Editorial: Port Authority toll increases

An open letter to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

Dear Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ):

There is an old Jewish joke set in Nazi Germany as the persecutions of the Jews by the Nazis were escalating. A Jew is walking through the park and he sees his Jewish friend sitting on a park bench reading the most anti-Semitic newspaper of the time. He asks his friend “why are you reading that trash?” And his friend answers him: “Because when I read this, I feel better. I learn the Jews control the banks. I learn the Jews control the media. I learn the Jews control the government. And I feel so much better knowing how rich and powerful we Jews are.”

Similarly, when I read your latest toll increase proposal, a proposal that can only be called legalized extortion, I felt better. Instead of being a poor person (who used to be middle class) who is struggling to pay his bills, I learn that I am so affluent that money is no object. I learned that I am so rich, that I can afford the skies the limit toll rates to finance your edifice complex. I learned that I am so rich I can afford your lavish executive salaries, benefits and perks. I learned that I can afford the price increases in food and clothing that will result from your toll increases as these increases are passed along to consumers such as myself.

By your own admission, the profits generated by your toll facilities are currently $459 million per year, or to put it another way, a profit of nearly half a billion dollars a year. Yet you have proposed soaking me and people like me for approximately another $1 billion dollars a year in tolls on top of the nearly half a billion in profits you currently steal from me and people like me.

Before you object to my saying you steal, allow me to quote part of the dictionary definition:

steal

   [steel] Show IPA ,verb, stole, sto·len, steal·ing,noun

verb (used with object)

1.

to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch.

I never gave you permission to take a thin dime from me. You have your own police force so force is not an unreasonable statement either.

And while we are on the subject of stealing, isn’t it true that the PANYNJ settled lawsuits in which the cities of New York and Newark charged you with defrauding them over the rent payments for the regions three airports. It appears financial fraud may well be a way of life for the PANYNJ.

You have spent years building your empire and you have spent years soaking the public for the ever-increasing expansion of your empire. You have repeatedly picked the pockets of innocent motorists so the people of Jersey City who live in expensive waterfront condominiums can pay less that the full cost of their PATH ride to their jobs on Wall Street. Furthermore, you have gone out of your way to obscure this fact with your creative accounting and misleading word usage. The truth is PATH has never paid its costs and those costs have been subsidized by motorists day after day, year after year, decade after decade, dollar after dollar, millions of dollars after millions of dollars, and billions of dollars after billions of dollars.

As for your toll increase proposal, I have a counter proposal. Refund every dollar in profits that you stole from motorists to subside PATH and your edifice complex. I am aware you might think this unreasonable and unlike the organized crime figures (yes the PANYNJ is organized and yes it engages in stealing and extortion, therefore the PANYNJ is organized crime) that run the PANYNJ, I am willing to compromise. My compromise is that your immediately decrease your tolls by the $459 million in profits you currently steal.

As history has repeatedly demonstrated that I can anticipate your response to involve you shoving something up my backside, I request that you at least pay for the condom and lube for a change.