Monday, August 28, 2006

Keep Votin' Republican Baby

The Seattle Times Reports today:

Experts warn U.S. is coming apart at the seams
By Chuck McCutcheon
Newhouse News Service

WASHINGTON — A pipeline shuts down in Alaska. Equipment failures disrupt air travel in Los Angeles. Electricity runs short at a spy agency in Maryland.

None of these recent events resulted from a natural disaster or terrorist attack, but they may as well have, some homeland security experts say. They worry that too little attention is paid to how fast the country's basic operating systems are deteriorating.

"When I see events like these, I become concerned that we've lost focus on the core operational functionality of the nation's infrastructure and are becoming a fragile nation, which is just as bad — if not worse — as being an insecure nation," said Christian Beckner, a Washington analyst who runs the respected Web site Homeland Security Watch (www.christianbeckner.com).

The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation "D" for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem.

"I thought [Hurricane] Katrina was a hell of a wake-up call, but people are missing the alarm," said Casey Dinges, the society's managing director of external affairs.

British oil company BP announced this month that severe corrosion would close its Alaska pipelines for extensive repairs. Analysts say this may sideline some 200,000 barrels a day of production for several months.

Then an instrument landing system that guides arriving planes onto a runway at Los Angeles International Airport failed for the second time in a week, delaying flights.

Those incidents followed reports that the National Security Agency (NSA), the intelligence world's electronic eavesdropping arm, is consuming so much electricity at its headquarters outside Washington that it is in danger of exceeding its power supply.

"If a terrorist group were able to knock the NSA offline, or disrupt one of the nation's busiest airports, or shut down the most important oil pipeline in the nation, the impact would be perceived as devastating," Beckner said. "And yet we've essentially let these things happen — or almost happen — to ourselves."

The Commission on Public Infrastructure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said in a recent report that facilities are deteriorating "at an alarming rate."

It noted that half the 257 locks operated by the Army Corps of Engineers on inland waterways are functionally obsolete, more than one-quarter of the nation's bridges are structurally deficient or obsolete, and $11 billion is needed annually to replace aging drinking-water facilities.
President Bush, asked about the problem during a public question-and-answer session in an April visit to Irvine, Calif., cited last year's enactment of a comprehensive law reauthorizing highway, transit and road-safety programs.

"Infrastructure is always a difficult issue," Bush acknowledged. "It's a federal responsibility and a state and local responsibility. And I, frankly, feel like we've upheld our responsibility at the federal level with the highway bill."

But experts say the law is riddled with some 5,000 "earmarks" for projects sought by members of Congress that do nothing to systematically address the problem.

"There's a growing understanding that these programs are at best inefficient and at worst corrupt," said Everett Ehrlich, executive director of the CSIS public infrastructure commission.
Ehrlich and others cite several reasons for the lack of action:

• The political system is geared to reacting to crises instead of averting them.
• Some politicians don't see infrastructure as a federal responsibility.
• And many problems are out of sight and — for the public — out of mind.

"You see bridges and roads and potholes, but so much else is hidden and taken for granted," said Dinges of the Society of Civil Engineers. "As a result, people just don't get stirred up and alarmed."

But a few politicians are starting to notice. In March, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., joined Sens. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Tom Carper, D-Del., in sponsoring a bill to set up a national commission to assess infrastructure needs.

That same month, the CSIS infrastructure commission issued a set of principles calling for increased spending, investments in new technologies and partnerships with business. Among those signing the report were Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.

"Infrastructure deficiencies will further erode our global competitiveness, but with the federal budget so committed to mandatory spending, it's unclear how we are going to deal with this challenge as we fall further and further behind in addressing these problems," Hagel said in a speech last year. "We need to think creatively."


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Keep voting Republican baby... look how great everything is going! So tell me, what platform do Repub' s have going into the midterm elections? What have they done that is so great? Read about the innumerable failures of our president and his congress in my previous posts... I don't need to go into a rant today. It's lunch time.

4 Comments:

At 3:52 PM EDT, Blogger Matt said...

Thanks for the insight rightong. I haven't posted anything on my blog for a couple weeks and it's exactly because of what you just pointed out. (partisan bickering) I'm sick of it, but I'm also a part of the problem.

I don't think we'd be pouring that 350 billion that we've already spent (more than half a trillion when it's all said and done) into "useless global warming initiatives". For one thing, I find it extremely hard to believe that moderate global warming initiatives would cost this much. Environmentalism, including the global warming kind, is an issue that really gets my blood boiling even more than this war.

Whether the Dems themselves are truly altruistic or not is irrelevant. Their policies and stated goals are altruistic and if you ask me, many republicans have proven themselves to be selfish to the extreme. i.e. K Street Gang

 
At 1:43 PM EDT, Blogger k2aggie07 said...

Its kind of hard to point the finger at Republicans when there are Republican sponsors on every initiative you pointed out.

Instead, how about we take responsibility on the state and local level to upkeep our own stuff and refuse to allow the government to continue pampering us?

For example, LAX is not federal property. It belongs to (I assume) the city of Los Angeles.

The BP Prudhoe bay pipeline belongs to BP, and no one else. No amount of Federal grandstanding will force a private corporation to action -- and thats a good thing. Companies should be separate entities from the government.

I think politicians in general are jerks, that the "citizen statesman" is an ideal that will never exist. So we make do with what we have. As far as I'm concerned, the best thing for government is to kick 'em out regularly, and not cusion their fall.

 
At 1:44 PM EDT, Blogger k2aggie07 said...

Lastly, if we had Democrats in office we'd still have the Iraq war. Just a reminder, that vote passed with almost unanimous consent on both sides of the aisle.

 
At 2:29 PM EDT, Blogger Matt said...

That bill passed with almost unanimous consent... ah yes, what a tragedy. This is extremely unfortunate, yet which side of the aisle is willing to admit their mistake and lack of judgement when signing on with this unnecessary war? It most certainly isn't the Republicans (except for a few), I'll give you one more hint: it's not any of the independents in congress. On top of this, I would like to point out that the Bush Administration had a stranglehold on what intelligence senators and congressman were allowed to see before voting yay or nay on the invasion. Just a reminder :)

 

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