Mark Belling's post from June 18, 2008 is probably more informative as to how the brain of the right wing radio entertainer works rather than the content. For this who missed it, Forget mass transit is one of the more curious rants of the year demonstrating that Belling will not be content until he marches the Republican Party to the edge of a cliff and...over it.
To prove that motor vehicles operating on highways are essential to our daily life, Belling makes the point that the recent closures of Interstate 94 caused disruption and chaos. He ignores the fact that the interruption of bus and commuter passenger rail can be just as disruptive though I suppose he attributes that to the weakness of the systems.
Surely Belling is probably ignorant of the studies and conclusions of the Partnership for New York City, a pro business lobby that sees Manhattan paralyzed and endangered by the automobile. They have called for congestion pricing saying that the cost of automobile congestion costs the city $4 billion a year and that does not include the environmental impacts.
No doubt Belling would lump this IBM-AT&T-Verizon-American Airlines driven group as a cabal of left-wing conspirators as he sees the business community move to his dark side.
Not satisfied to malign transit riders, "Unless you’re one of the fringe that actually rides the bus, transit just isn’t that important," and ignorant of all of the studies that prove that subsidized transit rides cost the public less than automobile subsidization, Belling shares these keen insights about Milwaukee's business community:
- The fake "crisis" has been promoted for years by The Business Journal and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
- The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) is becoming increasingly left-wing.
- As a consequence, the MMAC, a once influential business group, is becoming the King of the Taxers.
- As for the "Business" Journal, it joins the Small Business Times as choosing to represent the interests of those who are taxing small businesses to death.
With that, I need no clever conclusion or retort.