As the military industrial complex of our greatest empire of democratic change marches boldly into the new world order, it has decided that it is perfectly fine to smoke cigars and play a round of golf in between conquests rather than paint the house, repair the roof, or even do the dishes of our dirty, rotting little homeland. In the name of security, it is better that we shed the blood of innocents abroad than invest in our own infrastructure at home. Someday you will understand, but for right now it is just too complicated for the little minds like those working at the Center for Strategic and International Studies to grasp this complexity -- minds like former Senator Warren Rudman, and Ambassador Felix Rohatyn. Like the latter said this evening on the News Hour, "You can explain something to someone, but you can't understand it for them."
A biannual survey by the American Society of Civil Engineers, grading all categories of infrastructure from schools to sewers, indicates a gap of $1.6 trillion over five years between what is needed to bring national infrastructure up to reasonable standards and what is now in prospect.
If I know this Republican administration, they are going to jump on this. I bet it's not a week before we hear a major campaign roll out on "Rebuilding America's Infrastructure". I can see the Fox News hypermedia graphics now! It won't be any problem for the top 2% of America's most fortunate income earners to pony up another percent or two of their salaries for this noble cause. I mean, who wants to smell rotting sewage in the air while they wait in line at the symphony, or have to forgoe that last scotch after golfing in order to make it to the airport on time due to traffic congestion?
Ok, I'm done. Really, this has been one of my most important issues since reading Jane Jacobs' Cities and the Wealth of Nations. As an architect and urban planner living in Pittsburgh, I see the constant evidence of the steady decline in infrastructural investment over the second half of the 20th century that has just gotten steadily worse. Our city here has a sewer system (combined with storm water outflow) that sends significant amounts of raw sewage into our rivers every time it rains. This region's sewer system needs an estimated $10 billion in federally mandated improvements, but like all federal mandates these days, it is unfunded.
How long can we sit idly by and watch our bridges crumble, our schools fall apart, our rivers fill with sewage, our roads crumble, our railroads rust, and our ports wash away before we start to demand some accountability from the entities that have and continue to profit from their use and abuse? I'm talking about the corporations that every day take advantage of the free ride to riches that this great nation has given them, and then report record profits and pay no taxes to the IRS from their offshore bank accounts.
We need to craft legislation that ties corporate tax accountability to funding the mandate set forth in this report by the CSIS. As Felix Rohatyn said tonight, "every 10 minutes it gets more expensive". There is no time to wait. It may take $1.6 trillion over 5 years if we start now, but that will seem like a bargain if we put this off until tomorrow. It is much easier to bite the bullet and paint your house every 6 years than to have to replace all of your windows, siding and trim every 20 years. Sure you played some good golf and invaded a few unarmed countries with the time you saved then, but now that your home has been foreclosed on by the Chinese, it doesn't seem like such a good time anymore.
Let's get it together and do this right while we still can: A new public works project for the 21st century that could stimulate the manufacturing sector of the domestic economy and put everyone to work who is able, maybe even a few guest workers, Lord knows there's more than enough to do!
Fun stuff to read and hear:
Washington Post Article on the Report
Link to CSIS
Audio Link to National Press Club Forum on the Subject of the Report