According to the latest TIME (while Bush fiddled):
“Global investment in infrastructure is soaring, but not in the U.S.”
“Few [U. S.] cities have good public transit…”
“Some 3,500 dams in the U.S. are unsafe…”
“The U.S. is decades behind global [railroad] standards and will need $250 billion over 20 years to catch up.”
“…$300 billion to $500 billion will be needed to repair and upgrade wastewater systems.”
“…U. S. airports will require a $14 billion annual infusion just to keep pace with basic needs.”
“Experts say 97% of roads need improvement…”
I remember when I was young and first left the U. S. to visit other parts of the world. I was impressed with the various cultural and political perspectives that weren’t visible in the U. S. and it made me aware of how much this country ignores about the rest of the world, but I was also struck with how well things functioned in the good old U.S.A. compared to most other places, even in as small a detail as the toilet paper!
But it wasn’t long before I began to notice how well things were functioning elsewhere, especially in Europe and Asia, compared to the U. S. and that in fact we seemed to be slipping behind.
Now, forget about it. We’re more like a so-called “third world” or “developing” country in many ways (health, infant mortality rates, distribution of wealth, etc.) but particularly in “infrastructure.”
A lot of the money for what’s needed, mentioned in the above quotes, has been wasted in Iraq on corrupt officials and corporations (like Hailburton) in failed schemes for improving the infrastructure there. It’s like we get two failed countries for the price of one. Good old Bush and the Bushies, they sure know how to fuck things up, don’t they?
And they ain’t done yet!
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9 comments:
Again you somehow find a way to blame all the ills of the nation on Bush.
How is the federal government responsible for the things listed except in some regulatory fashion ?
Each of the listed items is the responsibility of state governments, local governments or private industry.
When the nation becomes a socialist entity, then and only then could the central government bear responsibility for the maintenance and development of the infrastructure identified.
I'm more surprised that you don't recognize overpopulation or unchecked immigration as the real problem taxing the existing infrastructure.
Rather than coddling the professional homeless or illegal immigrants who overburden the existing infrastructure try crying out for enforcement that will curtail their numbers.
Hey "Another Lally": Are you kidding? The leadership of this country is not responsible for the mess we're in? Does the stink somehow run up the river? No, it runs down. The boys and girls at the top are corrupt and they poison the entire system, state and local governments included. This "infrastructure" you talk about is the people of this country, you and me, drinking this poison and becoming increasingly powerless over their own lives. The current admin. is waging an immoral, illegal and corporate-sponsored war with our tax dollars and our blood. The resemblence to the Vietnam era is more than superficial; the LEADERSHIP of this COUNTRY is CORRUPT. From a book about Vietnam:
"It seemed to us that the whole country, not just the government, had laid aside its normal pursuits and danced off to disport itself in a puddle of flummery, that we had become a nation of pettifoggers, of small time tricksters, a padded Lilliput whose citizens had simultaneously forgotten how to tell the truth. That the itch to equivocate had become as widespread and as irresistible as the temptation to fudge on taxes, and so on and so forth...maybe they put something into the water."
In a democracy the 'stink' indeed rises from the bottom. If our local and state governments were more effective in their stewardship of the taxes they collect and business they attract and promote, there would be plenty of monies available to operate and maintain the various infrastructure that has been spoken about.
Further if the local and state representatives who are elected by the populace are honest and decent then the 'stink' would be eliminated.
The only similarity between Viet Nam and Iraq is that the CIA provided poor intel to the presidents involved. George Tenet has come clean in his distortion of the intel as it concerned Iraq.
What is happening in Iraq is indeed immoral. Iraqis and foreign fighters obstructing the rebuilding by killing the Iraqis who are trying to live in peace is immoral beyond comprehension in the western system of thought. How much different would the Marshall Plan have fared under the same circumstances ?
Again, this is not a socialist country. The federal government does not run the governments of states and localities.
The Democrap Party has been distorting the truth at every opportunity to make the current adminstration look bad. It was apparent that Conyers was taking his lead from Dubai, as did the Englishman Galloway. At least Galloway admits he takes money for his efforts on behalf of the Sunnis against the west.
Schumer and the DNC formed an organization with no other objective than to accuse GOP members of wrong doing, usually former Democrats. Just about every allegation came back to bite them and their own members. They even had to distort the facts in the Foley case which the press manipulated to make the case seem more outlandish.
The corruption exists no doubt, but it is the corruption of the former administration that gave corporate control over many facets of military logistics.
The former adminstration was also listening via the NSA for terrorist communications. Thus the claim that the present adminstration is diminishing civil rights is absurd and insidious.
Ther is corruption, but it is the party that seeks power at all costs that is corrupt. The Democrat Party cares nothing for the nation, only their party and political power. Their ineffectiveness is glaring yet they try to push the blame off on others at very opportunity.
Wake up and see what is really going on.
Like I said before, I'm ashamed we have the same last name. You couldn't have gotten it more wrong if you were a paid member of Rove's cadre. May Rush bless your days with his insidious lies and W. bring you all the peace and happiness he has brought to the rest of the world. For God knows, Republicans care nothing about power and money!
I shouldn't have said "ashamed"—I should have said "saddened by the fact." My Irish peasant immigrant grandfather, and my seventh-grade drop out hardworking Irish-American father, are rolling in their graves that anyone with their last name could miss the reality that the Republican Party has always been more concerned with helping the wealthy than with helping the poor, and though experienced and wise enough to realize that power currupts, and that there is corruption and all its tributaries in any political party, still, there are major differences between the two main parties and their goals and accomplishments. And if you are the working poor, the unable to work poor, or the so-called working "middle-class," in almost everything that concerns your welfare, the Democratic Party has served your interests better than the Republican Party, and if you are the non-working wealthy, or the working wealthy, your interests have almost always been better served by the Republican Party. Period.
I'm fully awake Mr. Another-Lally; I don't depend upon the political allegiance of our leaders to evaluate their behavior. What form of logic do you employ when you say "The corruption exists no doubt, but it is the corruption of the former administration that gave corporate control over many facets of military logistics."? Isn't that the equivalent of "Yes, mom, I deliberately broke the window - but little Billy did it first!" And aren't you contradicting yourself - the stink was running down when Clinton was in office, but with Bush it runs up? It doesn't matter to me if any former leadership was corrupt (and they all were to some extent) - I'm talking about W. and the present people in power and the situation in front of us. I hold them all accountable - Rice, Rove, Tenet, Cheney. Unlike Oswald we know for a fact that W. did not act alone.
According to Lally,"Republican Party has always been more concerned with helping the wealthy than with helping the poor."
There is no historical basis for this claim. The Republicans broke from the Democratic-Republican party over the issue of the Indian Eviction Act. The GOP did not support the wholesale eviction of all native Americans east of the Mississippi to the Oklahima Territory.
The next major conflict between the two ideologies was slavery. The Big Business Democrats would rather maintain slaves than to endeavor to reach the lofty goals of the Declaration of Independence.
In the years of Reconstruction, it was private enterprise and invention that built the railroads, canals, bridges and shipping companies that brought prosperity to the nation, not the federal government. It was in these years that the Progressive Republicans required immigrants to be sponsored to insure that they had a place to live and work when then arrived. The money for all this enterprise came from European investment, not the federal government.
Through the efforts of Progressive Republicans hospitals were built in localities along with the fostering of public education. Other private organizations built hospitals, schools, orphanages, housing for the poor, etc, not the fedral government.
In the FDR administration, it was the support of the Progressive Republicans that passed the New Deal programs. The Democrats fought all these programs as socialism and called Roosevelt a traitor to his fellow wealthy.
It was the Eisenhower adminstration who built the national highway system and handed that over to the states to maintain. It was Eisenhower who sent federal troops into Arkansas to protect protect and insure the rights of the Little Rock Nine.
It is only since the 60's that localities stopped managing their finances reasonably and sought more and more money from the entitlements of the Johnson policies. City hospitals closed, education suffered, mass transit and other infrastructure fell into disrepair. Neighborhoods in NYC became victims of the economic blight that the fiduciary irresponsibility fostered. Whe NYC cried poverty to DC Gerald Ford asked how the richest city in the world could be bankrupt. The fedral government along with the state had to bail NYC out of the debt brought about by the corruption.
The 90's saw the growth of ENRON, TyCo and WorldCom as they robbed the customers and employees blind with phantom accounting. It was the current adminstration who brought down these companies.
Today we see Islamic fanatics killing in nations the world over, but some only see Iraq in their narrow minds eye of the problems of the world. These same people see no contradiction in pulling our troops from Iraq only to invade Sudan or Somalia.
Think through the things that you profess to believe because you have a very distorted view of history and reality.
Okay, as has happened before, this gets way out of hand because you have no capacity to see any other perspective than your own. Some of what you add to the discussion is correct, but your choice of facts is incredibly selective, not to mention dismissive of any other set of facts that might contradict your point. The implication of your certainty is that the thousdans upon thousdands of books I've read on these subjects, not counting the probably hundreds of thousdands of well documented articles etc., my father's and my own experience as political activists, not to mention my personal history of a lifetime of interaction with governments from the local to the federal level either controlled by or d0omintaed by one party or the other, as well as the "facts on the ground" of say just the last seven years, or twenty ot forty, etc. support my contention in I would guess a million or more ways. But to endlessly throw facts and our interpretations of them at each other would waste more time than I'm willing to spend. So this is the last I'll say. The movement to eliminate the estate tax, which taxes only the very wealthy, has been a Republican Party goal for some time and is supported by almost no Democrats. Now, you casn go on about the "death" tax and how family's won't be able to pass on their family farms etc. and all the other rightwing Republican propaganda, but it won't change the basic reality of that, and I won't be reading it anyway, 'cause like i said, life's too short.
A little bit about a former Progressive Republican that you may find agreeable.
As President Theodore Roosevelt firmly believed in the separation of church and state and thought it unwise to have "In God We Trust" on currency, because he thought it sacrilegious to put the name of the Deity on something so common as money.
He was also a Freemason, and regularly attended the Matinecock Lodge's meetings. He once said that "One of the things that so greatly attracted me to Masonry that I hailed the chance of becoming a Mason was that it really did act up to what we, as a government, are pledged to — namely to treat each man on his merit as a man."
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