Maximum Leader Hood today compares our local politicians to children, reflecting on the way Speaker Jim Black just happened to find $6 million in scarce state road-building funds to widen Lawyers Road in Mint Hill. For a mall. To be anchored by Belk’s. After the Belk clan contributed money to Jim Black. Big surprise.
We’ve moved beyond the well-connected getting theirs and elected officials always bouncing up against the law-making rules. Many in North Carolina no longer know the purpose of government. Take Jim Black for example.
“We put it in for the whole region,” Black told the Observer. “Anywhere that I can help with economic development, I’ll do that.”
But road-building should not be about economic development. In fact, there is evidence road building does little for economic development. Road building should be about road building. That is the state’s job, not economic development. Economic development is a sham issue which allows the Jim Blacks of the world to auction off access to the political process.
Think how absurd it would sound if government officials talked about other legit government functions in terms of economic development. “We hired more prosecutors for the whole region. Anywhere I can help with economic development, I’ll do that.” Absolutely no one in Raleigh, least of all Jim Black, is qualified to try to centrally plan the state’s economy.
If the Down East kleptocracy does not want to build roads where they are needed, then they need to shutter NC DOT, lift the entire 30-cent gas tax, and quit yammering about economic development. It makes my head hurt.
