Why Tom, funny you should ask because under your definition of what our government ought to be providing, it should of course be private industry that builds them. I'd think your answer would be that no tax dollars ought to support our network of highways. Having government do it would be......socialistic. It certainly is not in our Constitution to provide for the transportation needs of our citizens.

Nope, if business A wants to be able to travel to business B, then by God they ought to build and maintain the road between them. Oh and then business C needs to get to business B but they need 4 lanes instead of the two that the other road entailed so the one they build starts where the other ends up and suddenly goes from 2 lanes to 4. A transition? Who cares. It's not the responsibility of any of those businesses. The people that drive on it better just know their lanes are going end suddenly. And some other road crossing one of those? Well unless all the businesses decide to give up some profit to build some traffic control device, then what the heck. You better be real careful motoring on this stretch.

Yep, the new energy bill ought to be all about drilling new oil wells in the US even though most studies have concluded that the output would be trivial at best and of low quality. How ridiculous of anyone to assume that better fuel economy might actually cut back our need enough that those extra wells might not be necessary.

Might be noteworthy too to mention that the version of the bill that did get passed on for Bush to sign got stripped of rebates and incentives for consumers to use alternative methods of energy other than fossil fuels. I'm sure that good old oilmen put on the heat when it appeared the Senate was about to get a veto-proof majority (they were one vote shy). The holdouts? All Republicans. Imagine that.

Art