Saturday, January 3, 2009

When Wisconsin Blows Its Stimulus $$ On Highways: A Prediction

Here's the prediction:

The State Department of Transportation will not have enough engineers and managers to get the work done efficiently.

So more of the management and oversight will be jobbed out, enriching the contractors by putting them in the driver's seat.

K-ching, k-ching. Just think of the work order changes coming down the pike - - those paperwork adjustments to contracts that build up the bottom line after the cobntract has been let.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Or we could do things your way and get the (free) money and put it into silly rail projects that will cost us tens of thousands in subsidies per rider every year and drive ourselves deeper in the hole.

Best idea is that we take zero in federal stimulus money (our grand and great grand kids taxes).

Joshua Skolnick said...

Reagan, Bush I and Bush II already ran up 75% percent of the federal debt of all time, all to fight wars of choice on credit (cutting taxes on the wealthy during war time so our kids and grand kids could pay for it, increase the share of the economy devoted to financial paper five-fold, coddle the "health care" insurance bureaucracy that devours over 32 cents of each health care dollar without actually delivering anything useful, and a car and truck based fossil fuel economy that imposes external costs of between 10 and 15 dollars per gallon of gasoline.

No transportation system is free, and when you factor externalities such as wars and environmental disasters, as well as the direct subsidy of several hundred billion dollars per year in taxes for our current auto-truck based system, the comment about "silly rail projects" costing tens of thousands per rider is simply another "conservative" red herring fact-free legend on the level of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen.