Another reason why the government can kiss my ass

[Gaazy]

So lately theres been talk of them putting all these millions of wonderful taxpayers dollars into making a new road for our local piece of shit fucking one runway airport and fedex. Everyone is pissed because its a fucking waste, and it is. Nothing but a joke. They act like they HAVE to spend the money right away or something bad will happen. Fedex and the airport have bought out these politicians into putting in this road for them and its no secret. The even more ridiculous part of it is that theres a road not 100 yards from us that already goes STRAIGHT THERE. A perfectly good, wide, 2 lane road. Its actually one of the better roads in the area. Straight off the interstate, no potholes or broken spots, and goes in a straight line right into the airport and fedex. The godamn airport has ONE RUNWAY. It would be different maybe if it was a decent size one! It doesnt even do commercial flights for gods sake, just private and mail planes! Its 100%, absolutely unnecessary, and everyone in this area agrees and is pissed the fuck off that they are spending this kind of money on it.

so anyways, I went to a meeting today with all the city guys and engineers and commerce people about it. Apparently, they are going to build the road straight through my property. Right through the fucking middle. And what do they tell me? Its much needed, tough shit. From their original plans, I was going to have to tear down one of my three shops for this, but now I just lose the few thousand yards of lot space where I store equipment, and the road will be literally 15-20 feet from my 3 shops.

I get no kind of help or reimbursement, nothing. This building and complex has been here for 20 years or so, but we have only been in it for 6. They made up some shit and put a right of way through me and up through the woods behind us, and then straight through a farmers land who has lived there for more than 50 years (almost all of his land, gone) to get around it. Nice to know they can put them wherever they want. This old guy that owns the farm above us I feel even more sorry for. Hes grown up there and lived there all his life, and all in one big swipe, its gone, all gone. And theyre giving him some measly ass amount of money and giving him like 60 days to get the fuck out.

So everyone wants to know why I hate the government so much? Theres an example. They think they can do whatever the fuck they want. For the people? Bullshit. Theyre all about helping small companies prosper and make it? Biggest load of bullshit anyone's ever come up with. Fuck those cocksuckin politicians. Theyre gonna be in for a rude awakening if they think that road will be clear all the time. I will have heavy equipment running across it to my other lot and between shops all fucking day, every day.

[Lueyen]

http://law.justia.com/westvirginia/codes/54/54.html

Don't think there is much there to help though, except maybe you can get fair compensation. Any other ideas I have are far to twisted.

[Drem]

Fuck those cocksuckin politicians. Theyre gonna be in for a rude awakening if they think that road will be clear all the time. I will have heavy equipment running across it to my other lot and between shops all fucking day, every day.

i really hope you do that. seriously. i hate situations like yours and i feel sorry for you man

[Lueyen]

Gazzy, is the existing road a more direct route? (And Drem I expect you to smile at this). If you could somehow prove that the new road would cause more driving or the like, if it generates more CO2 perhaps you could demand that a study of the environmental impact and how it would affect global warming be done. In other words tie the project up in red tape... if they are looking to get it done quickly and "spend the money" now due to federal pressure you would effectively kill the project.

[Gaazy]

Gazzy, is the existing road a more direct route? (And Drem I expect you to smile at this). If you could somehow prove that the new road would cause more driving or the like, if it generates more CO2 perhaps you could demand that a study of the environmental impact and how it would affect global warming be done. In other words tie the project up in red tape... if they are looking to get it done quickly and "spend the money" now due to federal pressure you would effectively kill the project.

100% straight line. Thats what is everyone is like WTf about. It goes literally straight from the interstate about 3/4 of a mile, if that, into the airport. Like godamn what the fuck is the point of that? They gotta clear cut alllll kinds of woods out and goes over a little ravine that pretty steep, and it will be at least a half a mile longer to the airport.

It absolutely, in no way shape or form, makes any sense, whatsoever. A complete, absolute, unnecessary fucking waste of money.

And, the engineer and chamber of commerce or whatever they are guys were dickheads too. When we were trying to ask simple, polite questions, they just had this really bad "We'll do what we want" attitude. By the end of the meeting I was so pissed off I was really close to making license plates for a long time, honest to god. I will say that I sure as hell will not cooperate with them. Im going to every thing I can to be a pain in the ass for those fuckheads. Park equipment in their way and disconnect it somehow so it wont run to move it, leave shit laying around, everything I can

[Gaazy]

Here in the next day or two Ill be able to prove to you guys how ridiculous this is now. I will be taking a video of the road and driving up and showing where the road WILL be for my granddaddy because he wants to see it, so Im gonna figure out how to put em on youtube or something and ill post it here when I do.

They are even taking some of the land of the place beside us. We are fence to fence with the federal Mine Academy national headquarters thing. The chief director came over today and talked to me, and even he said theres nothing he could do about it to help us or himself even, and hes about as pissed as I am about this bullshit. He said he even talked to the higher ups in DC about it and they pretty much ignored him

I guess the government is too busy handing out hundreds of billions of dollars to the rich to give their managers million dollar bonuses for running their companies in the ground to worry about helping anyone else /shrug

Speaking of which, I hear Obama is gonna be on Leno tonight. rofl, what a joke, doesnt he have more important shit to worry about?

[Gidan]

Guess being the president means you are no longer allowed to do anything but work.

[Tuggan]

He is working. You think he's going on Leno to shoot the shit? He's touting his economy stimulus bullshit.


Sorry to hear about this useless road though buddy. Sucks that nobody owns anything huh?

[araby]

gaazy good luck on this and keep us posted.

[Gaazy]

if I could get away with it I think I would kill those dickheads in our local gov that think they need a new road there. Infuriates me more every day to know in a few months the beautiful landscape in front of my property will be destroyed for a pointless 1 mile or less long road. Nice little field that deer and turkey are in every morning, some nice huge pine trees that will be thrown out, a nice little farm and pond behind me that have a few horses always trotting around with all kinds of animals on it. Now, a fucking road. They are using some kind of federal grant, why do the people in this country think they HAVE to spend the money on SOMETHING just because they have it? I mean for gods sake, our interstates are really getting bad in more than a few spots now, why not repave those? Its so bad in one stretch of a couple miles that sometimes you have to grip the wheel for dear life to hold it steady at that speed. And god knows theyll be sending 400,000 people to do the job. dont know how it is where you guys are, but here they send 15-20 guys our to fix a fucking pothole. You can drive past and see one guy doing the paving thing, one guy on the steamer, one guy shoveling, and the rest standing with brooms talking or sleeping

[Lueyen]

They are using some kind of federal grant, why do the people in this country think they HAVE to spend the money on SOMETHING just because they have it?

Your question already includes the likely answer. If you'll remember a while back the thread Narrok posted regarding "white male construction workers". Regardless of your feelings on the matter, one thing that is pretty clear to take from that conversation is that the stimulus money granted is not without stipulation. Everyone who had their hands in it had their own concerns to various degrees about how the money would be spent. Some of it was based on power and the ability to bring home the bacon to constituents, but even if that had a limited impact you can rest assured that stipulations on how the money was spent based on perception of how effective it would be were put in place. On a whole that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the devil tends to be in the details. As with laws finding the perfect equilibrium is near impossible, but because people will often seek to subvert honest intent, the red tape writing must rule the day. The unfortunate side effect of removing subjectivity is to also remove common sense in many cases. This is why bureaucracy often times falls short of expectations and in many cases lends it's self to abuse. It's very likely that government officials think they have to spend the money now, because due to federal stipulations they do. It may very well be a case of it being a package deal. The project that makes no sense may be tied to a project that is badly needed, and they can not do one without the other.

This is why I stated that your best bet in stopping it may very well be in finding a way to delay it. Likely you won't completely prevent it, but will reflect it someplace else.

[Gaazy]

Dude, you know you have to talk down a bit to me, I dont have any idea what your first paragraph means.


And yeah, we've had a couple of lawyers from that field into it, and they said there's not shit we can do but make it a pain in the ass for them. But this was actually mentioned, but they said the two were not connected, but I dunno, they talk above my head too half the time.

[Lueyen]

Sorry Gaazy. While the project may not meet common sense guidelines it may perfectly fit federal stipulations on how stimulus money should be spent. It is also possible that if there is no project found currently that can be done, funds for multiple future projects may be denied. In other words they are under the gun to use it or lose it.

[Arlos]

And it sounds likely that this is entirely the idea of the local politicians, too, nothing to do with Washington. Basically what the states do is just say "We have a list of projects that are ready to go, we just need the money!" in order to tap into the funds. There are limits on the type of projects, but road construction is on the list.

Seriously, I doubt anyone in Washington has any idea of the details of that new road, they just saw it as Line Item 327-A in the funding request list from West Virginia. The people that are pushing it are no doubt the local or maybe even the state politicians. As to WHY, well, I would think that one possible reason would be obvious: Just how much money DOES Fed Ex pull in? How much of that have they spread around to those local politicians as "campaign contributions"?

So, FedEx says it wants this road, for whatever reason, and all those politicians that get big $$$ from them bend over backward to give FedEx exactly what it wants, regardless of if it makes sense or not. The local populace isn't as influential as FedEx is, so your complaints don't mean squat to them.

So yeah, be pissed at the politicians, but be pissed at the LOCAL ones who are in FedEx's pocket, as well as FedEx for asking for this road in the first place.

-Arlos