Highway 40 Blues

Posted by Larry Miller on June 27, 2010 under Why | Be the First to Comment

Highway 40 runs the width of Tennessee and beyond. This ribbon of asphalt gives truth to the saying that in the volunteer state they have two seasons, winter and highway construction. Anyone who has made the run in or out of Nashville can attest to the fact that the smooth high speed run across the state is invariably broken by periods of restful pause as one sits in line waiting to get through yet another construction zone.

Pennsylvanians living along Route 22 that runs through the Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton, especially the last few miles before crossing the Deleware, can tell tales of constant construction repairing this or that section of road. It’s been rumored that some PennDot employees have spent their entire careers on this stretch of road. While we all recognize the need to keep up our infrastructure and hate bouncing our cars over the pot holes that never seem to go away, it is often easy to relate to the frustrations of the Michael Douglas character in the 1993 movie Falling Down.

I just completed a ten day swing up through the northeast for a graduation and wedding along with a little family vacation time. We spent far too much time on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway, which surprisingly enough, were about the only roads that had no shovel ready projects ready to absorb the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds congress borrowed from the Chinese in an attempt to undo the damage to our economy done by previous federal interventions.

Everywhere else, it was Highway 40 and US 22 on steroids. It was difficult to go more than a few miles without either being part of a construction site or seeing signs telling us one was to be part of our immediate future. Some even had the gall to place notices somewhere near the start that funding came from the ARRA. I felt good, seeing my children’s tax dollars at work, and wondered how they would pay for repairs needed in their time.

As I passed through the sites, it did my heart good to see all the union workers… some doing so… some watching and the politically connected contractors gainfully employed while much of the rest of the country struggles. I guess it’s like NJ Governor Christie said, that the government workers (and apparently contractors as well) have not participated in the recession.

There appears to be a new protected class, a class that lives off of our tax dollars and hardly ever bites the Democratic hand that feeds it. They have a pretty good relationship that leaves the rest of us out in the cold – or at least leaves us with the bill. It follows the old political principle of narrowly defined benefit with broad based cost.

With my apologies to Larry Cordle who wrote the Ricky Scaggs hit, we are all feeling a different kind of Highway 40 Blues, no matter what road we are traveling down. Some of the construction work, highway and who knows what else, is necessary. Some is not. But all of it will be paid for by several generations of Americans, and the bulk of money will be going to the “right” people, which, for the most part, is not Joe Lunchbox who is just trying to make ends meet… unless he has the right union card.

It’s not just highways, our benefactors are doing their best to see that we have nice, attractive buildings powered with green energy, populated by well paid government employees offering us seats in fine furniture when we come in to apply for our welfare check. Unfortunately, for this plan to work, it is necessary to turn the middle class into part of the dependent class. But, we will be able to have our checks deposited automatically into our government bank accounts. I really appreciate their consideration.