Musing on Bridge Collapses….

The thing that really pisses me off about the whole thing with the MN bridge collapse — the thing that nobody is standing up and pointing out — is this:

This is what happens after 25+ years of Conservatives successfully managing to spread the meme that “Big Government” and Taxes are OMG TEH WORST THING EVAR. They’ve convinced the American sheeple that ANY taxes, ANY government spending, is somehow suspect.

Maintaining the national infrastructure is EXACTLY what taxes are for, people. That’s precisely what the government is supposed to do. But no, after two decades of harping the point constantly, the Conservatives have managed to create an environment where anyone pointing out that we need to raise taxes to pay for this stuff is committing political suicide.

I saw on the news this weekend the next inevitable step: Some Conservative Talking Head floating the idea that everything would be better if we privatized the highway system.

It’ll happen, folks. Mark my words. Every Interstate in this country will become a for-profit toll road, in the name of “fixing what government can’t.”

Just wait.

7 Replies to “Musing on Bridge Collapses….”

  1. I laughed a lot – a commentator on the radio described the proper reaction to the bridge collapse in terms of the “War on Terror” – complete with sound bites. and he ended with “and what if things go badly, and there are cost overruns – what is the worst that can happen…We’ll have too many safe bridges?”

  2. Considering my experiences in MN were always with the DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, thanks!) I was shocked when I went home to visit my dad the first time under a Republican governor who was dancing around madly trying to figure out how to add “surcharges” without having to call them “taxes” because he’d run on a firm no new taxes platform!

    I saw some commentary on the news story where some dumbshit actually said “this is so typical of those ‘blue states’ letting their infrastructures fall apart!” and I thought I was going to fall out of my chair.

  3. Maintaining the national infrastructure is EXACTLY what taxes are for, people.

    Pish posh! Typical liberal claptrap. Taxes are for funding pointless, unwinnable wars, Gareth! Get yer facts straight!

  4. “Every Interstate in this country will become a for-profit toll road, in the name of “fixing what government can’t.”

    If the New York thru-way is any example, that won’t work very well either. And of course we wouldn’t get a corresponding reduction in taxes to compensate, so we’d just pay more for even worse roads (and the cost of restructuring to make them all toll-roads would be monstrous in itself).

    The saddest part is, they don’t need to raise taxes to fix the roads and bridges. There’s plenty of money already, it’s just spent sticking our nose into other people’s business overseas (and padding corrupt politians’ and their buddies’ pockets of course), instead of taking care of things that need doing right here.

  5. Who said:

    “Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits… In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.”

    ?

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