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AP - The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday
people shouldn't fret about general bridge safety across the country,
notwithstanding figures showing more than 70,000 are rated structurally
deficient. "I don't believe that they should be worried at all," NTSB
Chairman Mark Rosenker said from the scene of the collapse this week of
an interstate highway bridge in Minneapolis. . .
It is unclear how many of the spans across America pose actual safety
risks. Federal officials alerted the states late Thursday to immediately
inspect all bridges similar to the Mississippi River span that
collapsed. In a separate cost estimate, the Federal Highway
Administration has said addressing the backlog of needed bridge repairs
would take at least $55 billion. That was five years ago, with
expectations of more deficiencies to come. It is money that Congress,
the federal government and the states have so far been unable or
unwilling to spend. . .
At least 73,533 of 607,363 bridges in the nation, or about 12 percent,
were classified as "structurally deficient," including some built as
recently as the early 1990s, according to 2006 statistics from the
Federal Highway Administration. The federal government provides 80
percent of the money for construction, repair and maintenance of the
so-called federal-aid highway system including Interstate highways and
bridges. But states set priorities and handle construction and
maintenance contracts.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRIDGE_SAFETY?SITE=
AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
ABC NEWS BLOTTER - 20 heavily trafficked bridges may need to be replaced
because they are structurally deficient, according to national bridge
inspection data. These bridges scored a lower structural integrity
rating than the I-35W bridge in Minnesota before its collapse.
According to the 2006 National Bridge Inventory, the Minnesota bridge
received a "50% sufficiency" rating. The Federal Highway Administration
says any bridge with a rating of 50 percent or lower is considered
"structurally deficient" and "may need to be replaced.". . .
Half of the 20 bridges are located in New Jersey and California,
including the famous San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (pictured above).
The New Jersey Route-21 Bridge over the I-80 corridor is the busiest,
with more than 518,000 daily commuters and a 49 percent sufficiency
rating. The lowest rated bridge is the Raritan River Smith Street Bridge
in New Jersey which 208,000 commuters drive across daily. It earned a
rating of only 20 percent.
LIST OF DANGEROUS BRIDGES
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/
STATELINE - The tragedy highlights a nationwide problem of deteriorating
bridges -- as well as roads -- that states and the federal government
are struggling to maintain in the face of fast-rising costs of
construction and the shrinking value of gasoline taxes. . . It would
cost an estimated $9.4 billion a year for 20 years to bring all of the
existing bridges up to date, according to the American Society of Civil
Engineers. . .
Oklahoma has the highest percentage of bridges rated structurally
deficient -- 27 percent. More than half of the bridges in Rhode Island
and Massachusetts were rated either deficient or obsolete, according to
the federal figures.
Bridges are just one piece of the transportation network strained by
long-term neglect, a steady increase in the number of drivers, a
stagnant source of funding and rampant inflation of road-building costs,
according to a March 2007 study by the American Association of State
Highway and Transportation Officials.
The biggest hurdle to improving roads is that federal gasoline taxes,
which pay for more than 45 percent of the nation's transportation
infrastructure, have not been raised since 1993 and are not even
sufficient to cover the spending in the 2005 federal transportation law.
. . Federal gas taxes will fall $11 billion short of planned road
projects by 2009, but the gap could be as big as $19 billion the
following year, AASHTO found. . .
Instead of raising the federal gasoline tax, U.S. Sens. Chris Dodd
(D-Conn.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) introduced a bill, just hours before
the Minnesota bridge catastrophe, to create an independent national bank
to provide government financing for major infrastructure projects.
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=229551
HOW TO FUND PUBLIC WORKS
[From Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual, Norton, 1997]
The total federal state, local and private debt in this country in 1996
was around $14 trillion. The actual money supply was just under $6
trillion. So what happened to the rest of the money? Most of it doesn't
exist and never did. We call this imaginary money debt. This debt is
money that we (as individuals, companies and government) have borrowed,
primarily from private sources. As Bob Blain, a professor at Southern
Illinois University, put it:
"Most debt is not the result of people borrowing money; it is the result
of people not being able to repay what they owed [to banks or
individuals] at some earlier time. Instead of declaring them bankrupt,
creditors just add more to their debt."
This new debt is called interest. Many people think the idea of the
government printing money is shameful, yet our laws permit private
financial institutions to create money all the time. Every time you fail
to pay off your credit card, you're letting a banker print some more
money.
You're not the first, of course. For example, when the Congress met in
February 1790 to figure out how to pay off the Revolutionary War debt of
$75 million, Alexander Hamilton strongly advocated issuing debt
certificates and using them as money. Congressman James Jackson of
Georgia warned that this would "settle upon our posterity a burden which
[citizens] can neither bear nor relieve themselves from.. . . Though our
present debt be but a few millions, in the course of a single century it
may be multiplied to an extent we dare not think of."
An alternative to Congress borrowing money to pay off its debt would
have been to have created the $75 million, using Congress's
constitutional power to "coin money and regulate the value thereof."
Instead Congress began a long tradition of borrowing the money that --
five trillion dollars of debt later -- many believe we can neither bear
nor relieve ourselves from.
In the early 19th century, the little British Channel island of Guernsey
faced a smaller but similar problem. Its sea walls were crumbling. its
roads were too narrow, and it was already heavily in debt. There was
little employment and people were leaving for elsewhere.
Instead of going still further into debt, the island government simply
issued 4,000 pounds in state notes to start repairs on the sea walls as
well as for other needed public works. More issues followed and twenty
years later the island had, in effect, printed nearly 50,000 pounds.
Guernsey had more than doubled its money supply without inflation.
A report of the island's States Office in June 1946 notes that island
leaders frequently commented that these public works could not have been
carried out without the issues, that they had been accomplished without
interest costs, and that as a result "the influx of visitors was
increased, commerce was stimulated, and the prosperity of the Island
vastly improved." By 1943, nearly a half million pounds worth of notes
belonged to the public and was so valued that much of it was being
hoarded in people's homes, awaiting the island's liberation from the
Germans.
About the same time that Guernsey started to fix its sea walls the town
of Glasgow, Scotland, borrowed 60,000 pounds to build a fruit market.
The Guernsey sea walls were repaid in ten years, the fruit market loan
took 139. In the first part of the 20th century, Glasgow paid over a
quarter million pounds in interest alone on this ancient project.
How did Guernsey avoid the fiscal disaster that conventional economics
prescribed for it? First and foremost by understanding that when you
build roads or sea walls or colleges or houses, you are not reducing
your society's wealth. In fact, if you do it right, you are creating
something that will add to its wealth. The money that was created was
simply backed by public works rather than gold or "full faith and
credit." It was, in fact, based on something more solid than the dollar
bills in our wallets today. In contrast, tacking on an interest charge
to public works -- as we do in the US -- creates no new wealth, but
merely transfers claims on existing wealth from debtors to creditors.
P.S.
It might help if we stopped using the word "infrastructure" and went
back to "public works." The growth of the former word curiously
coincides with the deterioration of the latter's substance. Could it be
that "infrastructure" seemed too remote and academic while "public
works" we use every day?
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
AP - The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday
people shouldn't fret about general bridge safety across the country,
notwithstanding figures showing more than 70,000 are rated structurally
deficient. "I don't believe that they should be worried at all," NTSB
Chairman Mark Rosenker said from the scene of the collapse this week of
an interstate highway bridge in Minneapolis. . .
It is unclear how many of the spans across America pose actual safety
risks. Federal officials alerted the states late Thursday to immediately
inspect all bridges similar to the Mississippi River span that
collapsed. In a separate cost estimate, the Federal Highway
Administration has said addressing the backlog of needed bridge repairs
would take at least $55 billion. That was five years ago, with
expectations of more deficiencies to come. It is money that Congress,
the federal government and the states have so far been unable or
unwilling to spend. . .
At least 73,533 of 607,363 bridges in the nation, or about 12 percent,
were classified as "structurally deficient," including some built as
recently as the early 1990s, according to 2006 statistics from the
Federal Highway Administration. The federal government provides 80
percent of the money for construction, repair and maintenance of the
so-called federal-aid highway system including Interstate highways and
bridges. But states set priorities and handle construction and
maintenance contracts.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRIDGE_SAFETY?SITE=
AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
ABC NEWS BLOTTER - 20 heavily trafficked bridges may need to be replaced
because they are structurally deficient, according to national bridge
inspection data. These bridges scored a lower structural integrity
rating than the I-35W bridge in Minnesota before its collapse.
According to the 2006 National Bridge Inventory, the Minnesota bridge
received a "50% sufficiency" rating. The Federal Highway Administration
says any bridge with a rating of 50 percent or lower is considered
"structurally deficient" and "may need to be replaced.". . .
Half of the 20 bridges are located in New Jersey and California,
including the famous San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (pictured above).
The New Jersey Route-21 Bridge over the I-80 corridor is the busiest,
with more than 518,000 daily commuters and a 49 percent sufficiency
rating. The lowest rated bridge is the Raritan River Smith Street Bridge
in New Jersey which 208,000 commuters drive across daily. It earned a
rating of only 20 percent.
LIST OF DANGEROUS BRIDGES
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/
STATELINE - The tragedy highlights a nationwide problem of deteriorating
bridges -- as well as roads -- that states and the federal government
are struggling to maintain in the face of fast-rising costs of
construction and the shrinking value of gasoline taxes. . . It would
cost an estimated $9.4 billion a year for 20 years to bring all of the
existing bridges up to date, according to the American Society of Civil
Engineers. . .
Oklahoma has the highest percentage of bridges rated structurally
deficient -- 27 percent. More than half of the bridges in Rhode Island
and Massachusetts were rated either deficient or obsolete, according to
the federal figures.
Bridges are just one piece of the transportation network strained by
long-term neglect, a steady increase in the number of drivers, a
stagnant source of funding and rampant inflation of road-building costs,
according to a March 2007 study by the American Association of State
Highway and Transportation Officials.
The biggest hurdle to improving roads is that federal gasoline taxes,
which pay for more than 45 percent of the nation's transportation
infrastructure, have not been raised since 1993 and are not even
sufficient to cover the spending in the 2005 federal transportation law.
. . Federal gas taxes will fall $11 billion short of planned road
projects by 2009, but the gap could be as big as $19 billion the
following year, AASHTO found. . .
Instead of raising the federal gasoline tax, U.S. Sens. Chris Dodd
(D-Conn.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) introduced a bill, just hours before
the Minnesota bridge catastrophe, to create an independent national bank
to provide government financing for major infrastructure projects.
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=229551
HOW TO FUND PUBLIC WORKS
[From Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual, Norton, 1997]
The total federal state, local and private debt in this country in 1996
was around $14 trillion. The actual money supply was just under $6
trillion. So what happened to the rest of the money? Most of it doesn't
exist and never did. We call this imaginary money debt. This debt is
money that we (as individuals, companies and government) have borrowed,
primarily from private sources. As Bob Blain, a professor at Southern
Illinois University, put it:
"Most debt is not the result of people borrowing money; it is the result
of people not being able to repay what they owed [to banks or
individuals] at some earlier time. Instead of declaring them bankrupt,
creditors just add more to their debt."
This new debt is called interest. Many people think the idea of the
government printing money is shameful, yet our laws permit private
financial institutions to create money all the time. Every time you fail
to pay off your credit card, you're letting a banker print some more
money.
You're not the first, of course. For example, when the Congress met in
February 1790 to figure out how to pay off the Revolutionary War debt of
$75 million, Alexander Hamilton strongly advocated issuing debt
certificates and using them as money. Congressman James Jackson of
Georgia warned that this would "settle upon our posterity a burden which
[citizens] can neither bear nor relieve themselves from.. . . Though our
present debt be but a few millions, in the course of a single century it
may be multiplied to an extent we dare not think of."
An alternative to Congress borrowing money to pay off its debt would
have been to have created the $75 million, using Congress's
constitutional power to "coin money and regulate the value thereof."
Instead Congress began a long tradition of borrowing the money that --
five trillion dollars of debt later -- many believe we can neither bear
nor relieve ourselves from.
In the early 19th century, the little British Channel island of Guernsey
faced a smaller but similar problem. Its sea walls were crumbling. its
roads were too narrow, and it was already heavily in debt. There was
little employment and people were leaving for elsewhere.
Instead of going still further into debt, the island government simply
issued 4,000 pounds in state notes to start repairs on the sea walls as
well as for other needed public works. More issues followed and twenty
years later the island had, in effect, printed nearly 50,000 pounds.
Guernsey had more than doubled its money supply without inflation.
A report of the island's States Office in June 1946 notes that island
leaders frequently commented that these public works could not have been
carried out without the issues, that they had been accomplished without
interest costs, and that as a result "the influx of visitors was
increased, commerce was stimulated, and the prosperity of the Island
vastly improved." By 1943, nearly a half million pounds worth of notes
belonged to the public and was so valued that much of it was being
hoarded in people's homes, awaiting the island's liberation from the
Germans.
About the same time that Guernsey started to fix its sea walls the town
of Glasgow, Scotland, borrowed 60,000 pounds to build a fruit market.
The Guernsey sea walls were repaid in ten years, the fruit market loan
took 139. In the first part of the 20th century, Glasgow paid over a
quarter million pounds in interest alone on this ancient project.
How did Guernsey avoid the fiscal disaster that conventional economics
prescribed for it? First and foremost by understanding that when you
build roads or sea walls or colleges or houses, you are not reducing
your society's wealth. In fact, if you do it right, you are creating
something that will add to its wealth. The money that was created was
simply backed by public works rather than gold or "full faith and
credit." It was, in fact, based on something more solid than the dollar
bills in our wallets today. In contrast, tacking on an interest charge
to public works -- as we do in the US -- creates no new wealth, but
merely transfers claims on existing wealth from debtors to creditors.
P.S.
It might help if we stopped using the word "infrastructure" and went
back to "public works." The growth of the former word curiously
coincides with the deterioration of the latter's substance. Could it be
that "infrastructure" seemed too remote and academic while "public
works" we use every day?
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