As wise adults we must face adult responsibilities for doing things like fixing our roads, which we use, and which have helped make us prosperous, mobile, and free. So yeah I gladly support using user fees to do it. I have a choice on how much I am willing to pay to drive, and the more I consume, the more I should pay. That's fair, and that's how it's supposed to work with most normal things we use....

I have no problem with using some of my taxes to make available, or even subsidize services I might find useful, like transit, or Amtrak, public health, or National Parks, if they can provide a net positive value to me, or that cannot efficiently be provided by the market conditions, or are in market conditions where these services may not have the ability to capture the full value of the total benefits to society from the price alone.

We don't always get the ideal return on our money, as shown by fiascos like the CAHSRA, but if we don't actually fix our infrastructure, we will end up like the Romans. And some time in the distant future, Chinese tourists can then come to look at the real cool ruins, of our once great road system, too.

We don't have the same adult imperative or obligation to take half of our income taxes, and spend it on the principle and interest, for our now good sized deficit, much of which has been largely caused by this last set of wars, and the ongoing expenses of maintaining a massive military to fight them. A vast military enterprise, that appears to have been used with no great skill, primarily to fight eternal low grade wars in every about every failed state we've been able to find, for the last 16 years or so. In most cases, in places where we have little national interest, and, with no real strategic plan to bring about "victory", which would be the restoration of peace and good order, so we can actually pack up and leave these failed states.

Doing that "war without end" thing has been a completely optional, expensive, and from every measure of "success" in these things, a damned wasteful use of my income taxes. These folks we have gone to "liberate" never have to take responsibility for getting their act together, and seem to then blame us, regardless of our often naively sincere motives, for their intertribal squabbles, backward corruption, and more often than not, hate us for even being there.

And, since some of these folks show such gratitude for my generous donation and our nations sacrifices to their welfare, by stealing much of the aid, while playing us off like chumps, and picking our pockets, that I just can't wait to see how much of my hard earned money we can squander, as a nation, in the next $hithole we can find.....?

But, I guess you're pretty okay with that, right?

California....on a beautiful Spring day like today.... yeah, it's just fine with me..... I hope that someday we will see a connection between ACE and the stranded investment in the HSR line at Chowchilla, that could provide half hourly service all day from those Valley cities in and out of the Bay area....