The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Saturday, August 18, 2007
The Bridge Falls and the Slimy Politicians show up...
Today's Opinion Journal takes on the sleazy politicians who immediately used the Minneapolis bridge collapse as an excuse to blame Republicans and call for tax increases. We could save a lot of money if we just put Dolls into Congress--you know, the ones where you just pull a string and the doll talks; they could be programmed to say "It is the Republicans' fault" and "we need to raise your taxes"....
Yes it really is that bad:
Yes it really is that bad:
Some things in politics seem to be inevitable--and one of them is that any road or bridge tragedy will be followed by an argument to raise the gasoline tax. That's what is now happening in the wake of the terrible Minnesota bridge collapse, but that state's transportation and tax record shows precisely why voters are skeptical.Read the rest. And let's prepare to send these sick opportunists home next year.
The gas tax pleas are coming from the usual suspects, in both Washington and St. Paul. James Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who runs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, recently stood beside the wreckage and recommended an increase in the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax, as a way to prevent future bridge collapses. His wing man, Alaska Republican and former Transportation Chairman Don Young, agrees wholeheartedly.
As it happens, these are the same men who played the lead role in the $286 billion 2005 federal highway bill. That's the bill that diverted billions of dollars of gas tax money away from urgent road and bridge projects toward Member earmarks for bike paths, nature trails and inefficient urban transit systems.
In Minnesota, meanwhile, politicians and editorial writers imply that the bridge collapse is somehow the fault of those like GOP Governor Tim Pawlenty who believe in the "motto" of no new taxes, as a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune put it. Mr. Pawlenty has been skewered for his veto earlier this year of a 7.5-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax increase (from 20 cents a gallon currently). Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, has told her Gopher State constituents that if President Bush weren't keeping us in Iraq, bridges wouldn't be falling down.
Labels: Attack Politics, Minneapolis bridge tragedy, Tragedy and Opportunism
Saturday, August 04, 2007
It Was only a matter of Time...
Cartoon by Eric Allie (click to enlarge)
Labels: Democrat, Minneapolis bridge tragedy, Tragedy and Opportunism
Friday, August 03, 2007
Our Crumbling Infrastructure
As Nicole Gilenas writes in City Journal, the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis is a symptom of a much larger problem: the unavailability of funding for infrastructure upgrades, because the social entitlement programs for which we have been borrowing against our future ever since the 1960's has become an untamed, resource-sucking monstrosity. If there is any one thing to blame for our deteriorating infrastructure, this would be it:
It’s easy to see how this happened. If the fifties were the decade of infrastructure, the sixties were the decade of entitlements and social services—and the sixties haven’t ended. Just five years ago, a Republican Congress scrambled to add a huge new prescription-drug benefit to the 1965 Medicare program. Even when we do spend money on infrastructure, it often suffers from confusion of purpose. Congress treats federal transportation bills as opportunities for political earmarks, rather than for rational growth. And states see infrastructure projects as ways to funnel money to politically favored contractors and powerful construction unions, rather than as worthwhile undertakings to be done as efficiently and effectively as possible.This problem will continue to haunt the country until someone has the courage to set different priorities--and I've got news for you: soaking the taxpayers for a prohibitively expensive socialistic health plan will blow any needed infrastructure improvements right out of the water. We are still paying for Johnson's "Great Society". It seems the only thing we can do now is to keep the entitlement-mad Democrats away from our wallets.
Labels: America's Infrastructure, Minneapolis bridge tragedy
Thursday, August 02, 2007
A Bridge Too Far
I wish I were not so cynical--but it is things like that which do not make it easy. When Fox broke into the Minneapolis Bridge tragedy last night, I instantly thought of Katrina and how all of the MSM's horses and all of Congress' "men" rode into town and proceeded to blame President for the Category 5 hurricane that had come through the previous day. So--the way my cynical mind works I thought "I wonder how long it will take someone to blame Bush for this one...". But I was kind of kidding... So when I saw this from John Hinderaker this evening, I was a bit shocked--but not completely:
While my wife and I watched news footage of the Minneapolis bridge collapse last night, many thoughts went through my mind. One thought that never occurred to me, however, was "How could I make political hay out of this tragedy?"Not so with Nick Coleman, the loyal Democratic party hack who writes a column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Less than twelve hours after the bridge went down, Coleman had in print a column blaming the collapse on Governor Tim Pawlenty and all others who oppose tax increases. (No one but Pawlenty was mentioned by name.) How was the governor responsible for this tragedy? A few months ago, he vetoed a five-cent a gallon tax increase. Of course, Coleman has to admit that this veto had nothing to do with the bridge collapse:
And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through....Indeed. There was never any money in any transportation bill to replace the 35W Mississippi River Bridge, because no one ever thought it was necessary. And this year's budget is obviously irrelevant to a bridge that would take years to design and build, even if that had been considered appropriate.
Read the whole thing. Disgusting.
Labels: Democrat, Media Bias, Minneapolis bridge tragedy, Unbridled Partisanship
