Bridge Collapse: "It's not terrorists, it's the tax cuts"
By: Teddy
Published On: 8/2/2007 3:00:49 PM
Now begins the blame game on the collapse of the bridge in Minnesota. The rest of the country, including us here in Virginia, are not only appalled and sympathetic, but feeling uneasy twinges of "Can it happen here?" Already, we have been told the bridge was inspected last year, and maintenance work was being done on the concrete deck, but not the underlying structure, at the very moment of the collapse. As it happens, both the feds and the state had inspected the bridge relatively recently (1-2 years, with normal inspections held 3 years apart)- therefore, everything was okay, or they'd have told Minnesotans, right?
Well... the feds considered the bridge to be at "fifty percent," not one hundred percent. To be fair, Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty might not have known this (which would tend to indicate that his administration is incompetent). In any case, this year the Democratic Minnesotan legislature passed a $4.18 billion transportation package including major money for maintenance, but Pawlenty vetoed it because he had taken a no-new-taxes pledge, saying "...the advocates overreached... if they came in with a more reasonable plan, maybe the results would have been different," meaning the tax increases proposed in both the first and second versions were not acceptable. The more parsimonious bill which finally passed, tailored to meet Pawlenty's objections, was $3.8 billion for "status quo" on transportation, including $347.8 million for infrastructure support, and no real increases in funding across the board. Given the legislative war recently concluded in Virginia over exactly this sort of transportation funding, it is instructive to read documentation on Minnesota's experience. http://www.house.leg...
What is striking is that The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recently produced a Report Card for America's Infrastructure including roads, bridges, schools, water systems and so on, each evaluated for condition, capacity compared to need, funding versus need- and the over-all grade for America's infrastructure was "D." Fixing the deficiencies will cost at least $1.3 trillion over 5 years for the country to bring its infrastructure over-all to an acceptable, "functional" level. There is also a professional estimate that traffic delays cost Americans $50 billion annually (lost wages, added fuel costs), and U.S. motorists "spend four times as much money fixing damage to their cars caused by crumbling roads than states spend on repairing the highways."(http://www.leanleft....)
Clearly, there is a distinct possibility that Republican Governor Pawlenty's veto of a more comprehensive (if more costly) transportation bill perhaps contributed to the bridge disaster because of limited maintenance funding, and failure to pay attention to maintenance because of costs.
Whether or not this turns out to be true, we can see that the Republican philosophy that "taxes are bad and government is the problem" have contributed enormously to the present decay of our infrastructure, to shoddy no-bid contracts, and blatant obstruction of efforts to improve the "common good." Indeed, in my opinion, most Republicans seem to act like parasites on the existing social and economic structure, sucking up its substance for their private gain and are, in effect, living off the capital saved and produced by previous generations. Now we all will be paying the price for their greed and lack of enlightened self-interest.
Comments
Typo? (cvllelaw - 8/2/2007 3:24:32 PM)
Did you mean $347.8
million?
Yes, thanks (Teddy - 8/2/2007 4:11:21 PM)
At this point, million, billion, schmillion, at the rate the dollar is depreciating it will take $347.8 billion in no time at all, and it will still be like pocket change compared to the need. But I refrained from saying the trillion dollars blown up in Iraq would be better spent here at home--- I figured you could all draw your own conclusions on that.
Infrastructure: it matters and requires $$$ (hereinva - 8/2/2007 3:27:10 PM)
Here is a link to the American Society for Civil Engineers web site... (infrastructure report 2005)
[http://www.asce.org/...]
Same thing with that giant NY Explosion (The Grey Havens - 8/2/2007 3:40:07 PM)
It's the same problem with the giant explosion that happened in New York earlier this month.
The decaying roads and ignorant children contingent of the Republican party doesn't care what crashes or goes boom, they just want to make sure they have a wealthy aristocracy to which they can cow tow.
"Wealthy aristocracy..." (Teddy - 8/2/2007 4:28:52 PM)
is quite right, and that is what they are giving us, although the new elite is so far cloaked in secrecy, and we rarely know who these mega-billionaires are (with some notable exceptions). Of course, remember that the Republicans, especially their evangelical contingent, confuse affluence with righteousness, and truly believe some people have big bucks because they deserve it and God loves them.
The irony for the disappearing middle class is that the accumulated wealth of America, created and stored up over the generations in the form of social and economic infrastructure, based on our notable political stability, is now being snapped up by foreigners who are cashing in their dollars accumulated from their financing of our raging deficits, so that soon we will not own our own country (including the deteriorating roads and bridges being privatized and sold to foreigners).
The question then arises, how will we pay the interest on our huge debt, how will we pay for the infrastraucture and other public needs, when the income from our productive assets now is not coming to us, but going overseas to the new owners? We don't seem to be earning enough foreign exchange because our trade deficit continues to accumulate. Will we become debt slaves as a country?
Wait for enginerring report (loboforestal - 8/2/2007 5:17:06 PM)
Wait for the engineers to review the disaster before pointing fingers.
The problems could be in design, could be in implementation, could be in safety review, could be in contractor labor mistake, could be contractor management mistake.
BTW, the Civil Engineers have a vested interest in spending more on complex infrastructure. Not that their analysis is wrong, but I'm not sure they'd ever produce a report saying "everything is fine, we don't need more roads, we need more bikes".
The bridge was 40 years old... (ericy - 8/2/2007 5:57:54 PM)
So the design per se was probably ok. Although one can argue that it didn't have sufficient redundancy built into it, which would have been a design defect.
It could be related to issues of age, maintenance, inspection schedules, and so forth. All will come out in time - no reason to rush this.
On an unrelated note, I have driven that bridge many times. It is on the way between my parent's house and my brother's house, and the bridge is probably about a mile from my brother's house. Everyone in my family is OK - others are not so lucky.
No rush to judgment as such (Teddy - 8/2/2007 9:04:32 PM)
but it is interesting to read the sequence of events in the State legislature, the Governor's veto messages, the resultant pared down transportation bill finally signed by the Governor--- and then look at the reports by the feds on the bridge. It now seems that the feds found the bridge in poor condition in the early 1990's, not just on the most recent inspection which finally put the bridge's grade at 50%, hardly a passing score. I am sure there will be lots of technical engineering reports, but with the facts as they appear to be right now it is plain there was a disconnect politically, and government did not perform its function of protecting its own citizens. Why was that? One reason that presents itself for consideration is what I pointed out: the Governor's parsimony based on his no-tax pledge. Take it from there.
I don't see what the problem is (Quizzical - 8/2/2007 6:46:22 PM)
Why don't the Minnesota politicians get together and impose multi-thousand dollar penalties for common violations of traffic laws? Problem solved.
But Teddy, don't you know that taxes are evil!? (Catzmaw - 8/2/2007 9:41:18 PM)
That's right, and gu'mmint's bad. We need less gu'mmmint, not more. And we should cut taxes, uh huh, and make all the infrastructure part of the private sector because private's ALLLWWWWAAAAYYYYS better than gu'mmint. If you make it all private then all the bad gu'mmint run bridges will get fixed by the private companies because it's the free market ... and the free market always fixes everything.
Yes, of cuss (Teddy - 8/2/2007 11:09:16 PM)
and that's no doubt what we'll be hearing from the right wingnuts--- except for those who will say the bridge collapsed because of gay marriage.