Posted on 08/25/2007 1:05:11 PM PDT by BGHater
The recent and tragic bridge collapse in Minnesota raises many questions in Americans' minds about our aging infrastructure, and what is being done to maintain it. Questions such as: "Was I-35 an isolated accident or are we approaching days when crumbling bridges and bursting pipes will be regular features on the evening news?"
The poor ratings on the inspection report of that bridge, and similar deficiency findings on as many as 25% of our bridges suggests the latter. Estimates on what it will cost to bring deficiencies in our infrastructure back up to par range from massive to astronomical.
Billions of tax dollars at all levels of government are devoted to infrastructure, but one problem is that politicians love to cut ribbons. Political capital is gained not from maintaining or repairing our systems, but from building new bridges, new stadiums, and new roads, often of questionable real utility. Seldom is there a ceremony or photo opportunity for repairing or maintaining something already in place.
As the so-called Highway Trust Fund is set to go bankrupt as early as 2009, private investment firms are gearing up for partnerships, which could be a positive step, if handled sensibly. What we need to avoid are items such as the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC), which is phase 1 of the NAFTA Super Highway . The Spanish firm Cintra is set to take over toll collections after the TTC’s completion, however it is unclear that they’ll have any obligations for maintenance. The cost is being socialized, while the profit is privatized, effectively making the American people pay for it twice.
Infrastructure, in a capitalist model, is an asset worthy of maintaining to ensure continuity of revenue. In a government controlled model infrastructure is nothing but a cumbersome liability. This should be taken into consideration when developing plans to keep our current infrastructure safe. Privatization should be used to encourage maintenance and safety, and where private companies truly invest and bear the upfront costs in return for ability to collect tolls or usage fees in some form. But public/private partnerships that look more like corporate welfare must be avoided.
We should re-examine how we handle the taxes we collect for infrastructure and how we allocate that money. At the very least reins need to be put on the Highway Trust Fund. Funds collected from the gas tax should go into the Trust Fund-- period.
Even the most ardent liberal and passionate conservative can agree that when they pay gasoline taxes, the least they expect is a road and bridge system that won't crumble beneath their feet. Before any subsidies or welfare payments are paid out, before social security is handed out to illegal immigrants, or health care is given to everyone, before bridges to nowhere are built at home, or entire countries bombed and rebuilt abroad, before any other myriad of exotic government projects are even considered, infrastructure should be attended to and taken seriously.
Too many taxpayer dollars going into nonessential things.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1886502/posts?page=1
I-35 sucks from south Texas to Minnesota.
www.outlawjournalism.com
ping
Should the infrastructure be maintained?
Often the most valuable part of the infrastructure is the right-of-way. When the plant is old, don't patch it. Rip it out by the roots. Build new, on the old right-of-way, and rather than widen old roads, acquire new r-o-w and build more roads.
L
Every liberal pol and journalist in MN is salivating over the prospect of using this as the impetus for raising taxes, when they squandered a billion dollars on a light rail system that NOBODY rides, and they’re insisting on spending an additional 20 million to make the new 35W bridge light-rail ready.
The federal budget for 2007 totals $2.8 trillion.
$699 billion (+4.0%) - Defense
$586 billion (+7.0%) - Social Security
$395 billion (+12.4%) - Medicare
$367 billion (+2.0%) - Unemployment and welfare
$276 billion (+2.9%) - Medicaid and other health related
$244 billion (+13.4%) - Interest on debt
$90 billion (+1.3%) - Education and training
$77 billion (+8.1%) - Transportation
$73 billion (+5.8%) - Veterans’ benefits
$44 billion (+9.2%) - Administration of justice
$33 billion (+5.7%) - Natural resources and environment
$33 billion (+15.4%) - Foreign affairs
$27 billion (+3.7%) - Agriculture
$27 billion (+28.7%) - Community and regional development
$25 billion (+4.0%) - Science and technology
$20 billion (+11.4%) - General government
$1 billion (+47.6%) - Energy
Notice transportation gets $77 billion, and various social welfare programs get $1,128 billion.
Aren’t gas taxes supposed to be collected specifically for maintaining the roads and bridges? Where does all that money go if not for that purposes only?
We need to keep spending tax dollars on ‘diversity programs’
We’ll just ask for more to fix bridges and stuff
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To Italian Mafia owned companies.. same with Waste removal and handling..
Nice handy list. Bookmark for later.
The New Privatization
States and cities are selling their roads, bridges, and airports for eye-popping sums.
http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=2297
And of that I see only $850 billion or so that falls under the Constitution. As usual, Dr. Paul is correct again
And too often, R-o-W is being sold off.
Ron Paul impresses me more each day as he takes on the real issues instead of getting into the soundbite game of packaged issues that the MSM likes. I like Duncan Hunter, too...but I fear that we’ll get stuck with another statist... :-(
John Derbyshire is wrong to resist the Ron Paul Temptation. Embrace it. Embrace it: conservatives, libertarians, pro-lifers…Right-minded Americans, all.
Sure, Paul, currently hovering in the single digits in polls, looks at first glance like a textbook case of a fringe candidate. And that’s unfortunate, because he ought instead to be our next president — and would be if he made it to the general election, since in a one-on-one match-up with likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, he could fare remarkably well.
That means Paul’s greatest obstacle is the Republican primary process. Since he wants to do virtually everything conservatives have long dreamed of with the office of the presidency, what’s stalling his chances is a herd-like desire to vote for the candidate who already seems likely to win the primaries. Democrats won’t keep him from the White House; it would be tragic, then, if Republicans stopped him themselves.
Recall, first, the big issue that likely cost the Republicans control of Congress in 2006 and turned George Bush into a lame duck: the Iraq War. Now, thanks largely to testy comments from his fellow candidate Rudy Giuliani, Paul is known as the sole antiwar Republican candidate. I realize how strongly many of his fellow Republicans disagree with him on that issue — I’m not as isolationist on military matters as Paul either (almost no one is) and have long hoped that the Iraq effort will turn out better than expected.
But it now appears that even the unambitious goal of stopping frequent bombings in Baghdad is proving to be, shall we all admit, tricky. And since the pro-war position is widely regarded as the thing dragging Republican congressional candidates down in ’06 and prospective Republican presidential candidates down in the polls for ’08, it would be a delightful turn if antiwar sentiment ended up redounding to the advantage of conservatives, in the form of Ron Paul’s election.
And think of the undeserved riches that would then be ours: Paul is an across-the-board libertarian on economic issues. He wants to abolish most Cabinet agencies (aside from State, Justice, and a radically whittled-down Defense). He has tried (unsuccessfully) to return the U.S. to the gold standard and has made clear his desire to dismantle the IRS immediately.
And for those who say it can’t happen, here’s the beauty part: Get Paul through the primaries, to the Republican nomination, and he has the tools to take on Hillary. He plainly gets the libertarian swing voters that the Republicans lost in 2006, he should garner most conservative votes when contrasted with Hillary, and — here’s the clincher — he gets a huge share of the bourgeoning antiwar vote to boot. Think about it: Clinton has already alienated the substantial antiwar faction of the Democratic party, while Ron Paul has inspired a supportive banner even at an anarchist rally full of hippies and punks, urging people to join the Ron Paul “love revolution.”
But don’t let that fool you into thinking he’s some flower-child. A seventy-two-year-old conservative Texan, Ron Paul is also one of the most pro-life members of Congress, wants better border enforcement, and, as a doctor, prefers to allow the states to manage the war on drugs, rather than praising drugs, as some less cautious libertarians are prone to do.
Presto! The much-lamented divide between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, which has seemed to be widening lately, is eliminated. As has oft been said, Republicans tend to fare best when they pursue the program (pioneered by National Review and praised last year by Ryan Sager in his book Elephant in the Room) called “fusionism,” yoking together social conservatism and the libertarian desire to shrink government. Both Giuliani and McCain, for example, have some fusionist qualities, sounding tough on military matters and fiscal matters — but no one’s more fusionist than a pro-lifer who genuinely wants to dismantle the entire welfare state. And if you’re nervous about Paul’s “going too far,” keep in mind the president only executes the laws — he doesn’t make them. There are limits to what even a president can do, but it’d sure be nice to have one pushing in a small-government conservative direction for the first time since Reagan, and arguably the first time since Coolidge.
Continuing conservative support for the Iraq war is certainly an issue (note that Paul voted for the Afghan war, so he’s not a complete pacifist), but surely it’s not the be-all and end-all of conservatism. As popular support for the war fades, and if we do not meet with the successes forecast by the architects of the “surge,” might not even the most pro-war conservatives be willing to budge a bit on that possibly doomed and politically damning issue? Hawks may be reluctant to shift, but for many conservatives it may well be worth it to have a president with true conservative values.
Do conservatives not really want all the things Paul has to offer? Then why do we fight at all? If it’s merely for power and mainstream acceptance, one might as well support Hillary Clinton or wait until after November 2008 and support whoever comes out on top. But if we want a radically smaller government — precisely that thing that a Republican Congress neglected to do for the last twelve years, which has created the current mood of conservative frustration — we must support Ron Paul. Remember how small government was at the nation’s founding and consider how perhaps even conservatives have since then become de facto socialists, accepting the leviathan state as inevitable. But it’s not inevitable if they vote against it when history hands them that chance.
National Review On-line is slowly coming around to the same view as you. By the time they arrive at that point there will be those here decrying National Review as a liberal rag. And the deconstruction of conservatism will continue apace.
What R-o-W has been sold?
Dont bring that up because the traitor will get upset.
One shrimp=one vote
OMG! Ron Paul's a kook! He believes in accountability and wisely spending the people's tax dollars!
I take it you're not going to comment on the article, right. I guess it is easier to post a pic.
Doubtful. Leased maybe.
You need some new material. Pronto.
Now, we don’t come here to comment on any articles. We just like to make smarty-pants remarks, (which are generally not original, entertaining, or interesting) and post mad mullah photo caps.
Care for a shrimp cocktail with your extra cut-and-run ribeye? It’s on special this week. Only 19.95
(only currency based on the gold standard is accepted.)
(May as well get that all out of the way)
Well, when you lay it out like that, its depressing...
Energy down on the bottom is very interesting though...Up 47%??? geesh friggin’ louezzzz!!! ;-)
When paul apologizes for blaming the USA for 9-11 and starts supporting our young soldiers in combat then I will stop but until then one shrimp=one vote for the traitor
That's at least the second time today you've posted that completely unrelated thread, calling it "related". Are you aware that FR has a "no spam" policy?
Bash him all you like. It makes no difference to me.
Ok
lies??
These are but two of the Congressman’s 65 earmarks sought thus far this year to the tune of $400,000,000.00. HIs chief spokesman pulled a Tom DeLay and said
“Reducing earmarks does not reduce government spending, and it does not prohibit spending upon those things that are earmarked,” the spokesman said. “What people who push earmark reform are doing is they are particularly misleading the public — and I have to presume it’s not by accident.”
Of course the Congressman in question is the patron saint of both the constitutionally pure crowd and the black helicopter crowd — Congressman Ron Paul.
Where in the Constitution does it state that the federal government can tax me to build bridges in Minnesota? Or restore a dilapidated theater in Edna, Texas? Or subsidize his shrimpers?
He’s just another career congressman, pretending to be different with publicity stunts for the lunatic fringe.
Another good article by Rep. Paul. It’s unfortunate that he draws such venom on what was created to be a conservative web forum. It seems to me that these attacks all boil down to three basic distortions. First, that Rep. Paul is crazy because some crazy people like him, by which logic Jodie Foster is crazy because of John Hinckley’s obsession.
Second, that he is some kind of pork champion, which is based on either a complete misunderstanding or a deliberate misrepresentation of how earmarks actually work. This is the most disturbing distortion, insofar that Paul’s actual record makes accusing him of being pro-pork about as rational as accusing the Pope of being pro-abortion.
And finally, that Paul has blamed America for 9-11. This isn’t true, of course; he’s just said that the terrorists have said (and our own intelligence has confirmed) that they want to attack us because of our presence in the Middle East. But some people apparently think that a conservative who states those facts should be attacked more spitefully than Hillary or Obama.
It always seems to be the same thing, for hundreds of posts, on Ron Paul threads. It’s too bad.
I don’t understand the title of the thread. Are they suggesting that Ron Paul is himself “aging infrastructure”? :-)
I’ll take 200 Ron Pauls, 100 Tom Tancredos and 120 Duncan Hunter as US Represantives. Let the Socialists have the remaining 35 seats just for entertainment value.
Wow - The money that Ron Paul got for Texas Wild Shrimp and those other little old Texas projects could have been used to fix old bridges!!! Looks like Ronnie is part of the problem here.
I think you are just defensive about the shrimp - It is embarrassing that your hero proposed spending money on promotion of the Texas Wild Shrimp Industry!!!!
“Second, that he is some kind of pork champion, which is based on either a complete misunderstanding or a deliberate misrepresentation of how earmarks actually work...”
Actually the way Ron Paul proposed the earmarks, encouraged others to support the earmarks, THEN voted AGAINST the earmarks is Misrepresentation - with a capital M. If he had not have proposed these earmarks, they never would have been there for others to pass.
I second that emotion! Although you only left 15 seats for the socialists, not 35. Darn. :-p
<crickets>
</crickets>
Didn't think so.
435. What the heck do you want from me? I went to public schools for crying out loud.
I is edumacated.
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