Mary Peters - Transportation Secretary

UncleTrvlingJim said

Just wanted to get a sampling of opinion here on Mary Peters, Bush's Transportation Secretary. I'm still reading up on her a bit, but it would appear that her opinion is that the government should not be in the business of infrastructure, but rather, roads and bridges should be built entirely by private companies and we should pay tolls for its use.

I tend to be a pretty small government kind of guy, but things like infrastructure, to me, seem like the very thing government is good for. IMO, I think the investment in infrastructure (and not just roads and highways and bridges, etc; but fiber optic cable and other means of distrubiting information) is well worth a national commitment.

Thoughts?

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I disagree with her and agree with you. Public infrastructure is one of the basics that I do believe government should do.

What is "government" in our system?

It's supposed to be "us" -- our collective will and our taxes employed to address common problems. Roads, canals, levees, port facilities and other basic infrastructure are the foundation for an economy. We all pay, we all benefit.

Infrastructure, education, defense, enforcement of property rights, and a few other things I could compromise on are the fundamentals of why people organize public authority for the common benefit.

The market fundamentalists who want to privatize EVERYTHING are as nutty as any kind of rigid fundamentalist.

Hell, roads and other basic infrastructure, which -- outside the interstate system -- is supposed to be more a local or state responsibility, are about the only areas where I get an actual tangible benefit from the taxes and fees I pay. Otherwise my tax dollars mostly disappear into graft and the military industrial complex, unless I make an effort to visit National Parks often. I see almost nothing of that money that directly improves the quality of my life.