BRIDGE COLLAPSE/ COST OF IRAQ WAR

What in the world is going on?
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Zlatko Waterman
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BRIDGE COLLAPSE/ COST OF IRAQ WAR

Post by Zlatko Waterman » August 5th, 2007, 3:47 pm

Many bridges in the U.S. are in bad repair. The recent bridge collapse could have been averted. Want to see where the billions to repair bridges are going?

Make sure to compare the Iraq War costs with other equivalent expenditures ( that could be funded were we not "at war" . . .):

( link)

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost- ... War-3.html



--Z

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stilltrucking
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Post by stilltrucking » August 5th, 2007, 11:26 pm

Thanks for the link.

Bush was johnny on the spot in his hard hat this time. He actually got out his plane and walked around. I suppose he learned a lesson from Katrina and his fly over inspection.

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Post by mtmynd » August 6th, 2007, 9:55 am

I heard a few days ago an engineer saying it'd take 10 years to rebuild a new bridge. If that is close to accurate, I reckon the bridge will never be rebuilt given the cost associated with it... unless, of course, the burden falls completely on Minnesota (a so-called 'blue state', btw), even if the bridge is an Interstate project with shared expense by the government. The current force of thinking in DC is to down play anything related to government expenditures for the people of this country (except war!).

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stilltrucking
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Post by stilltrucking » August 14th, 2007, 7:31 am

the bridge will take 18 months to repair

Norman the cost of the war a drop in the bucket they say
when adusted for GNP or some mumbo techno jumbo economic algorith that is beyond me
adam smith or karl marx
I got an a in political science 101 from UofMd college park
still don't get it
left right
antiquated political categories.


Cecel noway they wont have that bridge asap
eight lane road from mexico to canada
too much money at state

what the hell do I know about economics
I could never figure out why I picked a load of frozen tacos in texas and took them to california and unloaded then I would go to another dock and reload a load of frozed tacos headed for texas.

sometimes like with orange juice I would not even go to another dock.

"it's always something" gilda radner

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stilltrucking
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Post by stilltrucking » August 14th, 2007, 8:28 am

That is what bugs me norman
our national product is so gross
our consumer culture so irrational
I am going to miss Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and the rest of the crime ring. They make war for ecconomic gain so rational. It is nice how Europe has become so ecconomically rational. Maybe a couple more hundred years and we will too.

done rambling
where is the comix?
what do you think we are paying you for :)

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e_dog
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Post by e_dog » August 17th, 2007, 8:21 pm

Aw, comeon! Ya can't blame Bush admin. for this!

We're destroying bridges abroad so we won't have 'em collapse at home. Since we invaded and conquered (?) Iraq, Al Queda hasn't blown up any bridges in Minnesota.
I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.

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stilltrucking
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Post by stilltrucking » August 17th, 2007, 8:53 pm

The money lost in Iraq is a drop in the bucket they say compared as a percentage of the total econony something like one per cent or two per cent I think.

I think world war 2 was costing 33 percent of the ecconomy.

I don't know whose fault it is anymore about the infrastructure falling apart.

The politicians who won't vote for a nickle increase in the gas tax, the state governments who raid the highway funds for other pet projects or to balance the budget.

Meanwhile in Texas they are selling the roads to private contractors to be toll roads.

e-dog said
We're destroying bridges abroad so we won't have 'em collapse at home. Since we invaded and conquered (?) Iraq, Al Queda hasn't blown up any bridges in Minnesota.
I like it e-dog
exactly so

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Post by jimboloco » August 18th, 2007, 8:30 am

read a letter to the editor in local rag
said how the liberals are all wanting to blame the iraq war for the bridge falling in minnesota

some folks cannot make connections very well

th dawg starved at her master's gate
predicks th ruin of th state

e dawg is right
the irak war is a purposful distraction from local biz

i just hope that the numbers of folks who wake up outnumber the ones who still think saddamn had to do with nyc
absurd
[color=darkcyan]i'm on a survival mission
yo ho ho an a bottle of rum om[/color]

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Post by jimboloco » August 18th, 2007, 6:25 pm

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070827/editors


editorial | posted August 9, 2007 (August 27, 2007 issue)
Things Fall Apart
Americans aren't just paying for the country's decaying public infrastructure with their pocketbooks. Now they are paying with their lives. The August 1 collapse of one of Minneapolis's most heavily trafficked bridges, which sent more than fifty vehicles crashing into the Mississippi River, is the latest in a string of infrastructure failures threatening public safety. In early July, on a busy runway at New York's La Guardia Airport, two airliners nearly collided in a "runway incursion," a phenomenon so common, said a spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board, they "only investigate a small percentage of them." Later that month, a steam pipe exploded in midtown Manhattan, flinging mud and asbestos for blocks and sending dozens to the hospital.

Everywhere one looks, the results of decades of public neglect and underinvestment are clear: not only collapsing bridges and exploding steam pipes but traffic-choked streets, clogged ports, corroded drinking-water systems and power brownouts. From 1950 to 1970 the government spent more than 3 percent of GDP on infrastructure. After 1980, that figure dropped by more than a third.

Two years ago, following the catastrophic collapse of the levees in New Orleans, which cost more than 1,000 lives, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issued a report cataloguing the myriad deficiencies in our nation's infrastructure. That report was followed by a number of other worrying findings. The Transportation Department, for example, estimated that freight bottlenecks were costing the economy $200 billion a year. The Environmental Protection Agency warned of antiquated drinking-water and waste-water systems that would require more than $541 billion a year to rebuild over the next twenty years. And the Federal Highway Administration has calculated that some $141 billion will be needed every year for the next twenty years to repair deficient roads and bridges. All told, the ASCE estimated, the government would need to spend $1.6 trillion over the next five years to repair infrastructure. And that estimate did not address our lagging deployment of high-speed broadband or the major expenditures needed to reduce carbon emissions to stave off climate change.

Those reports, and the tragedy of the New Orleans levee collapse, should have been a wake-up call for our leaders, but little has been done. The Bush Administration has been more interested in protecting its tax cuts for the rich and siphoning off money for its endless occupation of Iraq. And the Democratic Party, scrambling to impress Wall Street with its fiscal conservatism, seems to have forgotten its proud heritage as the party of the New Deal and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Indeed, one of the first acts of the new Democratic Congress was to pass a "pay as you go" budget procedure, a roadblock to new public spending, whether on healthcare or infrastructure.

The Minnesota bridge collapse may at last be starting to change those misplaced priorities. Senators Christopher Dodd and Chuck Hagel have introduced legislation to establish a National Infrastructure Bank, which would enable the government to help finance projects by, among other things, offering guarantees to state and local governments. And Representatives Dennis Kucinich and Steven LaTourette have offered a bill to create a Federal Bank for Infrastructure Modernization, which would offer low-cost loans to states and municipalities. These bills entail modest cost to the taxpayer and are a step in the right direction. But they barely begin to meet the nation's vast public investment needs. The Dodd-Hagel legislation, for example, has proposed an initial bond-issue ceiling of only $60 billion.

But at least the two measures put constructive ideas on the table. All presidential candidates, particularly Democrats, should come up with comprehensive plans for closing the public investment deficit. Nearly fifty years ago, John Kenneth Galbraith warned in The Affluent Society about the danger of public squalor alongside private affluence. Massive public investment, he argued, was needed to improve social goods in areas where the private sector was unwilling to invest. Today, we see Galbraith's vision materializing on a frightening scale. If we don't heed his wise advice, we will suffer many more preventable disasters.
[color=darkcyan]i'm on a survival mission
yo ho ho an a bottle of rum om[/color]

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stilltrucking
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Post by stilltrucking » August 18th, 2007, 7:14 pm

Something so weird going on here in Texas jim. The govenor and legislature are selling the roads right out from under us. Roads built with our tax dollars going to be sold to private companies who will convert them to toll roads.

Eie Yie Yie

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jimboloco
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Post by jimboloco » August 19th, 2007, 2:13 pm

this privitazhun biz
roads and prizonz
a right wing quackmire
[color=darkcyan]i'm on a survival mission
yo ho ho an a bottle of rum om[/color]

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stilltrucking
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Post by stilltrucking » August 19th, 2007, 2:51 pm

I dont know jim
is it only the right
seems like it has been going on a long time
but no doubt it has reached surreal absurdity under bushco
I heard a sound byte about how the intelligence biz has been privatized too.
But you know they must be doing something right
cause we ain't been attacked at pearl harbor since 1941
and our ships are safe to cruise the waters of the tonkin gulf

sorry jimbo no sense me trying to have an intelligent conversation today
I'mToo stoned.

I see if I can find the link to the intelligence bizz.
Last edited by stilltrucking on August 19th, 2007, 3:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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stilltrucking
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Post by stilltrucking » August 19th, 2007, 3:48 pm

This is the link about the privatized intelligence
I am getting way of Norman's topic I probably should post it to that other string
Company executives recently announced the creation of a new private intelligence company, Total Intelligence, to be headed by Black and Richer. Blackwater executives boast that some of their work for the government is so sensitive that the company cannot tell one federal agency what it is doing for another.

http://glassfrequency.blogspot.com/2007/07/war-inc.html
It is being set up to rival the CIA.

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Post by jimboloco » August 20th, 2007, 8:44 am

yep the real mercenaries
thazz right

i just sent a letter to the Times
made a reference to national inner weakness
kudos to el elpaso keed
fer th punchline

waiting for hate calls now
should it get printed
but timely enuf
where is the california professor when we neeed him?
probably sketching his cat
Subject: "In defense of a real hero" Aug.15th

A letter writer (In defense of a real hero, Aug 15th) stated that John Kerry "directly caused greater suffering and misery for the POWs" in Hanoi, and that he, Jane Fonda, Ramsey Clark and Joan Baez provided "aid and comfort to the enemy."

One of my AFROTC classmates was a POW in Hanoi. I met him in Vietnam shortly before he got shot down. He told me he "wanted to get into the action."

Those of us who returned home from the war and joined the anti-war movement were not concerned with "aiding the enemy." We wanted our brothers home and we wanted the American people to know that our nation, with mis-directed military power, sufferred from an inner weakness. And it's true today.

J W
© Copyright 2007 St. Petersvoid Times.
[color=darkcyan]i'm on a survival mission
yo ho ho an a bottle of rum om[/color]

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Zlatko Waterman
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Post by Zlatko Waterman » August 21st, 2007, 9:35 am

No doubt, gentleman, the Iraq War is a purposive distraction from "what's really going on" all right.

As Bill Moyers says, that consists of taking money from the pockets of the many and putting it in the pockets of THE FEW.

Here's a good article on the "decline of the superpower" on Tom Engelhardt's site:


http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=11474


Where is Spengler when we really need him?

( excerpts from THE DECLINE OF THE WEST online . . .)


http://www.duke.edu/~aparks/Spengler.html

Peace,


--Z

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