Light the torches, grab the pitchforks!

"I have told my kids as well as others their age, they need to pay attention to this one. To be involved. This is going to affect them (and our grand kids) much, much more than it will affect people my age."

How is your drive as of late? More and more people who have been driving on our highways and byways are starting to smell a rat. Including the old Bird here. What? Is this a conspiracy theory? Might be. In fact, the Center for the American Experiment just published an article throwing a bit of gas on this fire. Where the state government (in conjunction with the evil Met Council) are scheduling repairs to really gum up the traffic.

What if this is true? The breadcrumbs seem to lead back to the Met Council (again). This bunch of un-elected, un-repentant, super bureaucrats seem to delight in making everyone's life miserable through social engineering. One just needs to look at the witch's brew called Thrive 2040 - the Met Council "cook book". In that document, most transportation funding (83%) will go towards light rail and buses, which are estimated to carry only 6% of commuters. 

The majority of commuters, the 90% who prefer to drive their cars to work, would only get the crumbs remaining from the transportation dollars. About the same amount of crumbs allocated to bikes, peds and safety. 

So what is the problem? Many in the the uninformed masses (that be us), either hate trains or commute from suburb to suburb. Regardless of the reason, the Met Council believes (in my humble opinion), that we need to undergo some sort of behavior modification. Just like in the show House of Cards, where Democrat President Underwood said, "The American people are like children. They often times don't know what is best for them. But I do." 

Here is the sweet irony of what this unexpected traffic mess is doing. The Met Council perceives themselves to be very "green". And yet when tens of thousands of cars are just sitting stationary on our freeways, idling - they are adding tons of pollution to the air we breathe. It also wastes precious fuel. Plus, it has been medically proven, more time sitting in traffic is bad for a person's health.

Let's peek in the future just for a moment. If it is true that the average motorist is stuck in traffic 47 hours a year compared to 12 hours a year in 1982, what is it going to be like in 25 years? I use 25 years as state demographers are estimating the metro population could add 750,000 more people during that time period. What? Do you mean 3/4 of a million people added onto a road system which is already inadequate? How does that work? You do the math on that one - the Met Council sure can't.

I have told my kids as well as others their age, they need to pay attention to this one. To be involved. This is going to affect them (and our grand kids) much, much more than it will affect people my age. Is there any hope? YES! Other than grabbing the pitchforks and torches, we can elect a Governor who will eliminate the Met Council and restore sanity to our state's transportation system.

Any ideas who that Governor could be? I do. He and I have talked at length about his plan and vision to fix this mess - the mess which does not have to happen. That person is Jeff Johnson, who is running for Governor in 2018. For the sake of Minnesota, and all who live here, we need Jeff now more than ever.