July 21, 2011

Intellectual Dishonesty in Washington

Posted: Sunday, July 17th, 2011 at 10:20 am
By: Ken Bennight, San Antonio Tea Party

The United States is running up debt to previously unimaginable levels, and that debt is rapidly becoming impossible to repay. A technique countries have historically used to deal with excessive debt is to inflate the currency, thus making the debt cheaper to repay. Of course that works only so long as your creditors let you denominate your debt in a currency you control. How long before our external debt will have to be denominated in Chinese Renminbis, Saudi Riyals, or some other currency?

But the United States faces a more immediate problem in using inflation to mitigate the debt. Many U.S. obligations are indexed so that the obligations increase as inflation increases. Fortunately for Washington and unfortunately for America, that is a minor inconvenience. Just as the U.S. government controls inflation, it also controls the measure of inflation, the consumer price index. Washington can reduce increases in inflation-indexed obligations by manipulating how the consumer price index is calculated.

That’s already been done to some extent. If we still measured inflation as we did in 1980, the present inflation rate reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics would be much higher than it is. According to a recent report by Dow Jones Newswire, Congress is considering again manipulating the calculation of the consumer price index to further reduce the reported inflation rate. Reducing the reported inflation rate, of course, has no effect on the actual inflation rate.

In pushing this proposal, Congressman piously speak of getting a more accurate picture of inflation’s true effect. But given that reducing the reported rate makes Congressmen’s lives easier, it’s hard to believe there’s no self interest involved. Are any of us, Captain Renault-like, shocked!, shocked! to discover that even the computation of the consumer price index is corrupted by politics?

The big transportation news of the day is that you won't be tempted to get caught in a downtown traffic jam for fireworks tonight. No fireworks, no jam.

But in honor of the day, a couple of transportation tidbits:

Austin, unlike some cities, has never been much for slapping names on its highways. We tend to stick with the numerical designations that God and TxDOT gave the roads in the first place. But your Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (note that the word "toll" does not appear in its name) is trying to change that.

Already, it has begun to call its under-construction toll road on U.S. 290 East the "Manor Expressway." Not tollway, expressway. We'll see how that catches on when the turnpike's first section opens in a couple of years. Sometime back, the authority also began to refer to its planned expansion of U.S. 183 in East Austin (which will have tolls on the main lanes) as the "Bergstrom Expressway."

The trend is expanding.

There is now, in concept, an "Oak Hill Expressway," meaning the short section where U.S. 290 West and Texas 71 meet that in a few years might be a tollway. The agency board voted last week to pay a consultant about $750,000 to manage that coming project. The board also approved $2 million for similar work, referred to as the "Manchaca Expressway," which you might know as Texas 45 Southwest. Which will also be a toll road.

As of now, the only Austin highway with a commonly used nickname is MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1), which is named after a defunct railroad company. Using that as a guide, perhaps Texas 71 East to Smithville and La Grange should become the Chicken Ranch Expressway.

SEGUIN — A wide variety of questions about State Highway 130 were answered Wednesday during the monthly membership meeting and luncheon hosted by the Seguin Area Chamber of Commerce at the Seguin-Guadalupe County Coliseum.

Guest speaker for the luncheon was Victoria Miller, director of corporate affairs and public information coordinator for the SH 130 Concession Company.

A joint venture of Cintra, a multinational company based in Spain and Zachry American Infrastructure, headquartered in San Antonio, the SH 130 Concession Company is building segments 5 and 6, the southernmost sections of the 90-mile toll highway running from Interstate 35 near Georgetown to Interstate 10 east of Seguin.

“We’re hoping that the road will be done by the end of 2012,” Miller said.

After delivering a brief description of the project, she opened the proceedings to questions from the audience.