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2009 starts out very well. Everyone, get on board!
Here come the Democrats! 
The New Conservative Party in 2010**
Classic problem with infrastructure. Everyone wants it, no one wants to pay for it. Sure right after a major bridge collapse everyone goes 'hey! let's invest in maintaining our roads!' but as soon as that fades from memory no one wants to fund it anymore.
If Clinton, Bush, Bush, and Regan had put the proper funding into maintaining the roads in the first place we wouldn't be in this mess.
The money has to come from somewhere.
Isn't it a nice small government idea to have the people who are using the resource heavily to actually pay for maintaining it? Plus this means job creation since all that maintaince takes a lot of good hard working manpower.
yeah, it sucks that they are talking about doing this now, but it's better then letting even more road/bridges fail.. they should have been taxing the hell out of gas for the last 40 years.
Then you pay for it. Or do you want the Government to force you to?
The bridge collapse was due to bad engineering. Had nothing to do with the Government. And Bill Clinton is a Democrat!
Get some facts!
The New Conservative Party in 2010**
Am, that bridge that collapsed a couple years ago did so due to neglect, in fact it was on a list of bridges that were likely to fail if they were not maintained better.
Bridges need to be taken care of. For intance they need their coating periodically replaced and they need to be checked for internal fatigue. That bridge had NOT been properly handled and thus, like any bridge that you neglect, failed.
As for Clinton. Who said I was blaming Republicans? Clinton made up 8 of those 40 years as did Carter which is why I said Clinton in the list of presidents who oversaw much of the decline.
This is a problem across parties because building new stuff is more likely to get you attention and votes and fixing/maintaining old stuff. Repairs are just viewed as an inconvenience to people since they just want stuff to work 'like it always did' and not take any new work or *gasp* closing a road while it is being fixed.
Ok, technically it was a combination of design problems that lowered it's structural capacity and significant degrading of the bridges components. Either element alone would probably not have done it (if it was built better it could take the neglect, and if it has been better maintained the design issues would not have come into play)
If the moron corrupt idots in the transportation part of government would oversee with their heads out of their butts, we would have plenty of money and better roads. They contract out work and then give huge a huge bonus to get the job done that they were already paid for. A duh price and deadline is already included in bid. It is a racket. They use cheap material and by the time they get done with a project,half the work already needs repair. The government blows our money left and right! What do we get for it? Higher frickin taxes! Why should the states not raise taxes this way? Obama got the vote of all America by saying just that ....remember Joe the plumber? Oblahblah sounds just like the transportation depts. .... those with money pay more so we can all equally have crap....except for congress who is getting a raise.
Sort of kicks the "energy conservation" thing to the curb doesn't it?
Western Oregon, specifically the Willamette Valley, Salem, Eugene, Medford, etc. have been sunbatheing in the Van Allen Belt and it got to what's left of the grey matter.
But Bend and Redmond aren't far behind.
@Nicole.
Point. Unfortunately any bureaucracy ends up having these problems. The larger they get, the more waste and corruption there is. Same with big companies.. seems to be a human thing and I have yet to see a political (or corporate) system anywhere that does not suffer from this.
Also unfortunately, this kind of stuff happens at the small levels too. Take a look at any small town (or company) and you'll generally find small town corruption, nepotism, and other such things. The solution tends to be oversight to keep people playing fair, which builds buecracies, which breed corruption.. rinse lather repeat.
Obama and the Dems want to add another $2 trillion to our national debt in 2009 alone, far worse than Bush ever did even at the height of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is what you voted into office, America.
To all those naive and ignorant souls who sounded the alarms and said Bush's fiscal irresponsibility was going to bankrupt America and that the Democrats were the solution, what say you now?
Commenting by HaloScan
