We need to de-link the Twins stadium proposal from transit.
Here is an article about how we do transportation funding that highlights
the character of the problem.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1126-06.htm
To wit: the federal Highway Trust Fund is running out of money just months
after a huge, porky transportation bill was signed into law. Taxes must be
raised to build more highways and useless "bridges to nowhere" in Alaska.
What is the natural way to raise taxes? To raise the tax on gas, which has
not been touched since 1993; it has not even been adjusted for inflation.
But that is not politically popular, so a better idea is to tax hybrid cars
and alternative-fuel vehicles, which don't use any or as much gasoline.
Brilliant, simply brilliant!
Tying transit to the stadium is the same sort of political nonsense on a
local level. We link a sustainable infrastructure project to an
"anti-sustainability" project. Just as the Neanderthal mind figures that we
should add a special tax for "green" cars to pay for the "anti-sustainable"
Federal Highway Trust fund, we decide that those who want sustainable urban
infrastructure development in Minneapolis will have to agree to pay an extra
and regressive tax for a structure that is not necessary and will in fact
set sustainability back.
This kind of political effort is absurdly self-defeating. We are on the
cusp of an energy crisis which will not go away in our lifetimes. Natural
gas and oil depletion are the first limits we bump up against. Water will
follow soon enough. We are smack in the middle of an Empire that has
declared an unending war for resources -- a war that wastes resources and
will be lost by everyone. And yet we cannot see the simple truth that we
must invest in sustainable new infrastructure and we must not invest in new
anti-sustainable infrastructure.
I guess the trick in politics lately is to tell people what they want to
hear -- life will continue just as it has. We will have plenty of time and
energy and money to throw at professional sports entertainment structure
which is rooted in a culture which will no longer exist, that is, a culture
which assumes entitlement to an eternal supply of energy (and other
resources) so cheap that we do not even have to think about them.
Want to advocate for a new Twins Stadium? Great! Just keep it separate
from sustainable projects. why? We do not need and cannot afford more
infrastructure rooted in a world that no longer exists.
-- pedaling for peace and ecojustice from Lynnhurst -- Gary Hoover
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