Thursday, August 02, 2007

All the bridges falling down, falling down, falling down...

Was it not just fairly recently that a bridge fell down in California? Double-decker thing, kind of like when the Oakland one did during the earthquake? I seem to remember this. I'm sure Kvatch will correct me if I'm wrong.

The collapse of the bridge in Minnesota as well has gotten me to thinking about the infrastructure of our country. An infrastructure that is old, and crumbling. Remember the incident with the flooding of the old tunnels underneath the Loop when the Chicago River breach occurred?

The part of this that has me unhappy is that Leandra was on the phone with me last night and mentioned (must have seen a crawl on CNN or something) that the cost of the Debacle in Iraquel has now exceeded 1 TRILLION dollars.

"Oh my god, that's terrible.. how many IS a Brazilian, Rummy?"

We can't afford to pay for Bush's Folly - and the money we will spend on that is money that SHOULD have been spent to help shore up and maintain and upgrade our country's faltering infrastructure. The state of the Borman Expressway and the constant construction thereon should be a clue to anyone with half a brain or more who needs to get from Michigan to Chicago.

Quite honestly, given this state of affairs, I am beginning to wonder about the sanity of Senators Clinton, Obama, McCain, Edwards, Mayor Gulliani, et al. Why would ANY sane individual want to take on the HORROR that this country is on the brink of achieving under the Bush Regime?

Sure, there is a slim chance of achiving a miracle and becoming nigh on to a "god" in the eyes of the world - but there are overwhelming odds in favor of the exact opposite and total failure, economic collapse, infrastructural collapse, famine, disease, plagues, locusts...

536 days

4 comments:

Leandra said...

While I am no fan of Mr. Bush, this infrastructure thing goes much further back than his regime. When the first of the huge interstates was completed, with all the bridges, etc. there was a plan--congressional intent so to speak--to perform routine maintenance on it across the years. Of course as with such things as border security and cracking down on illegal employers after the last amnesty, only the first part got done. The rest was left ot go to hell. Which it has.

Now it's a disaster and there isn't enough money to fix everything in a timely manner even if Mr. Bush and his buddies weren't throwing money down a rat hole with wild abandon. Far too much is far too way gone to get it all back into shape without more of the type of disaster that happened in Minnesota.

Here in Seattle we have the Alaskan Way Viaduct that people fully expect to go down like a rock when we have our next major earthquake. It's three levels. Always loaded with traffic. Old. By any measure it needs replacing. It's not being replaced at the moment because the politicians are arguing about it a lot.

Another disaster like in Minnesota is not a matter of if but more a matter of when, and sooner rather than later.

Anonymous said...

I'm spooked as I used to drive across the 35W bridge every evening...for 5 years.

Though they're talking about massive structural failure, many people are saying that the bridge base gave way. I don't know...and it doesn't take anything from your point regarding infrastructure. We could deal with all of it if Bush weren't throwing $0.5T down the toilet.

BTW: The connector that collapsed in Oakland was due to fire. A tanker crashed and blew up.

Anonymous said...

We've had a few bridges and overpasses collapse here in Canada, too. It will cost billions of dollars to shore up and repair the old structures and yet our government insists on giving many millions of dollars away to other countries and spending many millions of dollars on peacekeeping and other military efforts in the world. I'm sick of it.

The Future Was Yesterday said...

Leandra put it very well. I'll add the northeast power outtage to her list. Nothing of substance has been done about the problem, other than talk it to death. It can only happen again - worse.

Our entire infrastructure is in worse shape than anybody wants to admit, from bridges to roads to electric power, to medical care.....sigh. Pick your worry, ya know?