Infrastructure under stress

Last night I watched the excellent History special "The Crumbling of America". This documentary raised several areas of concern for every American. They detailed several classes of infrastructure that are degrading quickly:

Bridges

Dams - Some states, such as Alabama, do not even have a dam inspector.

Levees - Surprisingly, the state most in danger is California, particularly Sacamento.

Roads

Sewers

Water Mains - Montgomery Co. MD, a rich suburb of DC, was singled out in this segment.

For anyone who has drived around the Rust Belt (e.g. Detroit) this will not come as any surprise. As a country, we spent several decades and a lot of money building this infrastructure. But since the boom in the 50s and 60s the state and federal governments have not taken action to properly maintain these roads, generally because they were too busy spending money on other items, which they deemed more important.

At this point, it will likely cost several trillion dollars to repair our infrastructure. Some of this will be done with the recent stimulus package. While republicans may balk at this figure and claim that it is the responsibility of the states, the states simply do not have the money to undertake this project. Once the tap water shuts off for weeks due to major water main breaks, or a bridge near your house fails and you need to drive an extra 50 miles to work each day, I think this issue would hit home with any American.

This is going to cost a lot to fix. This is also not a partisan issue. Today in Detroit, the democratic city council voted against an increase in the sewer/water tax. Sure, people in Detroit may have trouble affording an increased water bill; but if the infrastructure which delivers and cleans the water fails, they will be paying a lot more.

Bush among the worst

Out of 41 ranked presidents, George W. Bush ranked 36th.  The recent CSPAN ranking shows a good consensus view of the effectiveness of president's.  Bush ranked near the bottom in most categories, especially foreign relations.

The top two?  Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.  The man who presided over the country during its greatest crises and the other perhaps our most important founding father.

Honest Abe's Birthday

Coincidentally, two historical figures were born on the same day. Charles Darwin, who we already discussed, and Abraham Lincoln. Elected to office in what would probably be the worst circumstances ever, he did an admirable job managing the conflict and allowing the Union to come out on top.

Darwin-Mania

Today (February 12th) is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.  Wired has a nice little story, and the history of evolutionary thought is the featured article on Wikipedia.

While there are still 1 or 2 crackpots and several million idiots who would lead you to believe that his thoughts on natural selection and evolution are still controversial today, they are not.  Modern biology has much to thank to this man, who gave us the blueprints for understanding how present day life came to be and is the foundation of modern biology.

Happy birthday Chuck.

Time to Re-Open Liberty

One of the forgotten victims of 9/11 is the Statue of Liberty, which has been partially closed since those attacks.  This limited access may change with the incoming administration as Obama was a co-sponsor of a bill to re-open the statue.

I think that it is very important to allow full access to the statue (even the Torch!  But that has been closed for 82 years).

2008, In Review

2008 was quite interesting.  It marked the end of Republicanism/Conservatism in the United States, at least for the forseeable future.  We saw progress in Iraq, and regress in Afghanistan.  

And through an intricate web of mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps, we saw the demise of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Merill Lynch, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns, Countrywide, and countless other financial firms.  

The free world also won, with Barack Obama defeating John McCain.  

The year, however, ended with the Israeli military state flexing its muscle in ways that would make Putin envious, and this is one more lose end for Obama to tie up once he claims the office on January 20, 2009.

Sorry all you conspiracy theorists

Yet another study has concluded that there was only one shooter in the JFK assassination.