Link to article here.

Senators may talk tough in these hearings, but the bottom line is they didn’t rein in the TxDOT oligarchy when they should have…during the last legislative session. For all the huffing and puffing they did, they never blew the house down! They know TxDOT cooked the books on the Trans Texas Corridor TTC-35 project, yet the Attorney General nor any of these “outraged” senators have done a single thing to bring anyone to justice.

Perhaps it’s that cozy relationship with those in the hotel yesterday (the highway lobby was swarming at the annual Transportation Summit where private industry and government wed themselves together, sealed with a kiss, of course) that prevents the public from getting a fair shake and encourages criminal uses of our hard earned tax dollars. Et tu, Brute? and Judas come to mind…the kiss of betrayal!

TxDOT rides in hot seat as lawmakers fume
By Patrick Driscoll
Express-News
08/07/2007

IRVING — Just two months after the state’s transportation department got its latest marching orders from the Legislature, a leading state senator said Tuesday the agency is as arrogant as ever.At a hearing of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, Chairman John Carona, R-Dallas, accused Texas Department of Transportation officials of circumventing legislative intent and even refusing to explain what they’re up to.

“What does it take to get TxDOT to listen to the will of the legislators?” he said. “It is a core attitude of arrogance that I believe still exists.”

Carona made the same complaint last spring during a wild legislative session in which more than half a dozen bills gained traction to reign in the department’s toll-road policies.

Surviving a gauntlet of political maneuvering was Senate Bill 792, which shifted some tolling powers to local agencies, limited what contracts can do and stopped leasing of toll roads — though there were many exemptions — pending further study.

Then came surprises from TxDOT officials, who said:

The moratorium on toll leases won’t affect any contracts for toll roads or rail lines for the Trans-Texas Corridor route that will parallel Interstate 35, though those projects weren’t exempted.

They might be able to get around the toll-lease ban by collecting the tolls themselves and then paying private developers returns based on traffic flows, an arrangement called availability payments.

They plan to move forward with a $2.5 million program to test speed cameras on Texas 6 near College Station and on I-10 in Hudspeth County, despite a law passed this year to prohibit cities from using such cameras.

Carona decided it was time for an update, and called a hearing on the first day of the annual Transportation Summit, which TxDOT boycotted two years ago because of disagreements with Dallas area leaders over where the Trans-Texas Corridor should go.

At the hearing, held at a Westin Hotel, Carona protested that his letters and phone calls to TxDOT about its speed-camera project have been ignored.

“All we’re asking for is the courtesy of an explanation,” he said.

He cast doubt on TxDOT’s hope of using availability payments.

“What I heard was you found another way to get around us,” he said.

State senators Robert Nichols, R- Jacksonville, and Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, the only other committee members there, also fired shots.

Nichols, who has served on the Texas Transportation Commission, which oversees TxDOT, said using availability payments would be like the state co-signing private loans.

“I’m not so sure you have the ability to do that,” he said.

After Carona noted that he couldn’t make TxDOT play nice but he sure could turn up the heat, Shapiro flashed a friendly smile and chimed in: “I think he speaks for most of us.”

Speaking for TxDOT, Assistant Director Amadeo Saenz and Transportation Commissioner Fred Underwood emphasized there’s a severe shortage of funds, which means toll roads are needed.

“Texas is facing enormous and rapidly increasing transportation needs,” Underwood said. “Achieving our goals will require a long-term program of investment in our transportation system by state, local governments and, we believe, by private participants.”

Carona said he wasn’t directing his attacks at Underwood, saying he’s too new on the commission to have caused problems, or Saenz, saying he thinks the world of him.

Link to article here. Governor Rick Perry and his cronies in the Legislature keep stepping into mine fields….when someone finally shines the light on the public fleecing and lack of fiscal responsibility the outrage gets kicked-up another notch! The fact that DPS is primarily funded from gasoline taxes, which is supposed to be a dedicated fund spent only for transportation needs, instead of by general revenues is what draws ire here. Everyone can see the Governor needs security when he travels, but the fact that he’s pushing tolls across Texas claiming there’s no money for roads rings hollow when he’s guilty of spending that diverted money on his own travel (especially when the public purpose of such is questionable).

Politicians always try to reach for a “public purpose” for their own image building trips, Perry is foremost in saying everything is for “economic development.” Think corporate welfare. He says he’s creating jobs…well, the benefits of these “new” jobs are most often completely erased by the cost to the taxpayers through corporate tax breaks and new infrastructure needs. Perry’s economic development dole outs are some of the most controversial use of taxpayer funds on his watch. Oh, but he’s a fiscal “conservative”…yeah right. The hypocrisy continues.

Perry ran up a $259,428 tab for trip security
By Peggy Fikac
Express News
08/07/07

Austin bureau AUSTIN — Foreign trips by Gov. Rick Perry and his wife have cost Texas more than a quarter of a million dollars in security provided through his protective detail, according to figures obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.Perry spokesman Robert Black touted travel Tuesday as particularly important in advancing the GOP governor’s economic development agenda.

That was a key aim of many of the 10 trips, although the list also includes a Grand Cayman vacation last year and a 2004 trip to the Bahamas with campaign donors and that the governor’s office said was to discuss education.

Perry’s direct expenses on state trips generally have been covered by a privately financed economic development program overseen by his office or business contributions or his campaign.

The security tab, however, is paid by the state. The cost of the Governor Protective Detail falls under the Texas Department of Public Safety’s highway patrol budget, financed primarily by the state gasoline tax and vehicle registration fees.

“It’s not a small amount of money,” said Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, chairman of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee, of the security cost of $259,428.07 for nine trips starting in 2004. (Security for the 10th trip, to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006, was provided by the federal government, according to Perry’s office).

But Chisum said security is an appropriate cost for government to bear.

“Obviously we wouldn’t want our governor going without security. … If he got kidnapped or something, we’d spend 10 times as much trying to get him out.” Chisum said.

Then again, Chisum quipped about the governor who sometimes draws lawmakers’ ire for his proposals and his vetoes, “There may be some debate about how much we would pay.”

The costliest security tab — at $73,413.85 — was for Perry’s trip to the Middle East in March, in the midst of the regular legislative session.

Perry, an Aggie, made the trip to help dedicate a Texas A&M University campus in Qatar and to have meetings with the aim of luring economic development projects to Texas.

“As the leader of the 10th largest economy in the world, the governor has made job creation and economic development a cornerstone of his administration, and that means … bringing jobs to this state, whether from inside our own country or from around the world,” Black said.

The other trips by Perry and/or his wife, Anita, included the Bahamas; Italy; two to Mexico; Japan; Iraq and Afghanistan; Grand Cayman; Qatar and the United Arab Emirates; Turkey; and Israel and Jordan. Anita Perry represented the governor during the 2005 trade mission to Japan.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said, “I think perhaps he should consider private security as an option. … Allowing the campaign to pay for private security during personal time is a reasonable thing. If you’re traveling as an official of the state on an official trip, then I completely understand the DPS should go with you.”

DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said the security detail’s duty is clear: “Whenever the governor travels, we go with him. That’s the way it’s been with past governors.”

Past governors’ travels also have drawn attention, although Perry seems to be the leader in foreign trips.

When then-Gov. George W. Bush campaigned for president the first time, in the 2000 election, Texas saw an increased security cost. In 1998, before Bush announced plans to run for the White House, the DPS spent $285,873 on his security detail. In 1999, when he began his campaign and traveled the country, the total jumped to $2.65 million. Bush also made a much-noted trip to Israel before launching his presidential campaign.

Bush’s predecessor, the late Democratic Gov. Ann Richards, traveled to Mexico, said former aide Chuck McDonald, but it was her U.S. travel that drew barbs.

“We got criticized just for going to California, for crying out loud,” McDonald said. “We were like, ‘We’re trying to bring the movie industry to Texas.’ Everyone is like, ‘Sure you are.'”

Political scientist Bruce Buchanan of the University of Texas said foreign travel potentially could benefit the state.

“It kind of depends on what’s going on on the trips. Obviously, there’s some element of building Perry’s profile … on the other hand, that doesn’t necessarily hurt the state,” Buchanan said. “It may in the long run help the state, should he in the long run have a future profile.”

“Ten (trips) does sound like a goodly number,” Buchanan added. “That’s quite a lot. I’m not sure I want to jump on him for that. A certain amount would be easily forgivable. This seems like quite a lot.”

Link to article here. This article echoes our concerns about transportation financing, but doesn’t call politicians out on their fiscal malfeasance. They essentially admit in this New York Times piece that they’d rather push building new highway projects so they can get their names on a road in a some selfish legacy-building enterprise than maintain our existing infrastructure before needless deaths occur. Sounds like Texas Governor Rick Perry, doesn’t it? He vetoed the PEOPLE’S eminent domain protection, the PEOPLE’S moratorium bill among others so that he can have his name on the Trans Texas Corridor. The people be damned. The farmers and ranchers be damned. Where is the outrage from these reporters???? With an admission like this, there should be indictments!

Also, they malign the Minnesota Republican Governor for having vetoed gas tax increases, but they neglect to mention it was because the state was running a $2.1 billion SURPLUS. Texas has a $14 billion surplus and they still tell us there’s no money for roads with straight faces. This is a shell game and we’re not falling for it. The Legislature had $8 billion in overtaxation and rather than give it back to the taxpayers or use it for transportation, they put it in a rainy day fund rather than release those funds to build/maintain roads. If ever there were a rainy day when we need the funds, it’s now! You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to conclude they’re purposely not funding infrastructure so they can continue to create a crisis and push a toll tax agenda (while claiming they’re not raising your taxes). Government has figured out how to make billions off our infrastructure and they’re going to tap the vein no matter what the fiscal situation.

Bridge Collapse Revives Issue of Road Spending

New York Times

MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 6 — In the past two years, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota twice vetoed legislation to raise the state’s gas tax to pay for transportation needs.

Now, with at least five people dead in the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge here, Mr. Pawlenty, a Republican, appears to have had a change of heart.

“He’s open to that,” Brian McClung, a spokesman for the governor, said Monday of a higher gas tax. “He believes we need to do everything we can to address this situation and the extraordinary costs.”

Even as the cause of the bridge disaster here remains under investigation, the collapse is changing a lot of minds about spending priorities. It has focused national attention on the crumbling condition of America’s roadways and bridges — and on the financial and political neglect they have received in Washington and many state capitals.

Despite historic highs in transportation spending, the political muscle of lawmakers, rather than dire need, has typically driven where much of the money goes. That has often meant construction of new, politically popular roads and transit projects rather than the mundane work of maintaining the worn-out ones.

Further, transportation and engineering experts said, lawmakers have financed a boom in rail construction that, while politically popular, has resulted in expensive transit systems that are not used by a vast majority of American commuters.

Representative James L. Oberstar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, sent out a news release last month boasting about Minnesota’s share of a recent transportation and housing appropriations bill.

Of the $12 million secured for the state, $10 million is slated for a new 40-mile commuter rail line to Minneapolis, called the Northstar. The remaining $2 million is divided among a new bike and walking path and a few other projects, including highway work and interchange reconstruction.

The $286 billion federal transportation legislation passed by Congress in 2005 included more than 6,000 earmarks, which amounted to blatant gifts to chosen districts, including the so-called Bridge to Nowhere in rural Alaska (that earmark was later removed after a political uproar).

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a telephone interview Monday that earmarks for transportation in federal legislation were “almost always new construction and not maintenance.” Earlier, Mr. Schumer said that he would introduce legislation next month to double a proposed federal transportation bill appropriation, with a focus on upkeep to $10 billion.

“The bottom line,” Mr. Schumer said, “is that routine but important things like maintenance always get shortchanged because it’s nice for somebody to cut a ribbon for a new structure.”

Last week, Representative John L. Mica of Florida, the ranking Republican on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, met with advisers to the Bush administration to urge a nationwide plan to address transportation needs. Rebuilding the I-35W bridge would be only “a Band-Aid” Mr. Mica said, “to a much more serious problem.”

“We don’t have any kind of strategic plan to deal with infrastructure, and we’re falling behind,” he said.

In statehouses across the country, legislators tried this past session to fill some of the void by passing bond acts or allocating money to improve roads, bridges and other pieces of the transportation system.

In Arkansas, lawmakers set aside $80 million, 15 percent of which will be used to repair county roads, 15 percent for city byways and the rest for its highways. New Mexico approved a $200 million plan for local and tribal road projects, and in Texas, $700 million was allotted for state transportation projects over the next two years.

Voters in California this year authorized nearly $20 billion in transportation bonds to pay for repairs and make other improvements to its taxed system.

“We still barely scratched the surface,” said Adam Mendelsohn, the communications director for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. “The governor is very concerned about the lack of attention that the federal government has given to infrastructure. It is probably no more acute than in California because of the tremendous strains from population growth.”

The federal budget for transportation comes largely from excise taxes, particularly on gasoline, set by Congress at 18.4 cents in 1993 and eroded over time by inflation and fuel efficiency. As such, over the last decade, state legislatures in 14 states have voted to raise the state gas tax 19 times. And several states are looking at toll roads and congestion pricing initiatives to help shore up the roads.

The National Conference of State Legislatures, a group with members from all 50 states, is calling for a 3-cents per gallon increase in the federal gas tax.

C. Michael Walton, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, helped write a series of reports issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers that have repeatedly found the nation’s highway system with insufficient money. “Continually falling short of the actual needs,” Professor Walton said, results largely from “our backlash to increases in taxes.”

Professor Walton said states had been looking to the federal government for leadership. “I am not sure transportation falls to the top of the priorities as it should barring a catastrophic failure,” he said in reference to state government spending.

A study released in May by the Urban Land Institute and Ernst & Young found that 83 percent of the nation’s transportation infrastructure was not capable of meeting the country’s needs over the next 10 years. The American Society of Civil Engineers, in its latest national report card, gave transportation infrastructure a D.

Meanwhile, there are urgent needs. The Interstate highway system turned 50 last year and is showing signs of age and inadequate upkeep. Around St. Louis, for instance, old bridges, rocky roads and tight ramp loops have led to a shutdown of parts of Interstate 64/Highway 40 — one of the most important corridors in the state — until late 2009.

“It’s so easy to let this stuff slip,” said Robert Dunphy, a senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute.

The national highway system, originally called the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, came into being under the Eisenhower administration. (The country’s population was 169 million then, and there were about 54 million registered vehicles on the roads.) It was spurred by fears that Americans would have a mobility crisis if the country were attacked in a nuclear war. By the 1970s much of the system was completed.

But since then, the nation’s highways have eroded with age and use, especially in areas like the Southwest where population booms have far outweighed the ability of roads to carry the new drivers.

Typically financing for capital transportation projects comes from the federal government matched with funds from states, which are then charged with maintaining the roads and bridges. But the federal government and states operate trust funds, filled with revenues from various excise taxes, which have been unable to maintain existing roadways adequately or finance capital expenditures.

But it may often be less the amount allocated for transportation than how it is doled out that leads to eroding highways, some critics say.

“Highway funding is supposed to be on the basis of need,” said Raymond Helmer, a transportation consultant in Houston who has worked on transportation projects for over 50 years. “There is supposed to be cost-benefit analysis, and every state does a study as required by federal government and comes up with needs, but then politicians say, ‘I don’t want that road here, I want it here.’ ”

Some transportation experts also said that though light rail and other public transportation projects made sense in cities, investing in them in sprawling suburban regions might not, even if the systems were supported, in theory, by the public.

“Too many American cities are spending far too much money on expensive rail transit projects, which are used for only 1 to 2 percent of local travel, and far too little on highway projects which are used for 95 to 99 percent of local travel,” Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute, said in an e-mail interview.

There has also been more emphasis nationwide on building new roads than on the maintenance and upkeep of old ones. Steve Ellis, the vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that monitors federal spending, said that might help move traffic in some places, but it left many others with the equivalent of a leaky roof.

“It would be irresponsible of me to go out to dinner if I couldn’t fix a leak in my roof,” Mr. Ellis said. “But that’s essentially what we do. We don’t take care of what we’ve got, but we talk a lot about building more and new.”

Link to articles here and here. The first article speaks of just some of the Texas pork barrel spending in the budget just passed (not to mention the $1.6 billion in gas taxes diverted away from transportation in this year’s budget). The second speaks to widespread discontent with politics as usual and the hunger for change, even among a Republican party faithful, Craig Shirley, who slams both parties and the political machine backed by special interests that produces the same ol’ same ol’ year after year. It’s time for a revolution. Ron Paul, who has NEVER accepted money from special interests and who has bucked the system and party politics may be the only chance to restore representative government.

Author Craig Shirley pretty well sums it up: “The candidates come and go. The congressmen come and go. The senators come and go. But the media and K Street, and the campaign consultants are here forever. They take over. They’re like cockroaches that come out in the middle of the night, and they take over.”

State budget loaded with pork-barrel spending
By: Associated Press
Aug. 4, 2007

In this year’s legislative session, it paid to support embattled House Speaker Tom Craddick.

That support translated into state dollars for an antebellum plantation home near Dallas, an Edinburg museum of South Texas history, and upgrades to a Houston park named for an influential Craddick legislative ally.

Recent budget prosperity and a presiding officer in desperate need of allies ushered in a return of pork-barrel spending during the recent session. In the new budget for 2008 and 2009, those who helped Craddick survive a bipartisan coup try were big winners of an estimated $176 million in so-called “special items.”

But Craddick spokeswoman Alexis DeLee says the “budget process that took place this last session is the same as it’s always been.”

Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, supported Craddick. He got a $600,000 matching grant for renovations at the Sylvester Turner Park in Houston. Turner says renovations to the 27-year-old park are needed, including new bathrooms to replace portable toilets.

Rep. Helen Giddings is another Democrat who supported Craddick. She helped the South Dallas suburb of DeSoto get $500,000 to buy the historic Nance Farm, a plantation home built in the 1850s.

Border area Democrats, a key bloc of support for Craddick’s re-election, did particularly well in the $153 billion budget.

Democratic Ryan Guillen of Rio Grande City got an $800,000 matching grant for a new park in his small border town and a new rural technology center for vocational skills training. A zoo in Brownsville and a soccer complex in Kingsville will get almost $700,000 combined for renovations. Another $10 million was set aside for Harlingen’s South Texas Hospital and $1 million for a border security technology and training center in McAllen.

Democratic Representative Aaron Pena of Edinburg helped bring the city $3 million for a new drug treatment center and $750,000 for the Will Looney Legacy Park and a museum of South Texas history.

___________________________________

Gingrich: US on Verge of ‘Golden Age of Freedom’
By Evan Moore
CNSNews.com Correspondent
August 03, 2007

(CNSNews.com) – America is on the cusp of a “golden age of freedom and prosperity,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in a speech Thursday before a group of young conservatives.

No doubt, America faces “enormous challenges,” Gingrich told the crowd. But he predicted that the young conservatives in attendance, along with conservatives nationwide, would lead America to a brighter future.

Gingrich was speaking at the Young America’s Foundation’s 29th National Conservative Students Conference, held at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Other speakers at the week-long conference included former Virginia Sen. George Allen, talk-radio host Michael Reagan and syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

Gingrich told the assembled students they were the potential leaders of the next great wave of American reformers, in the tradition of the Jeffersonians, the Lincoln Republicans and the New Deal Democrats.

But for that wave to sweep across the country and help build a better America, young conservatives need to reject the current modus operandi in the political and social culture, he said.

Disdain for the system

America today, according to Gingrich, is divided. There is “the world that works,” exemplified by the success and accomplishment of private enterprise, and there is “the world that fails,” typified by the “old decaying bureaucracies” of Washington, D.C. — the remnants of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs.

The old bureaucratic, one-size-fits-all model is slow, inefficient and wasteful, said Gingrich. On the contrary, companies such as FedEx and UPS, for instance, can track millions of packages they are shipping in real time, while the federal government has failed to locate the millions of illegal immigrants living in American society, he said.

Gingrich then quipped that his solution to ending illegal immigration would be to mail packages to those illegal immigrants, store their addresses and then round the immigrants up.

The former House Speaker said he was “troubled by the failure of both major parties” in correctly addressing the issues and problems Americans face. Democrats, said Gingrich, are “trapped in a fantasy world” and the “party of unionized bureaucracy” while Republicans refuse to admit the nature of the systematic failure of big government.

Gingrich cited the example of Detroit — which he had previously discussed on Fox News Sunday — as an indicator of this failure. Detroit epitomizes the failure of the bureaucracy-based approach, he said. The Motor City has lost nearly half its population over the last 60 years. Its residents now have a per-capita income that is ranked 62nd in the nation. In 1950, Detroit ranked first.

Today, only 25 percent of Detroit’s high school freshmen eventually graduate on schedule. And a majority of those who drop out of high school, said Gingrich, are likely to end up in jail. “How can we tolerate systems more likely to send people to prison than to college?” he said.

As for President Bush’s global war on terror, “none of you should believe we are winning this war,” said Gingrich. “There is no evidence that we’re winning. … This is a phony war.”

Further, the failure to swiftly detect and deal with the terrorist cell members involved in the planned attack on Fort Dix, and the lawsuit of the “flying imams” against US Airways revealed that “our system is broken,” said Gingrich, and that “something is fundamentally wrong.”

To defeat the threat of radical Islamists, America must devote more resources to its intelligence, defense and foreign relations services, he said, adding that Web sites and religious services that incite Muslims to commit jihad should be shut down.

“For us to be serious about winning this campaign is going to require a dramatically more serious strategy and a dramatic overhaul of our bureaucracies, and a significant increase in resources,” said Gingrich.

Presidential ambitions muted

There has been speculation that Gingrich may run for president in 2008. He has fueled that speculation by dropping hints to the media and expressing disdain for the current conventional means of running for president.

While Gingrich did not discuss his views on running for president at the conference, conservative and author Craig Shirley told Cybercast News Service that he shares Gingrich’s disdain for the enormous fundraising and bureaucratic operations prevalent in contemporary presidential campaigns.

“The permanent power structure in Washington is the national media, the K Street lobbyists and the campaign consultants,” said Shirley. “Politicians are merely vehicles in which to have fun and profit.

“The candidates come and go. The congressmen come and go. The senators come and go. But the media and K Street, and the campaign consultants are here forever. They take over. They’re like cockroaches that come out in the middle of the night, and they take over.”

Shirley emphasized that the means to break the hold of Washington’s “consultant-ocracy” rests with the American public. “The consultants are not the gate-keepers to the nomination,” he said. “The voters are.”

Link to article about the tragedy here.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Collapse due to frivolous earmarks, starving the gas tax & diverting funds AWAY from roads/bridges

San Antonio, TX Friday, August 3, 2007 – Citizens against the push for privatizing & tolling our highways in order to address our Nation’s aging infrastructure see the Minnesota bridge tragedy as a transportation wake-up call.

“It’s criminal that our politicians passed a highway bill in 2005 that funded a $223 million bridge to nowhere in Alaska instead of retrofitting this bridge on one of America’s most heavily traveled interstates,” fumes an incensed Terri Hall, Founder/Director of Texans United for Reform and Freedom (TURF). “We have serious misplaced priorities in this country and politicians who are derelict in their duties.”

The 2005 federal highway bill (SAFET-LU) had 6,000 earmarks for frivolous Congressional pet projects taken from our gas taxes at a time when the Bush Administration was pushing the privatization & tolling of our highways saying new taxes were necessary to address congestion and aging infrastructure. By design, they want to DOUBLE TAX toll the traveling public to plug their own leaky boat.

“What we have are politicians who are now blaming the taxpayers for NOT giving them enough of our money to pay for infrastructure when, in fact, it is they who have habitually pilfered and diverted billions from both federal and state gas tax funds which has caused our infrastructure to fall into disrepair. Now they are guilty of needless loss of life. Truly blood is on their hands,” reflects Hall.

In Texas, twenty-five percent of fuel taxes are diverted to public schools and another 5% to things that don’t relate to highways. The Texas Legislature has diverted $10 billion from the state highway fund in the last 20 years alone while also defrauding taxpayers into thinking the only way out of our infrastructure woes is to now toll us for what our taxes have already built and paid for and to sell our highway system to the highest bidder while STILL failing to keep our bridges and highways safe.

“Let the revolution begin! The public WILL rise-up to boot these politicians out of office if indictments don’t do it first. Heads need to roll rather than to come after us for tolls,” remarks Hall.

_______________________________

By David Alexander
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – 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.

Governors in at least four states — Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa and Pennsylvania — ordered new bridge inspections or were considering them following the collapse of the highway bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis on Wednesday.

Other governors ordered administrative reviews, while federal lawmakers demanded action.

“A bridge in America just shouldn’t fall down,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat at a news conference in Minneapolis. “We have to get to the bottom of this.”

“We should look at this tragedy that occurred as a wake-up call for us,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. “We have all over the country a crumbling infrastructure; highways, bridges and dams. We really need to take a hard look at this.”

Rep. James Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, blamed President George W. Bush’s administration for shortchanging road and bridge repair in a highway funding bill two years ago.

Bush, he said, “failed to support a robust investment in surface transportation,” adding the president insisted on only $2 billion a year for bridge reconstruction when lawmakers were pushing for $3 billion a year.

When Congress next rewrites the highway funding bill in 2009, “we’re not going to settle for a bargain-basement transportation” policy, Oberstar said.

The problem of aging infrastructure is not new. A 2002 report by the Department of Transportation said about 30 percent of the nation’s highway bridges were structurally or functionally deficient.

While the report found the figure had been declining, it warned that all the country’s bridges were deteriorating with age and growing traffic volumes were increasing the strain on them.

ALMOST FAILING ‘D’ GRADE

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.

“This has been out there for quite some time,” said Kent Harries, an engineering professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s not only the transportation and bridge infrastructure, it is infrastructure in general.”

Bridges actually received comparatively high marks in the civil engineering report: an acceptable C grade, compared with D notes for the country’s aviation system, dams, drinking water, electric power grid and hazardous waste system.

Robert Dodds, head of the engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said what made the bridge collapse so shocking was the general reliability of bridges nationwide.

“We take their safety for granted every day,” he said.

But Harries said infrastructure failures happen more frequently than most people notice, pointing to the collapse of a concrete bridge box girder near Pittsburgh in 2005 and the recent explosion of a steam pipe in Manhattan. Part of the problem is finding maintenance funds.

“We recognize that there is a problem but there just seems to be this inability to move on it, partially I suspect because the problem is so amazingly large. The dollar values that we’re talking about, they defy understand,” Harries said.

Funding it all would require trillions of dollars. The only way to address the issue is to prioritize, he said, but then politics comes into play.

“The fact of the matter is nobody gets their name on a bridge repair,” Harries said. “You build a bridge, you get your name on it.”

(Additional reporting by Jon Hurdle in Philadelphia, Carey Gillam in Kansas City and Rick Cowan in Washington)