Bob Herbert: The Master Key

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/opinion/12herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

The Master Key
By BOB HERBERT

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Senator Kerry will introduce legislation next week to create a federal infrastructure bank — officially, the American Infrastructure Financing Authority — to provide loans and loan guarantees to large, essential infrastructure projects. The loans will be seed money used to leverage other sources of funding.

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We’ve moved so far from that forward-looking, can-do philosophy of prior eras that there is a danger that we really are incapable of preventing the nation’s infrastructure from deteriorating further. We’ve seen how catastrophic that can be. New Orleans was all but lost for want of an adequate system of levees and floodwalls. Thirteen people were killed in the rush-hour collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Natural gas pipelines are blowing up in city after city. And the sorry condition of so many streets and highways contributes, at least in part, to the deaths of thousands of motorists every year.

Creation of an infrastructure bank would be an important indication that leaders in Washington are still capable, despite most of the available evidence, of moving beyond partisan paralysis to engage one of the biggest challenges facing the country. If there is such a thing as a master key to a better American future, investment in the nation’s infrastructure would be it. That is the biggest potential source of jobs. That is how you build the foundation for new and innovative industries.

I sometimes try to imagine New York City without its subways, or the United States without the interstate highway system. Those kinds of projects could not be built today. Try to imagine life in the 21st century without the Internet. Imagine if we had never gone to the moon.

Maybe that’s what’s missing today. The ability to imagine.

[ej510]

1. One reason New Orleans was left to rot was a lot of those people were poor and the second reason was

because most of those people were black.

[andym]

2. Won't the GOP make this DOA? NT.