The collapse of the 8 lane Interstate bridge in Minneapolis is just another reminder of how this nations priorities are out of order. This is just another event in a long list of incidents that have put the spotlight on our aging infrastructure. Although this incident is certainly more dramatic than most others. There are the broken levees in New Orleans and in California, the aging power grid which can easily be overloaded, aging sewer systems in major metro areas across the country, bridges that need to be replaced, aging underground utilities in some of our major cities, like New York, which had a major steam system explosion just a few weeks ago... (and I mentioned then that the nations infrastructure was falling apart).
Yet, the so-called political leadership is wasting U.S. tax dollars to destroy and then rebuild other countries...namely Iraq, to the tune of approximately half a trillion dollars. By the time it is all said and done in Iraq...the amount of U.S. taxpayer dollars wasted there will approach or exceed a full $1 trillion dollars....an astonishing amount of money. One trillion dollars is more than the entire budget of nearly every other country on earth....with the exception of just a few. And we can't use that money to fix our own country? I guess not. Instead, your tax money is going towards building bridges in Iraq and lining the pockets of executives from Haliburton, KBR, Bechtel, Blackwater and other private contractors. (3) (4)
No, this is not Bush's fault. It's not Clinton's fault. It's the governments fault as a whole... both parties... State and Federal. It's societies fault for putting up with neglectful government.
There is something fundamentally wrong with a country that doesn't invest in its own people and fails to take care of its own basic needs. This is also the byproduct of a government with no real balance of power... where the Congress provides no real oversight and the Executive branch answers to no one. The bridge collapse is also a byproduct of a two party system, where voters have no real choice. A two party system is simply a glorified dictatorship of sorts because the two can collude and solidify their hold on power, while limiting the power of the people to remove them. It's innately difficult for the average voter to develop any kind of leverage in a two party system. Therefore, the influence of voters in this system is very limited. The two parties don't have to worry about a viable 3rd or 4th party holding them accountable. They have no one to answer to and they have no motivation to be responsive to the needs of the people. So you end up with this shared dictatorship between the two Parties. It's ironic that we have our troops dying in Iraq (a country with dozens of political parties to choose from), but no such political choice exists here at home. Most major democracies around the world have more than 2 major political parties on the national level. When you have 3, 4, or 5 Parties or more in the national government, it forces compromise, coalition building, and negotiation in good faith...even if the other national parties have just a few representatives in the Congress. In a country that is evenly divided, a small block of alternative/independent Representatives would actually be able to hold a lot of sway because their votes would be so important. No single group can dominate in such a system. As long as Americans continue to accept the two Party system... as long as no other major political parties emerge in the United States, this situation will continue.
As Bush is paying his visit to Minneapolis, I hope that someone can ask him about where his priorities are and why our tax money is being wasted overseas. I don't mind my tax money going to good causes such as economic development for poor countries, building schools, making countries more self sufficient, helping to provide education, providing emergency food, water and shelter for people dealing with disasters, helping with AIDS and Malaria in Africa and Asia, etc. But I don't like the idea of my money being wasted on a war that was not necessary.
Despite the Bush visit, I have a feeling that by the end of the day, it will be business as usual for Bush & Co. The media and engineers are telling the American public that this was a wake-up call. But a wake-up call is no good to a coma patient. The coma patient being those in positions of leadership who aren't leading. What makes folks think that this will be a wake-up call for the country? This country has a very poor track record of actually waking up when the calls come.
The genocide of the Jews (& other groups) by the Nazi's was supposed to be a wake-up call. But it didn't work. But it is clear now more than ever that the "Never Again" proclamation only applied to White Europeans. I guess they forgot to tell us that.
All the warnings before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were wake up calls... but they didn't work.
Vietnam was supposed to be a wake-up call. Didn't work.
The loss of the Space shuttle Challenger in 86 was supposed to be a wake-up call. It didn't work. The issue there was money taking a priority over protecting lives. It was about safety officers being overruled by higher-ups at NASA. But in 2003, the same thing was repeated again with Shuttle Columbia.
The terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center in 1993 was a wake up call. But it didn't work. The Democratic leadership failed to take measures to at least make it more difficult for terrorists to enter the United States. And under Republicans, the entry requirements are just as lax. The U.S. continues to provide an open door to terrorists, despite the Visa system being exploited by the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks.
The North Hollywood Shootout and the Luby's Cafeteria massacre were supposed to be wake-up calls. But they didn't work. First responders are still not prepared to deal with heavily armed mass shooters... (so how can they be ready for Al Qaeda?). We continue to have mass shootings, where police are unprepared and outgunned.
September 11th 2001 was supposed to be a wake up call.... but the nation is still vulnerable. Security gaps remain...despite the government knowing what those gaps are.
Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath...were supposed to be a wake-up call. Didn't work. The government is having trouble finding the money to provide the flood protection that New Orleans really needs. Yet the Netherlands can build the most powerful & innovative flood protection system on earth...and they have a fraction of the U.S.'s GDP. Again...it's all about a nations priorities. If they can do it....why can't we? Are the nations priorities going to be on improving life for its people, educating its people, making its people healthier, and fixing the nations infrastructure...or will money continue to be wasted? The U.S. has to eventually make a decision about which way it wants to go.
If Katrina wasn't a wake up call.... (or at least a call that was answered) what makes people believe that the tragedy in Minneapolis will be a wake up call? In fact, Bush's man in the NTSB, Mark Rosenker, is already putting some spin on the bridge collapse.... telling Americans that this was an unusual & isolated case...(an "anomaly") that everything is fine and that we should all go back to sleep....back to being the zombies that we have been for so long.
Of course the above list represents just a few examples among many... But you get the picture. The point here is.... there will be no real response to this wake up call. There will be a lot of finger pointing, a lot of investigations, a lot of tough talk from false leaders, a lot of talk from politicians seeking election or re-election, a lot of Congressional investigations, but in the end, nothing of substance will be done. Nothing is going to be done about the nations infrastructure. It will be business as usual soon.... as was the case after all of our many other "wake-up calls". The Feds will say...we simply don't have the money (of course not....when you send half a trillion dollars of our money to be wasted in Iraq).
Furthermore.... Americans....especially Red State Americans (and there are a lot of them) don't want taxes to help pay for our basic domestic needs. The Republicans have successfully turned the word "taxes" into a dirty word. So much so, that they now use the term as a part of their fear mongering campaigns....to scare Americans. But not all taxes are bad. If you are investing in your country and in your people... this is not always a bad thing. But to Republicans.... all taxes are bad. Yet these same Republicans seem to have no problem with their government giving their tax money away to Halliburton and other contractors in Iraq and elsewhere... companies known for overcharging the government. I never hear a word from Republicans about that!
These bridge collapses are not all that uncommon. I can recall a major artery bridge in St. Louis that collapsed about 20 years ago- The Kingshighway bridge. Apparently (If I remember correctly) the bridge fell completely out...but it happened late at night, so there were no major injuries or casualties. If it would have occurred during rush hour... there would have been dozens of vehicles on the roadway in bumper to bumper traffic. But this kind of deterioration is occurring nationwide, due to years of neglect and priorities that are completely out of wack.
Business as usual will soon return to Minneapolis, to the rest of the nation, and to the corridors of power in Washington D.C. The latest wake-up call might get the country to collectively roll over. But unfortunately nothing more will happen. The sleeping giant unfortunately doesn't seem to be able to wake-up from its coma.
Yet, the so-called political leadership is wasting U.S. tax dollars to destroy and then rebuild other countries...namely Iraq, to the tune of approximately half a trillion dollars. By the time it is all said and done in Iraq...the amount of U.S. taxpayer dollars wasted there will approach or exceed a full $1 trillion dollars....an astonishing amount of money. One trillion dollars is more than the entire budget of nearly every other country on earth....with the exception of just a few. And we can't use that money to fix our own country? I guess not. Instead, your tax money is going towards building bridges in Iraq and lining the pockets of executives from Haliburton, KBR, Bechtel, Blackwater and other private contractors. (3) (4)
No, this is not Bush's fault. It's not Clinton's fault. It's the governments fault as a whole... both parties... State and Federal. It's societies fault for putting up with neglectful government.
There is something fundamentally wrong with a country that doesn't invest in its own people and fails to take care of its own basic needs. This is also the byproduct of a government with no real balance of power... where the Congress provides no real oversight and the Executive branch answers to no one. The bridge collapse is also a byproduct of a two party system, where voters have no real choice. A two party system is simply a glorified dictatorship of sorts because the two can collude and solidify their hold on power, while limiting the power of the people to remove them. It's innately difficult for the average voter to develop any kind of leverage in a two party system. Therefore, the influence of voters in this system is very limited. The two parties don't have to worry about a viable 3rd or 4th party holding them accountable. They have no one to answer to and they have no motivation to be responsive to the needs of the people. So you end up with this shared dictatorship between the two Parties. It's ironic that we have our troops dying in Iraq (a country with dozens of political parties to choose from), but no such political choice exists here at home. Most major democracies around the world have more than 2 major political parties on the national level. When you have 3, 4, or 5 Parties or more in the national government, it forces compromise, coalition building, and negotiation in good faith...even if the other national parties have just a few representatives in the Congress. In a country that is evenly divided, a small block of alternative/independent Representatives would actually be able to hold a lot of sway because their votes would be so important. No single group can dominate in such a system. As long as Americans continue to accept the two Party system... as long as no other major political parties emerge in the United States, this situation will continue.
As Bush is paying his visit to Minneapolis, I hope that someone can ask him about where his priorities are and why our tax money is being wasted overseas. I don't mind my tax money going to good causes such as economic development for poor countries, building schools, making countries more self sufficient, helping to provide education, providing emergency food, water and shelter for people dealing with disasters, helping with AIDS and Malaria in Africa and Asia, etc. But I don't like the idea of my money being wasted on a war that was not necessary.
Despite the Bush visit, I have a feeling that by the end of the day, it will be business as usual for Bush & Co. The media and engineers are telling the American public that this was a wake-up call. But a wake-up call is no good to a coma patient. The coma patient being those in positions of leadership who aren't leading. What makes folks think that this will be a wake-up call for the country? This country has a very poor track record of actually waking up when the calls come.
If Katrina wasn't a wake up call.... (or at least a call that was answered) what makes people believe that the tragedy in Minneapolis will be a wake up call? In fact, Bush's man in the NTSB, Mark Rosenker, is already putting some spin on the bridge collapse.... telling Americans that this was an unusual & isolated case...(an "anomaly") that everything is fine and that we should all go back to sleep....back to being the zombies that we have been for so long.
Of course the above list represents just a few examples among many... But you get the picture. The point here is.... there will be no real response to this wake up call. There will be a lot of finger pointing, a lot of investigations, a lot of tough talk from false leaders, a lot of talk from politicians seeking election or re-election, a lot of Congressional investigations, but in the end, nothing of substance will be done. Nothing is going to be done about the nations infrastructure. It will be business as usual soon.... as was the case after all of our many other "wake-up calls". The Feds will say...we simply don't have the money (of course not....when you send half a trillion dollars of our money to be wasted in Iraq).
Furthermore.... Americans....especially Red State Americans (and there are a lot of them) don't want taxes to help pay for our basic domestic needs. The Republicans have successfully turned the word "taxes" into a dirty word. So much so, that they now use the term as a part of their fear mongering campaigns....to scare Americans. But not all taxes are bad. If you are investing in your country and in your people... this is not always a bad thing. But to Republicans.... all taxes are bad. Yet these same Republicans seem to have no problem with their government giving their tax money away to Halliburton and other contractors in Iraq and elsewhere... companies known for overcharging the government. I never hear a word from Republicans about that!
These bridge collapses are not all that uncommon. I can recall a major artery bridge in St. Louis that collapsed about 20 years ago- The Kingshighway bridge. Apparently (If I remember correctly) the bridge fell completely out...but it happened late at night, so there were no major injuries or casualties. If it would have occurred during rush hour... there would have been dozens of vehicles on the roadway in bumper to bumper traffic. But this kind of deterioration is occurring nationwide, due to years of neglect and priorities that are completely out of wack.
Business as usual will soon return to Minneapolis, to the rest of the nation, and to the corridors of power in Washington D.C. The latest wake-up call might get the country to collectively roll over. But unfortunately nothing more will happen. The sleeping giant unfortunately doesn't seem to be able to wake-up from its coma.
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Additional Commentary
CNN-- Nearly a quarter of the nation's roughly 600,000 major bridges carry more traffic than they were designed to bear, according to reports based on federal government data.
Experts said Thursday that the problem stems from a lack of money and leadership.
Federal Highway Administration data from 2006 shows that 24.5 percent of the nation's bridges longer than 20 feet were categorized as "structurally deficient" or "functionally obsolete" (data from Utah and New Mexico was from 2005).
"Our bridges are not in very good condition in this country," said Ruth Stidger, editor in chief of the trade publication Better Roads, which compiled the data. See a list of bridges that the Transportation Department wants inspected (pdf)
Some states are worse than others. Arizona and Rhode Island have a similar number of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges -- 384 and 405 respectively. In Arizona, however, that's 5 percent of its total bridges, while in Rhode Island, it's more than half. See how many problem bridges are in your state.
While the "structurally deficient" and "functionally obsolete" monikers don't indicate the crossings are treacherous, they do imply serious problems, Stidger said.
The Interstate 35W bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River during Wednesday rush hour was deemed structurally deficient two years ago.
Recent inspections did show "concerns about stress and fatigue" in aspects of the bridge but did not result in calls for immediate restrictions on the bridge, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Thursday. See photos of the disaster.
Structurally deficient, Stidger said, generally means the bridge can't carry the traffic it was designed to accommodate. Usually, restricting traffic to light vehicles can alleviate any dangers.
Functionally obsolete is a different story, Stidger said, explaining that bridges carrying this tag also carry major design problems, diminishing their load-carrying capacity. Functionally obsolete bridges "probably should be replaced," she said.
In its most recent report card on the nation's infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation's bridges a grade of "C" and said that in 2003 27.1 percent of them were deficient. Watch why some bridges need repairs.
Casey Dinges, a staff leader on the report card, said "structurally deficient" and "functionally obsolete" are technical terms used by the federal government.
"Neither one means failure is imminent or that your life is in danger or that you should be afraid to get in your car," he said. "That said, we still have pretty serious concerns about the overall state of the nation's infrastructure."
The report also said bringing all the nation's bridges up to snuff would cost $188 billion over the next two decades.
While the number might sound staggering to some, Dinges says it's "doable."
"That's simply maintaining what we are doing right now," he said.
"New technology, money -- there are resources involved, but I think the big thing is really political leadership, and that has to come at all levels of government," he said.
"There has to be an honest discussion about the financial resources it takes to maintain these systems," he said, adding that infrastructure needs to be a priority.
"There are no Republican bridges. There are no Democratic drinking water purification facilities. We all use these systems," he said.
But Stidger said states aren't getting the money they need to repair their roads and bridges. They're forced to resort to a process of "patch, patch, patch and nothing ever gets repaired," she said.
She likened the process to putting a Band-Aid on a broken elbow and said, "There's only so much you can do with inadequate funding."
The bulk of Highway Trust Fund revenue comes from an 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal gasoline tax. The fund is the primary source of federal money for transportation infrastructure and the interstate highway system.
Continue
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Broken Bridges, Lost Levees and a Brutal Culture of Neglect
by John Nichols
As rescue workers continued to pull bodies out of the stretch of the Mississippi River that runs beneath the collapsed I-35W bridge in Minneapolis Thursday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters released a $5 million grant to help with cleanup and recovery at the site of the disaster.
That will barely be enough to cover the expense of extracting the bodies of the drowned and dismembered commuters who were hurtled into the river when the interstate highway bridge they were traveling on buckled and then fell into the river. And it will not begin to pay for the rebuilding of a vital transportation link in one of America's most populous cities -- an initiative that will cost in the hundreds of millions.
To get the money that is needed to repair the damage, limits on federal aid for infrastructure will have to be lifted.
This will happen now not because the money is needed but because dozens of Minnesotans have been killed and injured.
If the federal limits were not applied with an eye toward denying needed infrastructure funding to states, if the federal government accepted its responsibility to maintain the bridges, roads, levees and sewers of the United States, the death and destruction that comes from neglect might well have been avoided.
The I-35W bridge had repeatedly been identified as suffering from "fatigue cracks." Inspectors had labeled it "structurally deficient."
Yet, as Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Nick Coleman noted on the morning after the collapse, "The death bridge was 'structurally deficient,' we now learn, and had a rating of just 50 percent, the threshold for replacement. But no one appears to have erred on the side of public safety. The errors were all the other way."
That's not a unique circumstance. That is the daily reality of America's rapidly aging and decaying infrastructure. Just a few weeks ago in New York City, an underground steam pipe exploded, killing one person and injuring dozens
Natural disasters do occur. Storms, heat, aging steel and concrete can all contribute to horrific turns of events like the Minneapolis bridge collapse, the pipe explosion in New York, or the nightmare that occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast.
But there is simply no question that the steady neglect of the crying need for repair and improvement of bridges, levees and other vital pieces of the nation's infrastructure, and the resolute stinginess of a federal government that is much better at finding money to repair the Middle East than the middle west, makes disasters more likely to occur and more extreme in their consequences.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobucher is right when she says, "Bridges in America should not be falling down."
They will continue to fall, however, just as aging levies will continue to crumble, until the federal government gets serious about investing in the updating, improvement and replacement of decaying infrastructure. The point here is not to absolve state officials, who in Minnesota -- as in Louisiana two years ago -- could and should have done more. But an "interstate highway system" is, by its nature and by the intents of the founders of the American experiment and their wisest successors, a federal priority.
Major infrastructure challenges, such as maintaining bridges over our mightiest rivers and modernizing levies, ought never be the sole or even the major responsibility of cash-strapped state and local governments. That is a recipe for disaster -- deadly, injurious and damaging disaster of a sort that plays out not just in "headline" events like a bridge collapse but in hundreds of below-the-radar infrastructure failures each year.
The American Society of Civil Engineers argues that, "With each passing day, aging and overburdened infrastructure threatens the economy and quality of life in every state, city and town in the nation." Conditions have grown so bad that the ASCE estimates it would cost $1.6 trillion over a five-year period just to bring the nation's infrastructure up to "good" condition. "Establishing a long-term development and maintenance plan must become a national priority," says the group.
That $1.6 trillion figure sounds like a lot of money, unless it is compared with the anticipated cost of $1 trillion or more for completing George Bush's mission in Iraq.
Make no mistake, the money to renew our collapsing infrastructure can be found.
But it will not be spent appropriately until top officials in Washington, led by the president, recognize that maintaining the infrastructure of the United States is as important, and as worthy of investment, as fighting wars in places like Iraq.
There are many costs that come when our leaders divert $2 billion every ten days to occupy a distant land. The first of these is human. Wars cost lives in a war zone, but they also dry up the funding that could save lives on the home front. By drawing resources away from vital social and economic development projects at home -- and maintaining a safe and functional infrastructure is essential to progress on both fronts -- an obsessive focus on warmaking abroad leaves a trail of death, destruction and decay in the U.S.
Writing of federal "negligence" when it comes to infrastructure repair, the Star-Tribune's Coleman observed, "A trillion spent in Iraq, while schools crumble, there aren't enough cops on the street and bridges decay while our leaders cross their fingers and ignore the rising chances of disaster.
"And now, one has fallen, to our great sorrow, and people died losing a gamble they didn't even know they had taken. They believed someone was guarding the bridge.
"We need a new slogan and we needed it yesterday:
"No More Collapses."
Amen to that.
(source)
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Comments from Fellow Bloggers
A Tale of Two Bridges
A Metallurgist's Insight
Commentary from the Field...
When Will The Next Bridge Collapse?- An Excellent article from Spiegel
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