Infrastructure Problems...

[Blown70]

Well, we here in Fargo seem to be in a big tiff of who MN or ND is going to get the diversion for the red river. either 938million or 1.38 billion, Either way a lot of money.... and everyone expects uncle same to belly up.... Guess what you live by the river there will be water, DUH.... you want to be by water live by a lake....

So, Elaruze, Mike DC, Tricky, Brock. This is going on everywhere,  I live high enough that I should not have an issue, but willing to take a hit if I get water, I have insurance... because I am smart enough to pay the total of $173 for the ins, I do not expect city, local, federal to pay for MY problems...that is my personal problem not infrastructure.

The Diversion they want to do is infrastructure,,,,,,and going to potentail add a significant amount to the national debt... that we all even in FL, CA, IA, ND, SD, MN, WI, IL, NY, NJ, etc, and on and on.....

Tom

[Brock Samson]

 Well these are cycles.. at one time Iran/Iraq was the most civilized place on earth. An extreme example but it illustrates the point.
Right now Dubai has an infrastrucure so new most of the signage isn't even up yet.
Perhaps if we actually made the effort to revamp our infrastructure we could radically shrink our unemployment.
I have read (to paraphrase) that whoever has the newest factories wins the wars - or words to that effect...
For example going into WWII the Axis had the upper hand having recently retooled their war machine, however, once the Allies got off their butts and developed the Spitfire and Hellcat to counter the ME 109 and Zero - just for instance, that example of one upsmanship (not to mention the Manhatten Project) won the resultant peace, of course we rebuilt their (axis) infrastructure and who supplanted our Impalas and Caddys on Americas' roadways? Why Toyotas and Mercedes of course. (Now even Fiat of Italy gets in on the action).  
A bit convoluted but we need a history refresher perhaps to avert further disasters if not just inconvienince.
I'm thinking of the TV show I saw about the fall of the Roman Empire last night...  
Americas ranking in the world is dropping to critical levels.
Health care and Education are two more examples at either end of population cycle.
It seems to me infrastructure falls squarely in the middle.
More scarey stuff just intime for Holloween.  

[BigBlackDodge]

This is where the current adminstration is falling very,very short.....instead of stimuls  money being handed out for every pet project on the planet They should employ an Eisenhower type program similar to the interstate highway program

Why blame the current administration? Previous administrations had the same opportunity (and knew about the problem) but chose to spend the money on unwinnable wars instead.

Exactly!

How many blamed the former admin when the minneapolis bridge collapsed? I'm guessing none.......


BBD

[Mike DC]

Bill Clinton got the budget back into line after just a few years in office.  I remember the public & the rest of Washington viewing the whole attempt as pretty ludicrous right up until it happened.  But I think the pattern he set would have actually begun PAYING DOWN the national debt in a matter of years.


I'm not trying to discuss the Clinton presidency here, I'm just making an example.  Sometimes these "impossible tasks" aren't as impossible as they seem.  We tend to have a lot of inertia about govt issues.  If it hasn't changed in many years then we have a tendency to mentally categorize it as "impossible to change" whether it really is or not. 



You could say the same thing about Reagan's arms race hastening the fall of the Soviet Union.  The mere idea still seemed pretty ludicrous to the average person on the street barely 3-4 years before it happened.

[Smokey Bear]

Ok - I'm not poking at specific individuals, but everyone is "independent" until nature f*^%$ them over, then they all have their hands out. Ive watched it for 40 years around here. The yokels say "govt off my ass!" and then the first flood they are the first and most vocal in line. All the rest of us pay for it (over and over again).

All of the transportation depts and major utilities are operated the same way.... just as the banks and other major businesses have been these last 24 months. Make a profit and keep costs low while the getting is good, and then cry cry cry to the govt and public until a handout is given to save your ass when things turn.

All of these transportation and utility organizations KNOW that their maintenance of infrastructure is NOT sustainable, yet they go on like there is no tomorrow. I know this business...... We will all be paying dearly for it in the future.

[Blown70]

Ok - I'm not poking at specific individuals, but everyone is "independent" until nature f*^%$ them over, then they all have their hands out. Ive watched it for 40 years around here. The yokels say "govt off my ass!" and then the first flood they are the first and most vocal in line. All the rest of us pay for it (over and over again).

We have a ton of those folks here in Fargo now..hands out for a hand out.... Hate it.  I live on high enough ground I really should not need to worry but then again "if" that happens I at least bought insurance.....

T

[The70RT]

Handouts are getting out of control. Now If you are eligible you can get a FREE pre paid cell phone. They need to put all these deadbeats to work. Labor to do Infrastructure work would be good for them.

[Blown70]

Handouts are getting out of control. Now If you are eligible you can get a FREE pre paid cell phone. They need to put all these deadbeats to work. Labor to do Infrastructure work would be good for them.

See, those people need to EARN that phone, not just qualify..... that is unbelieveable..... then that same person is the one who complains becasue I HAVE TOO MUCH TOO MANY CARS and KEEP IN MIND I WORK 6 DAYS a FING WEEK.... becasue why I want to EARN Those nice things......

[elacruze]

Here's where I plug the book, "The Creature From Jekyll Island". It's a history of the Federal Reserve Banking System (Fiat Capital) and the American economy. If you really care about the Dollar and deficit, buy it, read it, and give it away to someone else who will read it.

Even if you conclude that it's just an interesting conspiracy theory, it's still an entertaining read. I think it's a very frightening look at how we got where we are, and an even more frightening prediction of where we are headed.

[tricky lugnuts]

I'm sure it is an interesting read. From what I've heard it's not much of a conspiracy theory - a bunch of prominent international bankers got together on a remote island off the Georgia coast and devised their plan to wrestle the constitutional power of coin and currency from Congress, who's now too dim-witted to even push for an audit of the Federal Reserve, a private banking consortium that can essentially make money out of thin air without telling anyone, including Congress, how much it's making, who its lending it to, and at what terms. The Fed has doubled its balance sheet in the past year or so and cut its lending rate to nearly 0%. Everybody's scared because of this housing bubble mess (largely caused by the Fed and its flood of cheap, abundant credit), but what's the next one going to be like? http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/0081908

Not that there are simple solutions, but imagine what we Americans would be getting paid per hour (or worth) if the U.S. had been forced to maintain its fiscal discipline and never defaulted (once and for all) on its gold standard in 1971. Up until then the dollar was pegged at $35 = one ounce of gold. Nixon told our creditors, sorry, no more gold. I think gold was trading today at $1,040 or so an ounce? The dollar was once a fixed measurement of value. What's it worth today, a pack of gum?

There's no doubt that the U.S. government and the private Federal Reserve banks have been depreciating the dollar and I don't think there is much doubt that is their plan going forward. That's how we'll "pay off" the $2 trillion or so that we suckered the Chinese into lending us over the last decade, paying off our debts with a depreciated currency. Of course, that has severe ramifications for the rest of us.

Sure, Clinton 'balanced' the federal budget for one or two years in his two terms in office, a real fiscal hawk. Har, har. Not that the GOP has done any better in recent memory. But Clinton didn't do anything about massive looming social security or medicare shortfalls, and both of those trust funds were still treated as slush funds for other federal government expenditures, and replaced with essentially IOUs, i.e., the non-public national debt which now stands at close to $6 trillion.

If you follow the federal budget, a depreciated dollar is really the only way it's possible to pay off the debt without 1. axing the defense budget, social security program, or medicare, or 2. jacking up federal income taxes by something like 100%. But that depreciated dollar makes it harder and harder to do everything else in the process. Raise federal income taxes? It's already a tax of questionable constitutionality and sorry, I work hard and I'm essentially poor - per American standards - but I already pay almost as much each month in federal payroll taxes as I do for my apartment. I'm not seeing the service.

Congress and Obama just passed a $787 BILLION stimulus package, all of it debt financed, and so far all they can point to is 600,000 or so jobs saved or created, most probably saved, in an economy that's shed millions of jobs since December 2007. Good thing! What would the unemployment rate be without that, 9.9% instead of 9.8%? We lost 600,000 jobs a month for more than seven months in the past year, and now everyone is predicting a jobless 'recovery.'

Here in Marietta we got $1.2 million in stimulus funds for road paving - about 5 miles of streets will be paved at best. Hallelujah.

All of that money goes to a Zanesville-based contractor that already gets ALL of the road paving work in Marietta every year because it has a monopoly in the area. On top of that, the company does crappy work, ask any city councilman. But I'll bet those are counted as jobs SAVED by federal bean counters and promoted as an 'important investment in tomorrow.' The jobs not done yet and won't be until next summer but the signs are already up: "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Helping America Work." Phew. All of our infrastructure problems are solved!!!

[Mike DC]

 
Inflation is a means of confiscating wealth from the public.  I don't remember who first said this phrase but it's true. 



IMHO the jobs situation looks bad because they never originally told us the truth last year.  The public figures were (and are) purely a form of govt propeganda.  We were in worse trouble than anyone in Washington dared to say out loud.  Personally I am amazed that we're doing as well as we are right now. 

[sunfire69]

Didn't mean to make it political when I said current adminastration...only meant that this group has a unique oppertunity .....but for what ever reason they are useing the "hand out" method instead of giving americans the opportunity to work AND fix the infrastructure....give a man a fish and you feed him for a day...teach a man to fish and you feed him for a life time.....( I know there is a jkoe that goes with that but I was avoiding it lol).....

[69DodgeCharger]

A good portion of those saved and created jobs are in the Govt sector. As far as the stimulus package I believe most states are using it to offset their own debt and pay for their own pet projects, or funding for things it was not intended to be used for. So the stimulus effect is pretty much null and void. I too have been seeing the "Putting America To Work" signs.....I wonder how much they cost? I know for a fact they are not needed and serve no infrastructure purpose.

[tricky lugnuts]

Here in Ohio they had to cut something like $7 billion over the last two-year budget. The new two-year budget passed in July (a $50.5 billion budget) has about $6 billion in Recovery Act money built into it to balance it. That's more than 10% of the total - a lot of cuts that were avoided this time around, but will be even more painful next time around if the economy doesn't recover between now and then. And let's be real, it's Ohio, a state that has never recovered from the 2001 recession and its job losses. What did Ross Perot say - a great big sucking sound?