ABOUT THAT BRIDGE THAT FELL DOWN... IT REALLY IS SOMEBODY'S FAULT-- OR SOME PARTY'S FAULT
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"No, turn around, idiot"
When I first met Tim Bedore, he was the music director at a rock station in either Houston or Sacramento and I had a small indie record company. Like most big corporate stations, he never played much of my music but he was always polite and he if he could get away with slipping on a song now and then, he did it. Later he put flowers in his hair, moved to San Francisco and worked at a new wave station, where my records were already oldies. He's also a stand-up comedian and does segments for PRI's Marketplace. A year or two ago he and his wife decided they wanted to raise their daughter back in the Midwest where Tim is from. He lives very close to the bridge that just collapsed. He just sent me this tonight.
Hello from the land of ten thousand lakes and at least one horrific bridge disaster. I say ‘at least one” because there could be more, here and wherever it is you live. I live just 3 miles away from the 35W bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last week, so perhaps, more than you, I am asking the question “What the hell has happened to our infrastructure?”Some of the reasons our infrastructure has been ignored and that bridge went down are, “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem,” that’s a Ronald Reagan quote; as well as the right wing mocking and ridiculing of tax and spend liberals, the “it’s your money, you earned it, you should keep it” drum beat of talk radio, the union busting, outsourcing, we can do America on the cheap philosophy of the Republican party. I would also like to throw in the bridge to nowhere Republican Senator Ted Stevens got funding for in Alaska when that money could have been spent on our 35W bridge, an existing bridge with a real purpose and a known structural problem for which our Republican governor could not find the funds to work on while vetoing just about every tax hike he has ever seen.
Some of you might be saying, this is not a time for finger pointing and partisan attacks. Is it a coincidence that the very people who say that are the ones who totally screwed things up? The fact is, this is precisely the right time for finger pointing... a better time would have been a few decades ago... certainly before we invaded Iraq... but here’s the big point I want to make... America has been screwed by conservatives. How’s Reagan’s service economy looking to you now? Or would you rather have some manufacturing jobs back here in America? How much of your 2, 3 hundred dollar tax cut would you give back to know that bridge you cross every day has been checked and the money necessary to keep it safe has been spent? Hey, Middle Class– have you gotten rich off the trickle down economy? How are those tax cuts to the rich working out for you, middle class?
My fellow Americans, things that work... like bridges... cost money. Things that work really well, cost lots of money. Things that work really well and don’t break because they are maintained, cost lots and lots of money. Tax money.
My daughter was on a school bus that crossed that bridge a few weeks before it went down. Now is indeed the time to point fingers and give a failing grade to the political philosophy that says we can run America on the cheap.
-Tim Bedore
Labels: infrastructure, Minnesota, Pawlenty
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 9:43 PM
4 comments
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4 Comments:
Portland Oregon has several bridges that were built in the teens and twenties, of the last century.
We know all about how fucked our infrastucture is.
My heart goes out to those who lost loved ones because we can drop bombs into Iraq with an accuracy of 50 feet, but can't fix a fucking pothole in the street.
Mr. Bedore hits the nail on the head.
While the Republican Party has packaged its Pavlovian response to any tax in the seductive wrappings of "it's your money/government is the problem/all taxes are liberal attempts to confiscate your money and give it to shiftless welfare recipients/etc. etc.", the real, albeit unspoken, message has been, "you CAN have something for nothing/let somebody else pay for it." It's an intoxicating mix of greed and ignorant selfishness, and the GOP has ridden it to power at all levels of government.
That attitude is reflected in the legions of citizens in communities across the country who automatically vote against every tax or local bond issue for road maintenance, for police and fire department manpower, for upgrading emergency responder communications equipment, for education, for parks, and of course for bridge and street repairs. Needless to say, these are also among the first people to complain about potholes, inadequate police and fire protection, and dirty, unkempt parks. And why wouldn't they? They've been told by Republicans at all levels of government for the last 30 years that "government is the problem, not the solution."
The really ironic thing about all this is that it completely undercuts the supposed values that Republicans and their supporters say they maintain in the own lives. When an anti-tax Republican homeowner sees that the shingles on his roof are old and in needing of replacement, does he ignore the problem and spend money on a vacation to Hawaii instead? Does he ignore substandard electrical wiring and buy a HD flat screen TV? Does he neglect a leaky foundation in favor of a new swimming pool?
Yet when it comes to public infrastructure, these people are suddenly outraged at the thought of spending a small percentage of their incomes on something they will use every month, week, and day. Unfortunately, everybody suffers when these people control the political process at the federal, state, and local levels.
I shudder at the thought of the legacies of greed and ineptitude we are handing down to our children's children.
why do you put all of these bad words on the internet peoples.
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