This is an anniversary that underlines for me why the 'smaller government' extremist conservative crowd gets so very very much wrong.
As I listen to the early morning news marking this anniversary today, the 'good news' from the tragedy is that we've gotten 55% of the WORST, most dangerous bridges repaired. We've done something, but we haven't done enough, and we haven't moved towards repairing so very much more of our infrastructure, much less built more to expand to accommodate growth and our increased population since the majority of our highway building that dates from the Eisenhower era with the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. We should have repaired ALL our bridges, we should have replaced bridges too damaged to repair, not simply closed them; we should have built more new bridges, not just that one on I-35 into downtown Minneapolis.
Most of all, we should have done more to modernize and make more efficient our energy and transportation systems, including getting further on light rail and other mass transit, and developing renewable, green energy rather than fossil fuels.
NO assurance that we will not have another collapse of a bridge, either in Minnesota, or somewhere else in our nation, NOOooooooooo, not that much progress. Just that in five years, we've made progress on slightly more than half of the worst, most dangerous, closest-to-collapsing bridges.
We've replaced the fallen bridge; we did that pretty quickly thanks to former Congressman Oberstar; unfortunately he's been replaced with a do-nothing special-interest-serving culture-war-making just as fact-averse male version of Michele Bachmann, not a real member of government, not someone who genuinely serves his constituency. Progress in any area other than more and easier guns and less and more restrictive health care for women, and forcing their religious beliefs on everyone have no interest.
We have had the hypocritical no-values family-values-claiming crowd in power since 2010, with poor results. Other than their culture wars (mostly anti-abortion) legislation, we have climate denying, big military spending, infrastructure ignoring, special interest gratifying redistribution of wealth to the wealthy, as our national credit rating declined thanks to their ignorant and ill-considered sabotage of our economic recovery.
Conservatives used to be discriminating and socially intolerant - like those who opposed civil rights in the 50s and 60s; but they were not stupid. They understood the value of Keynsian economics, because it worked; they understood the value of regulation, because it worked, and they understood the role of government in growing and safeguarding our nation.
Instead we have voting suppression, a terribly shameful and Un-American thing I thought I would never see again in this nation in my lifetime.
The bridge collapse should have united us in repairing and expanding our infrastructure. It did not.
We have climate denial; don't confuse anyone with the facts. We have attempts that should have ended after the Scopes Monkey trial to ban teaching solid science, including teaching evolution, with attempts to 'teach' a non-existent controversy with creationism. We have junk science being represented as serious science for religious and ideological reasons superseding reason.
Enough, and more than enough. It is time to return to reason, and to sanity, and to knowledge over ignorance and ideology. We need to spend what we need to spend to fix our roads and bridges, to respond to people in need of disaster relief from government assistance for climate change events. We need government to help us reverse the human-caused global damage to our environment, instead of waiting for the reality deniers to catch on and sign on. If we don't, falling bridges will be common, and they will be the least of our problems.
As I watch the ads for former Governor Romney from his cronies who explain how they built their own businesses ALL BY THEMSELVES, I am struck by the reality of how each and every one not only benefited from our infrastructure far more than they are willing to credit, but how EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THE PEOPLE IN THE ADS GREW THEIR BUSINESS FROM GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS.
That would be contracts and business from that government they want to shrink, that they want to go away. It would be a safe bet that they want OTHER GOVERNMENT that they pay for to go away, not the government on which THEIR business is based. That is selfish, that is narrow-minded, that is special-interest in nature, and that is BAD politics and bad governance.
It is time to have corporations pay a fair tax rate, and to end corporate welfare for successful industries like big oil, and to some degree, big Ag, and big Pharm. It is time to properly regulate the financial industry, including breaking down the too-big-to-fail banks, into separate entities that either do investment banking OR, not AND, commercial banking. We need BACK the undone regulation like Glass Steagal, but not only Glass Steagal, and we need new regulation and consumer protection put in place for the dark markets like credit default swaps. We need prosecution for banksters, not free passes with golden parachutes.
We need to return corporate control to stockholders, we need to stop the buying and selling of our legislators, and get back to having elections, not auctions -- especially the buying and selling of our conservatives in office who don't even try to hide the big money they take, or the inside trading they do at our expense and at the expense of good HONEST government.
The I-35 bridge anniversary is an occasion for sorrow, not only for the lives lost and for the tragedy, but for how little changes for the better we have made, and in some cases how far backwards we have gone instead of forwards.
As I listen to the early morning news marking this anniversary today, the 'good news' from the tragedy is that we've gotten 55% of the WORST, most dangerous bridges repaired. We've done something, but we haven't done enough, and we haven't moved towards repairing so very much more of our infrastructure, much less built more to expand to accommodate growth and our increased population since the majority of our highway building that dates from the Eisenhower era with the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. We should have repaired ALL our bridges, we should have replaced bridges too damaged to repair, not simply closed them; we should have built more new bridges, not just that one on I-35 into downtown Minneapolis.
Most of all, we should have done more to modernize and make more efficient our energy and transportation systems, including getting further on light rail and other mass transit, and developing renewable, green energy rather than fossil fuels.
NO assurance that we will not have another collapse of a bridge, either in Minnesota, or somewhere else in our nation, NOOooooooooo, not that much progress. Just that in five years, we've made progress on slightly more than half of the worst, most dangerous, closest-to-collapsing bridges.
We've replaced the fallen bridge; we did that pretty quickly thanks to former Congressman Oberstar; unfortunately he's been replaced with a do-nothing special-interest-serving culture-war-making just as fact-averse male version of Michele Bachmann, not a real member of government, not someone who genuinely serves his constituency. Progress in any area other than more and easier guns and less and more restrictive health care for women, and forcing their religious beliefs on everyone have no interest.
We have had the hypocritical no-values family-values-claiming crowd in power since 2010, with poor results. Other than their culture wars (mostly anti-abortion) legislation, we have climate denying, big military spending, infrastructure ignoring, special interest gratifying redistribution of wealth to the wealthy, as our national credit rating declined thanks to their ignorant and ill-considered sabotage of our economic recovery.
Conservatives used to be discriminating and socially intolerant - like those who opposed civil rights in the 50s and 60s; but they were not stupid. They understood the value of Keynsian economics, because it worked; they understood the value of regulation, because it worked, and they understood the role of government in growing and safeguarding our nation.
Instead we have voting suppression, a terribly shameful and Un-American thing I thought I would never see again in this nation in my lifetime.
The bridge collapse should have united us in repairing and expanding our infrastructure. It did not.
We have climate denial; don't confuse anyone with the facts. We have attempts that should have ended after the Scopes Monkey trial to ban teaching solid science, including teaching evolution, with attempts to 'teach' a non-existent controversy with creationism. We have junk science being represented as serious science for religious and ideological reasons superseding reason.
Enough, and more than enough. It is time to return to reason, and to sanity, and to knowledge over ignorance and ideology. We need to spend what we need to spend to fix our roads and bridges, to respond to people in need of disaster relief from government assistance for climate change events. We need government to help us reverse the human-caused global damage to our environment, instead of waiting for the reality deniers to catch on and sign on. If we don't, falling bridges will be common, and they will be the least of our problems.
As I watch the ads for former Governor Romney from his cronies who explain how they built their own businesses ALL BY THEMSELVES, I am struck by the reality of how each and every one not only benefited from our infrastructure far more than they are willing to credit, but how EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THE PEOPLE IN THE ADS GREW THEIR BUSINESS FROM GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS.
That would be contracts and business from that government they want to shrink, that they want to go away. It would be a safe bet that they want OTHER GOVERNMENT that they pay for to go away, not the government on which THEIR business is based. That is selfish, that is narrow-minded, that is special-interest in nature, and that is BAD politics and bad governance.
It is time to have corporations pay a fair tax rate, and to end corporate welfare for successful industries like big oil, and to some degree, big Ag, and big Pharm. It is time to properly regulate the financial industry, including breaking down the too-big-to-fail banks, into separate entities that either do investment banking OR, not AND, commercial banking. We need BACK the undone regulation like Glass Steagal, but not only Glass Steagal, and we need new regulation and consumer protection put in place for the dark markets like credit default swaps. We need prosecution for banksters, not free passes with golden parachutes.
We need to return corporate control to stockholders, we need to stop the buying and selling of our legislators, and get back to having elections, not auctions -- especially the buying and selling of our conservatives in office who don't even try to hide the big money they take, or the inside trading they do at our expense and at the expense of good HONEST government.
The I-35 bridge anniversary is an occasion for sorrow, not only for the lives lost and for the tragedy, but for how little changes for the better we have made, and in some cases how far backwards we have gone instead of forwards.
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