A Tollbooth On Every Corner

<p>Pop Quiz: What government agency has been most flooded by conservative, free-market ideology during the Bush administration? <br />

A: The Justice Dept.? <a title="The Environmental Protection Agency" href="http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/white-house-skirts" id="qrj3">The Environmental Protection Agency</a>? It’s a tough call.</p>

<p>But <a title="today’s Washington Post" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/16/AR2008031603085.html" id="lsoo">today’s Washington Post</a> makes a strong case for the seemingly innocuous Dept. of Transportation. <br />

The Post describes department heads passing out Barry M. Goldwater’s &quot;The Conscience of a Conservative&quot; as they reject money that Congress gives them to build public roads and launch mass transit projects. Instead, DOT has now successfully told Congress to give tax breaks to private equity firms to build roads. Given the ambitious task of privatizing the nation’s roads, in the interim, DOT is taking the tollbooth to places it’s never gone before.<br />

D.J. Gribbin, the dept.’s general counsel and White House liaison, wants tolls for cars in congested in metropolitan areas, even for airplanes that land at peak hours. His vision of a tolling utopia is more free market than the free market’s most towering prophet, Milton Friedman.<br />

&quot;<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Milton+Friedman?tid=informline" target="">Milton Friedman</a> said 30 years ago you should price roads for users,&quot; Gribbin told The Washington Post, &quot;but you couldn’t because you can’t have a toll booth on every corner.&quot; Now Gribbin says automatic toll collections have made the dream possible. <br />

Will the next president’s Transportation Dept. appointees keep the dream alive?</p>