Free Republic

America is falling apart. Literally. From highways to bridges to plumbing to telecommunications, we are not keeping up with our national maintenance chores. Our highways are crumbling. Just maintaining them as they are would cost up to 40 cents a gallon more in gas taxes over the next five years. And that would do nothing to meet the increased demand; highway travel and hours stuck in traffic have both grown by about 25 percent in the past 10 years. Remember that bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last summer? More than one-quarter of U.S. bridges -- including one-quarter of Oregon's --...

Ray Kopp enjoyed tooling around in a hydrogen- powered Honda prototype vehicle so much that, for a moment, he pictured driving one home. Then Mr. Kopp, an economist at Resources for the Future, remembered the car's price tag - $1.5 million - and his hopes were dashed. Therein lies the core of America's energy problem. Short of radically altering America's driving habits, the United States cannot achieve energy independence without spending billions of dollars on new initiatives. And no political consensus exists to spend those sums despite decades of promises to cut oil imports. But new plans are emerging that...