Imagine Texas without an I-10, an I-20, an I-40, or an I-35. Imagine Colorado without either an I-25 or an I-70. Imagine any state without an Interstate Highway. The national highway system that began with a Dumbo president (greater than St. Dutch) in 1956 — Dwight D. Eisenhower — is now part of the national fabric. Even the Dumbos and the Teabaggers know better than calling for the dismantling of the Interstate Highway System. However, the IH-System was soooooo 20th century and we are now in the 21st century and a national high-speed rail system is needed in these times of global warming and climate change. We cannot afford huge trucks on the super-slabs belching atmosphere-eating exhaust. John Young echoes Fareed Zakaria in telling us that we are in a gigantic hole and we need to stop digging. However, the Dumbos and Teabaggers are slow learners and we need to take a shovel to the sides of their collective heads. If this is a (fair & balanced) version of Cassandra's vision, so be it.
[x Austin Fishwrap]
Think Of The Greater Good Rather Than Individual Pangs And Angst
By John Young
Tag Cloud of the following article
President Dwight Eisenhower puts all of his political capital on the line to advance an audacious notion: a national highway system. He is rebuffed when states refuse to play along. They complain that even if the federal government pays 90 percent, these will be their highways to maintain, with costs associated. They want no part of it.
That, of course, didn't happen. The states understood the benefits of that initiative to lift the nation, and regional economies, into better days — post-frontier days, post-Dust Bowl days.
Fast-forward to the new governor of Florida, who recently pushed the pause button on comparable progress.
Rick Scott turned down $2.4 billion in the federal stimulus bill for a high-speed rail project from Miami to Orlando. Scott's argument: The railroad system would be unlikely to pay for itself and would require state subsidies ultimately. (Like interstate highways, possibly?)
Scott's decision drew huzzahs from the tea-bag core by which he secured a razor-thin victory in November. It also frosted off some fellow Republicans in Tallahassee who know the jobs and economic activity now will go elsewhere.
Admittedly, Scott's position is easy to peddle to any interest not along the proposed rail line. What use is it to them?
And you wonder how Eisenhower made the pitch to those who wouldn't have an Interstate 35 or Interstate 10 facilitating speedier traffic their way.
High-speed rail? Audacious. But those who dismiss its potential, even if it requires subsidies as do airports and superhighways, are trapped in their own conventions. They are trapping society at the same time.
Scott's hard-right constituents called his rejection of the stimulus dollars brilliant. The person looking smart now, however, is Fareed Zakaria, whose piercing essay, "Yes, America is in decline" ["Are America's Best Days Behind Us?"] in the March 14 Time magazine assailed the rush to climb into our shells regarding public investment.
One wonders where we would be today if a Republican like Eisenhower curled up in a shell instead of building for the future.
One thing that the interstate highway system did was truly link states into a whole. Time illustrated Zakaria's commentary with an American flag diced into red, white and blue tatters. One could say the same about long-range communal considerations such as infrastructure and education.
"We are cutting investments and subsidizing consumption — exactly the opposite of what are the main drivers of economic growth," Zakaria writes.
Gee, FDR, we can't tax-cut and toll-road our way back to prosperity?
One can think of few fiscal moves that would be harder on a region's economy than to shut down community colleges. Yet that's what Texas legislators were about to do to Odessa College, Frank Phillips, Brazosport and Ranger College. How anyone could have seen such a move as preferable to tapping an emergency fund, or otherwise finding revenue to continue these colleges' operations, bespeaks a dark, backward state of mind that afflicts us.
Unfortunately, policymakers aren't thinking of the greater good, but of individual pangs and angst.
"American politics is now hyper responsive to constituents' interests," writes Zakaria. "All those interests are dedicated to preserving the past rather than investing for the future."
The battle today pits the impulses of tax cuts and insularity versus infrastructure and education, and it's a rout.
The nation will be poorer for it.
"Together, the unifying forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear — United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts." That was Eisenhower promoting the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. Ω
[John Young was the editorial page editor and a columnist of the Waco Tribune-Herald for 25 years. A Denver native, Young was editor of the Valley Courier, a small daily in Alamosa, CO, prior to his time in Texas. His column is carried regularly on the Cox News Service and New York Times News Service. Young has moved back to Fort Collins, CO and serves as an adjunct in the Department of English of the Front Range Community College. Young is a graduate of Colorado State University.]
Copyright © 2011 The Austin American-Statesman
Get the Google Reader at no cost from Google. Click on this link to go on a tour of the Google Reader. If you read a lot of blogs, load Reader with your regular sites, then check them all on one page. The Reader's share function lets you publicize your favorite posts.
Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves by Neil Sapper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at sapper.blogspot.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here.
Copyright © 2011 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves
