What's this? Congress might not be ready to guarantee some $500 million in funding for Mayor Bloomberg's congestion-pricing plan?

At least one congressman, Rep. Peter DeFazio, seems to thinks so — and he's warned New York pols just that.

(I resent the attempt by your email system to prevent people outside your district from sending email. You are a member of a NATIONAL body, not a New York City or State body.)

Please do everything you can to stop the attempt by Mayor Bloomberg to turn over to the rich alone, the streets constructed and maintained by the people at very considerable cost and effort. The streets do not belong to the rich. They belong to everyone, and we should no more have to pay a fee to drive on the streets we paid for (including via Federal tax supports) than have to pay a fee to get a police officer to act or firefiters to put out a fire. The people have already paid for the right to use the streets: we own them, we built them (the rich didn't do any of the actual work of building or maintaining the streets), we repair them with our taxes (including sales taxes and parking garage taxes paid by outsiders). To charge the same fee for poor and middle class drivers as for the rich is grotesquely unfair, the old "The law forbids both rich and poor from sleeping under bridges" thing. "Congestion pricing" is stealing by the rich. It must be stopped, and everyone responsible for this attempt to clear the 'riffraff' from Manhattan and leave the Central Business District for the rich only should be condemned very publicly and very loud. Cordially, L. Craig Schoonmaker, Expansionist Party of the United States (originally formed in NYC), 295 Smith Street, Newark, NJ 07106, XPUS@aol.com

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:58 PM