"It had better be a job where you can make some money."

That, apparently, was what Governor Rod Blagojevich told Ali Ata about Ata's quest for a state job during Blagojevich's Navy Pier fundraiser in 2003 - an event that pulled in almost $4 million for the governor and appears to have put Blagojevich and his campaign fund in extreme legal jeopardy.

No matter how rigorously rational the reasons, how artfully articulated the arguments, how many millions of taxbucks the governcrats will burn through to build the Great Speed Bump of Mexico, it will never produce the results its cheerleaders insist on pretending it will.

The Mississippi Valley Growers' Association (MVGA) built successful markets over 15 years in Davenport and Bettendorf, with six Iowa Farmers' Market Improvement Competition awards from the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, the Iowa Department of Agriculture, and the Iowa Farmers' Market Association. The River City Market Association (RCMA) formed 11 years ago. The MVGA and the RCMA have negotiated leases from the city together since 2002. This was confirmed by Charlie Heston, Levee Improvement Commission, at the March 12 meeting. In 2007, we formed a joint board and have shared expenses for patrol officers. We worked diligently to develop a plot map that the patrol officers thought would provide the safest traffic flow for customers. This plot map was submitted to Charlie Heston and leases prepaid in December for the upcoming year.

We are Taxbucks.

We say "we" because you never find one of us alone. Taxbucks always run in packs, usually in millions, often in billions, and ever more frequently in trillions.