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Nearly 56,000 Bridges Called Structurally Deficient (usatoday.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from USA Today: Nearly 56,000 bridges nationwide, which vehicles cross 185 million times a day, are structurally deficient, a bridge construction group announced Wednesday. The list is based on Transportation Department data. The department scores bridges on a nine-point scale, and while the deficient ones might not be imminently unsafe, they are classified in need of attention. More than one in four bridges (173,919) are at least 50 years old and have never had major reconstruction work, according to the ARTBA analysis. State transportation officials have identified 13,000 bridges along interstates that need replacement, widening or major reconstruction, according to the group. "America's highway network is woefully underperforming," said Alison Premo Black, the group's chief economics who conducted the analysis. "It is outdated, overused, underfunded and in desperate need of modernization." The five states with the most deficient bridges are Iowa with 4,968, Pennsylvania with 4,506, Oklahoma with 3,460, Missouri with 3,195 and Nebraska with 2,361. The eight states where at least 15% of the bridges are deficient are: Rhode Island at 25%, Pennsylvania at 21%, Iowa and South Dakota at 20%, West Virginia at 17%, and Nebraska, North Dakota and Oklahoma at 15%.
Finally a list of items ranked by state in which Alabama and Mississippi aren't the worst.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
... based on Transportation Department data.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
bridges that need to be widened to handle additional traffic are not "structurally deficient"
Just because a bridge is old doesn't mean it's unsafe. In Europe, a 50 year old bridge is likely to be called "the new bridge" and have people griping that it's not as good/pretty/whatever as the "old" bridge
how many of the other bridges are just fine as is, but could stand to be upgraded for various reasons other than that they are deteriorating?
once you start lying about things, how can we trust anything that you say?
David Lang
Those bridges are all in Pittsburgh alone. Wonder how many there would be if other cities were considered ...
The most surprising thing about this story for me is that Iowa needs 5,000 bridges.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
In other news, 90% of the time I take my automobile to a mechanic or my body to a physician, it turns out I need some work done.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I partially blame the Environmental groups involved, because of previous hyperbole used in previous reports. That being said (and being a nearby resident), I can assure you that most of the issue was due to the FAILED Primary Spillway not being maintained. The topover caused by the failed spillway was fully preventable, had the DWR and ACE and the rest done their job the last 7 years.
But, instead, we have more infrastructure projects proceeding even though we can't maintain what we got. After all, we need a High Speed Rail Train between Fresno and Bakersfield ASAP!!!!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
a bridge construction group = special interest?
was on one of my evaluation reports. i think.
/. had a story on that a couple of days ago:
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/02/13/2034224/188000-evacuated-as-californias-massive-oroville-dam-threatens-catastrophic-floods
It's sad that Trump is refusing to spend the money to maintain all of these state owned dams. I know the spillway damage was found in 2005 which means the Bush Crime Family made the decision to try to murder us with a dam failure. Now, Trump refuses to spend money to fix that. It could have been fixed only eight days ago before further damage was done, but because of Trump's giving money to Wall Street instead of California, I can't go home indefinitely.
So just put your servers in Tupperware and you'll be OK, little snowflake.
You can't Chicken Little away negligence.
Mod parent funny, please. If it's actually *not* a joke, please let the sad AC off the hook at least.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Hippy dude.. your state built and paid for the dam. So why should the _Federal_ government pay for repairs? Go pester your state government since they're the one who aren't helping you. Use some of the taxes from your legalized Marijuana to pay for it instead of spending all the tax dollars on velvet posters and black lights.
WTF?
The five states with the most deficient bridges are Iowa with 4,968, Pennsylvania with 4,506, Oklahoma with 3,460, Missouri with 3,195 and Nebraska with 2,361....
Finding a new funding stream for road and bridge construction is a priority for state and federal officials because the gas tax that primarily funds the highway trust fund hasn’t kept pace with construction priorities as cars become more efficient.
Efficient cars aren't the problem. The problem is that legislatures can't keep their grubby hands off that money. Pennsylvania is second on the list, yet it has the highest fuel tax rate in the country, How can that be? Because about half the money is diverted away from road and bridge construction to projects like mass transportation and funding the state police.
Funny thing too, because I remember how Obama's stimulus plan was supposed to go towards this sort of issues. Although where I lived the money my town got for it was all spent on replacing the fully functional street lamps with new ones that looked nicer and a bike land literally no one has ever used due to being in rural Mississippi.
How'd all those "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects go over the PAST EIGHT YEARS????
Yeah, the best thing to do is to totally shoot the messenger!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Trump has shown he doesn't give a damn about Americans. He withheld federal money to pay for the dam that the state of CA build and maintained.
Seriously? He's been in office less than a month.
I heard Alt Right skin makes for some good waterproofing. The snowflake just needs to go hunt some top government officials.
He's been in office for about 30 days and now the infrastructure of The Californian Reich is now on his shoulders? What about the decades of money that you fucks got and spent on sucking the asses of illegal immigrants? It's shit like this that makes me wish I had voted for him just to shove it in your fucking face. Next time I will vote for him.
A bridge construction group says that 1 in four bridges are structural unsound.
Might this have anything to do with that the group advocates for bridge construction. *FAKE NEWS*
and London bridge isn't on it.
Erh... you ARE aware that there were 8 years between the "Bush Crime Family" and the hairpiece? Why didn't that one do anything?
And more interestingly, why doesn't he get any blame?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
USA's infrastructure has been neglected a long time and both T and the Democrats want an infrastructure bill. GOP are apathetic, but there may be enough on board to pass it. Let's do it!
Some blame O for not including more infrastructure in the 2009 stimulus bill instead of spending on state teachers and first responders, but many economists felt "big metal" infrastructure projects would take too long to ramp up to be sufficient for a stimulus.
Table-ized A.I.
Funny thing too, because I remember how Obama's stimulus plan was supposed to go towards this sort of issues.
No, the point of that program was to buy votes for the Democrats. It had nothing to do with anything useful to the general public.
Yep, I remember him saying this. Didn't mean much to him since he never followed through – he had more sexy plans! Golf got his best time and effort, that's for sure!
"Structurally Deficient" has legal and engineering meaning (which may vary by state) and does not necessarily mean a bridge is unsafe. Quite often, it means that the bridge must have a sign in front of it stating a maximum gross vehicle weight.
Also, what qualifies as a bridge subject to government attention? Do you have a 20 foot concrete culvert passing under the road? That's a bridge, and the government (correctly) pays attention to it. But it isn't necessarily a big deal.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
That bike land sure sounds nice! What's the weather like there?
I partially blame the Environmental groups involved, because of previous hyperbole used in previous reports. That being said (and being a nearby resident), I can assure you that most of the issue was due to the FAILED Primary Spillway not being maintained. The topover caused by the failed spillway was fully preventable, had the DWR and ACE and the rest done their job the last 7 years.
But, instead, we have more infrastructure projects proceeding even though we can't maintain what we got. After all, we need a High Speed Rail Train between Fresno and Bakersfield ASAP!!!!
Blame this on the environmentalists all you want but the Obama admin. tried to get infrastructure reform done for 8 years and the GOP blocked it for no purpose other than spite and a Machiavellian effort to further the interests of the GOP and make Obama look bad. If anybody is to blame for this it is Mitch McConnell and his predecessors. http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
Blame your wildly corrupt local officials and yourself for not keeping them in line.
The erosion on the main spillway had no effect on how much water they were releasing from the reservoir. The reason the water flowed from the emergency spillway was because it rained too much, and there was poor water management while levels were rising.
Bullshit. The only reason there was infrastructure spending to the extent there was contained in the stimulus was because Republicans wanted it included. Maqybe if most of the money hadn't been used to line union accounts it would have had more effect.
Bridges are a local problem (state and county level) interestingly enough the top 4, maybe 5 are the biggest butthurt about "dey took ur jeobs"
how's that small limited government working for you, oh you want aid to fix your bridges AND your horse and buggy economies
ugh
I voted for him twice, so you can feel good using one of mine if you want.
because a Republican-controlled Congress was dead-set on doing nothing in order to obstruct Obama at all costs. This is, seriously, no shit, because the Republicans would be damned if they even APPEARED to be supporting a president that some still swore was not a citizen.
Blame Trump if they all don't get fixed. Oh course the crazy lunes will. Even though Obama, Bush, and Clinton caused the conditions that we have the wacked out, "My penis before anything" crowd will blame Trump for not fixing their f'ing mess.
The assertion that the primary spillway was not maintained is false.
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2017/02/10/maintenance-records-show-oroville-dam-spillway-previously-patched/
In 2013, 66,749 bridges were considered structurally deficient. This is a 17% decrease in the last 4 years. I think this should count as good news.
What's a bike land?
I'm afraid your new POTUS isn't any better than that - he's even doing his work on the golf course!
That's pretty much what everyone in town said too.
it wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that republicans voted no against anything obama tried to do.
The president doesn't control the purse strings congress does. unless Congress votes for it the bridges will go unfunded.
it is something that has some bi partisain support but knowing republicans they will throw a rider in that only white males can do the construction work or some other bullshit rider.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I mean I know the article came from USA Today but other than that, there was no indication that these bridges all resided in the United States.
I live in California but I think this really should be addressed. Slashdot isn't a U.S. only tech site.
Cheers,
NowGetOffMyLawn
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Nearly 56,000 bridges nationwide, which vehicles cross 185 million times a day, are structurally deficient, a bridge construction group announced Wednesday.
Let's see what I can do with this sort of headline.
-Nearly 56,000 projects nationwide are managed by insufficiently trained project managers, the Project Manager Institute announced Wednesday.
-Nearly 56,000 unions nationwide, which employ 36 million workers are insufficiently funded, a union advocacy group announced Wednesday.
-Nearly 56,000 XYZ nationwide, which are important for ABC reasons, need more money, said a group who's business is XYZ, and who would get most of the money if such money were allocated.
To any interested parties, the Notabadguy Institute would like to note that Notabadguy needs structural investment and more money. Perhaps some of that internet money.
In other news, to no one's surprise, BeauHD continues her unbroken record of being a shitty editor looking for partisan news to throw at the slashdot masses. Thanks for being a cuntwaffle.
Why? Did you see a protest group opposing spillway repair?
They could have used the words like "at risk of failure" to mean, 'bridge might break soon, if it does not get repairs', but they used the words "structurally deficient" to include bridges which can last decades longer, but are not big, or strong, enough for current vehicle standards.
They want to hold-up elites! Imagine the gush of (red) progressive spirits when ... the concrete arches give way. SQUISHsplashwhat a rash....
Taxpayers might decide they don't want to pay for an expensive new bridge, and just pay a bit extra on infrequent truck shipments.
video of them calling me racist when I pointed it out.
Convinced me to NEVER vote DNC for the rest of my life because of that.
Sure we need some new bridges, and there are probably a thousand or so that actually need to be replaced. But our infrastructure is deficient in many more important ways. I just hope money needed for less sexy projects doesn't go to bridges. Her e are some of the things we need more than bridges:
Municipal water supplies. Flint wasn't just a case of local mismanagement, it was just the most visible. Local election reform is needed, but more importantly there are thousands of towns with aging, blocked-up pipes and waterworks. They don't get fixed until someone's house burns down because there wasn't enough mains pressure for the hydrant. Sewage overflows that cost millions to fix, inappropriate water savings programs, and high water taxes for businesses are just three of the symptoms of an aging water supply.
Research on longer-lasting roads. If we spend a billion on this now we'll save a billion per year from now on.
Better isolation and more intelligent routing for the high voltage mesh electrical network. We've spent a good deal on this, but shortcuts have been made. Sagging lines can cascade into regional failure. The most effective and least sexy way to deal with it is building more electrical transit capacity for cities that need it. A few places could definitely use municipal and larger power storage via hydroelectric, batteries, or whatever's clever.
And while we're talking about electricity it's time to reform municipal power to encourage user level solar power. Switch pricing to grid plus/minus usage with an instant rebate for the poor. I know that's not something the federal government regulates, but a study that strongly proves the economics should encourage local adoption of the plan. If it doesn't add in some bullshit grant to encourage it. After it's been working well and obviously saving money for a few dozen cities phase out the grants.
Nuclear power, and use the united house, congress, and prez to tell the NIMBY's to stuff it. Sell it politically by pointing out the fact that coal jobs are never coming back and jobs jobs jobs.
My 2 cents.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Maybe we should reduce the number of cards on the road rather than trying to rebuild 1076 bridges per week... We could build places where people live together and call them cities, and build vehicles that carry multiple people and call them trains, and hire a plumber from Brooklyn to fix the evil in the world and call him Mario...
Real lawyers write in C++
Roughly.
https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/s...
So no Gold in the Computer or phone you are using?
What is Powering it Coal? Hydro? Oil? Wind?
The natives lived in Your area for thousands of years leaving it as pristine and full of game as they found it, How about you?
These bridges were designed before Americans became obese tubs of goo. Obviously we can't expect 50 year old designs to take into account our ponderous girth.
They'll blame him for everything back to the start of the Clinton administration. It's gotten so silly that I just quit listening. There are zero unbiased sources of news. It's either Pro Trump or Anti Trump. He's a grade A asshole but all he's done so far is try to stop people from coming in from 7 countries and build a Cabinet. Since he's done next to nothing they'll just use whatever is at hand to stick him with.
My Dad voted for Hilliary 3 times and he's dead.
I can assure you that most of the issue was due to the FAILED Primary Spillway not being maintained. The topover caused by the failed spillway was fully preventable, had the DWR and ACE and the rest done their job the last 7 years.
Hear hear! Of course, their budget was cut so they didn't actually have the money to maintain the spillway, but hey! That doesn't matter! They should have been maintaining it anyway! Out of the goodness of their hearts!
I mean, they're public servants, right?
Obama has thousands of "shovel ready" jobs ready to fix our roads and bridges and...oh, wait a minute.
So exactly what was the trillion dollar stimulus passed during a supermajority supposed to accomplish if not the goals they said it would? The Democrat party had no obstacles for 2 solid years and could have passed anything and everything they ever wanted. The stimulus was supposed to address shovel ready jobs through recovery.gov. Is that what we really got? You tell me since you don't remember what that even was.
And FYI, most roads and bridges are on state roads, not federal, so it's not up to Congress to pay for it. You are referring to the interstate system, which is not the problem.
A 2000-mile, 35-foot border wall that will replace the Statute of Liberty as the symbol of American freedom.
This. Trump had almost two weeks to fix the dam between the time he became our ruler and it became a problem. The fact that he decided instead to try to murder people in California proves he wants us to die. Republicans are truly the party of death. That is why they haven't fixed this.
Man, you really are fucking stupid aren't you. Maybe you should realize that no matter how much you shill, Trump isn't going to let you suck his cock.
Not to mention certain dams in California.
If only they'd listened to the environmental groups and shored it up during that long drought....
Had we listened to Greens, there would be no more dams.
But to address the bridge inspection problem, I say: Hire more trolls!
Cali has the highest income taxes in the US, so why wasn't the funding there? Answer: pension funding. State, county, and local level are all screwed by pension obligations. Decades of pushing the problems forward by raising pensions for government workers instead of raises, because that was politically acceptable. But the pigeons have come home to roost.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Blame this on the environmentalists all you want but the Obama admin. tried to get infrastructure reform done for 8 years and the GOP blocked it for no purpose other than spite and a Machiavellian effort to further the interests of the GOP and make Obama look bad. If anybody is to blame for this it is Mitch McConnell and his predecessors. http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
Bingo.
Mitch McConnell was instrumental in blocking proposed bills that would have started addressing the aging infrastructure. Not just once, but over and over again.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
This is just bullshit. Republicans blocked any infrastructure spending that was even hinted at, it's actually one of the reasons the Fed had to do so much QE and why so much of it went to the banks.
Go read some Krugman, dumbass.
I recommend staying away from Krugman. Republicans were pushing for more infrastructure spending in the bill. You can't change history. The ARRA only spent about 3% of the bill on infrastructure, which is why many R's opposed it. You can read about their alternative bill here Suck it.
Nonsense. The "erosion" on the main spillway was a huge crater many yards (meters) across, with increased flows spewing additional chunks of concrete into the air and into the Feather River. As the inflows exceeded the outflows (65000 CFS out, 120000 CFS plus in) the lake went to 100% and over the emergency spillway. The erosion on the emergency spillway threatened to destroy it, and they had to up the flow on the main spillway to 100000 CFS to start lowering the lake levels. There is now a HUGE crater at the end of the main spillway, and not much left of the main spillway below that point. Basically, they would have been able to manage the water IF they could release water from the main spillway (it can handle 250000 CFS, but that would flood the levees downstream). They could not. When it became clear the emergency spillway wasn't up to the task, they opened up the main spillway to just below levee-flood stage, which effectively assured the destruction of the rest of the lower half of the main spillway.
The big problem they have now, which is little-discussed in the media, is how long can they hold out. The rain season still has a few months to go, March is typically the wettest month, and the snowpack in the 6200 sq mile Feather River basin is about 175% of normal. Every day they run that main spillway at 100000 CFS they erode what's left of that hillside, and they have no option but to run it at that level if the storms keep coming. If the hillside erosion starts breaking off more of the main spillway it could threaten the integrity of the spillway gates, and then they're really in trouble. That's part of the reason they're desperately trying to shore up the hillside below the emergency spillway, because they might have no choice but to use it again soon.
Of course, even though much of California is washing away, just last week the Sacramento bureaucrats declared we're still in a drought. Bureaucracy and regulation is a ratcheting mechanism--it only turns in one direction. I'm sure they'll announce we're still in a drought next month too, even if they have to make the announcement from a rowboat moored to the top steps of the Capital building.
Trump had over two weeks to fix this problem that happened in 2005 with the spillway which proves he hates us and wants us to die. He did nothing in the over two weeks he had. The fact that he couldn't turn-around CA's lack of infrastructure spending that has been inadequate for nearly fifty-seven years proves he isn't good enough to be the ruler of the US. A real leader would have turned that around.
You can't Chicken Little away negligence.
Yet the people yelling "The infrastructure is falling! The infrastructure is falling!" are always people like the DOT or ASCE, that have the most to gain from additional spending. They have been predicting the imminent collapse of every bridge in America for decades, yet somehow the bridges are still standing. Of course we need to do maintenance and routine inspections, but the notion that there is some crisis is nonsense.
Here is the number of people that were killed or injured in the Oroville dam spillway failure: 0.
Because you're a RWNJ looking for an excuse to hippie punch, even if it has no relation to facts or reality in general.
The list of 'structurally deficient' bridges includes the WA Hwy 520 bridge over Lake Washington, completed in 2016. It is not structurally deficient.
The problem with money is that it's fungible.
It makes it very difficult to track what it gets spent on. For example:
You plan on spending $1,000,000 on roads in your area.
I give you $1,000,000 that must be spent on roads.
Do you now spend $2,000,000 on road improvements, or reduce what you were going to spend (potentially to zero)?
You could claim that you spent my money on the roads, and nobody can prove otherwise.
Well, maybe you Mississippi politicians should have chosen to spend their stimulus funds on more useful things.
Yup, thats all hes done.
As well as sacking an acting-AG that wouldnt support him without question.
As well as taking a combative stance toward the judicial system that threw out his EO.
As well as positioning himself in opposition to all the mainstream media, and siding with a horrific shit of a news outlet.
As well as dumping 90% of the experience of the National Security Council, and putting the former chairman of that shit of a news outlet onto the Principle Committee of the NSC.
As well as pissing off major foreign leaders.
As well as inviting un-vetted guests, including foreign nationals, to stand over him while he reads top secret intelligence on North Korea and south east asia.
Those are just some of the other things he has done in his first not-even-a-month in office.
And lets not talk about his child-like attitude on Twitter...
>Of course, even though much of California is washing away, just last week the Sacramento bureaucrats declared we're still in a drought.
You can't be sure they're wrong. Droughts are commonly broken by flooding events - but a flooding event may not mean the end of a drought. It depends how much more rain is coming. A few floods in the middle of a drought generally fails entirely to actually RELIEVE the drought.
Now it's likely the drought WILL be ending since that terrible El Nino does appear to have been broken - but it would indeed by very premature to declare that it is broken.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Some people just don't like the truth...
With terms like "nationwide" and naming several states in the summary, I think it's a reasonable thing to assume.
The guy from Andorra was wondering how they managed to fit 56,000 bridges in his country ;-)
but the notion that there is some crisis is nonsense.
A person drinks a gallon of bacon grease a day for 40 years, then suddenly dies of a heart attack. Most people would recognize that the "crisis" began decades before the heart attack. But I am guessing you would say that there was never a crisis. Or if there was, it only began seconds before the catastrophic failure of the person's heart.
allow infrastructure work while a Democrat is President. Now that Trump is President maybe they can appropriate some money for infrastructure work. Hopefully they won't put poison seeds in the bill. They should triage the work so that the bridges that are about to fall will get worked on first.
Bridges are falling apart because it is too expensive to do road maintenance. That is so expensive because the government is in bed with the construction companies who give campaign donations. The union are in bed with the government and the environment groups. All in collusion to charge the dumb tax payer a billion dollars per paved mile.
The fix. Keep it local. Let small local civic groups take charge and ownership of the individual roads. It could be s source of community pride. Plus we could have groups such as the kkk and the new black panthers each sponsoring a segments of the highway. We could see who could build a better road. Rather than watching the nfl on Sundays families could get together and do a little road construction.
I know it would never happen though because the media has you guys convinced that the only way to build a road is have large corps and government agencies lay down miles of orange barrels to fix a pothole. The USA does roads like it does health care ass backwards.
Our new President understands facilities maintenance and renovation as necessary and profitable.
This is untrue, at least effectively. The problem with infrastructure in this country is that it isn't compatible with our current politics. Infrastructure doesn't get out the vote -- it's not a divisive issue. It's also not something where you can distribute pork around the country in the form of, say, NASA supply contracts. I have a bit of a hobby horse going on with this issue, but I do see this as being a result of two-party politics and ultimately our voting method (FPTP). Since our political process demands that we be sorted into two groups which proceed to scream at each other, infrastructure is only ever going to get lip service from national politicians, except where concerns the national defense. I'm certainly willing for events to contradict me, but I think that our current crop of politicians are too self-interested for that.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
As well as sacking an acting-AG that wouldnt support him without question.
An Obama-appointed AG that was on their way out the door anyways and was playing leftist politics.
As well as taking a combative stance toward the judicial system that threw out his EO.
He criticized a ruling. Boo hoo. Kinda like when Obama embarrassed the Supreme Court judges at his State of the Union address for the Citizens United ruling? Actually, Obama's was worse:
"It is not unusual for presidents to disagree publicly with Supreme Court decisions. But they tend to do so at news conferences and in written statements, not to the justices' faces."
That's from the New York fucking Times, back before they completely went anti-Trump apeshit.
As well as positioning himself in opposition to all the mainstream media, and siding with a horrific shit of a news outlet.
Because the mainstream clearly had a bias against Trump, and became "horrific shits" themselves.
As well as dumping 90% of the experience of the National Security Council, and putting the former chairman of that shit of a news outlet onto the Principle Committee of the NSC.
A neutral and non-screechy article on the matter provides a different perspective.
As well as pissing off major foreign leaders.
Wah, wah. He's not Obama and he's not afraid to ruffle some feathers.
As well as inviting un-vetted guests, including foreign nationals, to stand over him while he reads top secret intelligence on North Korea and south east asia.
Yeah, he fucked up.
And lets not talk about his child-like attitude on Twitter...
Sounds like you're talking about it. Boo hoo, he's mean on Twitter, just like he was during the campaign.
Some other things he's done:
- Put the focus back on American jobs.
- Put a spotlight on government waste via over-priced mega projects.
- Met with foreign leaders.
- Ramped up deportation of illegal immigrants.
- Set goals for reducing regulations and their costs.
- Nominated a Supreme Court justice.
McConnell is still railing against infrastructure spending, to this day. From your link the proposed bill (which seems to have got very little traction from the party leaders) would have spent $114 billion versus the version that passed the House which offered $90 billion. Frankly I don't know why you seem to think that the RNC is interested in infrastructure spending. A cursory review of recent headlines shows that this is the only issue that Democrats are willing to work with Trump on, and McConnell is very clearly having none of it. And since he's the one with the actual power over what happens with the legislation, well, I'd have to say that if you think that infrastructure should be something we spend money on, you might want to take that up with him.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I can't help but wonder if the approximately five trillion dollars we completely wasted in attacking Iraq and Afghanistan might have been enough to fix a bridge or two...
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You know, if Texas, and it's sorry-ass textbooks, and it's anti-sex laws, and its abuse of the lower classes, was on the south side of that wall, I'd be totally up for building it.
Don't forget that the Governor gets great emergency powers when there is a drought, especially with regards to land use and areas around lakes/rivers/streams... There is a strong political reason to keep the drought - power.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
California received federal funds to fix the dam, not to mention to build a secondary relief dam. Who knows where that money disappeared to. Probably to support illegal Mexicans.
Thank you Ronald Ragan, his name list faceless evil overlord's, and all you fucking idiots who believe that rhetoric and voted for him and everyone after him that knelt thank you Ronald Ragan, his nameless faceless evil overlords...The same people who control Hillary Clinton, by the way, and all you fucking idiots who believe that rhetoric and voted for him and everyone after him that knelt down in front of the Crotch of lower taxes and deregulation
The funny thing is how democrats bitched about over-priced mega projects until Trump attacked them and now they're suddenly for them. He actually is on the side the democrats claimed to support on some issues and I think that pissed them off more than anything else. Probably because they were all smoke and mirrors. It's nice to have a president that despite some truly awful flaws, isn't an owned bitch like the last 2 clowns that were there. If I were the democratic party's supporters I'd try nominating a billionaire for president that isn't a political whore. Oh! I forgot, the left's voters don't control who their party nominates, the DNC does!
Shocked that it reads almost *exactly* like the report that came out in Reagan's first term, in the early eighties. Oddly enough, the GOP REFUSES to raise taxes to do massive spending on infrastructure. I guess that not only is it not "sexy" (maintenance never is), but it's not big buck profits for their buds.
Nearly 56000 headlines are deficient in remarkability
One way to reduce the amount of traffic on roads is to fund rail way more. It is not only cheaper to maintain than highways, but also much more efficient to operate. The problem with any infrastructure project is that once it is built it is forgotten. Instead, right after the ribbon cutting make plans on how to replace the structure and set funds aside.
I'm sorry, I lost interest when I read that a "bridge construction group" announced something that they could make billions off of being involved in correcting.
The phrase "don't shoot the messenger" comes from the theory that you would get nothing from eliminating a completely impartial party which has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
I don't see a "messenger" here. Just the usual politically and money oriented groups on both "sides", and when you have "sides" talking, there is no "messenger".
A person drinks a gallon of bacon grease a day for 40 years, then suddenly dies of a heart attack.
Here's a better analogy: Millions of people eat bacon everyday. The medical establishment claims this is a crisis and many bacon eaters are going to die within 40 years unless the medical establishment gets a lot of money to "fix" the problem. The money isn't spent, and 40 years comes and goes. Few people die, and bacon eaters aren't dying any faster than danish eaters.
Would you still insist that the "crisis" was real? Or would you maybe consider that bacon isn't as bad as you were told?
Disclaimer: I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
No, we don't need your city.
We can simply choose to buy our tech, entertainment, etc. elsewhere.
There are many, many cities - and also towns, villages, and extensive suburban areas that provide those in plentiful quantity and quality.
So no, your city is no more or less important than any specific agricultural area.
However ALL cities, at least all large cities, are toast without agricultural areas in toto.
You don't have any friends do you? I'm sorry.
I wouldn't be surprised if a different environmental group was opposing spillway repairs because some subspecies of Meadowfoam lived nearby. Or some tree infestation beetle. Or fairy shrimp.
You think I am joking? All three of those have been used to obstruct repairs and infrastructure projects in Butte County. They will literally classify same thing as a "endangered subspecies". I wouldn't be surprised if some local Environmental Group was protesting anything. They do that a lot around here.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This is what I hear from the Democrats in Sacramento ...
Help 'Not our President', we need Federal Funds to fix Calexit infrastructure that has nothing to do with federal anything!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Slashdot isn't a U.S. only tech site.
But Slashdot is a U.S. tech site. That isn't to say that the rest of the world is unwelcome or uninteresting, but the focus is primarily America-centric.
And you're assuming nefarious motives with no evidence for them ? It's perfectly reasonable not to call of drought measures after a single case of flooding - if the rainy season keeps up and it's still claimed at the END - then there is grounds to be upset. Right now, the realities of the drought are by no means solved. Farmers still have to recover from years of bad crops, one flooding storm doesn't fix that. Dams and reservoirs need to get full, animal and plantlife has to recover. Until they do - you're still dealing with the results of the drought and it is insane to end mitigation procedures.
This has been the worst drought in living memory (unless you know somebody who is 118 years old - because that's how far the records reliably go and no other el nino drought in that time was this bad), it didn't just affect California either. In South Africa food prices are up 25% (and more in some cases) and food imports had to increase almost 70% due to crop and livestock losses, in neighboring Madasgar at least 4 million people have been killed by this drought. There are 6 year old children there who have never had a bath in their lives. What little water there is gets drunk - and people are litterally eating rocks because every crop has failed for years, and even the wild plants are gone. So is the livestock - Madagascar is in the midst of the worst famine in it's history because of this drought. Do you really think one big flood and all that just goes away ?
Now it looks like this El Nino cycle is broken, there is hope that the drought will end this year in all the regions affected - but it's effects will not be over tomorrow or even next months. Try next September or so - when everywhere affected has had their rainy seasons. If they all have good seasons throughout - THEN you can say the drought is over.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Yes, but the main spillway is not eroding "uphill". I stand by my statement that the damage to the main spillway does not affect how fast they can release water from the reservoir. All the damage is occurring below the initial breach. Water flows down the concrete and is projected beyond the end preserving the bedrock support for the remainder of the spillway. Flow was kept at 100,000 cfs for days, and all the erosion occurred downslope from the initial breach. They could increase the flow all the way up to capacity, without compromising the integrity of the dam. The emergency spillway is another matter entirely. All efforts should be made to keep levels below 901 feet where the emergency spillway comes into play. The bedrock below the emergency spillway is not stable, and erosion there could very well affect the integrity of the dam.
Oh, so now the unions are responsible for Republican obstructionism?
Sorry, I can't keep up, I thought it was the Colorado Potato Beetle. Or maybe it was the Ebola virus? No, wait, it was Peruvian mummies, that's it, yeah! No, it was Icelandic volcanoes, that's the ticket!
The one thing, the one and only thing that Republican obstructionism cannot have as a cause, is Republicans, right? Right.
That would be accountability and we can't have that now.
I voted for the guy who talked about this.
No I think you would be sadly deluded when what should be a joke that badly fails a reality test is put forward as if it is real.
However I do not think you are deluded. I think you are mocking me - not the same thing as a joke at all.
Is this how your mocking goes?
"Ha ha - we wasted all that money on the high life for executives and laid off the people who do the repairs - so what are you going to do about it peon - hold a sign?"
Did I nail it or did you have something more specific in mind?
Choosing in the affirmative is a ranking only in the degenerate sense of the term. In the same sense you could say that a dictatorship is a voting system of one. If that is the only choice you want to make, that's fine, but that's not an argument against trying to capture more information from voters.
The Electoral College doesn't need to change. Please don't argue against positions I haven't taken. I am not a Democrat and do not see this as a partisan issue, and the DNC is likely to view this idea as an existential threat.
Multiple-choice methods of voting have nothing to do with any particular form of government. They are associated with larger numbers of political parties simply in reflection of the fact that people have a broad range of political views. The idea that there should be only two political parties is clearly nonsense, and you yourself can point to many factions and divisions not only within the major political parties but in all walks of life. We have the voting method that we have simply because there wasn't another to choose from in 1780. The fundamental goal of election science is to represent voter preference in as fair and accurate a manner as possible. Unfortunately, it's been mathematically proven that there is no perfect voting method, but the one that we have is one of the worst, and various groups in various countries have been campaigning to end it for years.
Please stop talking about Trump. I have not based any part of my argument on his election. You may not have looked into election science very deeply, but this has been the only political issue I have cared about for just about the last two decades. I think that all options this cycle were bad, and that that represents a failure of our system, but that's also not what's driving my concerns.
America has made itself impenetrable to everything but information warfare, and is an information war there can be no higher target than a major political party headquarters, especially during an election cycle. It takes minimal skill and technology to attempt to hack someone. There is minimal risk of detection. And now someone has shown that it is possible, and that there is very little to fear in the way of repercussions. Getting hacked is going to be massively destabilizing for any organization of any kind, political or not, and I do not see a particularly good reason to let hackers of whatever stripe hijack American politics at their whim.
The nation is in unmatched turmoil because our leaders have to keep splitting us apart with social wedge issues in order to make sure that we vote for the right teams. We are not on opposite teams, we are both citizens who want to make our country better. Across the US people have more in common with each other than that divides them, because that's what it means to be a citizen of a country. We're allowing ourselves to be split into warring camps, but it doesn't have to be that way. This is a way to resolve it. It's not a perfect solution, but I do see this as a vital existential issue for our democracy, and an extremely urgent one. But, all that said, I'm not necessarily enjoying feeling compelled to try to talk the entire country into going with me on this one, and I would be grateful for a better opposing argument, so rest assured that I am giving your opinions their due consideration.
Please also excuse any lack of copyediting in the above, I'm running late for an appointment.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
video of them calling me racist when I pointed it out.
Convinced me to NEVER vote DNC for the rest of my life because of that.
So when you called out your local officials for the bike lane, they said you were racist for asking them (the local officials) why they weren't spending money more wisely?
There's one near the top of the california list that was built in 2008! (22 fwy over Harbor Blvd)
-shouldn't there be criminal investigation going along with that one?
they are also listing bridges that are deficient in meeting the needs of the traffic on them, such as a need to widen the whole freeway but that one bridge needs to be replaced for that reason alone -and not that it can't safely handle the loads put upon it.
Typical of a report from a 3rd party BUILDER's association -if it's actually acted upon it benefits them greatly.
Just like the north Dakota bridges -there are some on the list that span 5' over a small creek on a very lightly used rural road -so who cares other than the opportunity for some pork-barrel spending
What's a bike land?
Bunch of half-pipes to do tricks on.
We need to start raising the tax on gasoline and diesel by .01 / gal / month.
Note that the gasoline portion should go to the state in which it was collected, while the diesel portion should remain with the feds. Then there has to be a stipulation that all of this will go ONLY INTO INFRASTRUCTURE.
By doing this slowly, it will not harm the economy in any way. Likewise, by raising money, rather than borrowing, it builds today, without taking from tomorrow.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
POTUS Truman had a little sign on his Presidential Desk: "The Buck Stops Here". POTUS Clinton received credit for an improved economy which the Republican Congressional Majority created. POTUS Obama didn't try very hard – except traveling, golfing and pontificating.
Trump has golfed more in his first month than Obama did in his first six months(6 rounds so far). Obama took 3 months before he played 1.
Trump has left classified top secret materials on his desk in a meeting with no. Classified people and had a non classsified phone(device) sitting on top of them
Trump is using a non classified device hourly meaning unless he is carrying two phones he has classified info on a nonsecured device.
You know everything you blamed Hillary and Obama for doing trumps us down twice as bad in just his first month.
Lastly how the hell does he hire people who can't pass background checks? The turn over in his staff has been record setting. Not to mention the hundreds of important posts that are still unfilled.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.