Thread: Obama Wants You to Pay an Interstate Highway Toll - Scam Time Charley

Obama Wants You to Pay an Interstate Highway Toll

Feds decide states can revenue generate federal militarized highway system

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
April 30, 2014

October 17, 1957 Federal Interstate Highway System plan. Illustration: Wikimedia Commons

Americans have shelled out billions in taxes to build and maintain federal highways. Now Obama wants them to pay tolls to drive on them.
The rip-off is contained in a $302 billion White House transportation bill. It would nullify a ban on converting the interstate highway system into a revenue generation toll road system.
The feds may try to stifle states’ rights at all turns, but they are using the argument to push the proposal.
“We believe that this is an area where the states have to make their own decisions,” said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “We want to open the aperture, if you will, to allow more states to choose to make broader use of tolling, to have that option available.”
Government blames more fuel efficient cars for the dilemma. Because of this efficiency – itself a government mandate – the Highway Trust Fund is in trouble. According to the feds, the 18.4 cent per gallon federal gas tax can’t meet demand. President Reagan jacked up the tax from four to nine cents. George H. W. Bush raised it to 14 cents and Bill Clinton brought it up to the current rate.
“The proposal comes at the crucial moment for transportation in the last several years,” Foxx said. “As soon as August, the Highway Trust Fund could run dry. States are already canceling or delaying projects because of the uncertainty.”
The federal government highway system was a product of the war machine pawned off as a modern Autobahn for the common folk. The German Bundesautobahnen was built by the Nazis, who had a penchant for merging public and military projects under totalitarian government. Fascism excels at this sort of thing.
The American federal government highway system was proposed by President and former General Dwight D. Eisenhower who was influenced by his experience as an Army officer participating in the 1919 Army Convoy on the first road spanning America, the Lincoln Highway.
The military had long planned a national highway system, beginning with a map submitted by General John J. Pershing in 1922. In 1956, Eisenhower signed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act into law. Initially pegged at $25 billion, the lumbering system eventually cost $425 billion.
The continual problem of funding infrastructure would not be an issue if the projects had started as private ventures. Toll roads would be acceptable if public money had not been used to build and maintain highway system. Inefficient and corruption plagued government cannot build and maintain a nation’s roads without endlessly raising taxes. Government has raided the Highway Trust Fund under the pretext of deficit reduction. In other words highway money has been used to fund general government spending. This sort of deceptive shell game is normal behavior for unaccountable government.
“Even the most ardent liberal and passionate conservative can agree that when they pay gasoline taxes, the least they expect is a road and bridge system that won’t crumble beneath their feet,” writes Ron Paul. “Before any subsidies or welfare payments are paid out, before social security is handed out to illegal immigrants, or health care is given to everyone, before bridges to nowhere are built at home, or entire countries bombed and rebuilt abroad, before any other myriad of exotic government projects are even considered, infrastructure should be attended to and taken seriously.”

This article was posted: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 at 9:24 am

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http://www.infowars.com/obama-wants-...-highway-toll/

http://www.alipac.us/f9/number-tax-i...rprise-301110/

Fox News

Ever driven down I-95 in Maryland, or the New Jersey Turnpike, and parted ways with $10, or as much as $20 in tolls?
If the Obama administration has its way, highways across the country could someday be taking a toll on your wallet.



Taking a Toll: Administration Wants to Let States Charge on Interstate Highways

A federal ban currently bars states from doing so in most places, but the latest White House push could change that.

Fox News

Taking a Toll: Administration wants to let states charge on interstate highways

Published April 30, 2014FoxNews.com

The George Washington Bridge toll booths.Reuters

Ever driven down I-95 in Maryland, or the New Jersey Turnpike, and parted ways with $10, $20 in tolls?
If the Obama administration has its way, highways across the country could someday be that way.
In a major shift for how governments fund transportation projects, the administration wants to let states charge tolls on interstate highways. A federal ban currently bars states from doing so in most places, but the latest White House push could change that.
Tucked into the GROW AMERICA Act, the White House's $302 billion transportation bill, is a toll provision that calls for eliminating “the prohibition on tolling existing free Interstate highways, subject to the approval of the Secretary, for purposes of reconstruction."
It also allows states more flexibility to use toll revenue for repairs "on all components of their highway systems."
The proposal reflects the growing need for new sources of funding to maintain the nation's aging transportation infrastructure. But it's also a slippery slope -- any driver knows that once a toll is in place, they become a handy tool for milking motorists. Tolls, for instance, just increased on I-95 and elsewhere in Maryland last year.
Following the Tuesday announcement, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters that the tolls would be a state-by-state decision, and it would require DOT approval.
"We would never tell a state or a local project sponsor to toll," he said on the call, adding, "but that optionality is increasingly becoming something that states are interested in, and we'll consider finding ways to help when that's an option that states want to consider."
The International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association applauded the administration in a written statement for recognizing “the importance of giving states the maximum amount of flexibility to use all appropriate funding and financing tools to meet their 21st century funding challenges."
But not everyone has been on board with the changes.
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association said it would review the proposal before making a statement but told the organization’s trade publication that the bill could “open the door to a localized interstate system by allowing states to apply tolls to existing toll-free interstate lanes.”
States are barred from tolling federal interstates now except if the money is used to add lanes or otherwise increase capacity, or if the highways have had tolls dating back to before the federal interstate highway program was launched in 1956. This is the case in Maryland and New Jersey.
The administration plan would let states toll interstates to pay for repairs or replacement of highways.
Many of the country’s interstates, built to last 50 years, are past their life expectancy and in need of more substantial repairs than simple repaving. States would also be allowed to introduce "variable tolling" -- tolls that change according to the time of day or traffic conditions -- on interstates. The tolls are designed to encourage more drivers to carpool or use public transit in an effort to relieve congestion.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, the 7.8-mile toll road connecting Chicago’s Dan Ryan Expressway to the Indiana Tollway clocks in as the most expensive toll road for passenger vehicles, costing drivers $.46 per mile.
The downtown tolls in Denver, Colo., cost $.29 cents a mile.
The Delaware John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway also ranks high, costing $0.29 cents per mile.


The Associated Press contributed to this report.


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...s-on-highways/

Obama Proposes to Allow States to Collect Tolls on Interstate Highway

Melissa Melton 5 hours ago
2 Comments

The cost of driving and basic travel across America is about to go up. As part of the proposed $302 billion White House Transportation bill called the GROW AMERICA Act, the Obama Administration just reversed a long-standing federal prohibition allowing states to collect tolls on pre-existing, otherwise free interstate highways:

Though some older segments of the network — notably the Pennsylvania and New Jersey turnpikes and Interstate 95 in Maryland and Interstate 495 in Virginia — are toll roads, most of the 46,876-mile system has been toll-free.

“We believe that this is an area where the states have to make their own decisions,” said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “We want to open the aperture, if you will, to allow more states to choose to make broader use of tolling, to have that option available.”
The question of how to pay to repair roadways and transit systems built in the heady era of post-World War II expansion is demanding center stage this spring, with projections that traditional funding can no longer meet the need.
That source, the Highway Trust Fund, relies on the 18.4-cent federal gas tax, which has eroded steadily as vehicles have become more energy efficient. (source)

The ban had been in place since 1956 when the national highway system was created under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The entire idea of essentially taxing travel on interstate highways goes against anything having to do with the spirit of free and open travel in this country, and we already pay a federal fuel tax as it is.
According to The Car Connection, the new tolls could generate as much as $87 billion in revenue for “infrastructure maintenance and upgrades”. But, again, that is additional revenue on top of the fuel tax. Would a toll not amount to little more than double taxation?

So what about roads that already receive federal funding for construction projects? Will they also be allowed to be converted to toll roads?
Multiple highways have been tolled in Texas and that money has gone not to fixing infrastructure but to private shareholders from foreign companies, as in the case with Cintra. Essentially, it’s just another way to make money off the public infrastructure.
In addition, the costs for transportation of goods across the country will ultimately rise as well, and as with everything else, these costs will also get passed along to who else? The customers.
In the meantime, while the government claims we need all this extra money to fund road repairs because the Highway Trust Fund is about to run out of dough, in the same breath the bill is also going to double funding for other modes of transportation. Transit systems and intercity passenger rail funding, for example, will get a boost from $12.3 billion to $22.3 billion.

Source

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this is Agenda 21 in action; limiting mobility of the people in America