{"id":17448,"date":"2012-10-24T10:05:52","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T15:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17448"},"modified":"2012-10-24T10:05:52","modified_gmt":"2012-10-24T15:05:52","slug":"persuading-michigan-voters-to-refuse-a-new-free-bridge-to-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/10\/24\/persuading-michigan-voters-to-refuse-a-new-free-bridge-to-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Persuading Michigan voters to refuse a new free bridge to Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The announcement back in June must have appeared too good to be true: a new bridge between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario to be completely funded by Canada. Michigan voters are being urged to <a href=\"http:\/\/news.nationalpost.com\/2012\/10\/23\/greedy-u-s-billionaire-urges-michigan-voters-to-reject-free-bridge-to-canada\/\" target=\"_blank\">refuse the deal<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Canada, understand, has agreed to pay for the bridge in full, including liabilities \u2014 and potential cost overruns \u2014 under an agreement that was about a decade-in-the-making and officially announced to much fanfare, at least on the Canadian side of the border, by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder in Windsor\/Detroit in mid-June.<\/p>\n<p>For Michigan, it is a slam-dunk arrangement. As Mr. Norton told one audience: \u2018\u2018If this proves to be a dumb financial decision, it\u2019s on us, not on you.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a <em>free bridge<\/em>, a vital new piece of publicly owned infrastructure \u2014 for both countries \u2014 and yet one that is in grave danger of being demolished before construction even begins when Michigan voters head to the polls for a ballot initiative attached to the Nov. 6 elections.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>Manuel (Matty) Moroun, an 85-year-old self-made billionaire who owns the 83-year-old Ambassador Bridge, is Cynic-in-Chief. The Ambassador is currently the only transport truck-bearing bridge in town. Twenty-five percent of Canadian-American trade, representing about $120-billion, flows across it each year.<\/p>\n<p>It is a perfect monopoly for the Moroun family, a golden goose that just keeps on laying eggs, putting upwards of $80-million a year in tolls, duty free gas and shopping sales in their pockets. Allowing a Canadian-financed competitor into the ring without a fight isn\u2019t an option.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The announcement back in June must have appeared too good to be true: a new bridge between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario to be completely funded by Canada. Michigan voters are being urged to refuse the deal: Canada, understand, has agreed to pay for the bridge in full, including liabilities \u2014 and potential cost overruns [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,53,13],"tags":[316,500,188,711,574,469,87,75],"class_list":["post-17448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","category-usa","tag-borders","tag-detroit","tag-electionwatch","tag-infrastructure","tag-michigan","tag-monopolies","tag-ontario","tag-tanstaafl"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4xq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17449,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17448\/revisions\/17449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}