Posted on 09/08/2010 3:14:47 AM PDT by Willie Green
We live in strange times: so many people without work and so much work to be done. While millions of Americans languish without jobs, the nation’s bridges, roads, and rails are falling apart. Meanwhile, as America sleeps at the wheel, China, India, and Europe are developing the next generation of infrastructure.
In Washington State and across the nation, infrastructure may be the key to our future. As the body count mounts from the "Great Recession," America is still without a vision of how to revive an economy built on sand. Over the past 30 years, as we developed a bubble economy based on speculation and hyper-consumption, our infrastructure has crumbled.
We need to get back to our foundations in more ways than one. It's time to plan for a new national infrastructure based on smart investments. Surprisingly, this won't be the first such plan. America's history of planning for "the basics" nationwide gives us strong precedents for laying out a new National Infrastructure Plan 3.0.
National Infrastructure Plans: 1808 & 1908
Our recent trend of neglect goes against our history. Infrastructure is in the very DNA of American culture. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson jettisoned the weak Articles of Confederation for a Federal Constitution in part because of the need to build infrastructure between fractious states. They knew such projects could secure the nation’s prosperity and independence.
President Thomas Jefferson initiated the Gallatin Plan (1808), which outlined a 100-year national vision for canal and roadway development. It laid the groundwork for the Erie Canal, the Intercontinental Railroad, and the Homestead Act. President Theodore Roosevelt looked back to the Gallatin Plan when he brought together the Inland Waterways Commission (1908). The plan guided our national infrastructure development for another 100 years and provided the early seeds for conservation, hydropower, and the Interstate Highway System.
Both Jefferson and Roosevelt understood infrastructure to be a central part of the American political economy. Jefferson saw infrastructure as a means of equalizing opportunities for wealth and political participation. Roosevelt wanted to break the power of the railroad monopolies by offering transportation alternatives. He also wanted to protect the nation's natural heritage from greedy exploitation and conserve such natural treasures as Mount Rainier National Park.
In the depths of the Great Depression, FDR cut unemployment in half by providing infrastructure jobs. Through the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), millions were put to work building the infrastructure that became the platform for prosperity after World War II. Schools, bridges, levees, roads, and park trails were all built during this period. Today we are largely living off that legacy. Now it's our turn to build.
National Infrastructure Plan 3.0: Some suggestions
In the other Washington (D.C.), crafting a national infrastructure plan must be the main entrée on the menu. So far in the stimulus package it has been treated as a garnish. Both parties have to make it the focus of national debate for the next two years. All the ingredients are there for long-term job creation, economic competitiveness, innovation, environmental restoration, energy independence, and a better quality of life for all Americans.
Infrastructure projects will provide immediate and long-term jobs doing the work that needs to be done. Far from throwing money down a sinkhole, this is a tremendous investment in our future that will reap huge dividends if done right. We can fix broken bridges and levees while lifting up broken people and communities. Let’s rebuild together.
Michael Godfried has degrees in architecture and structural engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Washington. He was co-founder of Save Our Sanctuary, which helped lead the successful grassroots effort to preserve the historic First United Methodist Church in downtown Seattle. He works in an architecture firm specializing in sustainable urban infill housing.
Telecommunication companies such as the old bell System companies( AT&T, and the 22 Bell Telephone Companies) as well as the new Telecommunication Giants( at&t, Verizon, QWEST United Telecommunications, Inc., Century Tel, Cincinnati Bell Telephone and Cox Communications) have been replacing Microwave Systems with fiber-optic Cable based Communication Systems for over 30 years. In 1970 55% of all long distance telecommunication facilities were Microwave based. Today Fiber-Optics has replaced almost all of the Microwave Systems.
So this sounds like a legitimate claim by the Bonneville Power Authority.
Anything about OBAMA wanting to rebuild the info-structure of the United States is horse feathers. All he wants to do with your money is give it to his Union friends.
I’m agaisnt it for the same reason I’m against your trains, Willie:
If it was worth doing, it would have been done by the private sector, not gvt money.
I read just yesterday that the TVA flooded orders of magnitude more more acreage than it ever saved from flooding.
Also, though it ws proposed as emergency stimulus spending, the vast majority of its spending was done years after the depression.
Furthermore - and I’m sure you love this principal - it caused 92% of Americans to subsidise power for the remaining 8% living in the Tenesee Valley.
Your kind of bargain, no Willie?
Not to mention the thousands of acres of private land that was seized and destroyed by the federal government. In most cases the land had been owned by the same family for generations. These people had little choice after this than taking a job with the same entity that had taken their legacy from them
Yup!
And interestingly, the data show that the Tenessee Valley actually lagged similar regions in terms of economic development (measured by per capita income) for years following the onset of TVA.
If it was worth doing, it would have been done by the private sector, not gvt money.
You are wrong.
Passenger rail is much more energy efficient than either automobile or airline travel.
And generations of future Americans would benefit economically by the reduced consumption of imported oil that would be achieved.
Unfortunately, lobbyists for various competing industries: automotive, airline, convenience stores, highway construction, freight railroads (not to mention the oil industry itself) are franticly spreading political disinformation to keep Americans wastefully addicted to oil consumption.
As a conservative Christian, I find this morally reprehensible. Especially considering the American blood that has been shed to secure OPEC fuel supplies in the Middle East.
The GOP is no longer the Party of Reagan.
Under the Bush Family dynasty, it has morphed into a Big Tent full of Wall Street libertarian hypocrites and swindlers. I truly wish that there was a conservative alternative to the democrats.... but the GOP has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they aren't it.
How many years of that ten years was consumed by civil planning and environment impact review? Was it actually ten years of construction work? If so, you obviously have a legitimate point although I see that as a manangement issue (problem government).
Please don't mistake my point, that you found so funny. My contention is that if you or I were on that job we would not find it as easy as you portray.
On the work schedule being at night, overtime may have indeed been the result. But what was the cause. If it is a busy section of highway and daytime traffic would have been impacted significantly, civil planners would have schedule the work at night for that reason. You can hardly blame the workers on the job for that.
Again, I understand and share your basic sentiments but do think they need to be tempered by reality, notwithstanding my questions above.
President Thomas Jefferson initiated the Gallatin Plan (1808), which outlined a 100-year national vision for canal and roadway development. It laid the groundwork for the Erie Canal, the Intercontinental Railroad, and the Homestead Act.
1817 June 16. -- Jefferson to Albert Gallatin.
"You will have learned that an act for internal improvement, after passing both Houses, was negatived by the President. The act was founded, avowedly, on the principle that the phrase in the Constitution which authorizes Congress 'to lay taxes to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare,' was an extension of the powers specifically enumerated to whatever would promote the general welfare...it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action...I think the passage and rejection of this bill a fortunate incident...[it] will settle forever the meaning of this phrase, which, by a mere grammatical quibble, has countenanced the General Government in a claim of universal power."[5]Source: http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Erie_Canal
Ten years of construction and THEN they found out they were two feet off from end to end.
I have seen good, well planned road construction around the U.S. - NEVER in CT where all the companies have to be union and most are cronies of the state politicians.
Willie,
How can you be so “for” nanny government (ie. they know what’s best for us and should do it whether we want it or not) and still consider yourself a conservative?
I’ve been wondering about this for a while. At first I thought you were just a rail buff, but then, reading your posts, I started to think you were a troll.
Now, I just don’t know what to make of you.
What you’re clearly stating here is that the has - in your view - a legitimate roll in dictating the type of transportation we should use.
Can you find that for me in the Constitution? Or even the Bible?
Look, I totall get that rail transit is the most fuel efficent (short of shipping). But that doesn’t make it practical in every case.
We already have a susbstantial freight rail system(privately owned, I might add), and that works just fine (within its limitations).
But passenger rail here just never seems to work - no matter how many gvt dollars you sprinkle on it.
Yet over and over you tout it as nirvana.
I ask again: What makes you think you’re conservative?
Is it just the religous thing?
Albert Gallatin's 1808Report on Roads, Canals, Harbors, and Rivers was visionary and far ahead of its time.
It is irrelevant that jefferson vetoed federal funding for the Erie Canal.
Governor Dewitt Clinton and New York State funded construction without Jefferson.
Similarly all other aspects of Gallatin's 1808 MASTER PLAN guided development of our early infrastructure.
There is a massive difference between the Great Depression and today. We are already spending untold billions each year on infrastructure and repairs. Are there any real new projects that need to be built? High speed rail is not practical in most of the country due to low population density.
Imagine trying to build a project like the Hoover Dam or any of the TVA dams in today’s climate. There is no way a major dam project would pass environmental regulations.
In 1929, vast areas of the US had little or no electricity, there were no major highways and rail travel was the only real option.
Workers were literally paid pennies per hour. CCC workers got $25/month, which works out to only $318/month today.
These programs really did nothing to end the depression. They helped some people and got some needed projects completed, but we were still in a depression at the start of WWII.
Then I have to agree with you.
LOL. The article indicates that Jefferson was willing to spend federal money on it. The article was wrong Willie!
BTW. I need a new retaining wall in my driveway. Do you think Congress should build it for me if I promise to use union labor?
Here's what the article said:
President Thomas Jefferson initiated the Gallatin Plan (1808),
That's 1808, Ditto.
In 1808, Gallatin was Jefferson's Treasury Secretary.
And that was when he came up with the plan FOR Jefferson.
It doesn't matter one iota that the president vetoed funding 10 years later,
Jefferson initiated it by giving Gallatin the assignment of coming up with a plan in 1808, just like the article says.
Just like their allies the general contractors. Pay the suppliers, stiff the subs.
Wrong. Jefferson did not ask for the plan. Congress requested it. Jefferson clearly believed that the Federal government had no constitutional authority for such works. Other than the National Road, those parts of Gallatin's plan eventually carried out were done by the states and by private funding or a combination of the two. The National Road was financed totally via the sale of Federal land in Ohio and Indiana. That is the only reason Jefferson agreed to the National Road. There was no debt involved.
There was no debt involved.
It doesn't matter.
Article I - Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises...
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;
The Constitution not only authorizes Congress to build roads, but they can also pay for it any way they want.
Congress can even borrow the money and pay it back with an excise tax on bananas if that's what they want to do.
That's the way our Founders set-up the system.
Your revisionist squawking doesn't change that one iota.
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