Great Rachel Maddow rant tonight about infrastructure.

[Brigid]

She's talking about the power outages in different parts of the country. She also pointed out that there have been serious outages in the DC area and muses aloud that this ought to get something done about the issue.

[upi402]

1. Our grid is ancient. We need a jobs act to fix infrastructure

But Repukes block ANY mention of it.

And then cry, "WHERE ARE THE JOBS OBAMA?"

[Igel]

6. There are two real issues.

The first is local. For that you have a public utilities commision that sets fees and such. They keep fees low. Low fees = low maintenance/no upgrade to infrastructure. This is a local problem, all the more so since all the funding is local and all the issues with easements and such rights are local and vary neighborhood by neighborhood. It's a community issue, and even at the state level runs into problems.

The second is national or state. When we lived up North there was a push to upgrade transmission towers. In the event of a shock to the power grid, huge swaths of the state could go powerless. Happened once, and it was largely unnecessary. But for that you need all kinds of jurisdictions to sign off on placement of the high voltage towers, of the lines, of access roads. Lots of NIMBYism, lots of people in the country wanting to preserve their nice views. An act of Congress would have given the authorities trying to route the transmission lines a lot of leverage, but there was no will to make it happen. Because it would have offended important supporters of the senators at the time.

When I was in California they had the same debate (second issue) for the same kinds of reasons. It's an evergreen problem.

[upi402]

8. FERC can promulgate regulation, can't it?

That is - if we had a functional congress and a real opposition party to corporate energy giants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005

[Booster]

7. And if a bridge happens to collapse the Repukes will say

"Well, it's Obama's fault. He didn't do anything about the bridges". God, I hate the ones in Congress.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. Too bad Sycophants and Casuistries can't produce Energy

D.C enjoys a bubble made from the rest of the countries sweat & misery ,the Mesopotamia of opportunists,their esoteric conversations keep us in the dark ,Hence I'll light a candle for them

[elleng]

3. And the Transportation bill has been SIGNED,

so maybe we're getting somewhere.

(But we'll need Appropriations for its implementation probably, eh?)

[Ilsa]

4. Old grid, not enough

training, not enough hired help to get these problems resolved quickly. Every entity has cut back; power companies, local governments.

YOYO. You're on your own.

[malaise]

5. She did observe that the bill passed in the middle of

the power cuts.