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True...

Hey libs/environmentalists, how about all the gas that got burned up,
all the damage done to the atmosphere, by idling cars?

Margery Eagan’s Herald column:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1165492

>>Marcia Gregg and her family left Pittsfield at 4:30 Sunday afternoon. They planned to be back in Boston by suppertime.
Instead, they spent nearly six hours simmering on the Massachusetts Turnpike. They didn’t get home until 10 p.m., by which time they were at a boil. Like untold thousands of drivers, they were trapped by the whims of toll takers who called in sick on the holiday.

>>The Greggs watched all of “Slumdog Millionaire” on their car’s DVD. They went through every song on the iPod. Marcia’s teenage daughter, unable to get to her homework and a 20-page paper that’s due Thursday, was beside herself. Her husband? Ready to kill, kill, kill!
Figuratively speaking, of course.
“What was going on? We keep waiting to see where the accident was. It was the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Gregg, who said the slowdown began in Springfield.

>>But here’s the sorry state of affairs between the beleaguered citizenry and the political class around here. Or, put another way, between tapped-out taxpayers and Beacon Hill scam-aholics. Gregg was one of several Easter Hell survivors who told me Deval Patrick’s Turnpike minions pulled this stunt on purpose, to make a point. They want to raise tolls and/or get a gas tax. The public’s complaining? So stick it to ’em. Shut off the lights on the Lenny Zakim Bridge. Let the toll takers call in sick. There’s an eight-mile backup in Framingham? So what. See how the whiners like it.

>>“The government’s supposed to be on our side,” Gregg said. “Instead they hold us in contempt.”
Gregg’s completely right, of course. I’m just always surprised to find regular people as deeply suspicious as me.