In beautiful downtown Portland, OR there is a tram that is mighty important to some strategically placed rich people. Some of the financing is coming from the less wealthy taxpayers of Portland. For background information you can go here and here and here.
For those of you who don't want background information or, for that matter, don't even read my blog, I'll save you the time of doing exhaustive research and try to put the "Tram Scam" in littly bitty sentences that I can understand.
There's a hill in Portland where the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) hangs out and underpays their lowest paid employees but overpays their highest paid employees and it's vitally important for them to be able to get up and down the hill lickety-split.
The tram doesn't go a long distance but it does go downhill from the top of the hill. In fact, it goes from the top of the hill down to South Waterfront Urban Renewal Area. South Waterfront Urban Renewal Area sounds pretty important, doesn't it? It doesn't really exist except on plans to get money from somewhere. However, when the urban renewal area is finally brought into physical reality, it will house, theoretically, rich people and places where rich people can party.
The architects who were awarded the project came up with a plan and design that would cost millions of dollars. They revised the plan and the design when they realized the towers for the tram had to actually support the tram. They revised the costs upwards. (There's a rule among those who get contracts from the government that all costs are revised upward instead of downward. It's the unwritten law of corporate welfare.)
The tram is a good idea for the few who will go from the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill and vice versa.
Unfortunately, the building of the tram has run into problems. One of the little problems that has arisen is that new revised cost estimates exceed the money that had been set aside for the project, which was based on optimism in the first place.
The second problem is structural integrity. The people who support the tram have come to the conclusion that a tram should have structural integrity. This is good. However, structural integrity costs money and since this is a government project it will cost MORE money and not less money.
Another problem that has arisen is the design of the tram itself. Because of brilliant committee work it has been decided that the tram should be able to carry people. But some people don't want the tram to look like a tram because that would be tacky and rich people don't like to hang out in tacky trams.
All in all, the tram scam is ongoing at the moment.
NOTE: I've got better things to do than erase the childish, immature, psychotic, obscene comments from looney Roger Weidner and his gang of illiterate morons, so just put your opinions at the Johnhays.net Forum.