I am sure you all now that a bridge collapsed in Minnesota. Sadly, this will probably not be the last bridge collapse in the country. To me it highlights the benign neglect this nation has shown towards our nation’s infrastructure.
The United States decided in the 1950’s to rely heavily, or almost exclusively on a national highway system to provide land transport. I won’t go into the long term problems with this system, lets just say there are many.
The real problem is in the early 80’s many infrastructure programs were canceled to save money for the fiscally ‘conservative’ Republicans in power. This attitude of only fix it if it falling down didn’t change with Bush, Clinton, or Bush Jr. The economic recessions of the late 80’s and the post 9/11 didn’t help either.
The shifting of more money to fighting ‘terrorists’ and Iraq deflected money that would of been spent on roads and bridges. We are now left in our current state of affairs. Many of the bridges we cross every day are 30, 40, 50 or more years old. Many are far past their original design lifetimes. We keep using them because people don’t want high taxes. People seem to forget taxes are there for a reason, to pay for things individuals can’t afford. Like roads, bridges, schools, teachers, etc. Time to suck it up. Cancel the war in Iraq, raise taxes to previous levels, fix our country (roads, bridges, schools, Social Security, Health Care) and become a country that we are proud to live in again.
If we don’t, expect to see more deaths due to benign neglect, and just deal with those costs when they arise.
Bridge collapse
I am sure you all now that a bridge collapsed in Minnesota. Sadly, this will probably not be the last bridge collapse in the country. To me it highlights the benign neglect this nation has shown towards our nation’s infrastructure.
The United States decided in the 1950’s to rely heavily, or almost exclusively on a national highway system to provide land transport. I won’t go into the long term problems with this system, lets just say there are many.
The real problem is in the early 80’s many infrastructure programs were canceled to save money for the fiscally ‘conservative’ Republicans in power. This attitude of only fix it if it falling down didn’t change with Bush, Clinton, or Bush Jr. The economic recessions of the late 80’s and the post 9/11 didn’t help either.
The shifting of more money to fighting ‘terrorists’ and Iraq deflected money that would of been spent on roads and bridges. We are now left in our current state of affairs. Many of the bridges we cross every day are 30, 40, 50 or more years old. Many are far past their original design lifetimes. We keep using them because people don’t want high taxes. People seem to forget taxes are there for a reason, to pay for things individuals can’t afford. Like roads, bridges, schools, teachers, etc. Time to suck it up. Cancel the war in Iraq, raise taxes to previous levels, fix our country (roads, bridges, schools, Social Security, Health Care) and become a country that we are proud to live in again.
If we don’t, expect to see more deaths due to benign neglect, and just deal with those costs when they arise.
Posted by admin on August 2, 2007 in General Comments
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