Dear Editor,
Regarding the recent front-page article in which the Honorable
Don Gage, chairman of the Valley Transportation Authority, suggests
abolishing Caltrans
… well, talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Dear Editor,
Regarding the recent front-page article in which the Honorable Don Gage, chairman of the Valley Transportation Authority, suggests abolishing Caltrans … well, talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
The VTA’s annual operating deficit, which I calculated at $271 million (excludes capital costs in the billions) is proof positive that our elected leaders have capitulated to the radical socialists.
VTA’s (and our other transit agencies) financials are as faulty as those Enron published before its bankruptcy. Shake up the transit agencies before abolishing Caltrans.
It is not the transport infrastucture that is at fault for our state’s insolvency (and transit agencies’ insolvencies), it is the socialist takeover of our government.
The for-hire carriage of passenger business is not part of the transport infrastructure, unless you adopt the Marxist-Leninist dogma espoused by Hon. Rod Diridon and the other Radical Socialists.
It comes as no surprise that public transit advocates offer excuses and justifications to preserve their jobs, should voters and elected leaders believe their lies? We did not need the MIT study to tell us that VTA is the worst run transit agency in the nation, or the Grand Jury Report about their gross mismanagement and wastefulness. Press reports of VTA’s farebox recovery rate (11% of operating revenues), which violates the mandated 15% rate in the Public Utilities Code, ignored by elected leaders, was in everybody’s mind as we struggle through recession and business failures.
Reality is this: The VTA and our other public transit agencies cannot make socialist transit work unless we overthrow capitalism, follow the course of the Soviet Union.
Is that what we want for our children and grandchildren? Is there a single disadvantaged, disabled, or elderly person in the USSR getting any transit service today? No. Why? Socialism-Communism don’t work in the long run, despite the lies of its defenders.
So, what’s the answer? Privatization.
What did Denver learn about privatization? How many hundreds of millions of dollars has San Diego County saved by contracting out to private sector carriers?
Treating motorists like smokers, taxing people out of their cars, blaming senior citizens driving “gas guzzlers” for causing air pollution and highway congestion are tactics socialists use to stampede voters into making mistakes. But the biggest mistake we make is to believe the transit advocates.
It would be cheaper for taxpayers to transport disabled and disadvantaged in taxicabs and limousines than by public sector transit.
VTA’s leaders remind me of medieval physicians applying blood-sucking leeches to revive a dying patient – the cure is worse than the illness. Have we reached the point where enough one-half cent sales taxes have accumulated to tell us what history has shown: Socialism cannot out-perform capitalism.
Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group officials and other local leaders have placed our bets on a sick horse, and now they want us to accept their lies a bit longer. What will it be? Higher taxes/fees, budget cuts for education and law enforcement, so that empty bus and train seats can be transported at taxpayers’ expense?
I say to VTA’s leaders what I said to Bullet Train commissioners: If they were the board of directors of a private sector company, then they would have been terminated for incompetence.
The Grand Jury was right about one thing: VTA is wasteful and grossly mismanaged, and a disgrace to our elected leaders who apologize for the taxpayer abuse it creates.
Joe Thompson, Gilroy
