Yeah, maybe it’s a little presumptuous to think my parody song, “Blank Check,” played a role in killing Governor Gina Raimondo’s “Taylor Swift tax” proposal, but it couldn’t have hurt.  So maybe (just maybe) a little not hurting will help push the governor’s most recently promoted bad idea — new tolls across the state targeted (at first) at commercial truckers — off the road.

Although the total count and final placement of the tolls are details that we apparently don’t need to know before the legislature imposes them on Rhode Island, the initial projection was for seventeen spots around the state.  So, to the tune of Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons,” I present “Seventeen Tolls.”

 

(Click here to download the mp3 file if the Flash player doesn’t work.)

 

Seventeen Tolls

One study says RhodeWorks would pay for itself
Another one says there ain’t no projects on the shelf
Nobody’s sure just what the DOT does
But we need truck tolls now… just because

You pay 17 tolls, and what do you get
A phony quasi-public half-a-billion in debt
St. Gina don’t you call me ’cause Mapquest’s sure
I’d cut my trip on Route 84

There’s more than one way to pay off a road
By cutting your spending or by the truckload
A private partner could mitigate risk
But when the speaker hears that, he says “tsk, tsk, tsk”

You pay 17 tolls, and what do you get
A phony quasi-public half-a-billion in debt
St. Gina don’t you call me ’cause Mapquest’s sure
I’d cut my trip on Route 84

A revenue bond would make investors sing
They get paid interest like it’s not a sure thing
But if something goes wrong, Wall Street ain’t stuck with the bill
If the truckers don’t pay it, then the taxpayers will

They pay 17 tolls, and what do you get
A phony quasi-public half-a-billion in debt
St. Gina don’t you call me ’cause Mapquest’s sure
I’d cut my trip on Route 84

The upside’s ten years of union work
But the governor knows that unions shirk
It’s a political rule, don’t be afraid of the crash
If the airbag’s filled with campaign cash

You pay 17 tolls, and what do you get
A phony quasi-public half-a-billion in debt
St. Gina don’t you call me ’cause Mapquest’s sure
I’d cut my trip on Route 84