Obama Program Will Tackle Repairs First
That's what a stimulus package is: a way to get money into circulation, fast. Hopefully we'll tackle bigger projects later:
President-elect Barack Obama calls it "the largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s." New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg compares it to the New Deal -- when workers built hundreds of bridges, dams and parkways -- while saying it could help close the gap with China, where he recently traveled on a Shanghai train at 267 mph.
Most of the infrastructure spending being proposed for the massive stimulus package that Obama and congressional Democrats are readying, however, is not exactly the stuff of history, but destined for routine projects that have been on the to-do lists of state highway departments for years. Oklahoma wants to repave stretches of Interstates 35 and 40 and build "cable barriers" to keep wayward cars from crossing medians. New Jersey wants to repaint 88 bridges and restore Route 35 from Toms River to Mantoloking. Scottsdale, Ariz., wants to widen 1.5 miles of Scottsdale Road.
Rebuild the broken infrastructure for the unsustainable carbon based car culture that has got us into the sh!t hole that we are in, in the first place.
Full speed ahead back to the 20th (American) Century!
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
Pouring money into fixing up all the highways so we can continue to "Happy Motor"!
I say we should update/re-build the railroad systems so every major city in the country is linked. This way we can move people, food and "stuff" from city to city in the future without being reliant on oil.
But, alas, it seems no one in a position of authority is really thinking about the future of this country, they seem to be merely fixated on maintaining a status quo that is doomed to fail.
Idiots.
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
88 bridges? Geez, we have neglected our infrastructure for a damn long time. I guess the GOP (and Dems who love the GOP) thought that people themselves were supposed to build bridges in their spare time away from their jobs, or some magic fairy was going to build one.
Was there any mention of Light Rail or Mass Transit or anything other than rebuilding 50 year old technology?
Building solar collectors and rail that could be powered by electricity are affordable solutions that minimize and/or reduce environmental damage as well as create jobs and stimulating the economy.
If projects like those don't happen, we'll know it's bad business as usual.
That's what a stimulus package is: a way to get money into circulation, fast. Hopefully we'll tackle bigger projects later ...
Obama's longer-term plans are exactly as you suggest, namely green and appropriate technology. But meanwhile, the basics have to be shored up.
Even if we all go Amish and get around with horse and buggy, we'll still need roads and bridges that are passable.
Could be to put all power lines underground.
Why not? Their going to be working on the roads and highways.
Just get rid of all the old telephone poles and put everything underground.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
Are very, very much more expensive to lay because of ground water and all that ground water and high voltage implies. And then vastly more expensive to maintain.
They gave up on that one hundred years ago.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
were installed in my town thirty-five or forty years ago and with no problems that I'm aware of. The heavy voltage feeder lines outside of my community that feed my town are still on poles but for the 450,000 residents here we like the clean look and the lack of power outages that we've had. Underground lines means vehicles that slam into poles don't give us power outages, nor do ice storms and we have a couple of those a year here, in fact when we have power outages here it is generally because a storm or a vehicle did damage to the above ground lines feeding the community.
That must have been when they were laying all those telephone lines across the bottom of the oceans.
It's not that expensive. If they're going to work on the roads, why not?
The major cost would be digging up the roads and repairing them.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
Omg think of the cost!
Good point, Benny -- yes, we need to consider many kinds of projects. An idea I had years ago was a system of canals and reservoirs in places like Texas and Oklahoma, where it seems they have both horrible floods and horrible droughts. Canals could channel a lot of floodwaters into reservoirs, where they'd help during the droughts. This could help throughout the whole South, in fact, where it's predicted that global warming will create more droughts as well as more and worse hurricanes.
For a second there I thought the headline read: Obama Will Tackle Reporters First.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Baloney. The workers who get the repair-related jobs will use as much of their income as they can to pay down debt or save (meaning a lot of the income will wind up in banks).
The era of buying shit just to buy it is over.
This is the Main route from Mexico to Canada the Transnational Highway system. Texas is already Stealing land to build this transnational corridor.
"I-35/TTC corridor that is to run south to north through the center of the state, was originally proposed as a 1,200-foot-wide, grade-level right of way with traffic lanes for passenger vehicles sandwiched between truck lanes, high-speed passenger and freight rail lines, and a 200-foot-wide multi-use utility zone. Constructed according to the original specifications, the corridors would have consumed 146 acres of land per mile, irreversibly damaging the environment and dividing or displacing scores of families and communities along its path."
This fiasco may have been slowed but a new round is expected in January.
Donaldd
F*ck Oklahoma. They went for McCain/Palin by a 2-1 margin over Obama http://electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/Graphs.... They voted in a landslide for more of the same of the Bush years meaning in part crumbling infrastructure, so let them have it. If they want their infrastructure repaired let them pray to the Lord and see if he will build it for them. If Oklahomans bitch about it tell em their portion of the budget allocated for their infrastructure is going instead to build infrastructure in Iraq for the war they support.
First look after the states that voted for Obama and for change and if there is any money left after that, throw whatever crumbs are left to the red states. Especially the deep red states like Oklahoma, Utah, Idaho and the deep south states. F*ck em.
Federal contracting is still in the mode of awards to Halliburton size companies first and often only. The Administration and Congress need to direct as many contracts to as many different LOCAL companies as possible. Large Federal construction projects are a huge boon to a local economy with enormous multipliers. But if contracting is handled as it has been under BushCo and companies are allowed to bring in cheap foreign labor as virtual slaves then you might as well piss the money down a rat hole for all the good it will do. That goes for specifying use of American-made materials, too.
The days of the Bushco "no-bid contract" had better be gone, gone, gone.
... is a good start. It does get money into the economy quickly, because the plans are already drawn up -- just put them out for bids, and start. On the other hand, watch out for massive PORK. Who's to say what repairs are "essential"? We could blow a lot of money on make-work that doesn't get us anywhere. Goes back to the old problem of who guards the guardians of the public funds. I hope Obama realizes that, and knows how to be cautious about it.
At least most of that 'make work' will make someTHING. Not just shuffle paper around. Every state DOT has a long list of things that needed fixed long ago. Most often, pork results in infrastructure.
I expect this stimulus package will be successful for two major reasons:
1) The entire world is consumed in solving the current financial situation, so the US is definitely not acting alone. Canada for example has approved almost $3 billion to the auto industry on the condition that the package in the US is first approved. Even events that would otherwise cause a huge tumult such as Syria being bombed a while back are being basically ignored because Bush is on his way out and nobody wants to start on a bad foot with the new administration.
2) Everything Obama touches succeeds. This may be a gross generalization, but Obama is just good at running organizations, making them grow and making them work. His attention to detail is superb, and you can see it in everything he's done over the past while: vetting VP candidates, applications for employment and cabinet member selection, preparing for a smooth transition in ministries starting Jan. 20, etc. He's not simply content to just sit back and leave everything at arm's length.
3) It's based on long-term growth (infrastructure, new technology).
Rebuilding roads and bridges? ZERO mention of mass transit?? How is this plan supposed to help end our dependence on foreign oil, a theme which Obama campaigned so heavily on?? This so-called 'New Deal' is nothing more than routine highway maintenance projects that were already scheduled to take place before Obama came along, and have been massively overhyped out of proportion by the corporate media. A New Deal for the oil companies perhaps, but it does nothing to help end our dependence on fossil fuels.
Dude one step at a time. Obama is dealing with literally decades of inaction and an infrastructure that's crumbling beyond repair. Let's deal with the major problems first before we pour money into mass transit, which I agree we TOTALLY need. However cars are not going away any time soon and when bridges are collapsing, it becomes a major safety issue.
Get the roads fixed, get the economy stabilized, THEN get the mass transit running!
Business need good infrastructure to operate. We need businesses operational to create jobs. Jobs pay taxes which will pay for infrastructure. That's the cycle of a strong economy.
that they better use prevailing UNION scale wage laws for these projects
That each state has to provide 20% of cost? With what if the state is having it's own financial problems?
dictate that Federal projects have a local sponsor that shares project costs. Not all bad since it does provide local buy-in and project ownership. Congress can set whatever cost-share rate they wish in the appropriation, including zero and can allow work-in-kind credit in lieu of cash.
Some of these repairs might not be "sexy" or green enough for some of you, but many of these projects have been abandoned for years. We get our house in order before we start on the "sexy stuff".
It's like fitting your roof with a whole lotta solar panels, while your foundation is crumbling.
These projects are little more than routine maintenance projects already scheduled to take place long before Obama came into the picture. It's laughable how Obama and the media try to sex it up by using marketing terms like 'New Deal' and 'massive public works projects' as if the idea of repairing aging infrastructure is some kind of amazing revolutionary act. It is nothing of the sort and smacks of dishonesty at best.
Well it SEEMS to be a revolutionary idea after so many years of neglect by the Republitards, who would rather take all that money and piss it away in the sands of Iraq, or give it all to their rich crony friends in the form of "bailout packages".
You know, it's nice to finally have an adult in charge, and haters like you who would lay the blame of this mess on Obama's feet and call him dishonest, are truly the lowest of the low.
On my way to work every morning and back, I constantly see the highway and road maintenace crews busy every morning repairing roads all over my county. I know because I have to put up with the traffic delays it (understandably) causes and this maintenance has been constantly going on and present everywhere across my county during the past 8 years. I'm no fan of Bush, but from my experience this claim of neglect has been grossly overstated. I have lived in Washington state and California during the last 8 years and have yet to see any signs of this so-called neglect.
Most of those projects were started in the Clinton years ("Your nickel at work.") A few things WA still needs now:
Alaska Way Viaduct
State Route 9 (road of death)
SR520 bridge
I-5 from Canada to Everett is in bad shape
and I still want my monorail!
it's putting people to work, putting a paycheck in peoples hands, as many people as possible. That was the crux of the New Deal needed the last time republicans ruined the economy and it should be the strategy for this latest mess created by conservatives. Use labor intensive construction techniques to maximize the number of bodies needed on a job. Any other public benefit, like safer roadways and bridges, is gravy.
The problem is, the highway maintenance crews are already very busy, and have been for the last 8 years. I have seen the crews out there busy working to repair roads and highways everywhere in the several states I have lived in or traveled to during the last 8 years and still do. I really have seen little sign of this so-called neglect that some have accused.
I live in Washington state as well (I see you edited that part out). You don't use the following bits of road for travel here?
I405/SRE520 interchange (being fixed after years of delay), 520 bridge, The viaduct, which sheds chunks of concrete onto the street below. It is closed down every 6 months for inspections and is built on waterfront landfill (Remember parts of SF in the Loma Prieta quake? Earthquake liquifation is the only term you need to know).
Also, the I5 corridor between Tacoma and Everett is in need of resurfacing, which is being done piece meal.
SR 2 over the pass, needs a $1.2b fix to become safer -- at least so people stop calling it the 'Highway of Death"
The Mercer Street Mess -- The I5 off and on ramping has been a bane to all of us who live on South Lake Union. I've had a couple of(Not my fault) accidents there myself.
And let's not forget the cluterfuck of them all, The West Seattle 'Freeway' Oh sure, there's that nice chunk of roadway over the Duwamish, that was replaced after that drunken pilot [whose wife later killed him, chopped him up and cremated him in the burn barrel] smashed into the old death trap, but there's that one mile stretch of 10 foot wide lane, 35 mph chunked up POS roadway that causes all sorts of heartache bullshit and death.
I think you are not really paying attention to the roads here. My friend from California always refers to our roads here sarcastically as "Those ultra-smooth WA State roads. You can feel the diff when you leave Oregon."
me-oww!
I moved to Seattle the year their Floating Bridge across Lake Washington sank to the bottom of the lake during a storm. I worked as a consultant to WSDOT (Washington State Dept. of Transportation). The WSDOT was painfully short of funds, and grasping at straws trying to keep the rest of the statewide highway system afloat (yeah, joke intended).
The city was growing so fast that highway construction simply could not keep up. Nor could basic safety repairs. Some stuff just had to be "let go until later." When I moved away ten years later, the WSDOT was farther behind than ever.
Multiply that by dozens of large cities nationwide.
killed them in OT. If they weren't a State agency, they'd be bankrupts
me-oww!
I didn't know this was a Western Washington blog :)
I agree with you. We have construction but some of those jobs are paid for by the state and are milked to death. They move slower than a Washington slug.
We have other death highways that need fixing also. I travel the roads you have named and stopped using the viaduct years ago. I worked on second ave and when I'd go to lunch, I was taking my life in my hands when crap sailed off the viaduct ALL THE TIME. I never felt safe going to the waterfront with my kids. We have many many bridges that need fixing. We that live here know what needs to be done as we are the ones sitting in traffic for ever and ever daily
do some of the "shovel ready plans" for infrastructure but then put more glass in the ground for
for increased broadband capacity/accessibility.
There already is a lot of dark fiber left over from the .com bust. At least in the metro areas. Verizon is going ape shit with FiOS here in Snohomish county, WA. Even the reservation I live on is almost fully fibered by the tribes' broadband service and Tulalip Data Services. The price of IP transport (backbone class) has dropped almost two orders of magnitude in the last 10 years. There are still pockets of need, but that is mostly in remote areas.
A trillion in stimulous is more debt. Debt is what has gotten us into this crisis. More debt will not solve it. It will only put some air into an already deflating credit bubble, while turning Federal deficits parabolic, which the bailout bills are doing already. All parabolics fail, just as Bear Stearns failed from parabolic leveraging. It is only a matter of time and time is running out.
Wall Street Journal online noted that the FED has approached congress about getting permission to issue federal debt. The FED wants to circumvent congress in the government's borrowing of money.
Hard times are coming.
Business need good infrastructure to operate. We need businesses operational to create jobs. Jobs pay taxes which will pay for infrastructure (and pay down debt.) That's the cycle of a strong economy.
Look, we don't have jobs and this is a start to put income back into the system. However, I hope someone with a red marker goes through some of these mayor requests as many are just plain stupid and a waste of money we don't have right now. I scanned 4 towns I know and just got pissed about the nerve of these mayors. For too many years we let the roads, bridges etc go to hell and always put them on the back burner for some other sparkling thing we didn't need. Our roads are outdated before even being finished. Worry about the gas later when the auto companies are forced to come up with something green to operate autos...which should be soon Stop nit pickin. It is a start for employment that can't be shipped out of the country. We must go back to basics before we decorate with waste or get smarter in raising monies someplace else. We must get right down to the nitty gritty to rebuild and bring jobs back. We need to demand that 700 Billion back from the banks and use it wisely instead of CEO'S payout and stock holders profits. That is just plain stealing from all of us. I will never do business with those banks or insurance companies again. They get their money free or for a half a percent and we pay anywhere from 12% to 38%. That is stealing. Lets give the guy a chance. He is in a hurricane of forces we have never seen before and no President has ever had to face before.
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