Left-handed Complement

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MUDGE’s Musings

We observe the first anniversary of the tragic collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis (August 1, 2007) with some sadness, and furious anger.

Sadness due to the thirteen lives lost, and 100+ injured.

Anger because the danger embodied in this country’s aging and dilapidated bridges, highways, levees and schools is criminally no closer to alleviation than 366 days ago.

Meanwhile, the economy is faltering: banks are failing, foreclosures are at record highs (three million empty houses!), the ranks of under- and unemployed growing apace.

What is it going to take to repair this country’s infrastructure osteoporosis?

What is it going to take to kick start the economy, to get people working and once again able to meet their mortgage obligations, perhaps even afford that $4.299/gallon gasoline?

It’s going to take a liberal quantity of bold.

I wasn’t there (my parents were young children) but this country faced a disturbingly similar crisis 76 years ago. Banks had failed by the thousands (defenestration became a popular Wall Street exit strategy). Millions of able bodied workers had no work.

The country, whose industrial and military might had tipped the balance and ended the bloody stalemate of the Great War, turned inward, closing off immigration, its historic lifeblood, and barricading trade, sending the entire globe into economic free fall.

The incumbent party (would you be surprised if I revealed that it was the Republican party?) wrung its hands and was the picture of abject futility.

A well-spoken and charismatic graduate of Harvard University stepped forward with some fresh ideas, promising a New Deal for the American people, and declaring that “the only thing to fear is fear itself.”

That New Deal served the country well for nearly 60 years. Hundreds of thousands were put to work to build highways, bridges, schools and dams. Labor and racial justice became the law of the land. Once again, this country’s industrial and military might prevailed in an even larger scale global war, the prelude to an economic and cultural explosion that became the envy of the world.

In many ways, it’s 1932 again. Bankrupted by pointless, and even worse, corruptly mismanaged war; hollowed out by energy policies set in Texas and Saudi Arabia for the benefit of the president’s oilmen sponsors; crumbling because the plutocrats have bamboozled citizens into believing that all taxes are bad, especially the ones that would make the plutocrats pay their fair share.

It’s going to take vision to fix the moral, the physical, the spiritual disrepair.

Hell, it’s going to take vision to recognize the mess in the first place, and vision to reach out for good plans from wherever they come (some of Roosevelt’s first programs, after all, were muscled up continuations of Hoover initiatives).

It’s going to take a liberal quantity of bold.

So, which party has the candidate with vision, who speaks with clarity, and seems to effortlessly engender inspiration and enthusiasm?

And which party has, despite its sober promises, begun swift boating and Rove-ing its way toward November?

So, where should our new president begin on January 20, 2009? That futile war needs to be contained, and ended, but that won’t happen overnight.

Al Gore and Boone Pickens won’t be severing our addiction to Middle Eastern petroleum in an instant, or even soon.

But those deteriorating bridges and roads, schools and levees: that’s an initiative that could begin Day One.

Put people to work, in the spirit of the reNEWed DEAL, rebuilding those highways and bridges.

Put people to work, in the spirit of the reNEWed DEAL, finishing with alacrity what the derelict administration of George III has disgracefully left incomplete, the restoration of New Orleans and its levees.

Put people to work, albeit with some training, in the spirit of the reNEWed DEAL, in those schools with too few teachers and too many underserved students, burying forever the lip service cynicism of “No Child Left Behind” and insisting that our children learn what they need to know, not what they need to pass dumbed down tests.

All this costs. Start by restoring equitable taxation on those of the plutocracy who have had a tax holiday for too many years. Ending that money pit called the Iraq Occupation, and getting smarter about resources and targets in Afghanistan will free up $zillions.

It’s going to take a liberal quantity of bold.

I believe I know from where bold might come from. I absolutely know from where it most definitely won’t.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Afghanistan, Economic depression, Economy, Education, Government, History, Iraq occupation, McCain, Obama, Politics, Presidential election, Recession. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.