The collapsed bridge is only the tip of the iceberg
The collapse of the I35W bridge over the Mississippi in Minneapolis during rush-hour traffic has gained worldwide attention. One of the visitors to my first article about the bridge came from the Japan Bridge Engineering Center. We've been hearing that many other bridges in the Twin Cities and around the U.S. are in worse condition than the one that collapsed. We been hearing calls from government officials for massive spending to repair our America's neglected "infrastructure".
My answer to all those government officials is: You built it, you own it, you're responsible for it, and you haven't maintained it. Who, specifically, is responsible? The fault falls over many decades, all over the nation, and primarily at the federal level of government. Who can we hold responsible during the 60's, the 70's, 80's, 90's, and for the past 7 years? Few individuals in government cover that period of time, and no individual can be pointed to as responsible for such massive neglect.
Massive neglect? Far more extensive than most people understand, and not just recently. Back in 2003, I wrote twice warning about government neglect of maintenance... Federal waste and lack of maintenance and Even national treasures are being neglected. Here's are some quotes from the first:
Incredibly, all that neglect comes along with MASSIVE WASTE. Government facilities, once established, are very hard to get rid of, so they sit, unused, underused, or just not needed at all. Billions are spent on pork barrel earmarks by congressmen, to reward political contributors and to generate publicity for politicians. Inadequate management leads to government agency waste and even losing expensive goods. Just this week, it was reported that the Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005. I hardly need to mention that our government has spent roughly a TRILLION dollars on the War in Iraq and Afghanistan (that's $1,000 BILLION for those mathematically challenged by wasteful and poor government education systems).
Government does NOTHING well, and does most jobs miserably... performance so poor that it couldn't begin to succeed in a competitive market. When a government program fails, the "solution" is usually to throw more money at it, resulting in even more costly failure. While each of us struggles daily to meet our needs, government throws our tax money around like it was of no significance. Unwilling to spend only what they take in, our government is going in debt to other nations and their investors; in effect selling our nation, piece by piece, to others.
There is not nearly enough space here to document how wasteful and neglectful our government's performance is, and corruption is clearly a big part of it.
Who then are we to blame?
There are two organizations that have held government power in their hands for many decades. Of course I'm speaking of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Separately and together, they scheme to deceive, plunder, and increase their own power at the expense of all of the rest of us. They waste enormous amounts of our money in their false competition with each other... stealing from the nation to peddle influence and buy votes. In a thousand sneaky agreements with each other, they move vast sums of money from the nation to each of their home districts to produce visible showcases that they can point to in order to fool more people into voting for them.
Of course, maintenance doesn't produce showcases. Maintenance doesn't generate votes or political contributions. It's invisible to the public... until something falls apart, killing people. Then, of course, these same politicians will leap to our rescue, promising to solve the problem but never acknowledging that they caused the problem... and they will throw still more of our tax dollars at it.
Make no mistake; it makes no difference which party's people are in which positions... the same corrupted, neglectful, misprioritized, wasteful and dangerous decisions will occur, because the goal of the two parties is precisely and only to get more of their people elected and to increase their own power. As long as Americans continue to fall for the phony "competition" staged by those two parties, voting for the supposed lesser of two evils, nothing will change but for the worse. The lesser of two evils is, by definition, still evil.
Doing what obviously needs to be done doesn't help get votes. Ribbon-cutting ceremonies on fancy new projects do. America is suckered in by it every election. Until we stop accepting the lesser of two evils con... until we stop idolizing politicians as powerful media celebrities... until we stop seeking our own little piece of the corrupt favor-peddling... our nation will continue to deteriorate around our heels.
As politicians gathered around the collapsed bridge in Minneapolis, instead of eagerly waiting for their promises of prompt action, the crowd should have pelted them with a huge barrage of tomatoes... or rocks. Each of them, from the Mayor, Governor, to Federal officials and the President deserve no less. They are each and every one part of a corrupt system that CAUSED the bridge collapse through neglect.
My answer to all those government officials is: You built it, you own it, you're responsible for it, and you haven't maintained it. Who, specifically, is responsible? The fault falls over many decades, all over the nation, and primarily at the federal level of government. Who can we hold responsible during the 60's, the 70's, 80's, 90's, and for the past 7 years? Few individuals in government cover that period of time, and no individual can be pointed to as responsible for such massive neglect.
Massive neglect? Far more extensive than most people understand, and not just recently. Back in 2003, I wrote twice warning about government neglect of maintenance... Federal waste and lack of maintenance and Even national treasures are being neglected. Here's are some quotes from the first:
Restoration, repair, and maintenance backlogs in federal facilities are significant and reflect the federal government's ineffective stewardship over its valuable and historic portfolio of real property assets. The backlog is alarming because of its magnitude-current estimates show that tens of billions of dollars will be needed to restore these assets and make them fully functional.And from the 2nd article:
DOD (Department of Defense) reported in 2001 that the cost of bringing its facilities to a minimally acceptable condition was estimated at $62 billion; the cost of correcting all deficiencies was estimated at $164 billion.
DOD (Department of Defense) estimates that it is spending $3 billion to $4 billion each year maintaining facilities that are not needed. Costs associated with excess DOE facilities, primarily for security and maintenance, exceed $70 million annually.
Interior [manages hundreds of dams and irrigation systems; over 34,000 buildings; 120,000 miles of roads; thousands of bridges; fish hatcheries; electric power and natural gas utility lines; campgrounds; and hundreds of parks and many nationally known recreational sites] has a significant deferred maintenance backlog that the Interior Inspector General (IG) estimated in April 2002 to be as much as $8 billion to $11 billon.No question... MASSIVE NEGLECT!
GSA (General Services Administration [which tries to audit and investigate government agencies] Repair Backlog Estimated at $5.7 Billion
Incredibly, all that neglect comes along with MASSIVE WASTE. Government facilities, once established, are very hard to get rid of, so they sit, unused, underused, or just not needed at all. Billions are spent on pork barrel earmarks by congressmen, to reward political contributors and to generate publicity for politicians. Inadequate management leads to government agency waste and even losing expensive goods. Just this week, it was reported that the Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005. I hardly need to mention that our government has spent roughly a TRILLION dollars on the War in Iraq and Afghanistan (that's $1,000 BILLION for those mathematically challenged by wasteful and poor government education systems).
Government does NOTHING well, and does most jobs miserably... performance so poor that it couldn't begin to succeed in a competitive market. When a government program fails, the "solution" is usually to throw more money at it, resulting in even more costly failure. While each of us struggles daily to meet our needs, government throws our tax money around like it was of no significance. Unwilling to spend only what they take in, our government is going in debt to other nations and their investors; in effect selling our nation, piece by piece, to others.
There is not nearly enough space here to document how wasteful and neglectful our government's performance is, and corruption is clearly a big part of it.
Who then are we to blame?
There are two organizations that have held government power in their hands for many decades. Of course I'm speaking of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Separately and together, they scheme to deceive, plunder, and increase their own power at the expense of all of the rest of us. They waste enormous amounts of our money in their false competition with each other... stealing from the nation to peddle influence and buy votes. In a thousand sneaky agreements with each other, they move vast sums of money from the nation to each of their home districts to produce visible showcases that they can point to in order to fool more people into voting for them.
Of course, maintenance doesn't produce showcases. Maintenance doesn't generate votes or political contributions. It's invisible to the public... until something falls apart, killing people. Then, of course, these same politicians will leap to our rescue, promising to solve the problem but never acknowledging that they caused the problem... and they will throw still more of our tax dollars at it.
Make no mistake; it makes no difference which party's people are in which positions... the same corrupted, neglectful, misprioritized, wasteful and dangerous decisions will occur, because the goal of the two parties is precisely and only to get more of their people elected and to increase their own power. As long as Americans continue to fall for the phony "competition" staged by those two parties, voting for the supposed lesser of two evils, nothing will change but for the worse. The lesser of two evils is, by definition, still evil.
Doing what obviously needs to be done doesn't help get votes. Ribbon-cutting ceremonies on fancy new projects do. America is suckered in by it every election. Until we stop accepting the lesser of two evils con... until we stop idolizing politicians as powerful media celebrities... until we stop seeking our own little piece of the corrupt favor-peddling... our nation will continue to deteriorate around our heels.
As politicians gathered around the collapsed bridge in Minneapolis, instead of eagerly waiting for their promises of prompt action, the crowd should have pelted them with a huge barrage of tomatoes... or rocks. Each of them, from the Mayor, Governor, to Federal officials and the President deserve no less. They are each and every one part of a corrupt system that CAUSED the bridge collapse through neglect.
posted by Robert Ronald Smith at 3:46 PM
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