bridges

[loffelkopffl]

wonder how many bridges could be repaired/replaced with the 100's of billions of $ wasted on the bush regimes' failed oil war?

[malolo]

Hmmmm.
Good point.

It's about time these (wonderful!)-folks added some new categories, dontcha think?

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-o...War-3.html

[Kelena]

Great site. I see from the calculator that we could have hired Seven Million school teachers! Okay, so how about 100,000 (20,000 just for Hawaii), and we give New Orleans a levee and rebuild its hospitals, public schools, and restore its architectural treasures and give it a socialized police force, that is, a police force that will serve and protect without sending an individual bill to the homeowner.

[HiloHaole]

It's very naive to think that the money would be redirected to some welfare program. There's enough money wasted by corruption, earmarks, and pork barrel by both parties to fund those things currently. Also, just think of the cost to our states if we didn't fight back and were to have a lot more 9/11's.

[loffelkopffl]

yes i suppose it is naive to the right wingers in congress, who have proven that they are nothing more than shills for corporate america, who put that interest ahead of the wealfare of it's citizens, and who contantly try to suggest bush's failed oil war in iraq had anything to do with 911.

[Kahunascott]

Hello… The Democrats are in control of the House and Senate and what have they done about the war?
(All the Pork attached to the bills)
And if I remember correctly the President before Bush was to busy dropping in fly in the White House to beef up the levees and higher teachers. Talk about naïve….

[HiloHaole]

The state of Minnesota is building a new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings, rather than fix the bridges. How is that the fault of our being in Iraq? It's not.

Have you ever noticed that the infrastructure failures in this country are happening in cities run by liberal Democrats?" New Orleans, Minnesota.

Some have said the Republican Gov. vetoed a gas tax increase that could have paid for infrastructure. But -- when Tim Pawlenty vetoed this five-cent gas tax increase, the state of Minnesota had a $2.1 billion budget surplus.

Instead of fixing bridges, Minnesota is pork-barrelling: A new $776 million Twins stadium to be paid for with a Hennepin County sales tax increase approved by state legislators with no voter referendum, $97.5 million for the North Star commuter rail line, $34 million in subsidies to ethanol producers that have seen a 300% increase in profits in the last year, and yet they're still being subsidized, $30 million for bear exhibits at the Minnesota and Como zoos, $12 million to renovate the Schubert Theater in downtown Minneapolis, one million for a replica Vikings ship in Morehead.

[haoleboy]

And Michael Moore is scrambling at this moment to document the evils of American highway maintenance.

Aloha
Richwhiteboy

"There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100 per cent Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

[malolo]

I dunno.

Maybe I'm making this up...or maybe I'm being naive...but I believe the Federal government provides 80 percent of the money for construction, repair and maintenance of the so-called federal-aid highway system -- including Interstate highways and bridges.

Like the one that just fell down.

My point in having posted that National Priorities website address?...in response to loffelkopffl's obviously-valid heartfelt query?

Simply to point out that we do, as a nation, whether we care to admit it or not, no matter where the heck we live, no matter who the heck we support politically (if anyone), seem to have our priorities a wee bit phlucked up.

Further exploration of the site by the concerned and curious will reveal (among other amazing tidbits) that 6,442 Port Container Inspectors could have been hired for the what the war's cost Hawaii taxpayers (alone) -- in 2007 alone.

http://database.nationalpriorities.org/tradeoff

Safety and security come at a price, yes.
Both at home and abroad.

But we all need to be wiser (and noisier!) consumers.

[lotus]

The problem is that we are afraid of our government, not the other way around. So these guys in office figure they can tell us whatever they want and get away with murder serving their own personal interests because we won't make them accountable. And so far, it has worked.

This applies to BOTH Dems and GOP alike. What we need in order to end the war is to reinstate the draft. Once the public sees that it could affect each of us, PERSONALLY there will be a huge scramble to get our of Iraq. As far as tax dollars going to where they are supposed to? It never does, Every project borrows from another, as needed. The problem is that a lot of times the priority of something like a bridge or a levee just doesn't seem like a big deal until it collapses. Take the Bay Bridge that connects Oakland to San Francisco.... No one realized just how bad a shape it was in until an earthquake collapsed it in '89. Now, CA has a retrofitting program. Does it work? We might not really know until the next big earthquake.....