gene yo really are a clown. how dare the government take funds from an emergency fund for an emergency.

i told you that the dams are safe.

as for the bridges clinton was in office for 8 years. he was cutting military funds. how come he didn't get those bridges fixed. bush was thrust into a war because of something called 9/11.

on top of all of that it isn't the feds job to do the work it is the states job.

and you want drengin to pay for all of that right.


so drengin you might as well write a check since gene thinks you have to pay for all of our troubles.

1.7 trillion/50=34 billion per state.

yes i know not every state has the same problems and some need more work than others.

but if you do what gene does the problem seems in surmountable. if you break it down it isn't as big.

and i heard on fox news that it would only take 190 billion to fix the 77,000 bridges.

Reply By: danielost Posted: Friday, August 03, 2007
Gene you really are a clown. How dare the government take funds from an emergency fund for an emergency?

“I told you that the dams are safe.”

Then why are 3,500 Dams given a safety evaluation of "D"? YOU ARE AN IDIOT!

Reply By: danielost Posted: Friday, August 03, 2007
“The magnitude of the infrastructure repairs that are needed FAR exceed what the States alone can provide. The latest estimate from the Civil Engineers is that we need $1.7 Trillion.


and you want dredging to pay for all of that right.


so dredging you might as well write a check since gene thinks you have to pay for all of our troubles.”


Guess what you mental Midget-- That is JUST what The Fed is doing now that the bridge collapsed!

danielost--it has to do with how the funds are allocated across the five pots of FHWA money (bridges being just one). The money (or "obligation authority) has to go back and it has to come out of these pots. FHWA is simply asking the states not to bankrupt one pot only.

i didn't use dredging you idiot i used

The overriding issue is the size of the problem. If we were talking about a few bridges and a dam or two we could alter the allocation on the money. The issue is we have one 8" pie to do what will take 1,000 pies to accomplish. The amount needed in all the states far exceeds their entire budget for YEARS!

It has to do with looking at the long term needs of the country and insuring the resources are available to deal with them. That is simply not being done. The resources we do have are in some cases allocated to things far less important and in other areas we simply do not have nearly enough resources given the size of the issue. The longer we delay acting the more costly it will become when we have no choice like in the bridge collapse!

then tell congress to get to work on it. and stop trying to spend the money on a universal medical program

ditto to that.

Col,

I still await your rebuttal in WWW Link.

None of you know why that bridge collapsed, because it isn't known yet to anybody, not even a preliminary cause is known. Nobody knows how many are dead from it, and you are already assigning blame.

Preliminary evidence suggests it was a bridge in need of repair and that it was identified as "deficient structurally" well folks 70,000 other bridges in this country fall into that category but that doesn't necessarily mean they are expected to fall over tomorrow.

I will suppose that since this type of failure doesn't happen often that it was indeed a combination of things, wide ranging temperature conditions over the past few days, extra stress placed on the side of the bridge the traffic was being bottlenecked through, possible vibrations occurring during the roadwork being performed, human error in the roadwork. There are lots of single possible things that could have occurred, or a combination of things could have. It will probably turn out to be the latter.

One thing we can all agree on is it should not have happened. Nobody should be driving on a bridge that is unsafe, and the inspection process routine should be good enough that when a bridge collapse like this is possible it's repaired/replaces or destroyed.

Assigning blame before the facts are known is irresponsible.

While we are on the topic, I'll further agree that spending more and more money in Iraq gets us no new bridges stateside.

I jumped most of the replies after about half way when I realize that it became a pointless debate over whether the money spent in Iraq would have saved these people or not. The part that disturbs me about all of this senseless debating is that The steam pipeline in New York was around 100 years old and the bridge was around 40. The idea of replacing the steam pipe infrastructure of New York is unrealistic to say the least.

The entire City would be brought to a stand still and millions if not billions of money would be lost due to the streets being block for demolition and reconstruction of the pipes and roads, power lines, phone lines, fiber optic lines, water lines, sewer lines, etc could and would be damages while trying to repair these steam pipelines and the traffic would be 20 times worse than it is at this moment. Unrealistic does not even begin to describe this idea. It takes lots of inspections and analyzing the consequences of the work to even begin to fix a pipe considers too damaged to ignore.

The bridge had been deemed a problem since 1990. Why was nothing done about it back then? Why 17 years later does everyone scream Bush is at fault? Was bush in the White house 17 years ago? Was the war in Iraq happening 17 years ago? What happened to all that money that is claimed to have been taken out of the FHWA by the war before the war started?

All I want to know is why nobody (except me)is raising hell over those who did nothing when we were not at war, when the problem had already been raised, when we had the money to do it, when Bush was not even in office? Why criticize today and ignore the previous responsible people? It's sad how easily we give a free pass to those who are just as much responsible back then as those today simply because they are no longer there.

I think a much FAIRER criticism could have been given to the (fortunately scratched) "road to nowhere" legislation put forth by a DEMOCRAT controlled Congress. The money from that could have addressed the deficiencies on this bridge...and that would have been a more reasonable criticism.

The truth is, there's malfeasance enough to go around...why single out one party or person?

Gid -- Is there another "to nowhere" case that I missed (it sounds like there is). I konw that the "bridge to nowhere" was introduced by/the pet project of Republican Senator Stevens and passed in the last Congress (which was Republican controlled) -- what's the one that you are referring to? Regardless of the specifics, your point seems valid-- money is not making its way to the right places...the quesiton is how does that get fixed.