I see "infrastructure" is the cause du jour...

like until yesterday nobody knew things were falling apart.

When I lived in Joisey, maybe every other month the Star-Ledger had a big story about dams reeady to go, road falling apart, bridges getting rusty, the aquifers draining, poisoned wells...

All ya hadda do was read the paper an you get the idea the whole place is about ready to slip into the Atlantic.

NYC, too. Didn't take much to find out about the ancient water tunnels and mains, or how the Williamsburg Bridge was rusting away to nothing. Potholes eating Toyotas and people faling through the sidewalks were common enough to not make the news every time it happened.

And you saw it in your town-- always something ready to break but never enough money to fix it before it broke.

There's always money for a new bridge, because that's spectacular and everyone gets bragging rights over it. No money to fix the old one, though, because that's boring and nobody notices anything that isn't new or broken.

There's just no glory in keeping things working right.

So, it ain't Bush that broke the bridge, it's the way we do things here, and Bush just fits right in.

Exhibit A being the massive power outage in the North East quadrant of the country. The power grid has been neglected since deregulation under Bush I. Then there's the terrible state of the railroads in this country, but that's been a growing problem since the 1950s. In certain parts, a speed limit of 85mph is imposed on trains because the rails are so dilapidated that higher speeds might actually cause track failure.

You don't notice it until it fails. Doesn't mean there are not people out there that are aware of it. But fixing infrastructure is a nonstarter in the political game. Why spend money on something that ain't broke? A politician needs to wow their constituents with big flashy things. Fixing sewers and bridges that aren't broke yet doesn't get people elected. And thats what counts these days.