INFRASTRUCTURE!

In my opinion, for the past 20+ years Americans have sacrificed infrastructure for social programs that have yielded little if any benefit -- except perhaps to create an entire "needy" class dependent on government and to eliminate males entirely from black families. And, of course, to ensure we keep the constant flow of worker drones (i.e., Mexican laborers) funneling into our country so as to continue the consistent underclass.

In that amount of time, however, we have done our level best to ensure that the necessary infrastructure to accommodate all the additional people has been seriously curtailed.

And we are just now beginning to see the toll that this lack of focus and priority is creating.

Ask yourself if the way I typify Sacramento, Fornicalia (the place where I work) is the way you would typify your local community:

I describe Sacramento as a series of burgeoning and exploding bedroom communities, strip malls and parking lots interlinked by single two-lane roadways.

Meaning: we build and we build but we consider infrastructure not.

What do I mean by infrastructure? That would be the logical essentials, such as:

• Power generating stations;
• Sources of water;
• Adequate emergency response staffing (fire and police);
• Hospitals;
• Refineries for petroleum distillates;
• Interconnecting surface roads with sufficient capacity;
• Expanded freeways to accommodate future traffic needs;
• Sufficient railbeds to accommodate future interstate rail traffic;
• Airport expansion;
• Sewer capacity, water treatment capacity;

And that's just the tip-o-the-iceberg; not being a civil engineer there are certainly other venues I am soon forgetting, clearly. Likely you will remind me of some.

The fall of the Minneapolis I-35W bridge is just a small taste of what's in store for us in the immediate future. This is just the beginning of what is known as a Cascading Event Chain. If you think your taxes have been going to the constant monitoring and assurance that your bridges and roadways and trestles and overpasses are safe -- well, think again. Just ask your local governmental civil engineers. Your tax dollars have been diverted to assuring that, at least in Fornicalia, with CDC, the male inmates desiring to so become women have been getting their penises surgically nipped in clean and sterile environments.

Commercial air traffic is at its worst since on-time and off-time statistics were first kept in 1987. Our controllers are working with equipment that is outdated, outmoded, and their hardware and software won't be fully upgraded until 2025.

Las Vegas, for example, may reach a crisis in terms of sufficient water in three meagre years. It's called "building a city in the desert," for Christ's sake.

The same for New Orleans. Rebuilding New Orleans is an excursion in stupidity and tilting at every possibly-ridiculous windmill known to Man.

We cannot sacrifice the many for the few. Even good Trekkies know that. Spock said, in "STII, The Wrath of Khan":

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."

And we, as Americans, have consistently gone out of our way to avoid this bit of common sense since the 60's. I said it ten years ago and I'll write it now: our country will only be better off when my generation, the Baby Boomers, the self-absorbed, completely die off. The sooner the better. Bill Clinton perfectly exemplified my generation, thank you -- which is what you shall get in his wife, should you elect her.

We HAVE sacrificed the many for the few exceptions -- and to our eternal detriment and, I submit, damnation.

We are only now beginning to realize the price we shall now pay for our shortsighted foolishness.

This is witness in our social programs, our HIPA act, our ADA, our classifying as "disabled" those parolees who tattooed their foreheads with offensive letters and graphics because they cannot get jobs.

In the meantime, what we really need -- serious infrastructure as listed above -- gets shunted aside for social programs that coddle puerile emotions but yield little benefit. We ARE sacrificing the many for the few!

• Short on water? Build desalinization plants!
• Short on electricity? Build power plants! Build nukes!
• Short on distilled petroleum? Build refineries!
• Short on freeways? Build more!
• Short on connecting roadways? Build more and widen them!
• Short on sewers? Dig down and install new piping! New plants!
• Can't move enough freight? Build new rail lines or double and triple track main lines!

But no.

We'd rather argue about fairy shrimp or vernal pools or some such bullshit.

It's not because we CAN'T make these things happen; it's because we bow to the FEW who would have us return to, as Spock once again said, the age of "stone knives and bearskins."

We can sacrifice the many for the few;

Or we can take back Logic.

BZ