Cities vs. the State

The radio is my alarm clock, and again this morning I was awakened to the sounds of the morning talk folks on WJBO, discussing some politician's lame proposal to construct a new Amite River crossing between Central and Watson by extending Hooper Road (LA 408) to LA 16 in Livingston Parish. This structure and approaches is alleged to cost over $100 million.

Understand this issue in local transportology.

EBR Parish contains 450,000 people, yet retains a vast amount of empty, developable space around the urban center, much of it located in convenient proximity to major activity centers. Much empty land remains in Central, Zachary, Baker, and the southwest/southeast corners of the parish to accommodate expanding populations near jobs and business centers. Indeed, much land exists in the central city area to house populations right now in areas located close to businesses, schools, parks, and other amenities.

Yet despite all this, the terror of the wretched Other persists, and thanx to the fiat socialism of public education most city folks are faced with the sole "choice" of failing EBR schools, to be shared with the feared Black People. (That is, if they haven't created their own lily Caucasian preserve school district for themselves - this means you, Central.) So after thirty years of White flight, there are now approximately 200,000 souls who live in the neighboring parishes of Ascension and Livingston - with only marginally better school systems, "but hey, at least we kept them jungle bunnies out."

Between Ascension and EBR Parishes, there are only three road crossings - I-10, Airline Highway/US 61, and Jefferson Highway/LA 73. Bayou Manchac (a small, barely navigable waterway otherwise) creates a seemingly insurmountable boundary toward greater communion between these two polities.

Between Livingston and EBR Parishes, there are also only three road crossings, courtesy of the somewhat greater separation provided by the Amite River - I-12, Florida Boulevard/US 190, and Magnolia Bridge (LA 37/64).

All these crossings were constructed in the age when these were exits from the city into the hinterland, not suitable for carrying 100,000 cars per day to and from lookalike subdivisions upon the denuded prairie.

The crux of the traffic problem in this region is the over-usage of these crossings into the crabgrass frontier and the approach roads therein. Simply put, it is like placing a constriction point on a water main every day.

The traffic situation within the exurbs themselves is also troubling, the rapidly developing sprawl spreading over an area served by inadequate country lanes and farm to market roads intended for an agricultural community of small population.

Do we want to sponsor continued development in this vein? Do we wish to beggar our urban centers and permit the complete secession of the capable majority, leaving our cities entirely in the hands of those incompetents, superflys, and sociopathic criminals who are bound to remain? Because this is what our politicians have seemed hell-bent on doing for nearly a century now.

Government policies are always designed to destroy communities, whether it be bridge building to greenfields, erasing civilization via the subsidy of indolence and irresponsibility, creating generations of ignorant unemployable morons via public skooling, or subsidizing the malinvestments of the politically connected dickhead elites (whom we so facetiously refer to as "entrepreneurs") in the name of "economic development."

It stops now. Piss off a bureaucrat, invest your life in the urban center.