Last year my wife and I drove almost the entire length of the New Jersey Turnpike. The tollbooths gobbled up our quarters and dollar coins faster than an old style Vegas slot machine. Yes, you could actually pay with coin of the realm either by using "exact change" lanes or a toll lane where a living human being took our paper money and gave back change, politely I may add. There were numerous lanes for electronic tolling and most of the traffic passed through using them.

Back in the State of Washington, we had occasion to drive to a friend's summer home on Hood Canal. The route took us over the Tacoma Narrows Bridge where a westbound toll is collected. Like New Jersey, tolls could be paid several ways, by cash, credit card or electronically.

Having a choice of payment method is good for the out of area drivers as well as the infrequent user. No need to purchase a transponder and money on deposit, no extra charge if the toll authority has to bill you by photographing your license plate, just pay cash. Unfortunately, such reasonable customer service is not available on the Albert D. Rosellini (Evergreen Point SR 520) Floating Bridge. One reason electronic (Good to Go) tolling is the only option is social engineering. In an effort to smooth out the traffic and discourage use of private cars, tolls vary depending on the time of day. From 7 to 9 AM and 3 to 6 PM, for instance, the toll is $3.50 each way. Make that $5.00 if the license plate photo is used. Not a problem if you are part of the 1% but fairly expensive for the rest of us. If you had to travel the peak hours for say 40 weeks, five days a week, prepare to find an additional $1,400 in your budget. You could cut this somewhat by adjusting your travel times, taking the bus or using I-90 which is what the social engineers want you to do except there is talk of closing one of those options by tolling I-90.

Since the primary purpose of the tolls is to pay for construction of a new bridge, why not charge a lower flat rate 24/7 and employ a couple dozen toll takers for those who don't have a Good to Go pass. A flat rate is fair, it allows metering of traffic by funneling cars through toll plazas without the financial penalty and fewer enforcement and billing people could offset the addition of human toll collectors.

Tim Eyman's Initiative 1125 would have instituted a flat rate toll but it failed to pass, probably because it contained too many other transportation issues such as light rail across I-90. Maybe an initiative on the single issue of a flat rate toll for the Rosellini Bridge would pass. How about it, Tim?

Cross posted on: clear fog blog

Honorable Senator Harry Reid announced that his Senate won't fulfill the budget process this year. The Democrats' budget would be the rough numbers that were cobbled together behind closed doors in the crush of the Obama-made debt-ceiling crisis last August.

Why would they want to write a budget? If they build the budget they have to show the American public how they plan to spend more than they bring in. And how they plan to raise taxes.

For cover Senator Conrad of ND intends to do the first step of the process, then set it on the shelf. That won't fulfill the process required by the budget law either.

Follow the law? Harry Reid?

And what will our two senators do with all their free time? Take another year off. This is the third year they have flouted the law and not built the budget.

Republican Senator Jeff Sessions responded: (The Hill)

"It's been more than 1,000 days since Senate Democrats have offered a budget plan to the American people," Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the budget committee, said in a statement. "Now, once again, the Senate's ineffectual Democrat majority balks at the task of leadership." 

Sessions argued Senate Democrats don't want to spell out a long-term budget plan for fear of public scrutiny. 

"[Reid] obviously continues in his belief that it would be politically foolish for his members to go on record in support of any long-term vision," he said. "But by refusing to lay out a budget plan for public examination -- a fact no one can deny -- the Democrat Senate has forfeited the high privilege to lead this chamber." 

... Sessions argued that the spending caps under the debt-limit agreement "crafted behind closed doors and rushed to passage at the 11th hour under threat of panic, do not even approach the definition of the budget process that the [Budget Control Act] law requires." 

"They are not in any way or any sense a Senate Democrat budget plan," Sessions said.
"There is no argument that can be made that these caps are a long-term vision for this country -- not on taxes, not on entitlements, not on spending, not on debt."

"They're attacking us because they have nothing better to do. They need something else to talk about."

Ten days ago, I criticized Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat for proposing that we build a new university in this area.

Westneat thought that I was objecting to the public money that would be spent on a new university — and there would be large sums from the taxpayer, even if it were a private university, as he had proposed.

Actually, my objection is more fundamental:  Before we build another university, we should find out why our universities are failing to educate so many of their students.

Westneat strikes me as man who is impressed by credentials, so I will bring in, as a witness for my argument, Derek Bok, twice president of Harvard University.  (As far as I can tell, Bok is very respected by his peers.)

In 2006, Bok published Our Underachieving Colleges, a book with a modest title, and a set of dismaying conclusions.  (If you are going to read it, you may want to find the 2008 paperback version, which has an afterword on his second time as president of Harvard.)

In his introduction, Bok summarizes some earlier criticisms and says that, net, college students do learn something — and that many of them are pleased with their college experience.  He then gives his own indictment:

These positive results suggest that the critics were too harsh and too one-sided in their judgements.  They do not prove that all is well with undergraduate education.   Far from it.  Despite the favorable opinions of undergraduates and alumni, a closer look at the record in the chapters that follow shows that colleges and universities, for all the benefits they bring, accomplish far less for their students than they should.  Many seniors graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers.  Many cannot reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, non-technical problems, even though faculties rank critical thinking as the primary goal of a college education.  Few undergraduates receiving a degree are able to speak or read a foreign language.  Most have never taken a course in quantitative reasoning or acquired the knowledge needed to be a reasonably informed citizen in a democracy.  And those are only some of the problems.

I didn't write that; Derek Bok did.  But many others could have, and since 2006, a number of researchers have followed up with studies that strengthen Bok's conclusions.

How bad is it?  Roughly this bad:  About thirty or forty percent of the graduates from our colleges and universities get little from their years in college, except some pleasant social experiences — and some very large debts.

Those college students who do not graduate — and there are millions of them — learn even less, though they may have almost as many pleasant social experiences — and almost as large debts.

Failure on that scale calls for analysis, not replication.  Rather than building a new college or university, we need to learn why our current colleges and universities are failing so many of their students.  When the first Tacoma Narrows Bridge fell down, we didn't build another one like it, we studied it to see what was wrong with the design.

Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.

"After her 10-year-old saw porn on a man's computer screen at [a Seattle public] library, a mom objected".

Any reasonable person would object, but the Seattle Public Library does not object:

... although the state Supreme Court says that libraries have discretion about which Internet content to allow, the Seattle Public Library "believes in the right of each individual to have access to constitutionally protected material."

[Library spokeswoman Andra] Addison says that the library is considering ways to deal with inadvertent viewing, such as that experienced by Howe and her daughters, by moving the popular DVD section elsewhere, for example.

Of course the public library shouldn't be used for watching hardcore porn. Then again, does the library need to provide free Internet access in the first place? Some will say that the library is there to provide access to information to those who can't afford it. But how many people are there really who are so disadvantaged that they have no other reasonable access to the Internet, and who also use library computers for, say, self-education, job search or other non-amusement purposes?

And along with that, why does the public library lend out DVDs? Since when should taxpayers subsidize the home theater entertainment of those who can afford to get movies from Netflix?

Two ratings agencies, Moody's and Fitch, just lowered the state's bond rating.  (A third, Standard & Poors, left the rating alone.)

The state's ratings are still relatively high — we aren't Illinois or California yet — but these lower ratings do show us where we may be headed.

No doubt these three leaders are spending all their time getting our state's finances back into balance.

(Did you know that Majority Leader Brown has a PhD in economics (!) from Colorado?  I have known that for several years, but I still find it hard to believe.)

Or, perhaps I should say, support Orbusmax!

This afternoon, I mailed a small check to Orbusmax, and plan to do so every year, as long as Orbusmax is operating, and our "mainstream" journalists are so often failing us, as they are now.

I hope that some of you will do the same, if you aren't supporting him already.

You can contribute electronically through PayPal, or mail him a check, as I just did.  You can buy merchandise from his shop.  Or you can make your Amazon purchases through his site and give him a small commission.

Advertisers should consider buying ads at the site.

Which advertisers?  Fry's, Newegg, and their local competitors, obviously.   Walmart and CostCo, again for obvious reasons.  Sporting goods stores, since Republicans are more likely to exercise than Democrats.

And many others.