In France, yellow vest protestors cause highway mayhem
The yellow vest protestors of France are not a unitary movement. The majority are peaceful, but there’s a fringe group (right? left? anarchists?) who have been a great deal more violent, and it’s that latter group who have declared war on highway tolls:
French “yellow vest” protesters caused transport chaos on Tuesday after occupying highway toll booths and setting some of them on fire.
France’s biggest toll road operator, Vinci Autoroutes , said demonstrations were under way at some 40 sites in its network and that several highway intersections had been heavily damaged, notably in the south of France.
The Bandol toll station, east of Marseille in the south of France, suffered fire damage overnight into Tuesday and the A50 highway was closed, said Vinci, whose network is mainly in the south and west of the country.
“Motorists should take utmost care as they approach toll gates and motorway access ramps due to the presence of numerous pedestrians,” Vinci said in a statement.
Several people have died in roadside accidents at yellow vest roadblocks in recent weeks, mostly at the many roundabouts blocked by groups of demonstrators.
The demonstrators have also torched or otherwise damaged about half of the traffic radars in France. The ostensible reason for the focus of these attacks, at least originally, is that Macron has raised fuel taxes and changed the speed limits in a way that further burdens a great many people in France who had felt plenty burdened already.
The more intense of the demonstrators clearly fancy themselves revolutionaries. And although the size of the demonstrations have decreased, that doesn’t mean that determined people can’t still do a lot of damage. What the political fallout will ultimately be is anybody’s guess.
They have been sabotaging speed cameras for some time and I don’t really blame them. The rural speed limits have been set too low.
Toll booths I don’t know enough about. The last time I drove in France was ten years ago and I saw none.
In most instances, public toll roads are a double tax. The federal and state gasoline taxes are supposed to pay for roads.
There are no toll roads in Nebraska. Indiana has a toll road and I think it was sold by the State to a private (and maybe foreign) company. Corrupt Chicago is infamous for its toll roads. Now Rahm wants to build a casino and legalize pot to fund public employee pensions. Chicago sucks.
Toll roads in California, at least those in southern California, follow the original masterplan for freeways but Jerry Brown and his transportation mastermind, Adriana Gianturco, decided not to build those freeways. “Small is beautiful,” you know. Consequently, the local authorities put those routes out to bid for private funding and that is where the toll roads came from.
The European middle class is a more than a few notches down and much closer to the bone than the American middle class.
I had a Christian friend who went to Europe as part of his Work. He came back and said, “Gosh, their apartments are so small and they have so little money!”
For a less anecdotal view:
“If Sweden and Germany Became US States, They Would be Among the Poorest States”
https://mises.org/wire/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-states-they-would-be-among-poorest-states
I’m sure their health care makes up for it.
From a leftist view:
A new report from the Pew Research Center sheds some light on this, revealing an American middle class that is notably smaller—but richer—than its equivalents across Western Europe.
“How America’s Middle Class Compares to Europe’s”
https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/04/euro-vs-american-middle-class/524193/
neo: Comment re-edit hasn’t worked at all today. So I’m more careful.
Have you read these: https://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/
and https://pjmedia.com/trending/media-confusion-are-paris-riots-fading-or-getting-more-organized/
Am I wrong in seeing parallels between the Yellow Vest protests and the Occupy Wall Street protests a few years ago here in the U.S.? If I am right, the authorities should should get serious and just stop allowing them space to protest, and the movement will die out.
Roy Nathanson: To be sure there are parallels, but the Yellow Vest folks are mostly middle-class/working-class — not the usual American radical melange of rich/upper-middle-class types running things with a lot of slacker/broken/homeless people swelling the crowds as in the Occupy movement.
Occupy came straight out of hard left, anti-capitalist, anarchist and communist groups. Its website slogan, complete with a red-black color scheme plus an upraised fist, was “The only solution is WorldRevolution.”
Checking the web tonight, I see Occupy folks have scrubbed most of that from their current web presence. However, I did learn a Google employee came up with the WorldRevolution slogan.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/09/17/breaking-occupy
Here’s Bill Ayers leading an Occupy teach-in:
“Bill Ayers Teaches Radical Theory At #OccupyChicago”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E1hKn7v9bs
This video seems to be put together by a conservative group. It has subtitles and commentary critical of Ayers. The original video I saw has been taken down.
I doubt the Yellow Vests are calling up the Euro equivalent of Bill Ayers to help them out.
But make no mistake. Bill Ayers is an extraordinary speaker and organizer. Arguably, he is the man who made Obama. If the radical left has a face, it is Bill Ayers’. To a shocking extent, we live in an America Bill Ayers created.
If the radical left has a face, it is Bill Ayers’.
And, like so many big names on the left, he is a rich kid. His father was CEO or Board Chairman of Commonwealth Edison, the big public utility in Chicago. Many of the radical left in the 60s were children of wealthy or, at least, upper middle class parents.
The children never accomplished anything. Other than chaos or blowing themselves up.
I lived in the ‘collar’ counties of Chicago ( Northeastern Illinois ) practically all my life.
Commenters Cornhead & Huxley & Mike K are correct.
By the way, for years Ayers was a “distinguished” Professor of Elementary Education at the University of Illinois in Chicago – UIC. Many of his “theories” have been adopted by “educators” all over the country.
Scare quotes are intentional.
That helps to explain why public education is such a disaster. It’s a feature; not a bug.
huxley & Mike – in re Bill Ayers:
When John McCain was running against Obama and declaimed, “We’re not concerned about some old washed-up terrorist,” I yelled at the screen, “Some of us certainly are!”
I truly believe McCain did everything he possibly could to elect Obama up to not quite including pulling the lever for the Democrat.
He wouldn’t do that, because he wanted to be president himself, but absolutely nothing he did as a candidate was directed to that end.
(And I think he hated Trump for grabbing the gold ring that he missed.)