STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – I’m from New York, so I’ve been ripped off before.
But it’s getting ridiculous.
It’s not just that we’re getting nickel-and-dimed to death. It’s that they’re stealing our freedom as well as our money.
Who is “they”?
Let’s start with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio and everybody else who’s in on the congestion pricing swindle.
They’re going to charge us outer-borough schmucks a fee to drive into Manhattan’s “central business district,” meaning the area 60th Street and below.
It’s money out of our pockets, and that’s bad enough. But it also denies us the freedom to visit a part of our own city. A part of the city that we already support with our taxes.
That makes our world a little bit smaller.
Wasn’t de Blasio the guy who ran on a platform of changing New York’s “tale of two cities” culture? But what does congestion pricing do except divide us from each other? Especially when you throw in the fact that it looks like a lot of people will be exempt from the congestion fee, including, if reports are right, motorists from New Jersey.
So, Manhattan will still be free for some people. Others will have to pay.
This is how resentments build.
The whole L train reconstruction project is providing a new example of how parts of the city are becoming off-limits.
For the duration of the rebuild, 14th Street between Third and Ninth avenues will be closed to most private traffic. The road will become mainly a bus-only thoroughfare in order to aid shuttles that will carry commuters during the rebuild.
It could be a good thing. It could make commutes faster.
Or the street could remain just as clogged as it always is. The traffic enforcement could be lacking as it already is in many parts of the city. The real upshot could be that 14th Street becomes just another place where ordinary folks like you and I are forbidden to drive.
And given Vision Zero’s anti-car edicts, it’s easy to imagine the 14th Street restriction staying in place even after the rebuild is complete. Who needs all those outer-borough cars clogging up our streets?
This stuff is really starting to hit us where we live, including the ban on plastic bags.
We won’t be able to use plastic bags when we go grocery shopping. And we’ll be charged if we use paper bags.
So we’ll have to bring our own re-usable bags in order to keep from getting charged. So we’ll have to be sure to buy only as much food as we can carry with our bags. That’s limiting.
A first-world problem, you say? To be sure. We’re fortunate to live in a country where the shelves at the store are stocked to overflowing. But we should be free to buy what we want.
The ban is supposed to make our planet greener. Not only do these plastic bags litter the landscape and clog our waterways, but their very production contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.
Or so we’re told. It’s hard to hear de Blasio talk about the “Green New Deal” when he takes a daily 11-mile drive to his gym in Brooklyn. He can’t put a stationary bike in the basement at Gracie Mansion?
I remember when we patted ourselves on the back for using paper bags, which are recyclable. Or for re-using those plastic grocery bags over and over again. I’m keeping plenty of those bags out of the waste stream. Come to my house and see for yourself.
But we don’t get credit for recycling anymore. Now the mantra is we have to use less.
So much for living in the land of plenty. So much for freedom.