The reality of today’s America: too poor and debt ridden to afford the lower cost of living alternative, and locked into an expensive lifestyle. While others were going to the Carribean on the credit card, I was camping in New York State parks. They’ll be shutting those down too.

The solution, for LaHood’s generation, to the burdens from the past? Sell out the future even more.

“That capital-to-operating flexibility now sits at 10 percent, a level set soon after the stimulus law’s passage. ‘Maybe that’s not the right percentage.’”

My I remind you that for the most part “capital” is not new systems, it is the replacement or rehabilitation of buses, trains, tracks, signals, and other facilities that wear out. Which those who still believe public services have a future would call “operating.”