Bridge Deep in the Big Muddy

And the wingnuts say: press on...

Here's an occupational hazard of the blogging biz: you find a really nifty link to share; then you lose it and it seems to have disppeared frmo the Internets for good. Today's case study: the poll on the wingnut website WorldNetDaily revealing their readers' hypotheses on what was responsible for for the Minneapolis bridge tragedy. About one half blamed excess spending on welfare. About one half of one percent blamed insufficient taxes.

Like I say, can't find the link. [UPDATE!! A Big Con reader finds the poll [1] in question.] But here at The Big Con we're of the lemonade-from-lemons persuasion, so I'm glad to share what I did find on WorldNetDaily about why, in the richest nation in the history of the universe, bridges still collapse:

• Jerome Corsi of "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth" has found the real killers [2]: "NAFTA superhighway traffic." (Yes: it's all the fault of a highway that does not exist, and also the tooth fairy, and an army of yeti. Read more here [3].)

• A letter to the editor [4] apportions blame democratically. "The bridge failed because government priorities place foreign aid, U.N. dues, homosexual issues, gay marriage, etc. ahead of infrastructural maintenance. There was, and is, plenty of tax money flowing to Washington to fix the nation's roads and bridges. Congress simply voted the moeny away for other things, like free health care for Africa, rebuilding Iraq, and generous cash payments to foreign citizens, like Yasser Arafat, among many others."

• David Limbaugh [5]—David Limbaugh! How sad, playing second fiddle to a pustulence [5]—has steam issuing from both ears: "Hillary Clinton exploited the Minneapolis bridge collapse to tell us we need the federal government to invest in infrastructure—'to protect us' and to 'create jobs.'" Yes, well, they don't call her "Hitlery" for nothing.

• Larry Elder [6], one of the unaccountably large number of wingnuts with big [7], bushy [8], bushy [9] mustaches, says it makes no sense for the federal government to help save our nation from bridge collapses because "The federal government played virtually no role in the construction of the first-coast-to-coast highway"—in 1913.

• Melanie Morgan [10] implores us to ignore the distraction. "There's one big difference between the bridge collapse and the terrorist attacks of September 2001: the imminent danger to the residents of Minnesota has now passed; the danger our citizens face from Islamic jihadists has not."

Good thing the WorldNet winguts have top-tier Republican presidential candidates to save them from embarrassment in the crazystakes. They're perfectly sane compared to Rudy Giuliani's approach to the problem enunciated in the last Republican presidential candidate debate debate. The way to keep bridges from collapsing? Of course! More tax cuts [11]...

YEPSEN: Mayor Giuliani, how do you answer -- in Minnesota, Governor Pawlenty, who vetoed an increase in his state gas tax said now he may consider one. Is this Republican dogma against taxes now precluding the ability of you and your party to come up with the revenues that the country needs to fix its bridges?

GIULIANI: David, there’s an assumption in your question that is not necessarily correct, sort of the Democratic, liberal assumption: “I need money; I raise taxes.”

YEPSEN: Then what are you going to cut, sir?

GIULIANI: But wait, wait, wait. Let me explain it.

YEPSEN: What do you cut?

GIULIANI: The way to do it sometimes is to reduce taxes and raise more money.

And what about President Bush? He found this past week an opportune time to propose a new corporate tax cut [12]. Naturally: our "tax structure makes us less competitive."

Worried about our gobal competitiveness, Mr. Bush? I like the International Herald Tribune [13]'s diagnosis better.

Is Aging Infrastructure Slowing the U.S.?

For roughly a century, the United States has had the world's biggest economy. One of its strengths has been its infrastructure, from the rails and telegraph lines laid in the 19th century to the airports and fiber-optic networks of today. But as the United States struggles to stay ahead of China, is its aging infrastructure slowing it down?

In almost every area - from waterworks to bridges and dams, highways to mass transit - many experts have answered "yes." A report card by the American Society of Civil Engineers, issued in 2005, gave the nation C's and D's in 14 of 15 categories, with an "incomplete" added for security.

Some of these deficiencies have very real costs to economic growth. The poor condition of roads, the engineers estimated, costs $120 billion a year in repairs, operating costs and time wasted in traffic - that's equivalent to a full percentage point of the economy....

Tocqueville time: why does it always take foreigners to make sense of things we should be able to make sense of ourselves?