2nd Entry - 08/14/08

What is a three word, nine letter phrase that has sucked the life out of Massachusetts?

THE BIG DIG.

To date, this monstrosity has cost the people and state of Massachusetts over $15 billion and with the $7 billion in interest state officials "forgot" to take into account, this project is going to cost at least $22 billion. The Boston Globe wrote that 73% of this was paid by drivers and taxpayers and it goes on to say that the annual payments will be around $600 million or $50 million/month. This is just the surface of the problem.

What effects does The Big Dig have on Western MA, even though all the construction, accidents and bureaucracy go on in the Eastern part of the state? First, all the money that goes to transportation, maintenance and/or repair is already gone. Every day construction continues, the taxpayers and the state are losing money. The manager of The Big Dig, the Mass. Turnpike Authority, doesn't know what to do. And how could he? It would have been silly for them to have a disaster plan or have a risk management team because nothing ever goes wrong with construction, right?

"The debt is a big part of why Massachusetts had the highest tax-supported debt per capita in the United States last year." The highest tax-supported debt. That would imply that taxpayers actually made a decision that they would support this debt. In reality, we are forced to support this debt. When your check comes on pay-day, three federal agencies and one state agency have already taken money from you. In MA, the most of the money being taken from our checks is going to The Big Dig.

What about the people who actually are doing the construction. They get still get paid but the funds are from borrowed money. So we have to pay people from borrowed money but the taxes taken out of the check go directly back to the state. The Globe says 80% of the workers involved with The Big Dig are paid with money that has to be paid back at some point.

In the 1980's, MA residents were told that the federal and state government would be paying for 90% of the cost. In 2008, the people have paid 73%. George Walker Bush would call this "fuzzy math" or it could be good Reaganomics. One day though, the Feds said they were only going to pay so muc and it was going to be up to the state. Who does the state turn to? You probably guessed it again because it's always the same group, taxpayers.

Back to Western MA. Taxpayers have paid over $15 billion for The Big Dig. That's is about $3.5 billion for the 4 counties in Western MA. There is no doubt that that money could have been used for a gamut of different institutions, programs and maybe just general savings but it wasn't. A small group of people "decided" that we would be taxed for a "project" that has yet to be completed, cost people their lives, caused injury and cost us billions. This "project" does not effect us in any direct way other than the money that is taken from our side of the state. For the people who do have to go out to Boston, I know they can see the traffic jams, the confusion and the eyesore that this project has become and really has always been. Where are our state representatives voices when they go out to Boston? They are probably just looking for earmarks and other policies that will benefit them.

"The Big Dig saddled us with costs we can't afford,". Great analysis from the secretary of transportation, Bernard Cohen. It's a surprise an effort like The Big Dig failed when you have all of this incompetency to go around. The economy on this side of the state may need an "obituary", as the Republican reports, but the killer is the state.