The Truth Behind the New Bridge to Canada

It's about money. Not yours, but Manuel Moroun's, who owns the Ambassador Bridge and doesn't want to lose revenue to a publicly-funded bridge nearby.

http://www.freep.com/article/20110424/NEWS06/104240595/Detroit-Windsor-bridge-battle-Separating-out-truth


I have crossed the border hundreds of times, usually at Port Huron. There's something inside me that thinks another bridge is a good idea, if only to reduce the backups that invariably happen every holiday and summer weekend; but it's deeper than that. If you travel much to Canada, you realize how close our two countries are, and how much Canadians like Americans, even if they often disagree with our government's attitudes and policies. Canadians and Americans want it and the Canadians will fund much of it, despite some detail differences.

The problem with disputes like this is that there is always money - or sex or power or combinations thereof - at the center (to some degree on all sides). All we can hope to do is make informed decisions that limit those factors' influence.

But we too often want simple answers and too often make decisions based on simple explanations, happy as sheep as long as we're grazing.

(BTW, there are also those personality types that more often want complicated answers and are never satisfied with simple explanations. They posit aliens behind the pyramids, Incan glyphs and the face on Mars, they create elaborate conspiracies behind tragedies like 9/11 and the assassination of JFK, they presume nothing is what it seems if something else is more interesting.

They are at the opposite extreme from those that want an easy answer and prefer to think no further. Somewhere in the middle is where most people live and love and work and die, and are constantly tugged and pummeled by the vocal and violent at either end.)