Posted on 01/07/2025 5:01:13 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Signs that we were once a truly great nation are all around us. Previous generations of Americans handed us the keys to the most magnificent domestic infrastructure that the world had ever seen, but now it is literally falling apart all around us. Thousands of bridges are structurally deficient and there have already been some very high profile collapses. Hundreds of thousands of miles of highways and roads in the United States are in very poor shape. Aging sewer systems are leaking raw sewage all over the place, and children are being slowly poisoned by lead pipes that desperately need to be replaced. The power grid is hopelessly overloaded and is extremely vulnerable. Meanwhile, our ports, our dams, our subway systems, our bus terminals and our airports are crumbling right in front of our eyes. The truth is that our nation’s infrastructure says a lot about who we are.
So what does America’s crumbling infrastructure say about us? Sadly, it says that we are a rusting, crumbling, decaying leftover from a better, more prosperous time.
When Joe Biden took office in 2021, his administration told us that “investment in U.S. infrastructure as a share of GDP has fallen by more than 40 percent since the 1960s”…
Public investment in U.S. infrastructure as a share of GDP has fallen by more than 40 percent since the 1960s. The World Economic Forum now ranks the United States 13th when it comes to the overall quality of infrastructure.
So Congress passed a bill that gave the Biden administration more than $100,000,000,000 to spend on fixing our infrastructure.
Honestly, I have no idea what they did with all that money.
In 2021, the official White House website was reporting that 45,000 bridges and 20 percent of our roads were in poor condition…
More than 45,000 U.S. bridges and 1 in 5 miles of roads are in poor condition, per the American Society of Civil Engineers. In 2007, the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed during rush hour, killing 13 and injuring 121.
Well, fast forward a few years later and the Department of Transportation is still telling us that “over 40,000 bridges” are in poor condition…
The Department of Transportation considers 6.8% of the over 600,000 bridges it tracks and rates to be in “poor” condition. That doesn’t sound too bad on a percentage basis, but it’s over 40,000 bridges in total.
And it appears that the condition of our roads has actually gotten worse in many states.
For example, Consumer Reports says that almost half of all urban roads in the state of California are not currently in acceptable condition…
Despite an enormous yearly disbursement for highways that tops $21 billion, the Golden State manages to keep just a little more than half their urban roads in acceptable condition. However, this is an outsized job since, in addition to 840 miles of coastline, California boasts more miles of urban roads than any other state and has the second-highest mileage of rural roads in the country.
Data from the National Highway Administration shows California’s roads are the most traveled in the U.S., so it makes sense that the state also has the second-highest number of motor vehicle-related fatalities in the country.
Back in 2021, the Biden administration also made a big deal out of the fact that millions of Americans were getting their tap water through lead pipes…
Millions still get water from lead pipes, despite the fact that exposure to lead has irreversible health effects; in 2015, a state of emergency was declared in Flint, Michigan as citizens learned that their water supply contained toxic levels of lead.
So why didn’t the Biden administration fix this problem?
An article that was published late last year revealed that the EPA is estimating that “more than 9 million service lines” are still made out of lead…
The EPA estimates that more than 9 million service lines are made of lead, a neurotoxin that can cause nervous system damage, learning disabilities and other health problems, especially in children. If lead pipes corrode, as in the infamous case of Flint, Michigan, they can poison drinking water.
While no amount of lead exposure is safe, the federal rule now requires utilities to notify the public and improve corrosion treatment if lead in their water exceeds 10 parts per billion. Some homes in Syracuse, New York, recently tested at 70 parts per billion.
Our politicians are constantly telling us that they just don’t have enough money to get everything done.
Personally, I would really love to see exactly what the Biden administration spent more than 100 billion dollars of infrastructure money on.
Have you traveled through any of our airports lately?
Compared to other industrialized nations, they are a complete and utter joke.
Why can’t we have beautiful airports, modern subway systems, functional roads and bridges, and safe water coming out of our taps?
More tax revenue is collected in America than anywhere else in the world, and so we certainly deserve the best infrastructure.
When I bring up the topic of taxes, most people immediately think of the federal income tax. But the truth is that there are literally dozens of different taxes that they use to extract wealth out of us…
When you take all forms of taxation into account, some Americans actually end up handing over more than 50 percent of their incomes each year.
So our politicians have no excuse for not fixing our infrastructure.
But even though they extract money from us in dozens of different ways, our infrastructure crisis just seems to keep getting worse.
In some areas of the country, roads that were once paved have actually been transformed into gravel roads because they are cheaper to maintain.
Our crumbling infrastructure is a perfect metaphor for our crumbling society as a whole, and it is time for the American people to start demanding better from all levels of government.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com
And Ukraine keeps getting billions from us...
But our Public Employee’s get paid very well, awesome benefits and Golden Pensions...
The money goes to bloated government employees, graft, and theft.
“Waste” is nonsense.
It’s taken and spent by people.
They know where every dime goes cuz they’re taking it all.
Well for one thing, we are spending about half a trillion on windmills and solar and such. Billions for EV charger stations, and billions more for “hydrogen hubs’ that will never see the light of day. And that’s just the start.
Ok Boomer. Calm down, we got equity.
Bookmark
“...They know where every dime goes cuz they’re taking it all...”
^THIS” is how 50+ ears in government service results in millions, if not billions, in some off-shore bank, mansions, living like royalty etc. all at taxpayer expense....just ask Joe Biden. He’s the classic example. He never did a single thing in those 50) years for the good of the American People. Instead, he enriched himself and his family to the tune of millions while selling out the taxpayer and the country. Oh...and FJB.
Infrastructure...
Had to laugh the other day. The mayor of Santa Cruz, CA announced that
‘What’s left of the wharf is perfectly safe’
after 120 feet of it collapsed in the huge waves a while back.
I was notified lst week that this Thursday....(the coldest day of this arctic freeze temps below 0)...our electric company will have a ‘Power Outage for Repairs” 8-4:00 on four streets in my neighborhood!..........When I asked why they didn’t do this over the summer they said this is to prevent something worse from happening during this freeze.
Our problem is the Democrat party.
Yes we have a lot of Schiff to fix.
but as long as the Democrats suck off all our money for “Do Nuthin” voters, nothing will get fixed.
1. Ignore anything you read from the American Society of Civil Engineers about the state of our nation's infrastructure. It's a good professional organization, but they have an obvious bias in these matters. Asking the ASCE to assess the state of our infrastructure is like asking a barber if you need a haircut.
2. To the extent that our infrastructure IS in such shoddy shape, I would make the case that this is a reflection of our personal and collective priorities. We don't spend as much money on infrastructure as we did in the past because we're pissing away trillions of dollars on other things.
3. Related to the previous point ... I truly believe that one of the biggest factors in our declining infrastructure is that nobody wants to spend any money on infrastructure in their own states and localities because most Americans are planning to move somewhere else in the near future. This is why infrastructure always comes in a distant third or fourth place behind education and health care when it comes to personal (and therefore political) priorities. In theory, a dollar spent on my health care or education has a personal benefit for me, while infrastructure has a collective benefit that usually extends far beyond the duration of time when I'd be using it myself. Why would I want to spend a dollar on a new bridge up the road with a 50-year life cycle when I'm likely to be living somewhere else (if I'm even alive!) 25 years from now?
RE: We don’t spend as much money on infrastructure as we did in the past because we’re pissing away trillions of dollars on other things.
OK, riddle me this — The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), (H.R. 3684) EXISTS.
It is a United States federal statute enacted by the 117th United States Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on November 15, 2021.
It was introduced in the House as the INVEST in America Act and nicknamed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.
Heck, After congressional negotiations, it was amended and renamed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to add funding for broadband access, clean water and electric grid renewal in addition to the transportation and road proposals of the original House bill. This amended version included approximately $1.2 trillion in spending, with $550 billion newly authorized spending on top of what Congress was planning to authorize regularly.
Where did the money go? When you said we are pissing away trillions on other things, WHAT OTHER THINGS?
Trillions and Trillions of Dollars spent and our Infistructure is still awful.🤬
There isn’t any crumbling American infrastructure. Barack Obama spent $0.8 trillion fixing it.
Oh wait....where did that money go.
Just made a trip to Kansas City. At the rate Missouri, once known for great highways, is going they will soon have roads as good as Oklahoma's state wide endless speed bump.
The only problem I see is no politician is going to be in the same office for 12 years. So why would a politician start something and have those coming after take all the credit. As a politician you want to do something to get immediate recognition so you can go to higher office.
2. The "other things" we piss away money on include exorbitant health care expenditures and unnecessary military spending.
The reason “education” doesn’t get solved is that the whole notion of government-run schools is a farce. As a result, “education” is nothing more than a racket that is designed to employ large numbers of marginal people in non-competitive working environments.
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