ep,
I'm in complete agreement. More or less.
I'd love to see a sensible policy toward mass transit in California and nationwide. Unfortunately, our government has been hijacked by the automobile, oil and airline companies.
There is an egregious mal-distribution of public financing in this country favoring the guys who relish the creation of traffic jams and the sky-jocks whose industry hasn't made one penny of profit in its entire 100 year history (in aggregate).
So, is America the greatest country on the planet, or what? A country that subsidizes traffic jams and bankrupts.
Sometimes our system of governance, with special interests bribing the pols, simply isn't working for the benefit of the nation. But the executives in the auto, oil and airline industry have sucked enormous fortunes out of the misfortunes they've created for the rest of society.
******* Re: Probably the biggest infrastructure shortfall is K-12 schol buildings.
I'm a bachelor, I resent that comment. <gg>
Actually, I'm trying to make a point. There is a new demographic situation in our land. There's a much higher percentage of the population who live in childless households for various reasons. Many of us wonder about the lavish subsidies to parents that were very appropriate in the 1950s, but may not make as much sense society-wide today. I've got a niece and nephew who are enrolled in the San Diego School District. They've been getting their K-12 education in some of these manufactured classroom units. I've visited the school, and I can attest that once I was inside the classroom, I was very comfortable and felt no sense of being deprived, compared with the brick-and-mortar schools I attended in the '50s and '60s. And I really liked the fact that when I walked out of the classroom, I was in the playground, instead of some dank, institutional hallway. Considering the way that American neighborhoods seem to blossom, then age, it seems to make sense to me that we wouldn't invest in hugely expensive conventional school structures that will end up with greatly diminished school age populations in about a generation.
****** Re: The second shortfall is sesmic retrofit.
A boondoggle to match the asbestos abatement racket! |