Infrastructure: Really Scary Piece in S&R

[tellner]

One of my favorite sites is Scholars and Rogues. It's incisive, cynical, well-informed and goes after the truth like a starving dog after a pork chop. Today it discusses the United States' decrepit infrastructure.

Infrastructure is one of those boring things that people don't like to talk about. Photos of Brittney Spears' naughty bits? Oh yeah! Who Wants to Survive America's Top Apprentice Idol? Bring it on! Ferreting out the phantom terrorists in our hair gel and insoles? USA! 9-11! But roads and bridges and sewers and dams and airports and railways? That's boring. There aren't any boobies or big explosions. You can't wave a flag and send in the Marines or gossip about who gets voted off the island.

When a bridge in Minnesota collapses or the century old New York sewers spring leaks in several places at once there's a three day story. Politicians bang their hands on the podium in carefully measured cadences. Blue ribbon commissions are seated. The Secretary of some cabinet department makes a speech. Bechtel, Halliburton and Fluor's accountants wake up with enormous erections at the thought of the contracts. Afterwards people go back to sleep. The problem is shelved, and everyone figures that it couldn't have been that bad. Look! The gays want to get married! Everyone panic! (You're not thinking, guys. If you want to stop gay sex, then allowing gay marriage is a good first step...)

Well it is a problem. And like brushing your teeth ignoring it won't make it go away. The problem that is. The teeth will go away if you don't brush them just like the roads, dams, bridges, sewers, electric power grid, railways, runways, aqueducts and ports. The ACSE believes it's a more than $1.5 trillion (with a "t") problem over the next five years. That's just to get things back to decent repair.

The Parties and their candidates just don't seem to understand how big this is. Obama proposes $60 billion over five years against needs of at least $400 billion for transportation. Clinton boldly proposes $10 billion in funding. McCain doesn't even mention infrastructure as an issue. I suppose The Market will automagically solve the problem with unicorn farts and pixie dust. I suppose we need magic. We've already mortgaged our grandchildrens' future to the tune of half a trillion to three trillion dollars to take the oil in Iraq. Unfortunately, the spoils of war failed to materialize.

Multiply that by clean water's shrinking funding, crumbling sewers, aging water treatment plants, and declining quality. Or consider the degradation of levees all over the country and note that the Administration is right at the forefront, repairing the levees in Louisiana with the finest materials and workmanship. They're actually stuffing them with newspaper instead of using earth or concrete, but we're still doing a heck of a job. Our bridges and roads are in bad shape and not keeping up with maintenance. Many aren't safe at anything like their rated capacity. The US railway system isn't up to Bulgarian standards let alone Western European or Japanese which is a real shame. It's more efficient per passenger mile than cars or planes. But that gets into a whole different set of issues ably handled by my friend and unindicted co-conspirator, publisher Rustin Wright.

If Teddy Roosevelt were President he'd have turned the government upside down and shaken out all the incompetents and crooks. If it were Dwight Eisenhower we'd have started rebuilding the whole thing under an audacious master plan. FDR or LBJ would have the programs in place and an army of recently unemployed workers holding shovels and pay stubs while they dug in. But we have George W. Bush whose governmental philosophy is that government can't do anything, so it's time to take a vacation and pat himself on the back for a non-job that lived up to expectations.

For the most part the press isn't there absent the squawking when something falls down. John McQuaid calls us the Can't Do Nation. Bob Herbert, one of the New York Times' few columnists with his head screwed on straight talks about our loss of will and clearly identifies the problem and some solutions. But they're pretty much alone. The Press, the boardroom and the politicians are are engaging in their usual short-term thinking. Nobody is taking care of business.

 

[Sukerkin]

This is something of a hobby-horse of mine ("What, another one?" chorus's everyone ) but it one of the invisible side-effects of allowing the market free-rein and having profit as it's sole aim.

The reason why the infrastructure in Britain was so good and stood up to the rigours of day-to-day life so well was that it was well built in the first place. Why? Because the Victorian entrepeneurs who funded it had social consciences as well as a bent for making money (by the cunning use of flags to annex resources in some cases it has to be said ).

It has not been effectively maintained for decades and is coming apart, as well as being overstretched by a population level it was never meant to handle. Myopic enterprise once more and a government more interested in international power-gaming than keeping the National Grid up to scratch.

The once publicly owned industries that kept everything running were 'privatised' (double speak for selling off what our taxes paid for in the first place) not all that long ago and in twenty years have asset denuded and profit-taken at every turn whilst doing little to ensure the system remains viable. The railways have already been bailed out more than once (using our taxes yet again) and I can forsee a time when the utilities are re-Nationalised and rebuilt using ... can you guess whose money?

Anyhow, whilst I try and stop frothing at the mouth, I'll just give a thumbs up to Todd for bringing this one into the light. It is a big issue that really needs proper discussion by those in the seats of power but I doubt we'll see much action until someone 'important' gets inconvenienced.

 

[5-0 Kenpo]

This is what happens when you make these things a federal, rather then a local issue.

 

[Tez3]

And it's always someone elses problem.

 

[Empty Hands]

This is what happens when you make these things a federal, rather then a local issue.

The state managed infrastructures are in no better shape. Some are worse.

 

[tellner]

The Bureau of Water Reclamation, the TVA, the interstate highway system, the air traffic system, the Clean Water funding, the railways back when we had them, the power grid - before we decided that reliability was less important than optimizing trading and dozens of other programs worked well precisely because they were national systems. Economies of scale were the word of the day. There was one well-defined standard. It was possible to plan in the long term and coordinate nationally instead of having fifty separate plans, fifty factorial interstate service bureaus and hundreds of conflicting standards.

It's as matter of unshakeable religious dogma among the Newts, Norquists and Limbots that Federal programs don't work. The reality is very different. When the effects cross state lines as all of these do you need organization at the national level.

 

[5-0 Kenpo]

The state managed infrastructures are in no better shape. Some are worse.

But when your state budgets are dependent upon federal subsidies, and are beholden to federal mandates, then even though they are state managed, they really have no control over them.

As an example, from something that I know about: Federal Consent Decrees for law enforcement agencies. Just had this discussion the other night.

For my understanding, the federal government has no right to come in and take over a law enforcement agency. But if an agency doesnt "consent" to the decree, then they will cut of federal funding, effectively crippling the agency. This is because the federal government has set up state and local governments for failure without them.

For another example look at DUI and speed limit laws. If states had not lowered the speed limit to 65 MPH (although this has since changed) or changed the presumptive limit of alcohol intoxication to .08%, they would have lost highway funding for which the state depends. And its not like the state can lower federal income taxes and raise state taxes to put it in their own coffers.

 

[5-0 Kenpo]

The Bureau of Water Reclamation, the TVA, the interstate highway system, the air traffic system, the Clean Water funding, the railways back when we had them, the power grid - before we decided that reliability was less important than optimizing trading and dozens of other programs worked well precisely because they were national systems. Economies of scale were the word of the day. There was one well-defined standard. It was possible to plan in the long term and coordinate nationally instead of having fifty separate plans, fifty factorial interstate service bureaus and hundreds of conflicting standards.

It's as matter of unshakeable religious dogma among the Newts, Norquists and Limbots that Federal programs don't work. The reality is very different. When the effects cross state lines as all of these do you need organization at the national level.

How do we know those things could not have been accomplished without federal intervention? We do not, because it is impossible to prove a negative.

 

[Makalakumu]

Before we completely decry the Right as the "boogeyman who destroyed the nation's infrastructure" maybe this is why maintaining the nation's infrastructure has become so much more difficult. If the nation's expenditures on infrastructure aren't keeping up with inflation, who is causing the inflation?

No amount of taxes will ever fix this problem if the value of our currency continues to erode.

 

[tellner]

UNK, I could make an excellent case about the cause of the plummeting dollar and our decimated industrial base. It would go back to the Carter Administration a little but really take hold during the Reagan - Bush - Clinton - Bush years. The simple fact is that it has historically been the post-Nixon Republicans much more than the Democrats who were vehemently opposed to the programs that created and used to maintain the physical plant.

The fact right now is that we have ignored the problems and hoped they would stay at bay at least until the end of the current election cycle. And we've been doing that for close to thirty years. It needs to stop if we are to function as a nation. And it needs to be done with a realistic view as to what it will take, what we are doing instead of taking care of business, and realizing that it won't magically go away.

That means calculating the man hours, the tons of steel and concrete, the energy costs, the real cost of the current mess and trends and how much more it will take with every year we bury our heads in the sand. The Good Fairy will not make it all go away. Photo ops with rolled up sleeves won't do it. More tax cuts for the rich will not magically dump trillions into the coffers. There isn't a hidden mother lode of government inefficiency that can be mined to pay for it all. It takes green eye shades, not ideology, to deal with the disaster we are seeing.

 

[Makalakumu]

That would be an excellent thread. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the plummeting dollar.

Regarding infrastructure, I have absolutely no problem with making fixing it the #1 national priority. I would axe 90% of the pentagon's budget and put jobless soldiers and anyone else who needed a job on one to get this back up to par.

Of course, the powers that be (and they be dems and reps) don't like social programs unless they blow other peoples infrastructure up.

Of course this doesn't do anything to address the fact that the insolvency of the currency is the major cause of the degredation of our country and standard of living.

How much can we tax the people before they have nothing left? With the erosion of the dollar, that's the choice we will face. So, IMHO, the Right has a point when it comes to taxes. It's just that they don't have the whole point. Just as the Left has a point in regards to our stuff falling apart. Just not the whole point.

So we all shout at each other and the people with no letters behind their names solidify their power by accumulating heaps of 0s in an account on a computer screen. They know the whole system is a scam. Hell, they designed it.

I'm sick of the "you stupid head politics." We need to shed the childishness real fast or people are going to wake up slaves.