Zombie Highway in Alabama Exposed on Public TV
August 6th, 2009Update Below in the Comments: Show Delayed Due to Breaking News…
On the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Public Television will air a story about so-called “Zombie Highways,” federal highway programs that keep going long after their original purpose has been fulfilled.
They gobble up billions in tax dollars and lay down hundreds of miles of blacktop, according to the advance link posted on the Alabama Public Television Website.
The story will look at a $3.3 billion proposed beltline loop around Birmingham.
“Environmentalists don’t want it, residents of the area where it’s being built don’t want it, even the mayor of Birmingham doesn’t want it,” the blurb says. “But because a group of business interests pushed for it, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) inserted it into a transportation bill — which means that taxpayers nationwide will foot most of the bill.”
Transportation experts say it’s the wrong road at the wrong time in the wrong place — and that it symbolizes what’s wrong with the way we build roads in this country. It’s also devouring subsidies that smart-growth proponents say could be better spent on public transit.
The segment will ask: “Is there any way to kill a zombie highway?”
Well, yes, there is, but it takes public involvement and the press for democracy to work.
What the broadcast reporters for public TV don’t realize is, the speculation going on now for land in northern Jefferson County and Blount County along the Locust Fork River is inextricably linked to the proposal for this new beltline highway. We are working on an overlay map to show readers the connections.
Check back soon and tell your friends. To find out the whole truth and nothing but the truth, turn to the Web Press!
Related Story
Birmingham’s Northern Beltline Highway Is Not Inevitable
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August 6th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Hasn’t Alabama had enough of Shelby?
Do you have to have a county named after your family to be a senator in Alabama?
August 6th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Well, there’s no Sessions County, at least not yet : )
Politics in Alabama has nothing to do with what the people want. It’s about what the controlling, polluting corporations want.
Shelby is fine with them…
August 6th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Rowland: I am not sure that Shelby County is named after an ancestor of Dick Shelby, although it is possible. I confess ignorance on that subject.
Pork barreling and rent-seeking: Shelby’s insertion of the funding (appropriate word, insertion) for the north beltway loop into the transportation bill is the usual modus operandi of almost all members of both houses of Congress, of both parties, so this is hardly evidence of any special evil on the part of Republicans or Alabama politicians in particular.
Robert Byrd, the very longtime Democratic Senator from West Virginia is a universal master at this, as was the unlamented former Republican Senator Ted Stevens, as are many others from both sides of the aisle too numerous to mention.
Rent-seeking corporations and business interests are attracted to fresh troughs of billions of tax dollars dished out by members of Congress in the same way pigs are attracted to fresh troughs of slop.
Logically, if Congress did not have virtually unlimited power to dish out the dough, those rent-seeking corporations would not be hanging out at the DC troughs. Pigs do not bother to go where there is no food, after all.
To stop this abuse, new limits, by constitutional amendment, need to be placed on Congress. Currently there is no constitutional barrier to how much Congress can tax, or spend, and no oversight except what Congress chooses to accept for itself.
Yes, there are elections in which, theoretically, members of Congress can be defeated. But thanks to state ballot laws limiting access for third party and independent candidates, “campaign reform” laws which stack the campaign fundraising deck in favor of incumbents, not to mention gerrymandering to insure safe seats for incumbents, not much will happen by way of substantive change in the makeup of Congress over any 10 year period. Meantime, the “newbies” who came in promising reform have become part and parcel of the continuing problem.
It’s a systemic problem, not one that can be logically laid at the feet of a few corrupt Senators or Congress members. If the latter were the case, it would be very simple to clean up — just limit the access of the corrupt few to the spending decisions.
But there are not just a few corrupted folks in Congress. There are hundreds of them. And that begs for a systemic solution, i.e., a constitutional amendment or amendments limiting the power to tax, spend and create deficits.
August 6th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Since the Senate voted 68-31 Thursday afternoon to confirm President Barack Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, to become the first Hispanic on the high court despite strong opposition by most Republican senators, a story on Birmingham highway construction, “Zombie Highways,” has been delayed until Monday for breaking news coverage, according to an update on the APT Website.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
We have one like that here in Tuscaloosa as well. The “Eastern Bypass” It is slated to head right through a newly purchased public park. City leaders are leaning on our park authority to “not be a problem”.
Maybe you should come here and do a story on that as a link to the total fiasco which is ALDOT!
August 7th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
I will, once we get the coal ash story done…
August 10th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Interesting segment tonight, but I think it’s a series and continues. Anybody else see it?