This whole thing is so disheartening. Where do American citizens think their roads, bridges, railways, electrical grid and airports are supposed to come from? Corporate vultures like Halliburton? We saw how that went down in Iraq, and it ain’t pretty.

That horrifying bridge failure in Minnesota a couple of years ago is just the beginning, especially in a bridge-dependent county like coastal Chatham. Our roads feature potholes big enough to swallow the SUVs we refuse to give up.
We’re losing our postal system bit by bit. And yet we stubbornly refuse to see the connection between paying a bit more in taxes and getting more and better goods and services from our local, state and federal governments. So very odd, vexing and frustrating for those of us who believe in the (limited) power of government to change the lives of its citizens for the better.

Alas, I fear that we are turning into a third world country as the rich get richer, the middle class dissolves, the poor get even more desperate and our infrastructure disintegrates before our very eyes. I’ve spent tons of time in the third world: I lived in Puerto Rico in the 1970s, traveled throughout southeast Asia in the 1980s and ’90s and have visited Mexico twice in the last decade. Our roads and public transportation systems are rapidly becoming all too similar to those in the above-mentioned countries–broken-down, decrepit, even dangerous. So why aren’t people up in arms about this? And why oh why did they vote down T-SPLOST?

The Wall Street Journal David Wessel said it best on “On Point Radio” this past week: “Americans want ever more in government goods and services–but they don’t want to pay for them in higher taxes.” It is this absurd, childish, fantastical and selfish attitude that will run the U.S. into the ground–literally.

Corporations can’t solve these mega-problems, people. Only government–which, ultimately, is all of us, no matter how much we may despise it–has the wherewithal to undertake big public works projects. FDR is surely spinning in his grave.