I-69 is the wrong fight

“I-69 resistance meetings are back!” 

So claims the Web site of a Bloomington group, “Stop I-69,” which protests against the highway’s extension.

There is a post in this Web site implying responsibility for vandalism against Chase Bank last year. Chase supposedly did business with an asphalt company involved with the construction of Interstate 69. To the Web site’s moderator, this made the asphalt company responsible for, among other things, the “murder of wild animals” and the “furtherance of globalization.”

The furtherance of globalization? I just might need to start attending those resistance meetings.

For those of you not yet swept up in the hysterics, what the protestors are actually protesting is an extension of the existing Interstate 69 – which currently runs from the Canadian border to Indianapolis – through Bloomington and Martinsville, Ind., to Evansville, Ind.

Extensions in other states would eventually take Interstate 69 all the way down through Texas to the Mexican border, thus completing a dreaded “NAFTA superhighway.”

To be sure, I have heard some good arguments against the extension of Interstate 69 through our town. Indiana could save considerable money by simply upgrading existing roads between Indianapolis, Terre Haute and Evansville, though I think the current route has economic merit.

Other arguments have been less sound.

Indiana Democrats in particular have long argued for alternative investments in existing infrastructure.

Democrats in control of the Indiana House of Representatives introduced House Bill 1656 attempting to clarify which branch of government gets to play the larger role in allocating a likely federal stimulus package.

Democrats in Indianapolis want to make sure these funds go to local infrastructure plans instead of bigger projects, like Interstate 69. These larger projects have the support of Gov. Mitch Daniels. Democrats are also wary of Daniels because he has refused to dip into a budget surplus for a local surplus that Democratic House Speaker Pat Bauer claims could create jobs.

Thus the need Indiana Democrats feel to make sure they get to decide where any federal funds go.

Yet, if maintaining local roads can provide jobs in this downturn, surely constructing an entire new highway might provide a few paychecks. I certainly imagine Interstate 69 will have more long-term merit than most plans that get stimulus funding.

Unfortunately, given the way debate over the road has been misframed, Hoosiers still remain skeptical.

Interstate 69 has nothing to do with global warming – an argument that always confuses me. It will cut through and destroy large amounts of farmland in southern Indiana.

I have no desire to brush aside those who depend on such land. I do want to acknowledge that many more people will benefit from the road’s completion and that infrastructure projects always face difficult trade-offs.

The anti-globalization argument against the road makes the least sense. Free trade is not the cause of some atrocious conditions found in the Third World.

Right now the Interstate 69 resistance seems fairly immature.

On the “Stop I-69” Web site mentioned earlier, there was also a video depicting the road as some sort of will of the establishment.

The video displayed plenty of anti-69 graffiti by protestors – if only to show us how rebellious they were.