04-21-2021, 04:31 PM
(04-21-2021, 02:21 PM)David Horn Wrote:(04-21-2021, 12:03 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(04-21-2021, 09:10 AM)David Horn Wrote:(04-20-2021, 11:31 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The Democratic leadership is moving Left because that's where the bulk of the money is coming from these days. As far as the spending bills, who cares,, the government is broke and the bulk it won't ever be spent anyway. The future Democrats are pretty much screwed.
If the government is truly broke, blame the tax-cutters and and enforcement obstructers.
Of coarse you would blame the tax cutters, you're always blaming the tax cutters while ignoring the tax spenders and continually calling for more spending.
Our physical infrastructure is falling apart. By international standards, it's a very sick joke. Our human infrastructure isn't in much better shape, with students carrying outrageous financial burdens for schooling typically provided for free or cheaply in other countries. Those are only two of many examples.
Like I said, blame the tax cutters and the politicians who made tax enforcement a joke too. Current estimates are $200Billion per year of tax cheating, mostly by the rich. Who defunded the IRS? Oh yeah, the Republicans.
The last time that I was in California (in 2009) I noticed how poor the conditions of the roads were -- and how inadequate many of them were. California relies heavily upon freeways, and the state hasn't added much freeway mileage since the 1980's. California started building freeways soon after the end of the Second World War, which explains how one can see that a crossover bridge on California 1 near Santa Cruz has the year "1947" on it. In the 1940's, Santa Cruz was a sleepy little beach town. You can just about use a highway map from the mid-1980's to get around California by road, with the most obvious changes being some improvements to California 58 (I think that California is trying to get I-40 extended from Barstow through Bakersfield* to Interstate 5), some toll roads in Orange County built with private funds, and the replacement of the 1930's era Oakland-San Francisco Trans-Bay Bridge. The highway system built for a population of 25 million about 35 years ago now serves a population of nearly 40 million. To be sure, California now has far more poor people** who cannot afford a motor vehicle, but still... the only reason that the roads aren't as decrepit as those in Michigan is that Michigan has harsh winters that can frost-heave highways. What was once visionary infrastructure in California is grossly obsolete.
That is one state. Let me tell you about the inadequacy of Interstate 94 between Benton Harbor and Ann Arbor. Fully adequate in 1962... well, that was nearly sixty years ago, was it not? Two lanes in each direction on one of the busiest, mostly rural, expressways in America (it connects among other things Greater Chicago and Greater Detroit) is wholly inadequate. The heavily-used interchange between I-69 and I-94 in Marshall is basically a cloverleaf, and it is only a matter of time before some trucker jack-knifes with a load of toxic materials. I remember when Interstate 69 was lightly traveled for an Interstate Highway; in Michigan much of its traffic is headed to or from such Canadian cities as Toronto and Montreal...
That's only roads, which are the most visible of infrastructure.
*Bakersfield was a dump when it had fewer than 70,000 people in 1970, and it now has nearly 400,000 people, so you can just imagine how the transportation needs have changed there! It is the second-largest non-suburb in America not on the Interstate system, and California is seeking to upgrade California 58 and California 99 to Interstate quality with federal funds.
** Poverty is an obscenity in a country that considers itself rich.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.