Anybody who ever had to deal with a junkie knows the drill.
You just HAVE to let me have this wad of dough because I HAVE to get a suit / car / diploma in order to get that special job / award / opening that I need to turn my life around and if I don’t get it I’ll just die!
And then, of course, things proceed with the crushing regularity of the tolling of a bell. The wad of cash disappears and in its place there is no new suit / car / diploma. There is just the knowledge that you have been visited by the Homework-Eating Dog. A genial sort of pet, really, one who will sit in the closet, never needing food or water or a walk, just waiting until it’s needed, when it will slink out, put its tail between its legs, and confess to eating the wad of dough just like it cheerfully confessed to eating that book report on Call of the Wild for Mrs. Markham’s 5th grade class.
You knew the dog was due for a visit, didn’t you, when you heard the politicians telling you that you had to cough up a trillion dollars for infrastructure projects or the country was going to just die!
And now it seems that the infrastructure trillion, passed in a great rush because we couldn’t afford to wait, never got to where it was supposed to go. That’s what the Governor of Pennsylvania says.
It’s the same with the state of the country’s infrastructure. Consider some of these “grades,” as reported in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ most recent infrastructure report card: transit, D; energy, D+; dams, D; bridges, C; aviation, D; drinking water, D-; hazardous waste, D; schools, D; and wastewater, D-.
I’d say this defines our infrastructure situation as one in crisis.
Over a year after the infrastructure stimulus was passed. No mention of it. Why do you suppose that it? Could it be because all that money is gone? Has the Homework-Eating Dog developed a taste for stimulus money?
Mark Steyn provides what just might be a clue.
The other day, wending my way from Woodsville, N.H., 40 miles south to Plymouth, I came across several “stimulus” projects — every few miles, and heralded by a two-tone sign, a hitherto rare sight on Granite State highways. The orange strip at the top said “PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK” with a silhouette of a man with a shovel, and the green part underneath informed you that what you were about to see was a “PROJECT FUNDED BY THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT.” There then followed a few yards of desolate, abandoned, scarified pavement, followed by an “END OF ROAD WORKS” sign, until the next “stimulus” project a couple of bends down a quiet rural blacktop.
Admittedly it would be helpful to have spent some years in Chicago or New Orleans (the NOLA Nimrod experienced both) to understand what something like that means. It means the money, if it was ever there, is gone.
That’s why you should probably read the entire plaint of the Governor of Pennsylvania. Because not only are the trillion infrastructure bucks down the gullet of the Homework-Eating Dog, but the Governor of Pennsylvania still wants what those bucks were supposed to do. So the economy wasn’t stimulated, the infrastructure wasn’t modernized, but the money to do both has been spent and it will have to be paid off by the next two generations.
Was that the change we were waiting for?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Tags: debt, infrastructure, junkie government, stimulus
Posted by nolanimrod
Conquistadores, Political Maneuvers, Reality Check, Rebuilding
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Nimrod
You have a well informed Post with plenty of body and facts that cannot be refuted.
Why don’t these clowns kick Rahm’s ass and put you in there.
This is the one where I said, Hey! I thought we were friends! Were I to replace Rahm it would mean that I would have to spend every minute — waking, sleeping, on the john, whatever — busting my brain trying to make Saint Obama’s latest effort to thoroughly screw up America and the other places where Freedom still peeks out from time to time seem like good things. A couple of weeks of that and I’d probably look like him: bags under my eyes down to my knees.
I’ve known guys like Obama. They are so insecure that they have to prove their superiority with every word, every deed, and do it with a supercilious hauteur that is pretty funny when viewed from a distance (à la Dan Ackroyd’s rich, snotty moron in Trading Places) but it’s no fun to work for.
Besides, I’d be inclined to try and mitigate some of the damage and I’m not sure that would be a good thing in the long run. I think it might be good that the country see the results is of all those feel-good slogans when you actually do them.
So recommending me for Rahm’s replacement is doing me no favor, I assure you.
Nimrod
Nimrod
Don’t be so modest. I liked the “second effort and left a comment.
And this made me remember; what do I have to do from my side to subscribe to receive Gmail notifications of your new Posts in my Inbox as well as new comments. I would like to see more comments in your Posts and will advertise your Blog when I am back from the cave again. I am leaving again in the morning if the weather holds to try and get a guinea fowl for my birthday on Tuesday. Do read my latest Post:
http://ikejakson.wordpress.com.….-red-wine/
So I guess this means that you are back from your cave. From the tone of the writing I thought it was going to be much more Robinson Crusoe than it was.
To get entire posts by email or through a reader just click on the syndication symbol ( and it will give you the choice to use a syndication service and a reader or to get posts in your email in box.
What does a guinea fowl taste like? I have had pheasant, Gambel’s Quail, dove, wild duck, wild goose, and wild turkey, but no idea what a guinea fowl tastes like (were it not for the Internet I would have no idea what a Guinal fowl looks like; now I know they look like something I believe is called a cassowary). If properly cooked, meaning slowly over a smokey fire with frequent basting, wild turkey is possibly the finest thing I ever put into my mouth. At least the finest thing that I chewed up and swallowed.
Hi Nimrod
Have I said something wrong? Of course we are friends, and I happen to hold the opinion that it is always a good time at anytime and for whatever reason to kick Rahm in the ass.
I like it to see the comment coming in via my Google Inbox. It gives me two ways to respond though I think I submitted the same response twice to another guy the other day when I used the Reply function in Gmail and when it didn’t show in the Post immediately I posted it straight in there as well.
Do let me know please.
Have you since also received my enquiry about how I go about things to subscribe to all your new Posts and comments following on that?
I hope to tell you soon about a Sodbuster’s Luck for an invitation to come over and select any two guinea fowls to bag for my birthday next Tuesday?
Thanks Nimrod
You are right about Rahm; one should be careful when dragging HIM INTO ANYTHING.
The Sodbuster [yours truly] will [all going well] have two guinea fowl for his birthday. To be confirmed.
But your Posts only show my comments making it look as if I am talking to myself, and that will invite my Kenya/Rhodesian/British/Russian/now Cyprus friend Bravo to brand me as insane over the World Wide Net. It’s nice and very convenient to get your response to my comment in my Gmail Inbox but I am concerned about utter and complete fulfillment and great happiness for my Friend Bravo, see.
And quite right you are, Sir Sodbuster (may I call you Sod? How about Auld Sod?). You are truly not talking to yourself, although that is often times the only way it is possible to have an intelligent conversation, especially if you are talking to one of the mental toddlers who usually go by some name or other, usually followed by ist.
I began blogging mainly to keep from annoying friends whose e-mailboxes would be chock full every morning with things I had read that they just must see and some of them were getting a mite huffy.
Then I started at MyT and then got into my own hosted WordPress blog and I was getting really into it, setting myself goals on the number of reads for the month, stuff like that, and then the liberals and their fellow useless idiots got a bit much for me.
Thus depressed I started doing less blogging less and then started just being lazy. When ever you leave a comment it goes to my email in box and I can reply from there rather than from the blog and that is what I have been doing. Just lazy.
But you are right. There isn’t much point to having half a discussion out in the open ant the other private, especially if it addresses something which might be of general interest.
So — color me newly aware of the wider duties of being a member of the blogosphere and will I not shirk them again.