Eating one's own dog food

Like voucher opponent Al Gore sending his children to private school and uber-environmentalist Dick Gephardt buying his staff SUVs, well, read on...

Seven days after getting trapped in a traffic jam at the Hampton Toll Plaza, New Hampshire's governor pushed through one of the fastest transportation changes in New England history: doubling tolls for northbound drivers at the often clogged booths on Interstate 95, while sending southbound traffic through for free.

The change will affect tens of thousands of north- and southbound drivers daily and the more than 100,000 who pass through the toll plaza each weekend, many of them Massachusetts residents going to and from Maine and New Hampshire. There were no public hearings, no studies, and no local notification. All it took was Governor Craig Benson becoming stuck for an hour in southbound traffic near the toll plaza on Aug. 14, which forced him to miss a wake he planned to attend.

Governor acts after being stuck in traffic