Let's Rebuild America First!

By Mimikatz

The awful bridge collapse in Minneapolis is a tragedy, but it is also, as Rick Perlstein comments, a "teachable moment."  Rick has been writing for months about the costs of conservatism, both in terms of crumbling infrastructure and the crumbling regulatory safety net (his e. coli conservatives).  It is not hyperbole to call the bridge collapse, as Rick does, part of the "tax cut death toll."

The bridge-collapse tragedy is a teachable moment: This is your government on conservatism.

This year two Democratic Minnesotan legislatures passed a $4.18 billion transportation package. Minnesota's Republican governor vetoed it because he had taken a no-new-taxes pledge, Grover Norquist-style. That's just what conservative politicians do.

The original bill would have put over $8 billion toward highways, city, and county roads, and transit over the next decade. The bill he let passed spent much less.

Now four people are dead, and counting.

Infrastructure collapse is easy to understand, but what about the e. coli conservatives, the ones who have gutted our regulatory system to pad their portfolios?  Here's David Goldstein from The Nation:

For decades our government has been dominated by a conservative ideology that claims to despise big government, abhor regulation and adhere to an unswerving faith in the infinite wisdom of the market. Rick Perlstein dubs this philosophy "E. Coli Conservatism," and in practice it is not only flawed but corrupt: a calculated conservative project intended to gut our regulatory systems in the interest of sheer corporate greed. We eat adulterated food not because we cannot adequately regulate the industry but because to do so would eat into the profits of the corporations our regulators serve.

In the six years since 9/11, food-borne pathogens and toxins have quietly killed ten times the number of Americans who died in the terrorist attacks. How many more Americans must conservatism kill before our leaders embrace a more responsible ideology?

So as we contemplate the costs of the Iraq War and what it has cost each of our communities, keep in mind that this is all by design.  A key part of the Bush/Cheney/Rove project is not just to redistribute wealth, but to make Americans mistrust the ability of their government to solve real problems and improve their lives, because that will undermine the Democrats' key appeal, their ability to actually govern more or less in the public interest.  Not only have Bush/Cheney spent our money and our children's money on their mendacious and ill-conceived war, they are robbing us of the means and the collective will to rebuild our own country, our crumbling infrastructure and our regulatory safety net, let alone address problems like global climate collapse. 

Ironically, these are all areas where we could put millions of Americans to work in decent jobs here at home, rebuilding our social capital, developing new technologies and binding us together as a nation, thus reinvigorating our economy.  Instead, we may see any "peace dividend" from ending the Iraq War, like the last "peace dividend" under Bush's father, going to bail out financial institutions, in this case those who bought excessively risky loans made by greedy mortgage brokers. 

That's conservatism, folks!

Comments

[dead last]

Back in the early 90s, it was clear that our infrastructure was failing. Over the past few weeks, we have had explosions in New York. Los Angeles, and somewhere else -- none from bombs but rather failing aging public utilities. There was a recent L.A. Times article about the City water and power company (DWP) and how it will cost billions to fix all the deferred maintenance and replace major elements that are beginning to fail. But alot the workers have been laid off to save on budgets. So they are having a hard time keeping up with repairs. Our system is crumbling. But if you drive a hummer, who cares if the roads are bad...

I feel for the people who lost thier lives in Minnesota. If there had been a $2/gallon road tax on gas, there would be enough money to pay for the repair of the infrastructure (by the users). Instead, we have given that $2/gallon to the oil companies and emirates.

[Splash]

Investment bankers (esp. Goldman Sachs) have had their sights on the national highway infrastructure for some time:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/highwaymen.html

Revealingly, I once heard a movement conservative complaining about the ill-effects of the national highway system on traditional families because of the ease of mobility it provided. .... They will privatize all of interstate commerce if given the chance!

[Mimikatz]

But the highway system also allows the movement of goods that is critical to the just-in-time inventory system with its distributed supply chains. Disrepair costs companies real time and money.

These observations by Lester">http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97mar/greider/greider.htm">Lester Thurow appeared some years ago in a critical review of William Greider's "One World, Ready or Not", but they are pertinent to this discussion:

What Greider leaves unexamined is the role of the state as an investor in the educational skills, research and development, and infrastructure necessary for growth in today's man-made brainpower industries and for the invention of the industries of tomorrow. In the end our societies will rise or fall not because of some financial boom or crisis but because of our willingness -- or unwillingness -- to make such social investments. They are our equivalent of the irrigation systems that underlay the prosperity of many ancient societies -- and that were maintained or not.

(snip)

Capitalism is myopic and cannot make the long-term social investments in education, infrastructure, and research and development that it needs for its own future survival. It needs government help to make those investments, but its own ideology won't allow it either to recognize the need for those investments or to request government help. That is the ideological paradox of our time.

Indeed.

[Dismayed]

Absolutely true. Great post, Mimi. Here in Austin we have toll roads coming out of our ears. They have even tried to convert some existing freeways into toll roads, fortunately that has failed, for now.

If toll roads are profitable for corporations, why would they not be profitable for the government to own. It's all about starving government, so they can 'justify' privitization of all infrastructure.

I've really grown the hate these conservatives over the past few years.

They don't love America.

[JohnJ]

My area already has one toll bridge and one toll highway gifted to private companies. Unfortunately, that is a continuation or business-as-usual for the corporate 3rd world state of Florida, rather than a degradation. (You have to have come up to go down).

[mainsailset]

Via Skippy we find that this bridge was part of Bush's Nafta Superhwy

http://xnerg.blogspot.com/

What a surprise.

[Jodi]

Mimikatz

you misuse the name Conservative for political purpose, and though that is not unexpected, still I feel that I should say that "no new taxes or tax roll back" is not by definition conservatism.

George Bush is not a Conservative not matter what he says.

[Sojourner]

Speaking of NAFTA, here in Texas I-35(major north-south interstate highway from Mexico) is a parking lot most of the time, if not just terribly congested. I remember when it was first passed that there was some concern raised about improving the freeway, but it got poo-pooed. I think, personally, that there is a decided effort on the part of our state's Republican leadership and possibly Washington to force taxpayers to shell out more through the implementation of tolls so that it does not affect state or federal budgets.

So, we are supposed to continue buying and using automobiles and gasoline, but we won't have highways to run them on? That is not very efficient...

One other thought: I have seen a serious decline in government oversight, both at state and federal levels, of public protection with regard to finances. Consumers in Texas and some other states are saddled, for instance, with "electric deregulation" which was a major fiasco in California, thanks to Enron. By implementing it here in Texas, with little or no oversight from government, the market is wide open to manipulation -- and it appears to be happening. Despite extensive information and evidence to that effect, our Republican-dominated legislature failed to do anything about it.

A laissez-faire marketplace is the dream of every businessman, but it is a theory. There have to be some limits and oversight by government to ensure everyone does play by the rules. Today, it appears that there are NO rules for anyone and chaos prevails.

[ab initio]

Imagine what could have been achieved if the $2 trillion for destroying the entire social fabric of Iraq was spent $1.5 trillion here at home and $500 billion to Iraqi citizens???

[Shari]

Our U.S. transportation infrastructure was built pretty well, as evidenced by how few of these types of catastrophes have occurred. We won't be able to say the same, though, as these projects become privatized. Just as in Iraq, greedy private contractors will come along and build with substandard materials and plans. When their constructions fail us and recourse is due, they'll file bankruptcy easy as you please, create a new company, rinse and repeat. The Republican philosophy is a failure. Privatization can't and won't do a better job of providing better services, infrastructure, or protection for the people. Our healthcare, roads, bridges, military defense, etc., must remain under our control.

If anyone knows of a "fight privatization" organization, I'd like to know. Thanks.

[a sad Minnesotan]

Not only has this horrific crash caused an as yet untold number of lost lives, it also decimated a bridge which connected the northern and southern parts of the Twin Cities. The bridge was so centrally located that it abutted downtown Minneapolis on one side and the University of Minnesota on the other.

A few well placed tax dollars could have prevented this human tragedy and the economic slowdown that will occur as we await bridge replacement.

I don't think the "no new taxes" slogan will continue to play well in this area.

[Mimikatz]

Jodi--If deregulation and lower taxes aren't the hallmarks of modern conservatism since Goldwater, I don't know what is.

Or you could always use Digby's definition, as quoted by Rick">http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/i_didnt_nixon_until_watergate">Rick Perlstein, who has studied conservatives as much as anyone, having written the definitive book on Goldwater and now writing one on Nixon:

As the Internet's smartest liberal blogger, Digby, puts it, tongue only partially in cheek: "'Conservative' is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives' good graces. Until they aren't. At which point they are liberals."

[bmaz]

Off topic just a bit, but WTF is the deal with this?

Scott Jennings appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Leahy: You work at the White House, you’re paid for by taxpayers, you work for the American people, I’m just asking you what kind of work you do.

Jennings: Sir I understand and based on my understanding of the letter I have from Mr. Fielding this falls under the president’s assertion of Executive Privilege and therefore I must respectfully decline to answer at this time.

He can't state his job description for the record because that is classified and claimed to be executive privileged? What, is he some sort of Jethro Bodine Double Naught Super Secret Agent or something? These guys have made the quantum leap to just plain crazy.

[demtom]

It's a delicate political dance -- one has to be very careful about accusations of exploiting personal tragedy for political gain. But there's clear potential here (for the reasons Mimikatz elucidates) to make clear, much as after Katrina, the wages of right-wing/cut-taxes-uber-alles government. Iraq may well be the accelerant poured on the anti-GOP fire, but public disquiet over the economic/social havoc wrought by years of Republican policy has been growing as well. Remember: the Roosevelt coalition may have been killed in the near-term by Vietnam and Civil Rights, but resentments against "the welfare class" had been exploited as well, and, by 1980, Reagan was able to declare government the enemy without facing the repudiation Goldwater had only 16 years prior. The horror of this bridge collapse can be for Democrats what the welfare queen was for Reagan: an anecdote illustrating something people are already inclined to believe but aren't seeing reacted to by their government.

There are cycles of public opinion on these matters: voters would have recoiled at Reaganism earlier (even during the Nixon presidency) but soon came around to it; they'd also have rejected flat-out populism from Clinton but seem ready for it now. This is why I have so much trouble with Hillary's position-myself-carefully campaign. I think it's time not to stake out a calibrated set of positions, but to replace the entire electoral calculus. The pieces are all in place, and it's a matter of the smart candidate picking them all up.

[DeeLoralei in Memphis]

I'm thinking China, that's what we'll get with lax government regulations on bidness and corporations, but strong gov influence on private life choices and free speach.

We have to ask ourselves which bridge collapse, which bout of food bourne illness, which bad federal response to anything, which blackout, which school shooting will be the last? When will we, as a people, say enough!? And which of our so called leader's will be the first to say it? And which the first to place the blame squarely and forever on the failed conservative governing philosophy?

Great post Mimi! Oh and over at Hoffmania, he has a link to a countdown video showing the collapse as it happened, it doesn't actually look like that cascading effect that was discussed last night.

[JohnJ]

To quote a quote:
"'Conservative' is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives' good graces. Until they aren't. At which point they are liberals."

We used to call that the "good ol' boy" system.

[Bruno]

Lost in all the labels here is the failure to debate Perlstein's central point - which is that collapsing roads are the price we pay for "tax cuts."

While this is an arguably reasonable proposition, the facts don't bear out the accusation.

First, most state & local governments, as well as the feds, have been raking in cash over the last few years. Absent Iraq, the US budget is nearly in Surplus territory.

As for states (I'm most familiar with Illinois) they have been on spending binges, as have the local governments, gorging themselves on property tax assessment increases.

So where is all this money going? (Iraq already mentioned)

The answer puts the onus equally on the left as it does the right. As an education watchdog who sees and chronicles the massive fraud, waste, and abuse that goes on in America's "district based" and 'bureaucracy based' education system, I've come up with a simple equation.

You can fund a child's education, or you can fund a corrupt and wasteful education bureaucracy - you can't fund both.

Further (again in Illinois - which may have surpassed NO and NJ as the most corrupt state in the nation), you can't fund new "L" tracks as stations when you are funding RTA bureaucracy, worker featherbedding, and obscenely unsustainable pension schemes.

Piling on, you can't fund health care for the poor (clinics, NOT INSURANCE!!)when you are funding productivity-free government and private insurance schemes that do little else but push paper.

As self proclaimed "conservative", I'm more than happy to see bridges built and maintained, as I am fine with rational mass transit and health-care for the poor. I have news for you. None of that can be funded when you lefties are shoveling cash into the maw of a class of tax-eating pigs who use all the AFSCME and NEA (IEA, WEAC. etc etc) dues to promote the growth of an even larger class of tax-eating pigs.

I am glad to work with the decent left on shoring up needed infrastructure, as I'm also happy to call Hastert as big a tax-eating pig as any worthless school superintendent (whose salary and piggish benefits educates not one child)

I'll help you lefties go after Chertoff, Brown, Haliburton, and other useless Bush Cronies if you help me go after the productivity-free class of bureaucrats eating this nation alive with their piggish salaries and pensions.

Once rid of these scum, there will be plenty to educate, treat, and provide jobs and retirement for the poor, with a little extra for even more tax cuts.

I'm right about this, but I'm happy to debate the issue with Rick on my Radio Show.

[JohnJ]

Sounds like throw the baby out with the bath water Bruno. While you're punishing those liberal government employees, another family goes hungry and their kids don't get to the doctor again this year. But you did get those Government employees!

Baby Bush just got done trashing our state here. One example is that his contention that our schools are sooo bad because those haughty educated people ain't teaching good enough. He forgot to mention that it was the 48th in line state for education, BUT IT WAS THE 49th worst funded system in the country at the same time. His conservative solution: give some of that money to the Rich to send their kids to private UNREGULATED schools (vouchers not large enough to cover all the tuition, so it doesn't work for the poor), while importing a no-bid contract company to test our kids, and then take money AWAY from schools that weren't doing so well. Just to punish those "you think you are so smart" teachers. BTW, he "forgot" to regulate the private schools that get the voucher money so they don't get tested the same way, or as we have found, they don't even have to exist. (Final, do or flunk exams for 3rd graders, they now spend their entire year learning how to take the test).

You have to actually DO SOMETHING besides bad-mouth the situation. And while you are doing it, remember the people at the bottom will be the first to suffer while you get your jollies punishing those just below you, as is so popular with the nouveau-riche. We've had over a decade of "oh, I'd gladly help if only.....". It's getting old.

I think good old (up to the 'z' in Alzheimer's) Ronny used the phrase "personal responsibility" when degrading the poor. In retrospect, that's just elitist code for "that's your problem, not mine".

[Mimikatz]

Bruno--First, many functions have devolved onto state and local governments as the Feds cut taxes ands services. That was Dean's point about the fallacy of federal tax cuts. Second, there are population increases and technological advances that have boosted the amount that needs to be spent on education and health care.

And here in California, we spend aqn inordinate amount on prisons and prison guards, among our highest paid state employees, because of all the "law'n'order" measures that the conservatives championed. Once again we are balancing our budget by cutting funds for the poor and disabled.

There is at least as much waste, fraud and abuse among private industry, to say nothing of sheer greed, as among state workers. That is really a pittance compared to Halliburton and other friends of Dick.

[JohnJ]

The "law and order" conservatives in this state not only imprison people for things like having a legally prescribed drug on you (25 years, because there is no "it's my prescription" defense for possession); but their friends now OWN THE PRISONS!

I feel soooo much safer with conservatives protecting me from?????

[JohnJ]

The corruption in the privatized services here far dwarfs the Government corruption in both magnitude AND cost. One small problem, the Repugs are linked at the hip to these "private" companies, so we don't investigate or punish when corruption is stumbled upon.

[Miller,]

NO MORE Toll Roads,no toll Booth at the end of my Driveway!
No Nukes is good Nukes.
I hope the next President will reverse ALL executive Orders,that the Waterboy issued.
NO Incumbents in 2008

[Mimikatz]

The fundamental flaw of privatization is that you cannot improve service and still make enough of a profit to make it worthwhile. If you try paying your workers much less in order to make a profit, it will cause service to deteriorate. It just doesn't work. Public employees may have
benefits and job protection, but usually that makes up for lower pay. In my experience they work as hard as anyone, and the best work harder.

[prostratedragon]

From Sojourner:

One other thought: I have seen a serious decline in government oversight, both at state and federal levels, of public protection with regard to finances. Consumers in Texas and some other states are saddled, for instance, with "electric deregulation" which was a major fiasco in California, thanks to Enron. By implementing it here in Texas, with little or no oversight from government, the market is wide open to manipulation -- and it appears to be happening.

Absolutely. This trend picked up steam under Reagan —you could probably say that it's what "Reaganomics" was all about— and has become grotesque beyond folly by now, partly due to pressure from the very groups that intend to make fraudulent use of the lack of supervision, and partly from convenient-idiot ideologues, which has resulted in the loss of system capacity to deal with white collar crime and keep up with business and financial "innovations" at all levels.

We saw in the Libby case a good example of how much time, sustained effort, attention to arcane detail, and sheer brain power it takes to prosecute just one white collar case, which did not even involve a complex entity like a hedge fund or the kind of spinoff structure that Enron used in its malfeasance.

We also saw in that case the way in which the perpetrators of these frauds, and those who support them whether or not they know of the fraudulence, use the press to undermine public support for proper supervision and enforcement, and try to buy off those branches of government on which monitors rely for support.

An earlier example of this whose inner history is more in the open is the banking crisis of the 1980s to early 1990s, during which S&L regulators in particular had to spend much valuable time struggling with Congress to maintain their capital budget and staffing levels —forget trying to increase them significantly to deal with the emergency.

Part of the problem proved to be the access to insufficiently knowledgeable, and apparently ineducable, members of Congress that was afforded by campaign contributions to individuals and Congressional campaign committees.

It is the iceberg which we might already have struck, in the form of the growing debt market turmoil. While States are often free to try to remedy these situations individually, there are obviously co-ordination and interstate commerce problems involved in some of these areas that would make it easier, or maybe even constitutional in some cases, to proceed on the federal level, if we had a federal government. Not to mention that some financial and other regulatory duties were pushed onto States by devolutionary hawks in DC.

Citizen historical research, anyone?

[earlofhuntingdon]

A worrying trend is the outsourcing of highway infrastructure, such as Indiana's sale of its toll road, the main interstate in the northern half of the state and the principal connection between Chicago and the East. Such deals are investment banking confections, whose principal function is generating deal fees. They ought to be banned. If not banned, Congress should ensure that the terms of any further deals protect the public's interest in a working and up to date highway system on which we all depend. I can't think of a more obvious exercise of the power inherent in the interstate commerce clause.

More generally, the "market" has only one interest, to maximize profit. This used to be leavened with a recognition that corporations and the places in which they did business had mutual or overlapping interests. That notion has flown out of the boardroom window like an employee pension. Recognizing the validity of anything that competes with maximizing profits is now seen as bizarre, like a Catholic advocating for married priests. Shorn of its restraining context, the profit motive has metastasized, giving us Jeffrey Skillings, unregulated hedge funds, and the dark side of international outsourcing.

The govt's job, on the other hand, is to act in the best interests of its citizens. That's high school civics talk, of course. For the GOP, that has traditionally meant maximizing the returns for its corporate backers (masquerading as job creation schemes) via friendly regulations, low taxes, anti-labor policies, and virtually free timber and minerals and grazing rights on govt lands. (The Bush administration is batting a thousand there.) The Dems at least aspire to being the party of the people, though they, too, have a full closet of corporate skeletons.

Govt is the only actor capable of acting in the public interest. Hence, Bush's interest in creating the impression that govt is incapable of being more competent than he is. The real issue is that he won't allow it function on behalf of the people. Until November '06, for example, the GOP Congress refused to pass any legislation that had too much Democratic support. Now that they are in a minority in both houses, the GOP's strategy is to prevent the Dems from passing any legislation, regardless of who wants it or the good it would do. Who cares about the savings from reducing childhood illness (via SCHIP legislation) when what matters is subsidizing private businesses? Morality isn't profitable. (Just as Bush's sale/giveaway of arms to Saudi Arabia and Israel has little to do with regional security and a helluva lot to do with a fifty billion dollar subsidy to American defense contractors.

As for investment in our aging infrastructure under Bush, it gets back to Karl Rove and his electoral math. Minnesotans may be lucky; its governor is a pretty craven GOP'er. New Orleans, not so lucky. What better gift to leave a resurgent Democratic Party than an aging and unpaid for infrastructure, an unpaid for war and occupation, and a DOJ more in need of structural repair than any highway bridge?