Mississippi River Bridge Toodleoo

NOTE: A conflict between the legislatures of the states of Missouri and Illinois over how to pay for a new bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis has been heating up over the past few months. Missouri wants to create a toll bridge and stick it to Illinoisans who have to cross the river to commute to work in St. Louis daily. This Illinois resident thinks it's unfair and that Missouri has the money but not the guts to use tax dollars to pay for a crucial American crossroad. Illinois already has allocated the funds to get a federal match while Missouri won't even negotiate.

So he wrote the...

MISSISSIPPI RIVER BRIDGE TOODLEOO

As a geographical undesirable (GU) from Illinois, I have personally experienced the social conceit and undeserved arrogance that Missouri legislators and some of its so-called civic leaders dump on people from anywhere else. My answer when asked where I went to high school leaves most Missourians with a typical blank expression on their faces. No, I’m not from the Show Me State. I’m from the much bigger, richer and more sophisticated Land of Lincoln, so stow the Confederate war flag in the back of your beat up pickup and listen up.

Lately the hillbillies in the Missouri legislature have been trying to stiff the residents of my great state by demanding a toll to cross the river from Illinois into Missourah or Missouree! Perhaps their third-world education system failed them when it comes to economics or sociology. Let me help you out a little.

Illinoisans already pay our share of taxes in your backward state and we don’t intend to pay any more for nothing. You see, about 100,000 of us work in St. Louis City and County. For that privilege we are forced to pay a one-percent “Head Tax” by the city, an income tax in Missouri where we earn our living, an income tax in Illinois if our spouses work here, federal taxes on both, and local sales taxes. What? Do you think we drive back to Illinois for lunch everyday?

The state of Missouri even taxes your newspapers. So much for your claim to fame as a low-tax state!

Don’t even get me started on politics in Jefferson City. Central Missouri%

Mississippi River Toodleoo

NOTE: A conflict between the legislatures of the states of Missouri and Illinois over how to pay for a new bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis has been heating up over the past few months. Missouri wants to create a toll bridge and stick it to Illinoisans who have to cross the river to commute to work in St. Louis daily. This Illinois resident thinks it's unfair and that Missouri has the money but not the guts to use tax dollars to pay for a crucial American crossroad. Illinois already has allocated the funds to get a federal match while Missouri won't even negotiate.

So he wrote the...

MISSISSIPPI RIVER BRIDGE TOODLEOO

As a geographical undesirable (GU) from Illinois, I have personally experienced the social conceit and undeserved arrogance that Missouri legislators and some of its so-called civic leaders dump on people from anywhere else. My answer when asked where I went to high school leaves most Missourians with a typical blank expression on their faces. No, I’m not from the Show Me State. I’m from the much bigger, richer and more sophisticated Land of Lincoln, so stow the Confederate war flag in the back of your beat up pickup and listen up.

Lately the hillbillies in the Missouri legislature have been trying to stiff the residents of my great state by demanding a toll to cross the river from Illinois into Missourah or Missouree! Perhaps their third-world education system failed them when it comes to economics or sociology. Let me help you out a little.

Illinoisans already pay our share of taxes in your backward state and we don’t intend to pay any more for nothing. You see, about 100,000 of us work in St. Louis City and County. For that privilege we are forced to pay a one-percent “Head Tax” by the city, an income tax in Missouri where we earn our living, an income tax in Illinois if our spouses work here, federal taxes on both, and local sales taxes. What? Do you think we drive back to Illinois for lunch everyday?

The state of Missouri even taxes your newspapers. So much for your claim to fame as a low-tax state!

Don’t even get me started on politics in Jefferson City. Central Missouri, politely referred to as “outstate,” would rather St. Louis and Kansas City didn’t exist. If he could, your governor would sell St. Louis to finance the rest of the state. Your boneheaded legislature dominated by outstate rubes, still control the Big City’s police department because of the Civil War, so let’s not go there.

Let me shed some light on where I’m coming from. The people who cross the Mississippi River consist of three categories: commuters, commerce and tourists. (No, I didn’t forget the St. Louis executives and leaders lunch at the topless bars daily. I just can’t decide which category they fit into.)

Now pay attention because here is where it gets complicated. If you build a bridge across the Mississippi River and charge a toll to cross it, the people who cross it every day, won’t use it. Why not? Because all the other bridges are FREE! Pretty sophisticated, huh?

So, if they don’t use it, that leaves the other two groups in the category, which means, your anti-tax state will be taxing interstate commerce and tourism.

Now having lived and worked in Missouri, as well as promoted it for some years to the rest of the world, I know that the last thing Missouri wants is a reputation as being anti-business and anti-tourism. So where does that leave us?

In attempting to cut off your nose to spite your face, you will be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. (That from an Ozark dialect I learned from a legislator from Carthage) It means, by trying to create a user tax on Illinoisan citizens, what the Missouri legislature will have achieved is to place a tax on the goods being shipped to and from Missouri companies! That isn’t exactly in the Chamber of Commerce good idea book, is it? Not to mention that many over-the-road truckers go through downtown St. Louis because it’s shorter than going around it. With a toll-booth slowdown and a fee, those truck drivers will think twice about the route to their destination. I’m sure the truck stop owners will benefit when they get bypassed.

Grandma and grandpa in their Winnebago also will be forced to pay a tourism tax because I-70 is the fastest east-west route through St. Louis, and Mobile Homes aren’t Hondas when it comes to gas mileage.

Yes. Missouri, despite the Victorian Hancock Amendment, you can find the money to pay your portion of a bridge that you need more than we do. Now that the Highway 40/Interstate 64 project is scaled back, why not scrap it entirely? Nobody wants it except for your Transportation Department Director and it isn’t even needed. For decades you failed to maintain the McKinley Bridge, from which Illinois had to bail you out, but we learn fast over here in the Prairie State. Once fooled….

You don’t have to Show Me what kind of ballgame is being played here. We didn’t pay for the Jones Dome or Busch Stadium and we aren’t going to pay your share of a new bridge to Missouri either.

Fed Up (GU) In Illinois

Hang on to your wallets boys. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Inflation: The Biggest Lie

I’m not an economist (thank goodness), I’m a Midwesterner with the good sense to know when I’m being lied to (most of the time). I have staffed a few campaigns, both partisan and non-partisan, have a degree in political science from University of Illinois at Springfield, and I know a good political game when I see one. I’m also old enough to remember the 1970s when inflation and interest rates were in double digits and the government blamed it on the price of oil. Well the price of oil is somewhere past the historic stratosphere and the government is telling us that inflation is moderate.

The current federal government has been accused of a lot of things in recent years, but truthful isn’t one of them. And, right now, this government cannot convince me that inflation isn’t running rampant in America.

Sure the Federal Reserve policy over the last six years has been to increase interest rates 15 out of 15 of the last meetings, supposedly to curb inflation, or was it supposed to slow down the irrational exuberance of the 1990s. I guess it depends on whom you believe and when. But I gotta tell you as one Midwesterner to another, inflation is out of control and I’m not so sure that interest rates aren’t about to take off as well.

If you remember the 1970s, the Middle East was very angry with the US over a number of issues, including support of Israel, the Shah of Iran and our general imperial attitude toward countries that produced the oil that America relied heavily upon to be, well, American. So the countries that produced oil decided to let us know who was in control and they embargoed their oil from our ports. That’s a nice word for cut us off cold. Limited supply.

What followed was an increase in the price of gasoline at the pumps and a general panic among us Americans. What also followed was a nearly vertical rise in the price of everything that traveled over ground, by air and by sea. That was called inflation and it increased our panic. Interest rates soon followed and the price of a house began to look beyond reach of all of us who didn’t have one. Same house. Same location. 300 percent increase in valuation.

Does all of this sound familiar? The only thing that’s different is the government keeps telling us that inflation is under control. How can that be when the price of everything I bought last year has gone up…a lot? The trees I bought a few years ago for $30 are $100. The meat I bought for a barbecue the same time last year has almost doubled this year. The price of a new car seems to average $30,000 and the house I bought when my son was born has tripled in assessed valuation before he enters his senior year in high school.

If I were an economist, I could explain each and every one of these things by talking about supply and demand and Mad Cow Disease, the War on Terrorism or real estate speculation, but as I said, I’m not an economist. I’m just a Midwesterner, but I’m here to tell you somebody in our government isn’t telling us the truth to us about inflation.

Maybe they call it something else now. Maybe it’s called Economic Fusion (confusion?) or the New New Economy. Regardless of the name, just like inflation, it’s killing those of us caught in the middle of it. Whatever it is we can’t afford it anymore.

I miss inflation. At least we knew what the enemy was and, unlike terrorism, felt that we had some kind of control over it. Or maybe we were lying to ourselves then too.

At the same time infflation was downsizing the buying power of our dollars, interest rates were in double digits! Back to the house example; in 1969 the house was worth $60,000; by 1979 it was priced at $180,000. OK, so maybe if you itemized you could deduct the interest on the mortgage to pay for the house. The trouble was that interest rates for a loan to finance the rest of the home after downpayment was 20 percent! Your wages hadn't kept up with inflation, so how are you going to find the money for the downpayment and still make the monthly mortgage payment? Same house. Same location.

Call it what you will. The price of everything has increased a lot since the millenium began. It’s inconceivable to me that the government, the Federal Reserve’s 12 districts and corporate leaders haven’t noticed. GM’s stock is at the junk level, and Ford is facing record losses. Most major airlines are in, coming out of or going into bankruptcy because their fares barely cover the cost of fuel to get to their destinations. Sales people I know tell me consumers are scared and not making major purchases. Yet we are told that the economy is doing very well and inflation is “in check.” Whose check is what I want to know. Not mine. Yours?

How can all of these “indicators” contradict what we are personally experiencing without some conscious duplicity. Sorry, political speak. I meant to say that this is bullshit and somebody knows it.

I also am old enough to remember the current President’s father telling us that the recession is over and the economy is moving forward. His opponent, who ran his campaign on the theme, “It’s the economy, stupid!” defeated him and went on to win another term. The economy was predictably perky in the 1990s, as I personally can attest.

What changed? 9/11? Iraq? Oh no, not Iran again. Well even a political science degree doesn’t entitle me to write more than any other commentator, so I’ll just end with this. If it looks like a Bush economy, runs like a Bush economy, and talks like a Bush economy, then it probably is another Bush economy. Stupid.