Letter to the Boston Globe and the Mass Turnpike Authority:Massachusetts Turnpike Hiking tolls to pay off Bechtel

I am mad as Hell and I am not going to take it any more.

I am not going to Pay for Bechtel and the Pike’s misuse of funds resulting in death and debt, and Neither Should You! I do not use the Big Dig. I get off at the Allston/Cambridge Tolls from Framingham. Yet I will be hit twice paying for the Turnpike’s misuse of funds while we sit by and get fleeced again. The last raised hike on the tolls resulted in the back roads filling up to the point it was taking me two hours to go twenty miles into Boston. Taking the pike takes me now an hour. Yeah, can I spend more money to take me longer to get to work? Please can I?

Now with the “New” toll hike that they keep speaking about as if it is a done deal, it will take me even longer, both ways. What happened to No Taxation Without Representation? Yes they are having little meetings in the towns that they will completely disregard. Their rhetoric has already been put into the past tense. Today it came out that the forecast of windfall from this hike is actually more than they thought. But instead of lowering the fees they are going to apply it to their debt. First, that rhetoric states they are hiking the tolls regardless of any town meetings. Second, Maybe I can legally change my name to Bechtel Parson and murder someone through negligence and then have the Mass Turnpike Authority pay off my debts. Seriously with these hikes and having to go to work every day in Cambridge I am going to go into debt.

I suggest that before they hit the people creating industry and commerce in Boston (an economy), they should actually go after the people that stole the money in the first place, Bechtel. Oh and by the way, I grew up in Colorado where after a toll road is paid for, the toll booths go down. The toll is to get the original road created, not to create a huge bureaucracy around the road itself. I can not believe there is a Turnpike Authority, or that it can be so crappy as to allow such graft and death and yet everyone feels they are powerless to stop this mess. We must stand up and say NO!!! We don’t get to create phony taxes to pay off our debts why should they? Who are they, anyway? We are the citizens of this state and country, they work for us. We need to remember it and they need to remember it. Let’s get a backbone and fight this, it is not right that we are being put in the position of the victim to be bled once again. Go after the real criminals Bechtel and make the Turnpike Authority accountable for its misuse and mere existence.