Stop the boondoggle

On Jan. 21 the IDS published an article about how IU hopes to get a boost from Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package.

This would be immensely valuable for IU and all Indiana students, and our chance of getting the money may depend on an important piece of legislation that is currently up for consideration.

House Bill 1656 would take the power to distribute stimulus funds from Gov. Mitch Daniels, where it now sits, and give it to the Democrat-controlled Indiana General Assembly. This could be important for IU’s future because Gov. Daniels has pledged to use much of the stimulus money to fund his pet Interstate 69 highway construction project, perhaps at the expense of funding for education.

The bill has another element to it; if it passes, the $1.5 billion that Daniels was planning to spend on I-69 will instead be distributed to cities and counties to repair local roads around the state.

Anyone with a car can attest to how badly this work is needed.
For those who don’t know, I-69 is a proposed multi-lane highway that would stretch from Indianapolis to Evansville (and cut through the outskirts of Bloomington). I-69 would cost the state billions of dollars in the heart of the economic crisis.

In fact, it is estimated that the highway would cost $1.56 million for every job that it creates.

It is also precisely the kind of unsustainable development we can’t afford if we are ever going to stop global warming.  

And to top that off, the road – first billed as the NAFTA superhighway – is part of a wider project to build transportation infrastructure designed to bring in more goods from exploitative Mexican and Latin American sweatshops, all at the expense of manufacturing jobs here in the US.

Personally, I applaud the Indiana House of Representatives for proposing this strong piece of legislation.  

I also call on all readers to contact your state representative and let him or her know your stance on HB 1656.

Alex Smith
IU graduate student