Herrera should kill CRC Funding in the Federal Highway Bill

In discussions with a staffer working for Jaime Herrera within the past few days, he acknowledged to me one of the nastier secrets that the Columbian continues to ignore:

The entirety of the Columbia River Crossing is a scam.

Herrera's office has, apparently, been hearing it.  He indicated to me that both the Oregonian and the Willamette Week had done in-depth examinations of the actual background of the eentirety of the what I describe as the scam concerning a multi-billion dollar, unnecessary, unaffordable and unwanted bridge replacement/light rail project, a fact determined by the Chief Justice of the Oregon State Supreme Court:

But Chief Justice Paul De Muniz, writing for the majority, highlighted an inconvenient set of facts for CRC backers.

He wrote in the Feb. 16 opinion that most of the project—namely the 10-lane freeway bridge and new interchanges—was put forward to get Clark County to agree to the light-rail line.

De Muniz cited statements that Metro made in the land-use process and Metro’s lawyer repeated before his court.

“It was politically impossible for the light rail project to proceed without also building new interstate bridges across the Columbia River,” De Muniz wrote.

“Or as Metro later summarized it: ‘There is no light rail without the freeway bridge[s] being replaced.’”

Backers have cited traffic and safety issues as the top reasons to build the CRC. But the court ruling means those and other justifications were created after officials decided to give a sop to Clark County, now worth $2.5 billion.

As many of us have known all along, the entirety of the CRC is driven by a worthless desire to stuff light rail down our throats; a fact known by, but steadfastly ignored by the daily newspaper which is singularly vested in a pro-bridge/loot rail outcome; needs, wants and desires of the people of this area be damned.

This decision by Chief Justice De Muniz proves that this scam is the most expensive, least efficient transportation project for it's size in the history of mankind.  Even Boston's legendary Big Dig is efficient in comparison.
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That the Columbian knows of this scam but refuses to report or editorialize about it is yet another in the series of crimes against this community the democrat newsletter is responsible for, right up there with their support of suing the people into silence on downtown redevelopment, the ballpark scam, the downtown, taxpayer financed park scam, the Jim Jacks scam, the "name-calling" scam and so on.
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When combined with the total lack of realistic transparency vis the issue of where this money has been vaporizing to and  the fact that the scum shilling this rip off refuse to put this to a county-wide vote and you have all the necessary ingredients that would justify the immediate end of the entirety of this massive fraud.

While federal highways should be maintained and expanded by federal dollars, the fact is that the billions slated to be dumped down the rabbit hole of the CRC is not a project that needs to be funded; on the contrary, it's a project that needs shut down while those involved need to be investigated by a federal grand jury for the obvious corruption this project has engendered.

People who SHOULD be looking out for us are throwing us under light rail trains.  And there's a price to pay for that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, here's an opportunity on the part of our congresswoman:

Kill the funding of this project now, demand Justice Department investigations into the companies who have sunk their fangs into the taxpayer jugulars like this is a vampire movie; publicly condemn the efforts of Leave-it, Stuart and Boldt, and solidify your base of people who KNOW we're being screwed and are waiting for you to do something about it because local officials have, for the most part, been long since corrupted by the downtown special interests who own them.