Bridges, Politics, and Death

I’ve been thinking about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. All of the easy and obvious points have, by this time been mentioned. We’ll gloss over the concept that road building is not a federal responsibility. We’ll skip the corporate welfare isn’t a responsibility of any level of government argument.

We will, however, discuss the fact that your elected officials are culpable in the deaths caused by infrastructure failures. The long and detailed version is here. The short version relies on a couple of key concepts. Let’s assume there is a fixed transportation budget for any given gummint sub-entity. So in order to pander and build shiny new projects, the money has to come from somewhere. So, do we fix the roads we’ve already got or build, I dunno, a light rail system that carries next to no people over a limited geographical area? Drive around Houston and the answer should be obvious. The answer is obvious everywhere else. New! Shiny! Pander! Vote Grab! In the meantime, the roads we all drive on go to crap until something disastrous happens. Yay politics! Poor political decisions lead directly to deaths. For some reason, this is one of the few things I can reliable count on in life.

Anyhow, when the elected officials claim there wasn’t any money for maintenance, you know they’re lying. They just felt other things were a higher priority. Hold ‘em accountable. Unelect all the bastards.