The United States of Disrepair: The Great Failure of Party and Presidential Leadership

[ancianita]

Business Insider's video on our $16 trillion problem of infrastructure spending stands alongside our Pentagon's yearly claim of not knowing where similar trillions have disappeared to. This is a critique of the politics that promotes austerity economics here.

In my view, it's also a critique of our overspending in the Department of Defense and Homeland Security sectors.

President Obama's claim is that two trillion in spending is needed for repairing America's infrastructure.

Quick summary of the video:

First, there is economic damage due to funding the engineering needed to control flooding. Levees exist in 881 out of our 4,134 counties, and their maintenance affects over 50% of the US population.

Second, the overall cause is defunding due to party politics against government spending, which has thrown out the priority of building infrastructure. Shipping sectors don't seem to cooperate with each other, either.

That's part of what Hillary blames "Quarterly Capitalism" for.

Third...

Many experts estimate that the United States economy loses somewhere between $22 an $30 billion a year in lost economic output due to flight delays and cancellations. Chicago and New York look 3rd World compared to the world's biggest hubs.

We don't need more roads and bridges; it's just that current roads and bridges need repair. Land shipping and transportation infrastructure are overburdened and logistically slow.

Our technology and big data are breaking through new frontiers we never even dreamed possible ten years ago. But those will mean nothing if the fundamental system is not maintained and repaired.

[allan01]

1. interisting

in the state of california, the state of confusion, the repupliCONS are protecting 100 rich individuals and 100 coperations from taxes . also there are thousands of people whose mantra is ,, " i dont want to pay my taxes", along with the howard jarvis group and the so caled " california taxpayers assn", along with the legacy of prop 13 . nationwide the mantra from the buscos was " no new taxes along with this last congress dispicable " sequestraization" has taken its toll . military spending also hasnt helped .th13 major us corperations havent paied taxes in years .

[63splitwindow]

2. Should be a transformation of the Department of Defense into the...

Department of Defense AND Infrastructure Repair. Put those in our volunteer services to work repairing and replacing our worn out and vulnerable infrastructure while still allowing the DOD (now DODAIR) bureaucracy to thrive.

[ancianita]

3. Absolutely. President Obama has turned this huge ship of a country such that Hillary can sail it

forward with a different tax structure and new spending priorities.

It's our job to make the November vote move the downticket into the empowering branch of government spending.

Let's hope the austerity days are over, folks.