Gas Tax not covering the cost of roads. Not even close.

[fieldafm]

FDOT, city government and regulatory agencies all coordinated their planning and permitting to provide this benefit for private development.

But even before that, it was the city council's decision to effectively not enforce the original growth management plan of 1974 that allowed such large scale development in that area of town to happen.  If that plan had been enforced, Southside Blvd and Baymeadows would have never seen the type of unbridled growth... there is a certain family in office now that allowed that all to happen and benefited greatly from it.

It's time for new blood to enter our city leadership, and not the backing of the same power brokers of the last 30 years... remember that when you vote tomorrow.

[FayeforCure]

The market is the community.  When activities are organized as a market it is controlled from the bottom up by individual consumer decisions.  If consumers are paying the full real cost of something they will choose the most efficient and convenient option.  Subsidies skew that decision making process and end up promoting inefficiency.  Top down decision making leads to transportation projects like the skyway.

Wow, "the market is the community"

That truly makes me laugh.

Hey, I guess in a very primitive society one might be able to say that "the market is the community," because it is easy for consumers to make decisions on the purchase of items.

But the development/purchase of roads has a very broad value to society, which individuals benefit from both directly and indirectly. The indirect values are very difficult to quantify.

Just like the indirect value of transit is hard to quantify in terms of transit related development that is spurred.........which shows that it isn't just the users who benefit, but society as a whole.

So please spare me the "free market" crap, because in a more developed and thus complex society, there is no such thing as the basic economic principle of equilibrium of supply and demand.

One recent example is the near monopolies created with ATT and T-Mobile having merged.......which is almost guaranteed to increase consumer prices.

Sadly the consumer is powerless in such situations, as the power to choose is meaningless.

So please don't let that "free market" brain-washing destroy the consumer ability to actually have choices:

the merging of companies into giant corporations or the privatization of government-run industry and national assets often result in monopolies (or oligopolies) requiring government intervention to force competition and reasonable prices.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/free-market#ixzz1HWjia9wm

[mtraininjax]

One recent example is the near monopolies created with ATT and T-Mobile having merged.......which is almost guaranteed to increase consumer prices.

ATT announced it has PLANNED to purchase T-Mobile, but nothing is a done deal especially when regulators do not expect ATT to be able to keep all of T-Mobile in its current form.

From the Wall Street Journal:

AT&T Inc.'s $39 billion deal to acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom AG could be facing an uphill climb at the Federal Communications Commission. "There's no way the chairman's office rubber-stamps this transaction. It will be a steep climb to say the least," said an FCC official on Wednesday. The official declined to comment on the record. The official stressed that the agency hasn't even begun to formally evaluate AT&T's proposal and will examine the deal on its merits and whether it's in the public interest.  Members of the commission's Democratic majority have expressed growing concern about the state of competition in the U.S. wireless market.


AT&T executives have expressed confidence that the deal can be approved and set a $3 billion breakup that the company would be required to pay Deutsche Telekom if the deal fell through.

That is a HUGE amount of money to lose if the deal did NOT go through in some format.