TIME FOR INFRASTRUCTURE NOW!

The time to get serious about rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure is NOW! It’s not just that bridges are falling down, roads are in disrepair, and updates for our railway systems are needed … it’s also that our water pipes delivering fresh water to our homes are disintegrating, and our electrical grid — it’s a disaster!

With changes in the climate definitely upon us, upgrading our nation’s electrical grid and burying the power lines underground would be a big boon to our nation and to our economy. We need to bury our power lines across the nation because when the latest big storms blow into a community, causing the above ground power lines go down, power is lost. When power is lost in the summer-heat, the resulting sweltering cities lead to suffering and even deaths. And when the electricity which powers computers and equipment is lost, when air-conditioning is lost in the summer and heat in the winter, lower economic productivity is the result.

Our schools are in terrible disrepair and the internet is not available to all in our nation. Schools should be repaired and rebuilt, and the internet needs to be expanded to the entire nation — as we previously expanded the availability of electricity with the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933.

The TVA is a federally owned corporation which was created by Congressional charter in order to establish an economic development agency to rapidly modernize the Tennessee Valley economy. The TVA dramatically expanded electricity to this region, which was particularly affected by the Great Depression — and it worked in stimulating the economy and making a brighter future for the region possible. We could do the same with making the internet available throughout the country, and probably without establishing a federally owned corporation!

Under Republican Dwight David Eisenhower the federal government built the interstate highway system, linking the contiguous 48 states. The role of the federal government in building the best infrastructure in the world in the 20th century was not questioned. And yet, while America fought two Middle East wars in the first decade of this new century — Europe and China were investing in top notch infrastructure. And we must face the fact that America simply cannot move our economy into the new century with this crumbling infrastructure.

And the really good news is: With interest rates at once-in-a-lifetime lows, the time to borrow money to rebuild the country could not be better than right now. The other really good news: Rebuilding our country will put Americans back to work and spark the economic recovery that we’re all looking for. And with Americans back to work, higher revenues to the government will accumulate and help to pay for the costs of the low-interest loans.

The bad news: The political environment is so toxic that our decision makers in congress are just plain opposed to spending any money what-so-ever, despite the fact that government spending is what brought our nation out of depression and recession in earlier times.

We are hopeful that there seems to be more and more effective grass-roots actions that are cropping up everywhere on the internet. The American people may be starting to rouse to demand democracy. Maybe we should start a petition online to get Congress to ACT NOW on rebuilding America’s infrastructure!

TIME FOR INFRASTRUCTURE NOW!