Where's The Money To
Replace The Infrastructure?
By H. L. Menken
8-4-7
The many victims of the collapse of the I-35 Bridge in Minnesota on Wednesday can join the growing numbers of us who are troubled by America's decaying infrastructure in the solace of knowing that our nation's super-rich have never been happier.
Only a couple of weeks after a steam conduit exploded beneath Manahattan prompting a CNN reporter to write, "With a blast that made skyscrapers tremble, an 83-year-old steam pipe sent a powerful message that the miles of tubes, wires and iron beneath New York and other U.S. cities are getting older and could become dangerously unstable" we added the Minnesota tragedy to the list of infrastructure problems coming to the fore.
Yesterday, a Reuters news story exclaimed, "U.S. politicians on Thursday treated the collapse of a highway bridge that killed or injured dozens of people as a jarring wake-up call to fix the nation's aging roads and bridges, but experts have been sounding the alarm for years with limited success."
They went on to state that, "A 2005 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country's infrastructure an unacceptable D grade -- almost failing. The group estimated the United States needed to spend $1.6 trillion over five years to put its infrastructure into good shape.
But where will the money come from to repair and replace that infrastructure? With an economy destined to decline, in part due to the subprime financing scheme that is now beginning to filter through the entire economic system, combined with massive war funding, tax cuts for the wealthy and a dollar that finds itself sitting at the doorstep of collapse, we find it increasingly impossible to afford appropriate funding for any large public needs. So, what happened to the world's richest nation that now leaves us in an impending state of permanent disrepair?
In January of 2001, a group of aggressive looters and class warmongers came to power led by Dick Cheney and G.W. Bush. Their goal was to promote the PNAC agenda and enrich themselves and their constituency along the way. In fact, the very goal of the PNAC as promoted in their literature is U.S. global domination -- which is another way of saying that the U.S. wealthy elite have ultimate control of key markets and a first claim to the subsequent riches those markets produce. But this group isn't just content on raping the rest of the world. No, they have no qualms about looting their fellow countrymen as well.
The PNAC agenda required firing up the "military industrial complex" and going to war in the Middle East to secure and control key energy reserves and establish world geopolitical dominance. This, of course, would be a costly venture; but those costs would be borne by the American public while the profits would go to the wealthy elite. For this group of looters, when it comes to spending the public's money for their own benefit, money is no object. There seems to be no amount of our money that they aren't willing to spend in pursuit of their own personal financial desires.
But spending the publics money on themselves isn't the only goal of the looters. Their other goal is the looting of the treasury by awarding themselves tax cuts even as they are increasing public spending on projects beneficial to themselves.
Economists William G. Gale and Peter R. Orszag wrote in the Minneapolis Star in September 2004 that, "Making the tax cuts permanent would generate large, backloaded revenue losses over the next 10 years. Combined with a minimal but necessary fix to the government's Alternative Minimum Tax, making the tax cuts permanent would reduce federal revenues by almost $1.8 trillion over 10 years - and that's in addition to the $1.7 trillion of revenue losses already locked into law."
A story in CNNMoney in April 2006 reported that, "Bush's tax cuts for investment income have significantly lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans, reducing taxes on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000 . . . The newspaper's tax cut analysis showed that more than 70 percent of the tax savings on investment income went to the top 2 percent (of taxpayers)."
Tom Turnipseed, in an article titled, "Dick Cheney: War Profiteer" points out that, "Just two years after he was Secretary of Defense, Cheney stepped through the revolving door linking the Department of Defense with defense contractors and became CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton was the principal beneficiary of Cheney's privatization efforts for our military's logistical support and Cheney was paid $44 million for five year's work with them before he slipped back through the revolving door of war profiteering to become Vice- President of the United States."
Turnipseed goes on to report what we all now know is true that, "The Bush administration has dished out lucrative reconstruction contracts in Iraq to favored U.S. based corporations including Halliburton." and that, "Under Cheney's leadership Halliburton out did Enron in using offshore subsidiaries as tax shelters to hide profits to bilk U.S. taxpayers." Prior to the Iraq war looting, Cheney's stock options were worth $241,498 but are now valued at more than $8 million-- for an increase of 3,281%
Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz produced a study a few years ago suggesting the Iraq war costs would exceed $2 trillion. Additionally, we find that the super-rich have awarded themselves more than $1.7 trillion in tax cuts.
On the other hand, the American Society of Civil Engineers estimated that $1.6 trillion would put the nation's infrastructure back into good shape. It seems that the choice is that we can either kill Iraqis and destroy their infrastructure, greatly enriching the looters who run our nation and their constituency along the way, or we can promote our own societal needs.
Bush/Cheney Is Not Government - It Is A Form Of Looting
Comment
Dick Eastman
"American Society of Civil Engineers estimated that $1.6 trillion would put the nation's infrastructure back into good shape. Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz produced a study a few years ago suggesting the Iraq war costs would exceed $2 trillion. Additionally, we find that the super-rich have awarded themselves more than $1.7 trillion in tax cuts. ... 2001 Nobel economics laureate George Akerlof called the Bush administration, "the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history, 'This is not normal government policy. What we have here is a form of looting.' " |
