Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
This is the “infrastructure” that ordinary people think the Susan Rice Administration wants to spend money on:
This is where the money actually would go:
Joe Doakes
The left, as Dennis Prager notes, destroys everything it touches.
Including words.
by
Tags:
Three feet high and rising.
While I am sympathetic to the point being made, that chart gives no indication nor does it point to anything related that would inform as to the typical lifetime of infrastructure “objects”. I mean, for example, on average how long does a Sewage Treatment plant last before major repair or complete replacement?
The referenced article is the typical BS from yet another well-known leftist source (which may’ve been the point?). It discusses utterly fantastical amounts on utterly fantastical projects (“power infrastructure” or “neighborhoods historically excluded from transportation investments”) that mean nothing and hand-wave arithmetic issues; 69% of that $100 billion spent on power infrastructure is a mystery.
As a now-retired engineer, I will also mention that executives in general hate spending money on maintenance. Government execs hate it because there’s no fame (ribbon-cuttings) and probably the graft is less profitable. So, that $2 trillion of infrastructure spending is really just another way to line a lot of pockets.
jdm, I agree the chart isn’t complete. A particular interstate highway bridge built in the 1960’s might have been well-maintained and be perfectly sound, or it might fall into the Mississippi River without warning. The broad category “bridge” doesn’t tell you the specifics (need to send a bridge tech to drag a chain, to be certain).
But that’s not the reason I used the chart. When voters hear you’re going to spend a ton of money on infrastructure, they assume it’s roads and bridges, sewers and water mains, big burly men wearing hard hats stuff. That’s why it’s such a stark contrast to what the Garden Administration actually intends to spend the money on, as noted in the linked article. If the voters knew that, they’d be less enthused.
Using a familiar word like “infrastructure” to mean “bringing WiFi to the Indian reservation” is a bait-and-switch, a fraud on the voters, a lie.
JD, nice zinger about the bridge. My comment about the chart wasn’t really meant as criticism of you; it’s actually an interesting chart. I was mostly just commenting, kinda in parallel to you, about how useless the term “infrastructure” is now (and has been for years).
And then that article… I wonder if the author got to wear a short skirt and wave her pom-poms while she typed it in.
Looking at the list, that’s a lot of money down the toilet for things that the private sector will generally provide if they’re good ideas. I especially dislike the huge subsidies for transit, Amtrak, and electric cars. Those aren’t just boondoggles, but can actually (COVID, crime, running out of fuel on a winter day ) get us killed.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.