Above, the I 35 bridge which went SLAM for no externally caused reason. No earthquake, hurricane, or tornado.
It simply was not maintained and prevented from rusting away because politicians had to get rich and pay back campaign contributors for getting elected in other contract ways. It's known as "deferred maintenance"
They screwed the ordinary people that commute to work every day in cars over that bridge instead of being responsible to their oath of office. 13 dead, 145 injured.
And this was the Cyrus Street Viaduct, Oakland Ca. 42 people killed when it succumbed to an earthquake, it hadn't been retrofitted to handle, plus, it was built on landfill.
http://www.thedrive.com/travel/5419/when-bridges-fail-people-die?xid=hl
It's because infrastructure isnt sexy like space exploration. It's something that everyone takes for granted. The lights come on, the shower drains, and the roads don't collapse after they swing through Starbucks on the way to work. And then something screws up and everyone raises hell till the powers that be fix it and then everybody forgets about it until it screws up again
ReplyDeletethat's it exactly
Delete50 billion dollars were not printed and used to pay for this galactic adventure... The Federal Reserve just sat down at their computer and made an entry in a file somewhere and "POOF" $50 billion dollars appeared out of thin air.
ReplyDeleteFolks, this isn't money -- it's electronic 1's and 0's. If our money was actually so difficult to get, we'd be making different choices. But since we've untied our restrictions on creating infinite piles of 'money' when we abandoned the gold standard, we can rationalize anything we want. Want to go to Mars? Here's some debt-based fiat currency. Want to bail out Wall Street banks? Janet Yellen will conjure up a few trillion Amero's to cover that. Need to actually fix a problem with real labor? You're on your own!
true... sad, and ridiculous, but true
Delete