A Toll To Pay For I-49 Corridor + Gay Marriage In Louisiana? – Wingin’ It Wednesday

This week on "Wingin' It Wednesday", panelist Mike Stagg, Warren Caudle, and former Congressman Jeff Landry joined "Nathan and Bernie in the Morning" to discuss a possible toll to pay for an I-49 extension as well as a state judge's recent ruling on gay marriage in Louisiana.

Here's what the panel had to say:

1. A state-funded feasibility study finds tolls starting at 18 cents a mile could pay from one-quarter to one-half of the more than $3 billion price tag to complete Interstate 49 South from Lafayette to New Orleans. Would you pay a toll?

Mike Stagg started us off:

This is the road to nowhere. What we’re really talking about is the first 8 billion dollars from willow to Broussard - elevated roadway that would not add vehicle capacity.There’s a cheaper way to do this. It’s Teche Ridge. It’s cheaper and it will bring more growth.
This obsession with this road that the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce has had has resulted in tremendous opportunity cost for Lafayette because if our time and effort has been put in problems we really had we wouldn’t need to address this.

Warren Caudle posited:

The thing has been a boondoggle since it first started. 25 years ago when it first started the thing was if you put the interstate down Evangeline Throughway it would destroy the businesses along there. Well those businesses destroyed themselves anyway.
Paying a toll, it depends on what the toll is for.

Jeff Landry added:

There’s a better more economical way to move traffic through Lafayette while not impeding the businesses in Lafayette. Would you be willing to pay a toll that places a loop around Lafayette? We should proceed with caution. We can only look towards Baton Rouge to see the disaster that has occurred out there. The challenge is for people in Lafayette to look at what’s better for us for the next 20 years.

2. A state judge in Lafayette has ruled that Louisiana's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Your Thoughts?

Warren started us off:

When these things come up I go back and talk to the spirit of Ronald Reagan. He has the constitution is designed to set the limitations of government and hold sacred the freedoms of individuals. It’s not the government’s job to tell people who they should marry.
This is a lot of to-do about nothing. This is all about who is having sex with whom and how can we oppose it or regulate it. I think the judges ruling was right.

Jeff posited:

The question is should 13-year-olds in Louisiana be allowed to marry? In New Hampshire they are. But there’s precedence that says if those 13-year-olds from New Hampshire come to Louisiana we don’t recognize that marriage.
I think the US Supreme Court ruled rightly when they ruled that defining marriage is reserved to the state. If you don’t like a state’s definition of marriage move to a different state.

 

Mike concluded:

The way this is framed is under equal protection. Because these rights were afforded and enforced elsewhere they should be upheld here.
This is a form of discrimination.  The way this is coming down here is framing it under equal protection.

To listen to the full audio from our Wingin' It panelists, click the play button below:

Now it’s your turn to tell us what you think about today’s Wingin’ It Wednesday topics. Who got it right, who got it wrong, and who was way off? Let us know in the comment section.