KY and IN: Don't Just Keep the Poor Poor; Make Them Even PoorER

Those bridges are built with tax dollars, including the tax dollars of the very working poor people who will be financially crippled by the new tolls.

As a Kentucky taxpayer who is paying for those bridges but who will use them maybe once a year at most, I say make toll zero for the working class and $100 each way for the fucking parasitic rich..

Joseph Gerth at the Courier:

Kentucky and Indiana have decided not to pursue lower tolls for poor and minority drivers on Ohio River Bridges despite finding that the charges would be “appreciably more severe or greater in magnitude” for them.

According to a draft report released Thursday by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and the Indiana Department of Transportation, the two states are committed to finding ways to mitigate the impact on minorities and those with low incomes, but largely left it to the states to pursue those efforts.

People will have 30 days to respond to the draft report and then the states’ transportation agencies will begin assembling their final report, which would then go to the Federal Highway Administration, which requires the study for interstate tolls, for final approval. Work has already begun on the massive project to build two new bridges across the Ohio and reconfigure Spaghetti Junction in downtown Louisville.

Louisville Metro Council Woman Attica Scott, D-1st District, said she’s hopeful the states will reconsider and create a way for people who are struggling financially to pay less.

“What they’re saying is we’re going to take part of your paycheck just for getting back and forth to work,” she said.

The report said that the tolls would “cause a disproportionately high and adverse economic effect” on minorities and people with low incomes.

The draft report rejects discounting tolls and giving credits to low-income people who cross the bridge regularly.

 Here's an idea: Eliminate the fucking tolls - which are ALWAYS a tax on working people - and raise income taxes on the fucking parasitic rich to cover the infrastructure cost.

That's the way it was done in this country for more than 40 years, including the most prosperous and economically equal decades in history.