It complicates things (maybe I’m just being naive here) that the same depressingly cynical porkbelly tendencies flourish on both sides of the aisle, the projects may represent different political veneers, but the results are similar.
To me, the salient issue comes back to political actors playing in a game rigged so that the only political results they can get are from contractors and other businesses. Citizens United was just this corruption laid bare. Our uniquely American bootstrappiness may paint a nice backdrop for arguments against government projects that actually benefit the public without a profit motive, but the real dagger in the heart is lack of incentive for political actors.
Interesting. I wouldn’t have realized that they didn’t want to spend the money. I would have assumed that they were planning $500 million for the base bus terminal itself plus $10.5 billion for cattle chutes to pen the passengers, shoe removal stations, x-ray machines, intrusive cavity search stations, an army of thugs armed with automatic grenade launchers and chemical weapons, a few platoons of armored fighting buses, and a warren of secret torture chambers.
Another vision of public transit in a bizarro twin evil empire.
The Golden Gate bridge was completed ahead of schedule and under budget. So was Hoover Dam, the other iconic public works project of the last century.
I challenge any reader here to show me a major infrastructure project since, say, 1975 which met both these conditions. That’s what has changed since then.
(edit) And if the GG bridge had not been built in the thirties, do you think it could be built today? The impact studies and the lawsuits from the opponents would chew up two decades before the first yard of concrete could be poured.
Citizens United was about whether a private group could make and show a movie critical of a political candidate. If you are in favor of overturning Citizens United, you are in favor of prohibiting such movies (and books, according the government’s lawyer in the case).
[quote=“chenille, post:23, topic:57832”]
I wonder if you noticed, there is a tacit admission about ideological success in this very comparison.
[/quote]I really think it’s cultural, not ideological. There are nations where graft and stealing from the public purse are almost unthinkable. They are I suspect the nations with the nice train systems. The USA is not numbered among them.
I would gladly pay a dollar extra a gallon so we could fix some shit around here and stop depending on fricking bake sales at schools. My point was that he can’t take the PANYNJ money with one hand and shuffle it somewhere else on a New Jersey project and then claim he doesn’t know what happened and the funding for the tunnel isn’t a possibility when he’s holding a giant sack with “$” on it behind him.
And massive subsidies for coal and oil. If you oppose those subsidies and/or you support some restrictions on polluting the atmosphere we all depend on, then you oppose The Free Market.
An ideology that says industries should be motivated only by maximizing profit, and a culture where they are as ready to rip off the government as they are their customers or workers, are not exactly separable in my mind.
Moses was an awful man but you have to give him credit for getting things done - many of which actually benefit a whole lot of people and created much of the urban landscape that we have come to appreciate today. Right or wrong, he was responsible for many big projects that would simply be impossible to pull off today.
Public parks, beaches, pools and much of the transportation infrastructure in NYC is juxtaposed against racist ideology (eg: public housing projects, Cross-Bronx expressway) that tore thru minority communities. Taken on balance, Moses’ projects were at least social-centric compared to modern “power brokers” who work mostly in finance for personal wealth creation.
I do wonder what it would be like if he had completed the lower-Manhattan expressway like he wanted…
