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Read other letters about this article
What I'm more interested in is how this ties in to our whole sick culture. Health care administrators whose job it is to make sure you DON'T get the treatment you need. Credit card companies whose primary goal is to make sure you DON'T pay off your balance each month.
What is the common denomenator here?
We're the Can't Do nation.
And it's not just bridges. Has there ever been a period in our history when so many American plans and projects have, literally or figuratively, collapsed? In both grand and humble endeavors, the United States can no longer be relied upon to succeed or even muddle through. We can't remake the Middle East. We can't protect one of our own cities from a natural disaster or, it seems, rebuild after one. We can't even give our wounded veterans decent medical care.
We're supposed to be an optimistic, problem-solving nation, the country that tamed a vast wilderness, won World War II and the Cold War, put men on the moon, built the Panama Canal and the Hoover Dam.
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/commentary/hc-commentarybig0812.artaug12,0,6831046.story
Apparently we also have to borrow hundreds of billions every year because we can't live within our means and can't pay up our debts even in good times. So it's a foregone conclusion we won't be able to pay up our debts, and the state of things will be even worse, when things turn south.
Everywhere you look, you see social systems that aren't working, cost way too much, or are falling apart: health care, schools, transportion infrastructure, consumer safety. And if you look closely at every one of these, you'll see greedy corporate representatives helping insecure legislators make the decisions on these issues. Not to make them better, but to make them more profitable.
We can't prevent a major city from getting blown off the map, and can't rebuild it when it does.
Honestly, I think we should tax these guys, and maybe pass some regulations.
It gets worse, of course.
"Incompetence" usually means bumbling, but the Bush White House's hostility to the federal bureaucracy has been quite purposeful. The administration has undermined the normal workings of agencies from the CIA to the Environmental Protection Agency, in part because they generate facts and opinions that conflict with political goals.
The White House has also seeded the government with appointees chosen for loyalty and ideological affinity, not competence. All of this has taken a toll on agencies' ability to process information, devise sound policies and communicate with the public.
