Thursday, August 14, 2014

One Southern Indiana's hypocrisy is absolutely reprehensible.


Your eyes are not deceiving you. At long last, with the bridges boondoggle firmly cemented in the annals of Kerry Stemler's anals, One Southern Indiana has decided to get militant about bridge tolls.

But only as they pertain to the big business and trucking firms that float First Secretary Chesser's boat.

"Suck it commuters, businesses gotta do business" says One Southern Indiana. Do not read the memo that One Southern Indiana sent crying about tolls as it will cause you to double over in a violent fit of laughter. Clearly OSI is still in denial that the bridge fairy has not shown up to cut a check for construction of the unneeded bridges."
-- Daniel Borsch at Say NO to Bridge Tolls

He's talking about this:

S. Indiana chamber asks state to help ease toll burden on businesses, by Marcus Green (WDRB)

The Southern Indiana chamber of commerce is asking state officials to consider changes to traffic and toll plans in an effort to ease the Ohio River Bridges Project's financial burden on local businesses.

The president and CEO of One Southern Indiana, which represents Clark and Floyd counties, sent the suggestions in a July 30 letter to the Indiana Finance Authority, the agency in charge of the project's financing.

Among the recommendations, based on input from chamber members, are limiting the Clark Memorial Bridge to passenger cars and trucks and restricting the span to one-way traffic during rush hour periods, Wendy Dant Chesser wrote.

That's right. To this very day, and until the end of time, One Southern Indiana cares not one jot about the impact of bridge tolls on independent local businesses, their customers or any ordinary human beings. In fact, the oligarchic organization has not had the first coherent statement to make about tolls and their effect on independent local business.

If you're reading and happen to own such a business, heaven forbid you might be a dues-paying member of 1Si. If so, you're sleeping with the enemy, plain and simple.

"There were already rumblings a year or so ago about reducing the 'toll burden' on the larger businesses and trucking outfits for whom the bridges are being built while casually and conveniently not mentioning onto whom the additional burden would be placed. 1Si strategy: 1. Make sure the bridges are built. 2. Make sure someone else pays for them. Between that and eschewing any transit development as legitimate choices would drive toll revenues down- welcome to the occupation. Malevolence and apathy, live together in perfect harmony. I'm out of bad song metaphors. I'm out of anything beyond them.
-- Jeff Gillenwater at Fb

He's talking about this:

Officials want bridge toll collection delay, by Charlie White (C-J)

With the first Louisville-area tolls in decades expected to begin downtown around April 2016, chamber of commerce officials in Louisville and Southern Indiana are urging officials to halt any toll collection until the bridges project is fully complete later that year.

"We're behind the bridges project 100 percent but we recognize there are members of ours who are concerned," said Wendy Dant Chesser, president and CEO of One Southern Indiana.

Pathetic, but then again, we've known this about 1Si for a very long time, haven't we?

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