In an earlier day, or era, more rational minds would have prevailed – and priorities assigned by judgments of what is important to Americans for an American future and for American safety.

Scare tactic. The amount of drugs is so small compared to the volume of water that it’s a phony issue. The fools that believed that story went out and bought bottled water or water filters. It reminds of the syringes on the beaches stories years ago to freak people out.

“It would be a monumental mistake to turn the future of America’s infrastructure over to the same crowd that brought us the subprime crisis, an economy loaded down with debt, and recession”

The author has it so wrong, on so many different levels.

Jeff

“Ron Paul 2008, No IRS!”

(Not!)

I like to imagine (because imagination is all that i’m going to get) an America where instead of sending our hard-earned income off to LLC’s on Wall Street in order to get table crumbs from the transfer of wealth, we might invest those same monies into local economies, infrastructure, etc. I have nothing against Wall Street or corporations, per se, they’ve a right to exist and profit. But we cannot keep giving them all the money (and power that goes with it) and then turn around and bemoan their heartless behavior.

We’ve been sold the idea that an IRA or a 401K makes you part of the ownership class…a real capitalist. But does it? I don’t want to see infrastructure owned by private companies, but i would be happy to see it owned by the equivalent of community credit unions…i’d plunk my toll money into the bin with some pride.

Dream on, sucker…

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0507/p09s02-coop.html

Thanks to all for their thoughtful comments.

A key part of this challenge, of course, is the battle between patching holes and fostering a 21st century, sustainable infrastructure. How to get money upfront, in a ‘cost to own’ investment rather than lowest bidder ‘cost-to-own’. And, moving toward lower energy-intensive infrastructure (for construction, maintenance, operations). The resources for that will, sadly, be hard-pressed to find in the challenging environment that the Republicans have created.

And, sadly, one thing that has been missing is how serious investment in moving on this path is the type of stimulus that moves the economy today while making it operate better tomorrow. Instead, “stimulus” money is giving out in checks to be spent on buying things, today, rather than improving things for today and tomorrow.

Of course, they wouldn’t be able to get that funding afterwards either, but I believe Obama would be the most likely to try.