I always like it when I find folks with the same opinion as me. It makes me feel a little less insane and marginalized. Maybe it should just make me feel a little less lonely :P
Anyway, so here comes Stowe Boyd commenting about a Bob Herbert op-ed on NYTimes.com about Interstate Highway I-95 repair-needs--I've commented before that I like the direction Herbert is coming from, but like Boyd, I don't think Herbert understands that there isn't time to fix things. And as Boyd says, what's the point of fixing something that is rotten to the core?
But check out what Boyd, Herbert and Philadelphia deputy mayor for transportation and utilities, Rina Cutler, say about American infrastructure, job-creation and the point of it all (first is Stowe Boyd giving the intro to his post):
I truly like Bob Herbert, but I am occasionally baffled by his Rotary Club boosterism for fixing the unsustainable infrastructure of the 20th century.
- Bob Herbert, Falling Further Behind
Fifty-one miles of Interstate 95, the main north-south highway on the East Coast, make their way through southeastern Pennsylvania. Construction of the highway began more than a half-century ago, before Barack Obama was born. Rina Cutler, Philadelphia's deputy mayor for transportation and utilities, noted that long stretches of I-95 are now reaching the end of their useful life and will have to be rebuilt.
In a report titled "Just Because You Ignore It Doesn't Make It Go Away," Ms. Cutler wrote:
"These stretches require reconstruction that is conservatively estimated to cost $6 billion to $10 billion over the next two decades. This badly needed investment could be expected to support tens of thousands of jobs over that period. The Federal Highway Administration has estimated that every $1 billion of investment in the Federal Highway Aid program generates 42,100 full-time equivalent jobs."
Schools, highways, the electric grid, water systems, ports, dams, levees -- the list can seem endless -- have to be maintained, upgraded, rebuilt or replaced if the U.S. is to remain a first-class nation with a first-class economy over the next several decades. And some entirely new infrastructure systems will have to be developed.
But these systems have to be paid for, and right now there are not enough people at the higher echelons of government trying to figure out the best ways to raise the enormous amounts of money that will be required, and the most responsible ways of spending that money. And there are not enough leaders explaining to the public how heavy this lift will be, and why it is so necessary, and what sacrifices will be required to get the job properly done.
In an era of historically high budget deficits, the case has to be made that this is not wasteful spending but essential investments that will yield powerful returns. "If you're not willing to invest," said Governor Rendell, "you have to be willing to accept an inferior product. That's the danger we're facing."
The fact that there are roads and bridges that are crumbling does not mean that we should rebuild them, and by inference, continue the car-obsessed industrialized sprawl that required them.
We should dismantle -- and recycle, in creative ways -- the transportation infrastructure of the past. I-95 would be a great train corridor, so we should start by taking half of it for new high speed rail, and most importantly get interstate transport out of trucks.
I am all for new schools, but let's build them next to new urban light rail, and not next to a decaying highway.
Boyd is absolutely right. We absolutely need to tear the house down to fix the kitchen... and the bathroom and the plumbing and the electrical system....
That's always the excuse I hear when I, or someone else, suggests we need to overhaul everything about our society.
"You don't want to tear the house down just to redecorate the kitchen..." is usually the glib, party-lined response. Of course, this argument only works when you're dealing with one issue. The big picture is much much worse.
Our economic system is frail and prone to abuse. Our legal system is filled with corruption thus guaranteeing we won't see regulation of our economic system. Unemployment is huge and, while our roads getting fixed could create more than 400,000 jobs, we're not doing it--and shouldn't, as Boyd says, because we need trains, not cars.
Roads were for when gas was cheap and we had no idea that pollution would ever be a problem. Trains are more efficient and we are going to be seeing gas prices rise--therefore trains make more sense for the future.
What cracks me up is something Boyd doesn't comment on and that's the money issue. Herbert wonders who will pay for infrastructure to be repaired but no one asked that question when it came to bailing out the banks or the auto industry, did they? Very few asked that question when we invaded two countries. Why is it that cost only becomes an issue when we want to do something that actually makes sense?
Save the environment? SORRY, it would kill our economy.
Universal health care? Sorry, we need to spend money on wars.
We need to rebuild our nation's ability to transport food and goods to everyone? SORRY, we don't want to leave our kids a mountain of debt. (Too late!)
Obama wants to build a nuke plant in Georgia? $8 BILLION COMING RIGHT UP!!
Forget that money isn't representative of *anything* anymore. Forget that over the past few years we've seen $3 trillion or more conveniently conjured to prop up the rich folks (banks, corporations, military/industrial complex, the stock market), we have to keep ignoring the band-aids that shouldn't even be used on the tumors killing our country. I mean, does anyone seriously think the USG and/or the Fed didn't just print up more money to cover all this stuff?
Seriously.
I really hoped that once Obama got into office I'd feel a little less like Slim Pickens at the end of "Doctor Strangelove."
RIDE THAT NUKE, BABY!! WOOHOOOOOO!!!
PS, if you're not following Stowe Boyd's blog on Tumblr, I suggest you do. Check it out at http://underpaidgenius.com.
