Our infrastructure is crumbling. We need leadership that puts #PeopleBeforeProfits, to end regime change wars, the new Cold War and arms race, and keep the money in people’s pockets and/or rebuild our country’s bridges, airports, roads, sewer lines, etc.
As US House Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has noted, our infrastructure is crumbling. We need to be fixing those things before they become a huge problem. A huge problem? Look at the Big Dig in Boston.
Jason Szep (REUTERS) noted how a portion of the tunnel's ceiling fell July 11, 2006 killing a woman. And it's not just our roads, bridges and tunnels in need of repair, our parks are also in need of repair. The National Parks Conversation Association explains:
The Trump administration and Congress have an extraordinary opportunity to provide needed and overdue resources to address the more than $11 billion infrastructure repair backlog.
The National Park System is second only to the Department of Defense in the amount of infrastructure it manages, and maintaining and repairing that infrastructure requires resources — staff and materials that the National Park Service has not received from Congress.
Due to the long-term underinvestment in parks by Congress, the infrastructure repair backlog comprised of park roads, bridges, trails, historic structures, campgrounds and other facilities has grown to more than $11 billion. Over half of the projects on the infrastructure repair backlog list are park road projects, such as the Arlington Memorial Bridge and the Grand Loop Road in Yellowstone National Park.
Our libraries need more funding as well. The American Library Associations' Members of the Young Adult Library Services Association just elected Amanda Barnhart as their new president today and, hopefully, she will get assistance from many Americans as she identifies and attempts to meet the demands of young adults throughout the country. At the Center for American Progress, Laura Jiminez explains why we need federal funding for our schools' infrastructure.
All around, there are needs that should be addressed. But they can't be addressed when all the money goes to these never ending wars. From 2001 through this fiscal year, the total cost of these wars has been 5.9 trillion dollars.
We need to set our priorities and stop letting the public servants -- who forget to serve us or else just ignore us -- set our priorities for us.