Today's truthful moment: "Bridge tolls will devastate Indiana businesses, owner says."

Kerry's in that castle, somewhere.

Mike, of course we both know that the bridges junta recognized this fact from the very beginning, which is why those earnest efforts we all made, again and again, to have Kerry Stemler and his sycophants sign off on an economic impact study for local businesses was mocked, ignored and buried beneath the Eisenhower-era verbiage -- and we were ignored because we're not the kind of esteemed, engorged business fetishists that Kerry and his ilk can get their rocks off to (and rake in a few stray bucks while smoking the inevitable post-$-coital ciggies), which is to say, we're not the big-picture, River Ridge besuited kingpins.

And then there's Ron Grooms, who said and did nothing until nothing could be done or said, and only at a dog-won't-hunt point far beyond tactical usefulness finally opened his eyes to the issues and heroically spoke out to mostly empty rooms. Posterity won't be kind. Meanwhile, the rest of us search for survival strategies.

Bridge tolls will devastate Indiana businesses, owner says, by Charlie White (CJ)

A longtime Southern Indiana businessman told Indiana officials during a Tuesday public hearing for the Ohio River Bridges Project that businesses in western Clark County will be "devastated" by the addition of tolls on Interstate 65.

Mike Kapfhammer, co-owner of Rocky's Sub Pub and Buckhead Mountain Grill on Riverside Drive in Jeffersonville, estimated that 40 percent to 50 percent of his customers cross the river from Kentucky without paying a toll. He doesn't believe many will buy toll transponders if they only travel to the Hoosier state for dining or shopping ...

Moss and Johnson on bridges and tolls.

Taken together, these two Sunday opinion columns appearing in Louisville metro newspapers occupying opposite editorial sides of the bridge tolls debate make a unified, if unintended point.

Opposition to tolling may be misdirected, and perhaps even wasted, without a fundamental examination of future transit options as largely contradicted by the assumptions of the ORBP. Does the sacred plan and its $4 billion worth of boondoggle actually provide "mobility solutions," or might these goals be achieved by altered or entirely different means? What is the future?

Dale Moss Jeffersonville restaurant owners take on tolls (Courier-Journal)

Like many Hoosiers, Wes Johnson and Mike Kapfhammer wait impatiently for fewer maybes about the Ohio River Bridges Project. And like many – including me - they want to believe in it but still cannot.

Johnson and Kapfhammer co-own the Buckhead Mountain Grill and Rocky’s restaurants on Jeffersonville’s riverfront. They were regionalists before regionalism was cool ...

... Johnson and Kapfhammer are trying to rally people as part of the No2BridgeTolls.org effort. “When they realize, then they get excited,” Kapfhammer said.

In short, we mustn't accept recently proffered diversionary bait. It's time to take toll talk to a different level, but more on that later. For now, know that No2BridgeTolls is holding a another meeting on Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. at Buckhead Mountain Grill in Jeffersonville. Now, notice how Rev. Johnson instinctively grasps certain points that seem forever to elude the iron dictates of Stemlerism.

JOHNSON: A bridge too far, by Richard Johnson (Tribune)

... When new highways and bridges are built in urban areas, they tend to have the long-term effect of encouraging more people to drive. This in turn leads to more traffic and bigger traffic jams…the opposite of the intended effect. We know this, but continue to build them anyway.