We all remember how
liberals tried to justify their recent bailout to
states and localities. It was going to do
things like save teachers’ jobs and pay for all
sorts of other “needed” services. But its
real impact was to enable the ever-increasing out
of control spending we have at the state and local
levels. Right? Little did we
know, however, that Nanny State directives from DC
were helping them spend those dollars so eagerly
borrowed from China.
In another ridiculous
misuse of our limited tax dollars, the Federal
Highway Administration has ordered New York City
to change “250,900 street signs… from the all-caps
style used for more than a century to ones that
capitalize only the first letters,” according to
Jeremy Olshan in the New York
Post.
Studies have shown
that it is harder to read all-caps signs, and
those extra milliseconds spent staring away from
the road have been shown to increase the
likelihood of accidents, particularly among older
drivers, federal documents
say.
(These must be the
same sort of federal studies that said a disabled
vet from Chicago’s North Shore could drive to the
city’s West Side in half an hour—while anyone
familiar with the area knows that the drive takes
an hour even without traffic, which is almost
never.)
“Safety is this
department's top priority,” Transportation
Secretary Ray LaHood said last year, in support of
the new guidelines. “These new and updated
standards will help make our nation's roads and
bridges safer for drivers, construction workers
and pedestrians alike.”
Wow, what a
guy! The Nanny State is so concerned about
avoiding those potential accidents, that it even
developed a special font, Clearview, for street
signs—which means that numbered signs must be
replaced, too. No doubt, LaHood had only the
best intentions, but with local officials having
to bust open their children’s piggy banks to make
payroll, did he realize that the price tag for New
York City alone would be $27.6
million!
And I did say “New
York City alone,” because this is a nationwide
initiative that will cost us an as yet
incalculable amount—in the middle of a recession
and the largest accumulation of debt in United
States history. Get ready for another bailout
when this money runs out because, as the Obama
sycophants and cronies tell us, tax cuts not
spending force us to
borrow.
Posted on 10/13/2010 7:50 AM
by Richard L. Benkin
