Posted on 04/25/2007 7:19:53 AM PDT by SQUID
...and so it is upon us once again. Construction or as some put it, destruction season. Those of you who have ever been in Chicago know what I am talking about. You see, Chicago has five seasons. Now, before you start thinking about how you will tear this apart please know that I understand that there are necessary road repairs that need to be done with our bridges and the like. So, get lost.
It's just that I have been seeing backward methods that seem to just fill time and damage the roads rather than improve them. Here is what I mean.
As I drive through the city admiring the changes that have taken place over the last 20 years I can't help but notice a certain phenomenon with respect to road repairs. I have noticed that Chicago road crews like to clear a road of parked cars, give a ticket or two, strip the road down and repave it. Looks nice, thanks guys! Ah, but that's not all, after they pave it then they start tearing it up for sewers and/or what I call "ghost repairs".
For example, they cut a little shallow trench across the road that is about two and one half inches deep by about two feet wide and spanning the width of the road. Then they just fill it back in with black top. After a while you usually get potholes along this strip of pavement. Make sense? Not to me. They didn't do anything.
Maybe I'm missing something, but does anyone out there know what the heck that is supposed to do for the road? Am I wrong in assuming this is a waste of taxpayer money? Is Chicago the only place this goes on?
I understand that Chicago has strong Labor Unions and the city often just "finds work" for them. Yet, the mayor always wants more money by raising taxes on damn near everything he can get his hands on.
Now, don't get me wrong, he has improved the city a great deal, but I question the blatant Union Welfair policy the city has. Maybe we wouldn't need to increase fees and taxes on everything if we didn't have so much waste. Government here is responsible for the mindless cost of living increases.
Additionally, Chicago has been selected to represent the US for the Olympics. If Chicago gets the work, the people are going to be raped like they often are with huge overruns. Again, the Unions milk the jobs for more than they are worth.
There is no end in sight for the graft that goes on in the city and the taxes just keep going up. Businesses are going to be pushed out of Illinois if the governor gets his way with the small business tax. It seems that Illinois is following the California model for finance. Suppress entrepreneurship, increase taxes, give illegals health insurance coverage and the list goes on.
But, when you take a stroll through Millennium Park and listen to the symphony you forget about the fact that you are walking on concrete worth more than gold and that the illegal that is keeping the park clean is covered for his free doctor visit at 2pm.
Alaska has two seasons
Winter and Construction.
Alaska has two seasons
Winter and Construction.
I lived in the western suburbs back in the '80s. I recall that road surfaces in the Chicago area made of concrete were usually in ruins; and I got into the habit of hugging the centerline because the rightmost couple of feet of so many blacktop roads was broken up.
Somebody once told me that when they're pouring concrete roads, they put in pieces of wood so that the frost heave will blow up the pavement and they'll have jobs the next year.
Also, I don’t think being irrationally optimistic solves our problems. Government is not to be trusted and our federal system is based upon mistrust. We need to talk about sticky issues.
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