Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Kentucky Bridge Collapse - Why Sensible Infrastructure Fixes Collapse in Congress - Esquire

Charles P. Pierce on infrastructure spending.--SS

Kentucky Bridge Collapse - Why Sensible Infrastructure Fixes Collapse in Congress - Esquire:

"Officials in Kentucky now say that the navigation lights should have been sufficient for the ship to notice that it was going under the wrong part of the bridge. But, still, the bridge would have been 80 years old this year. It was scheduled to be replaced anyway, and very preliminary work of a new four-lane bridge over the lake already had begun. You wonder how many patch-and-fill projects there are around the country, how many bridges with balky lighting and obsolete construction. Of all the mysteries of our politics, why this country can't simply fix itself is one of the most enduring. And the mystery is not why sensible proposals die in Congress. They die for the reasons they always die — because, in Congress, sensible proposals end up in the hands of nonsenical people. The mystery is why the American people don't rise up, merely out of raw self-interest, and scream, "Fix the damn bridges. Fix the damn roads. Hell, fix the damn dams." This shouldn't be hard to do. Infrastructure spending creates jobs and it keeps you and your car from falling into a lake. Scoreboard!"

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