[antimedia] antimedia: Thought for the day....

[Email subscription to blog articles]

Posted by antimedia:
Thought for the day....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1186109762.shtml


   ....The news today is filled with stories of the bridge collapse in
   Minnesota. Rightfully so. It's an important story.
   A much more important story, related to the bridge collapse, is being
   ignored. From the AP:

     More than 70,000 bridges across the country are rated structurally
     deficient like the span that collapsed in Minneapolis, and
     engineers estimate repairing them all would take at least a
     generation and cost more than $188 billion.
     That works out to at least $9.4 billion a year over 20 years,
     according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.
     The bridges carry an average of more than 300 million vehicles a
     day.

   The primary function of government is to provide safe roads, clean
   water and dependable power and guarantee the safety of its people
   through law enforcement and a well-trained military. When government
   neglects those things in a futile effort to solve social problems, it
   fails at its primary purpose and people die needlessly.
   Engineers estimate that we need $75 billion per year just to maintain
   our highways and bridges, not to repair deficient ones. Every year
   Congress and the states allocate $60 billion, 80% of the money
   required just to maintain the status quo. It's been this way for
   decades. In effect, engineers are like the boy holding his finger in
   the dike, hoping against hope that the damn won't break.
   Thomas Jefferson [1]once said, "I predict future happiness for
   Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors
   of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
   If Jefferson could see the government we have today, he would shake
   his head in disgust.

References

   1. http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/2530