Right, Cathy. I recently saw a comparison of what you could do with a billion dollars (what we spend in Iraq in a few days). Among other things, we could build One Hundred and Thirty (!) $75 million dollar schools in this nation. We're blowing through money in Iraq so fast it'd make your head spin, if it isn't already spinning from the waste of dough .........and lives.
The lefty kooks always come up with that crap but without a strong defense there will not be any brides and roads on which to spend money. There is a wealth of money, in the billions, in the federal Highway Trusts Funds." but the Dims in congress will not spend it on the roads, they want to transfer federal gas taxes to public transportation in the Dim controlled cities around the county. One need to go back to FDR and his response to all the money spent on lead lease. "When one house in on fire, one does not worry about the water bill." The Dims and their kook followers still do not understand we are at war with all of the radical Islamic terrorist.
mike
There is more money to be made selling weapons and supplies of war, as opposed to building bridges and roads.
But not the war.
Called inflation, but it's not keeping up.
raise the alarm. But lack of money and the defeat of a gax tax to help pay for upgrades, put the repairs off for 13 years.
Baloney, local roads maybe, but our interstate highway system is vital to our economy and national defense, and just makes the US a great country to live in. Can't imagine what it would be like driving through Wyoming if not for the interstate. There is no way that state could afford a decent highway system.
Unless you have a senior Senator who can funnel the money to his state, or more likely contractors who have them in their pocket (Like Senator Stevens) away from more needed projects
Funny, I didn't read anything about raising taxes in that article
I live fairly near a new, multi-million dollar high school under construction.
This is a huge campus, with every modern convenience.
Too bad that when it's done, the demographics of the area ensure that it will be populated primarily with the children of illegal aliens.
Your tax dollars at work.
It's also called urban sprawl. Contributes to the need for more highway lanes, not less, since outlying communities are often planned badly.
Really? People won't get married without a strong defense?
Gee, I have not seen the Republicans spending that money when they ran Congress. I guess they don't want to see the budget deficit go up.
And other terrorists as well.
Jeff
Somehow, education....and it doesn't matter who's being educated, is more important and worthwhile to me than killing people. and we certainly spend enough of taxpayer money in developing and purchasing weapons of all sorts to do just that.
You're incoherent as usual, Mike.
The attitudes that government can't do anything right and all taxation is bad have contributed to the neglect of bridges and highways, so we end up building them to minimum standards and performing only minimum maintenance (at best). When I was young, the Phoenix area had a flood that was expected to occur only once every 100 years, and it wiped out all but one of the bridges across the Salt River. Our government officials were so cheap that they wanted to simply rebuild the washed out bridges to their original specs, claiming that better bridges made no economical sense because the odds of another big flood were so remote. But public outcry forced them to build much better bridges (one had concrete columns 2-3 times as long as the original), and in the next 1-2 years there was another 100-year flood.
The one bridge that wasn't wiped out by the first flood was built by the federal government during FDR's presidency. It's still there and suffered no damage from the floods.
It's not just about fallen bridges, it's about a sick sick system. One that would rather spend money on a war and bomb another country's bridges than keep it's own from falling. Some understand, some don't, some can't.
There was a chain link suspension bridge that was almost as old as the Minnesota bridge when it collapsed.
It wasn't considered that sound a design -- it was thought to have less redundancy than other bridges of the same span and capacity and therefore required much more inspection to assure its safety. It also had a salt water spray system to de-ice its road surface. I wonder if any of that salt water plumbing had been leaking.
We've worried far more about our bridges being bombed (highly improbable) than about them corroding away (highly likely).
Your statement doesn't address the problem. Certainly education is important, but I'd rather my tax dollars be spent on educating our citizens' and legal residents' children. There would be more dollars for the using.
Even more scary, a newscaster on Fox stated that 26% of all bridges in the U.S. are now considered functionally obsolete.
Just think of how this figure might have been far lower if pork spending monies had been used properly.
I'm in Minneapolis ... and I'm quite sure this bridge collapse tragedy will be politicized, with some claiming that government has not spent enough. The TRUTH is government spends plenty of money, but the investments are not focused enough on the basics, like infrastructure. Minnesota has spent a lot recently on light rail, which is an extremely inefficient and expensve way to move very limited numbers of commuters, and does little to reduce highway congestion. News this week in Minnesota focused on an additional light rail system that would cost close to a billion dollars. Ironically the projected costs keep snowballing. partly because existing bridges cannot support the weight of (heavy) light rail and lots of extra funding is required to shore up the bridges.
People love their cars, and light rail will not even put a dent in the number of cars on the road. Yet, politicians shortchange funding for highways and bridges in favor of silliiness like lght rail and diversity training.
It's not that we're taxing or spending too little, it's the gross inefficiency of government and its misplaced spending priorities. If government focused their resources on fundamental basic services, and cut waste, we'd all be better off.
Typical liberal talking points.
It's a sound design of 40 years ago. The question is what was the condition of the metal elements in the bridge structure. NTSB and a parallel investigation by an independent engineering firm hired by the Gov. will find out what failed both in the structure and in the whole process of inspection and follow-up.
It's not for sure that even then those bridges would be replaced. It's a crap shoot.
Some years back, a NYS Thruway bridge collapsed, and there was the expected uproar about how unsafe many bridges are. I have no idea if it resulted in any functional changes in the inspection process.
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