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David Frum: Buying a bridge monopoly in Michigan
David Frum | Oct 27, 2012 12:01 AM ET | Last Updated: Oct 27, 2012 10:04 AM ET
From a Canadian point of view, the most important vote to occur November 6 is not the vote for president of the United States. It is not the contest for control of the House and Senate. It is not any of the governorships at issue, or the state legislatures.
It is a ballot proposition in the state of Michigan, Proposal 6, an amendment to the state constitution intended to thwart the building of a second bridge across the Detroit River between the United States and Canada.
The existing Ambassador Bridge, the busiest border crossing on Earth, debouches into downtown Windsor. That location may have made sense when the bridge was built in 1929, but it’s been apparent for a long time that a second span was needed to connect more directly to the Canadian highway system.
One obstacle: The Ambassador Bridge is privately owned by an American billionaire, Manuel Moroun. Moroun intensely opposes construction of a more modern crossing. Not only would a new bridge deprive him of toll revenue, but it would also divert business from his highly profitable duty-free gas station monopoly.
Nobody makes a billion dollars without considerable shrewdness, and Moroun has deployed his money to build political opposition to the plan for a modern bridge. First he persuaded the Michigan legislature to bar spending any state money on the bridge. Michigan’s Republican governor circumvented that bar by reaching a deal with Canada whereby the Canadian government would advance the bridge’s cost and repay itself by taking first claim on toll revenue.
Not to be defeated so easily, Moroun responded by buying himself a ballot initiative. Moroun has invested at least $24-million in his so-called “The People Should Decide Campaign.” (The $24-million is the Detroit Free Press’s estimate, based on Moroun’s publicly disclosed spending through late July. Since then he has certainly laid out much more, and not all the spending need be disclosed.) Moroun’s campaign has gained support from the local chapter of Americans for Prosperity, an important national Tea Party organization. The campaign has also been endorsed by Grover Norquist, the Washington conservative power-broker and sometime lobbyist.
Why do taxpayer groups oppose the construction of a bridge that will cost precisely zero in Michigan taxpayer funds? That’s a very interesting question, and I hope it’s not too cynical to wonder if the answer can be found in the stubs of Manuel Moroun’s chequebook.
The advocacy has proved effective: Moroun’s TV commercials falsely claiming that a second bridge will cost Michigan taxpayers have had an impact. Polls show support and opposition to Proposal 6 almost exactly evenly divided.
For Americans, the moral of the story is: He who buys the Tea, runs the Party. The Tea Party has proven itself no exception to the rule about the sway of big-dollar donors over the U.S. political process. The Tea Party advertises itself as a middle-class protest movement equally hostile to Big Government and crony capitalism. Instead, it has hired itself to a business monopoly whose only argument rests on untrue statements and lavish spending.
For Canadians, there’s another — and related — moral. One reads a lot these days questioning whether the Harper government’s vigorous style of governing might represent some threat to democracy. And yes, the Canadian system does empower the executive over the legislature, at least in a majority government. But let’s have some caution please about the claim that democracy gets more perfect as it gets more direct. As Michigan has demonstrated, direct democracy may reveal itself as auctioned democracy — and a legislature may be independent of the executive and yet abjectly dependent on special interests.
National Post
David Frum | Oct 27, 2012 12:01 AM ET | Last Updated: Oct 27, 2012 10:04 AM ET
From a Canadian point of view, the most important vote to occur November 6 is not the vote for president of the United States. It is not the contest for control of the House and Senate. It is not any of the governorships at issue, or the state legislatures.
It is a ballot proposition in the state of Michigan, Proposal 6, an amendment to the state constitution intended to thwart the building of a second bridge across the Detroit River between the United States and Canada.
The existing Ambassador Bridge, the busiest border crossing on Earth, debouches into downtown Windsor. That location may have made sense when the bridge was built in 1929, but it’s been apparent for a long time that a second span was needed to connect more directly to the Canadian highway system.
One obstacle: The Ambassador Bridge is privately owned by an American billionaire, Manuel Moroun. Moroun intensely opposes construction of a more modern crossing. Not only would a new bridge deprive him of toll revenue, but it would also divert business from his highly profitable duty-free gas station monopoly.
Nobody makes a billion dollars without considerable shrewdness, and Moroun has deployed his money to build political opposition to the plan for a modern bridge. First he persuaded the Michigan legislature to bar spending any state money on the bridge. Michigan’s Republican governor circumvented that bar by reaching a deal with Canada whereby the Canadian government would advance the bridge’s cost and repay itself by taking first claim on toll revenue.
Not to be defeated so easily, Moroun responded by buying himself a ballot initiative. Moroun has invested at least $24-million in his so-called “The People Should Decide Campaign.” (The $24-million is the Detroit Free Press’s estimate, based on Moroun’s publicly disclosed spending through late July. Since then he has certainly laid out much more, and not all the spending need be disclosed.) Moroun’s campaign has gained support from the local chapter of Americans for Prosperity, an important national Tea Party organization. The campaign has also been endorsed by Grover Norquist, the Washington conservative power-broker and sometime lobbyist.
Why do taxpayer groups oppose the construction of a bridge that will cost precisely zero in Michigan taxpayer funds? That’s a very interesting question, and I hope it’s not too cynical to wonder if the answer can be found in the stubs of Manuel Moroun’s chequebook.
The advocacy has proved effective: Moroun’s TV commercials falsely claiming that a second bridge will cost Michigan taxpayers have had an impact. Polls show support and opposition to Proposal 6 almost exactly evenly divided.
For Americans, the moral of the story is: He who buys the Tea, runs the Party. The Tea Party has proven itself no exception to the rule about the sway of big-dollar donors over the U.S. political process. The Tea Party advertises itself as a middle-class protest movement equally hostile to Big Government and crony capitalism. Instead, it has hired itself to a business monopoly whose only argument rests on untrue statements and lavish spending.
For Canadians, there’s another — and related — moral. One reads a lot these days questioning whether the Harper government’s vigorous style of governing might represent some threat to democracy. And yes, the Canadian system does empower the executive over the legislature, at least in a majority government. But let’s have some caution please about the claim that democracy gets more perfect as it gets more direct. As Michigan has demonstrated, direct democracy may reveal itself as auctioned democracy — and a legislature may be independent of the executive and yet abjectly dependent on special interests.
National Post
What's bizarre is that a bridge that will improve commercial and other road traffic at a very busy border crossing may not get built despite it not costing the State of Michgan a single dime directly.
The US political system in microcosm? It's also illustrative of the pros and cons of different governing systems. It sounds great to say that we should have more direct democracy, but will it yield better results? Sometimes the adage that you should be careful what you wish for applies.
Anyways, if the current border crossing dumps into downtown Windsor - it should at the very least, go to a bypass but BC has the same problem with the one from I-5 too.
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