Our very own Tobacco Road
Categories:
· Others
International:
· USA
|
|
Source:http://www.southtownstar.com/,2010-05-20
|
|
What do you get when local legislators can't get anything meaningful done but really want to show the folks at home they are working hard?
The Hackers Highway.
Also called Tobacco Road.
Which might be known one day as the Illiana Expressway.
In its waning days before adjourning late last week, the General Assembly took the first steps toward raising the tax on a pack of cigarettes by a buck. For a state flooded in debt, a dollar tax on anything amounts to baling out the basement with a thimble.
Legislators did have a much easier time giving their approval for the Illiana Expressway, the mythical bi-state route in the far south suburbs. A bill to build the proposed road sailed through both chambers.
I never have been convinced the Illiana Expressway is needed, other than to encourage one more ring of suburban development farther into the countryside.
But you have to give the state's leaders credit for thinking ahead.
If they do try to solve the state's budget mess by hiking the cigarette tax, another highway will be required soon to accommodate the loads of smokers coughing and wheezing across the state line, on their way to Indiana to stock up on cheap smokes.
The bill that was forwarded to the governor calls for an expressway linking Indiana and Illinois at a cost of $1 billion.
The details pretty much end there.
The Illiana Expressway has yet to win federal approval. No one knows what path it will follow or its exact starting and ending points. Neither Indiana nor Illinois owns a single speck of land dedicated for the purpose of a building a new interstate highway.
And a decision about how to pay for construction has yet to be made.
Add everything up and you are looking at a couple of decades - at the minimum - before anything ever gets built.
In passing the measure, Southland senators and representatives alike said a new ribbon of asphalt will be vital for creating jobs and eliminating congestion. The highway's construction, whenever that happens, will generate all sorts of economic development for the region.
That all looks and sounds good. Something to boast about in press releases and campaign literature.
But we've been hearing the exact same things about another transportation project deemed essential decades ago: The proposed south suburban airport near Peotone.
No one in a position of leadership was willing to settle a dispute a few years ago between two south suburban camps over who should govern and oversee a completed airport. Instead, Option C was chosen - ignore the issue altogether.
The airport has become the crazy aunt of Illinois who's permanently locked up in the attic.
She is dying a slow, quiet death.
So rather than calling on a priest to administer last rites, the state is moving on to something else until the tough decisions have to be made and the big dollars need to be spent. Our local lawmakers are happy to oblige.
Illinois has burned through untold millions of dollars, wasted hundreds of manpower hours and acquired bits and pieces of land in the airport's footprint.
For what? So the state could move on to another project that will wind up costing even more money.
Illinois is the neighbor who starts remodeling his house and can't find a good deal on shingles so he starts building a new, more expensive house on the empty lot next door.
The Illiana Expressway is what it is: A ruse thrown up by the state's leaders and local legislators while they fumble, bumble and stumble with the airport.
They don't want to tell the constituents that they have failed, so they have created a new project as a diversion with the hope everyone stays quiet.
The Illiana Expressway - the perfect smoke screen. |
|
|
Tobacco Hot news and Information...
| | |
|
Tobacco firm to auction 5.5-acre Marol plot
|
>>>
|
|
Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/,2010-09-07 |
|
| |
One of the prime properties at Marol in Andheri, owned by Golden Tobacco Limited (GTL), has been put on the block for sale. The company will conduct an auction for its 5.5 acre plot on Tuesday. The reserve price for the plot has been fixed at Rs 50 crore by the company and they have taken a
|
|
|
| | |
|
KT&G Joins With Imperial Tobacco Group
|
>>>
|
|
Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/,2010-09-03 |
|
| |
KT&G, South Korea's foremost tobacco company, sealed a partnership with Imperial Tobacco Group under which the former will manufacture products for the latter this year.
|
|
|
| | |
|
China scientists say cigarette butts protect steel
|
>>>
|
|
Source: http://www.sunherald.com/,2010-05-14 |
|
| |
Chinese scientists say they have found a way for the countless cigarette butts that are tossed every day on streets, beaches and other public places to be reused - in protecting steel pipes from rusting.
|
|
|
|
|
