The North Texas Tollway Authority let it be known yesterday that you can now show off your support for the Dallas Cowboys by purchasing a Dallas Cowboys commemorative toll tag. For the bargain price of $22.99, you can show the rest of DFW where your true loyalties lie year-round!
Where can you buy these beauties? The Dallas Cowboys Pro Shop at your local mall, of course. And then you have to call NTTA to have it activated (read: to keep from being sent incorrect bills in the mail because the toll booth doesn’t recognize your tag). If you don’t already have an account with NTTA, there’s an upfront cost. A regular TollTag with NTTA requires this upfront cost as well. So now there’s a good question to be asked – who benefits from the $22.99 cost of the super-special Dallas Cowboys commemorative tag?
Jerry Jones is already milking Arlington taxpayers for all they’re worth, thanks to the silver cockroach he built on their dime. A toll tag is an unfortunate necessity for commuters in DFW as it is – why pay an extra $23 that appears to benefit his empire instead of, oh, helping to pay off the toll roads in question, for example? Even if a portion of the proceeds from tag sales is going back to NTTA, some amount must be going back to Jones and the Cowboys due to licensing alone.
Isn’t bad enough that taxpayers are having to put up with toll roads when they have every reason to believe that the gas taxes they pay will be sufficient to build infrastructure? Isn’t it bad enough that the highway fund is regularly raided to pay for other things, part of the reason that tolling entities like NTTA have to exist at all? And isn’t it bad enough that taxpayers were cajoled into paying for one of the most expensive sports venues in the country on the “support your team” mantra, that eminent domain took out private property for parking lots in the name of same, and that north Texas government seems perpetually beholden to Jones and his machine?
Bottom line – it ain’t worth the sticker price, folks.
