Bangs and Whimpers, via Digby:
Going Backwards
by digby
I think this pretty much captures where we're going as a nation:Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.I think it's safe to say that when these people say they want their country back, they aren't talking about the country of the 50s or 60s, with its "Tomorrowland" optimism. They want to go back to the Dust Bowl.
The heavy machines at work in Jamestown, N.D., are grinding the asphalt off road beds, grading the bed and packing the material back down to create a new road surface.
In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as "poor man's pavement." Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.
The moves have angered some residents because of the choking dust and windshield-cracking stones that gravel roads can kick up, not to mention the jarring "washboard" effect of driving on rutted gravel.
But higher taxes for road maintenance are equally unpopular. In June, Stutsman County residents rejected a measure that would have generated more money for roads by increasing property and sales taxes.
"I'd rather my kids drive on a gravel road than stick them with a big tax bill," said Bob Baumann, as he sipped a bottle of Coors Light at the Sportsman's Bar Café and Gas in Spiritwood.
If this guy wasn't brainwashed, he'd be talking about how the wealthy should be pitching for these roads, but Rush tells him that taxes are evil, even for millionaires, and he believes it so fervently that he'd rather go back to a primitive state than challenge that orthodoxy. This is a sign of a culture in deep decline.
...
Somehow I'm sure I will soon read that a Very Serious Think Tank has determined that illegal immigrants and their hippie overlords caused this problem.
Just as I am sure that, somehow, more tax cuts for the rich will turn out to be the only thing that will be able to solve it.
It's a suicide cult.
And they're trying to take the rest of us with them.
7 comments:
I live with dirty roads. Lots of them. Yes they can be hard on your vehicle, yes washboards can be hard on your bladder, yes they are dusty.
They also take a grader and a driver 2-3 times a year to make it passable at 40 mph. Fast enough for a dirt road in rural Vt. in terms of cost your looking small fractions of money compared to paving.
We had a road near us that was famous statewide for being near impassable for years. It was a "paved" or paved-patched road. Nobody wanted to pay to have it rebuilt in the town it was located in because most of the traffic on it was people passing through to the next town. They finally decided to do something about it and the fist thing they did was take it down to dirt. It made a huge difference. It's cheaper to maintain a dirt road.
I don't see this as a sign of the crapoclypse, PA never should have paved most of the roads they did. It may be seen as a sign of progress but progress can cost money.
When you think about what the right is saying it wants, and what the teabaggers say they want, you realize that historically it is not the 1950's they want to return to.
These people want to go back to the 1890's, giled age all the way. Back before there were regulatory laws, when unions were almost non-existant, when the government really was less powerful than the largest corporations and the rich got to decide how everyone lived.
Look up the gilded age, that is what the right has in mind for us all.
"It's a suicide cult."
An accurate summation of right wing insanity in 4 words. Only driftglass.
My freshman year in high school history class, we were encouraged to write an essay on the Roman Empire. I wrote mine on the parallels between the decline and fall of Rome and the direction of the US. It was 1962. Not much has happened since then to change my mind until 2008.
I would bet that a significant percentage of the liberal bloggers in my age group wrote essentially the same essay in high school and had much the same renewed hope in '08. Now, we're all working on our heads and struggling to see the positives so nobody can say we're bitter.
I'm up here in the northern peninsula of Michigan, and many roads are either being worked on to patch them up, or in the case of older, backwoods roads, have been gravel for at least a decade. Our county roads ave been patched, patched, and repatched to the point that spots resemble the worn knees on a pair of jeans, covered up again every time they wear through (as oppose to getting new fucking pants)
What's with all this urgency? Sit back, crack another Coor's Lite and relax, Rome weren't burnt in a day.
I believe they met years ago, D. (When they wanted it back from Clinton and Gore's rule.) At the same time, they decided to enforce the wisdom of the tax cuts - and then stole the election for Dumbya to ensure it.
Somehow I'm sure I will soon read that a Very Serious Think Tank has determined that illegal immigrants and their hippie overlords caused this problem.
And they're not just trying.
They want us to go first.
And they're trying to take the rest of us with them.
I'm guessing that they all think they will be getting on the Heavenward bus to golden harps and young bodies after they get rid of the troublemakers (us).
Or some such dire nonsense.
S
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