Eugene Robinson: Our politicians are flunking the vision test

[kpete]

Somehow, we seem to have lost the capacity for long-range planning and execution — at a time when, arguably, foresight and patience are more essential than ever before.

There is a ready-made excuse for doing nothing on climate change: the fact that other nations, too, must act if we are to avoid parboiling the planet. But this is not true of the other big issues that our leaders acknowledge but cannot bring themselves to properly address.

All this rising, however, is gradual. The impact of climate change, while undeniably real, is somewhere between subtle and imperceptible when viewed in an election-to-election time frame. Likewise, measures to decrease carbon emissions would have no immediate payoff. The question is what atmospheric temperatures will be like at the end of the century, not at the end of Senator So-and-So’s next term.

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Anyone who travels to other industrialized countries comes back with the realization that U.S. infrastructure is falling behind. Many countries have much faster and more widely available Internet service, which has to be a national priority in the information age. Other countries have newer airports, deeper ports, faster trains, sounder bridges. Yet the bipartisan consensus on infrastructure spending has disintegrated, and I believe this is because such projects take time — and vision.

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I haven’t mentioned the national debt, and that’s because interest rates are at historic lows. This seems to me a perfect time to make long-term investments that will not produce returns in one year, or even five years, but that promise to create the necessary conditions for sustained economic growth.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-our-politicians-are-flunking-the-vision-test/2014/11/03/2776c154-639e-11e4-836c-83bc4f26eb67_story.html

[gordianot]

1. To the best I can tell Republicans have one goal.

Cut taxes for the very wealthy. The details is how do you accomplish that? They vary from limiting voting, impeaching the African American President, eliminate the need for third world immigrants by creating a third world America here.

[merrily]

2. Lost our capacity for long-range planning? Did we ever really have it?

Bridges that don't fall down from under vehicles are NOT an example of long range planning. That's basic maintenance.

An example of long-range planning was FDR drawing a grid on a map of the US, as the first sketch of a national highway system, in 19 fucking 38.