USA Coming Apart at the Seams?

Apparently, and seemingly not the kind of far off nightmare people would want you to believe either:

"If a terrorist group were able to knock the NSA offline, or disrupt one of the nation's busiest airports, or shut down the most important oil pipeline in the nation, the impact would be perceived as devastating," Beckner said. "And yet we've essentially let these things happen — or almost happen — to ourselves."

It noted that half the 257 locks operated by the Army Corps of Engineers on inland waterways are functionally obsolete, more than one-quarter of the nation's bridges are structurally deficient or obsolete, and $11 billion is needed annually to replace aging drinking-water facilities.

President Bush, asked about the problem during a public question-and-answer session in an April visit to Irvine, Calif., cited last year's enactment of a comprehensive law reauthorizing highway, transit and road-safety programs.

"Infrastructure is always a difficult issue," Bush acknowledged. "It's a federal responsibility and a state and local responsibility. And I, frankly, feel like we've upheld our responsibility at the federal level with the highway bill."

....

"There's a growing understanding that these programs are at best inefficient and at worst corrupt," said Everett Ehrlich, executive director of the CSIS public infrastructure commission.

Ehrlich and others cite several reasons for the lack of action:

• The political system is geared to reacting to crises instead of averting them.

• Some politicians don't see infrastructure as a federal responsibility (Ed Note: What the hell?!)

• And many problems are out of sight and — for the public — out of mind.

"You see bridges and roads and potholes, but so much else is hidden and taken for granted," said Dinges of the Society of Civil Engineers. "As a result, people just don't get stirred up and alarmed."

How much longer can we let things stay out of sight and out of mind, and as such not even care, even when the ground is falling away from under our feet?


Thanks to Lustin for the find.