Hooray for Tax Cuts!
I get the feeling that when people look back on the I-35 bridge collapse, they’ll be qualifying it with the word “first” :
More than 70,000 bridges across the country are rated structurally deficient like the I-35W bridge, and engineers estimate repairing them all would take at least a generation and cost more than $188 billion.
“At least a generation”, as in “it’s been at least a generation since we’ve had a White House and Congress that were both run by responsible people”.
And that’s just the bridges. We’ve got steam pipes exploding in New York, a power grid that blacked out a third of the country a year or two ago, and a million other disasters waiting to happen because the grown ups aren’t in charge and haven’t been for a very long time.
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Well, that makes no sense at all.
“tax cuts” refer to federal taxes generally, especially when given your reference to the WH and Congress.
Bridges, steam pipes, power grids … and almost all the million other disasters are paid for by state and local governments.
So … logically you must fully support those federal tax cuts then?
Comment by Mark Olson — August 3, 2007 @ 8:06 pm
…Bridges, steam pipes, power grids … and almost all the million other disasters are paid for by state and local governments…
…In many cases, with money received from the federal government. One of the most notorious examples is Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere.” Widely regarded as a huge waste of taxpayer dollars, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens was able to get it built in his home state with earmarked federal funds.
Comment by Doobie — August 4, 2007 @ 3:23 am
Mark Olson –
Your comment is quite disingenuous.
You know perfectly well that the mantra of “lower taxes” has been employed by the Republican party at every level of government, from small counties and municipalities up to the federal government.
You know perfectly well that this mantra is parroted verbatim all the time, with no reference to what standard they should be “lower” than, nor to what “taxes” are specifically indicated. You can easily imagine the reception of anyone at any Republican gathering who were to propose that there is some necessarily level of taxation and spending, and suggest what it might be, rather than merely holler for “lower taxes” and “smaller government”, without reference to any rational standard.
It is highly reasonable to conjecture that, when a long period of domination by the ideology just described above coincides with a period of major deterioration of the transportation infrastructure (among other things), that there is a connection.
Comment by harold — August 5, 2007 @ 10:03 am
I know you’re all about your crazy talky-talky “words” and “logic,” but that’s just a bunch of elitist hooey! Everybody knows that taxes are bad! Remember? Taxes bad! See, how it oughta work is, they take all the taxes away, but the government provides us services for free anyway! Because it’s free to do stuff! See? That’s why we shouldn’t have to pay taxes!
Comment by briantologist — August 6, 2007 @ 8:58 am