With an oink oink here and an oink oink there

Niki Kelly has an article in the Fort Wayne Journal Courier entitled Toll Road lease foes say greed fuels plan. A Senate appropriations committee hearing had about 30 opponents crammed into the committee room. Fort Wayne’s Jim Kelsey:

“Selling prime productive assets is a sure sign of desperation and mismanagement. Any asset may be sold for quick money,” he said. “That is not the problem. The problem is balancing budgets so that you don’t have to sell assets. This means prioritizing needs and raising taxes when necessary.”

A minor part of the article I really enjoyed was Ms. Kelly’s description of ‘Major Moves’ as “Daniels’ pet name for the program.” I dislike the trend in politics of using slogans as labels for legislation. When you use shorthand to describe a thing, you avoid having to actually discuss what that thing is. Often times this is a necessary evil given the need to speak succinctly to be understood. But with politics, the sloganing of legislation (not to mention the verbing of nouns) obscures the legislation even further than usual.

Back to the Toll Road. Opponents, such as Brenda Buster, sees the Toll Road sale in terms of basic Hoosier morality:

“Instant gratification is short-lived and full of regret,” said Brenda Buster of Morgan County.

She compared the plan to “pawning state assets like a junkie when they need fast cash.”