The fourth installment of a six part series on the Orange County toll roads is now up at Orange County Progressive. Here’s the intro on the story of the ill-fated extension of the 241, where the OC Power Structure met their Waterloo at the hands of DFH’s, Surfers, and a motley crew of environmental activists.

Opponents of the extension of the 241 were waiting anxiously for TCA Directors to emerge from their January closed session meeting with their attorneys.  “We were looking at the body language, and when they slumped into the room with a beaten look and hang-dog expressions, we knew that their lawyers had given them glum news.” The agency attorneys had apparently advised that further legal action would add additional waste to the 40 million plus that had been expended in an attempt to build the final 16 miles of the 241 Toll Road.

Although some directors continued to bluster, for the first time there was talk of reaching out to all stakeholders to put together a new plan. The arguments and logic developed and articulated by toll road opponents had prevailed with the coastal commission, and even the Bush cronies in the waning lame-duck days of the Commerce Department wouldn’t buy the cart-load of preposterous arguments concocted by the TCA flacks.

But their willingness to compromise is too little, too late. It’s like a late stage alcoholic abusive husband, still unable to face the fundamental addiction. The disease is pathetically obvious to close observers, and in moments of sobriety or remorse, the abuser promises to do better. Until the board members of TCA hit bottom and start working a new program, they’ll continue with a pattern of denial, victimhood, and relapse.

A key part of Republican ideology continues to revolve around piratizing our regulatory agencies, roads, water supply, retirement, and social services.

Just as the early California Progressives battled the railroads, we need to fight every one of the modern era pirates trying to steal our most important public goods.