The Grapevine

   The Grapevine is a stretch of road between Los Angeles and the San Juaquin Valley. It goes north and south and climbs a range of hills 6000 feet above sea level.
   The road itself gets to about 4500 feet.
   As you approach the summit of the road, coming from either direction, the surrounding very high hills begin to close in toward you so that on the San Bernardino side it's practically a canyon, through which, when it snows, it gets cold sooner and stays cold longer and the snow blows harder and more fiercely than anywhere else in the vicinity. It's also steep. Did I mention the truck traffic from Canada to Mexico that is funneled through this ravine?
   Therefore, if there is a winter rain in Los Angeles the Grapevine is usually closed to through traffic.
   This has been the case on this government road for one hundred and fifty fucking years.
   It's closed right now in fact.
   It's the only artery between Los Angeles and San Francisco and Oregon and Washington.
   And it's closed.
   Because of snow.
   There are thousands of people on either side of it that cannot go anywhere and are marooned. They probably can't even turn their cars around.
   The 18-wheeled truck count alone is likely in the thousands.
   The news morons do not see a story here other than a chance to leave their offices and go to the site of a traffic jam and announce "There is a traffic jam here. Back to you, Sandra."
  The Feds and the States are sure doing a good job of road building. And everyone is in a trance of delight about it too. You talk about eliminating the state from human affairs and the first thing they scream is "WHO WILL BUILD THE ROADS?"
    Well, probably someone who knows something about building roads and maintaining them and keeping them open when it gets a bit chilly, would be my guess. Someone who doesn't close his roads when the weather gets snarky and leaves thousands of his customers freezing in the snow for no reason.
   That would be my first guess. Not my hundredth. My fucking first.
   It would probly be your last. You would go through a list of bureaucrats from DC to fucking Peru before you would think that "the public road system" solution that has been in use since fucking Ancient Rome is a really good answer to traffic. Yeah, it sure is: if you want traffic have governments money build the roads. They do such a fucking great job of it let's keep them employed at it. Let's get that death count into the millions and the lack of access into 50% of the year instead of just 25. Let's just keep doing this.
   By the way, if you're in Los Angeles and you want to get to Fresno, fly. At least today. The Feds havne't started building roads in the air yet so there should be no problems.
   If you were a venture capitalist and you wanted to build a road that would be more advantageous and customer friendly to international traffic through the busiest money-corridor on earth, you would not be allowed to. The government road police would toss a trillion licensing and insurance and environmental and legal and mythical and religious and arguments from tradition  at you to send you packing as soon as you opened your briefcase of blueprints.
   Because government hates private business and private enterprise. Because it is better than what government forces you to use.
   But you don't think that. Because you are stupid. you think like this, I will show you how you think because I can get into your stupid empty head because access is paper thin and filled with wide, untrammeled walkways. You think like this: "If private enterprise builds roads they will charge exorbitant fees for me to use them and I will not be able to go anywhere."
   This is how you think. I am calling it thinking because that's what everyone calls asshole nigger logic: they call it thinking. So that is what I am calling it.