Taking Credit for the Efforts of Others – the MAGA Way

 

Hurricane Katrina damage

Oroville Dam spillway failure

And no, Al Gore did not invent the Internet either. But there is reality to recent legislation. As Reuters reported last November, “Two years after President Joe Biden signed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law, his administration has launched 40,000 projects aimed at rebuilding America, according to his infrastructure czar, Mitch Landrieu.” For anyone who is remotely interested, our kicking the infrastructure repair can down the road may have saved the nation somewhere between $2 and $4 trillion in direct expenditures, but the indirect costs have been staggering. Just looking at the levee failures triggered in the New Orleans area from Hurricane Katrina, seeing mile after mile of decimated homes and businesses, roads and bridges taken out, was the visual evidence of such short-sighted deferred maintenance.

It not just those concrete and asphalt highways, potholed into oblivion, or even those concrete and steel bridges and dams cracking and subsiding, but so much of the United States still relies on leaded water pipes or dirt with some stone piled on as a functioning dam or levee system that people rely on… but engineers know are likely to fail in any extreme (and now very likely) condition. In February of 2017, heavy rains compromised California’s Oroville Dam; “water flowed over the emergency spillway, headward erosion threatened to undermine and collapse the concrete weir, which could have sent a 30-foot (10 m) wall of water into the Feather River below and flooded communities downstream. No collapse occurred, but the water further damaged the main spillway and eroded the bare slope of the emergency spillway.” Wikipedia. 180,000 people were evacuated. An expensive repair was necessary.

In short, our infrastructure is way below par, particularly given the raging storms and killer fires as our “cheerful parting gift” for ignoring climate change for so long. People should be informed as to which dams, bridges and dams are current threats, right? Well, that information has become scarce for reasons that might amaze you. As David Lieb writing for the August 23rd Associated Press reported: “One reason so few communities have qualified for top flood-insurance discounts is that some federal agencies have prohibited the release of inundation maps for dams that they own or regulate.

“After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, some federal agencies cited national security grounds while refusing to release certain information about dams. They feared dams could become targets if terrorists knew the potential to cause devastating flooding… The Bureau of Reclamation owns 430 dams in the western U.S., including some of the nation’s largest structures. But it has required non-disclosure agreements when sharing dam inundation maps and emergency action plans with local officials. That has inhibited officials from sharing specific information about the risks of dam failures with residents who could get flooded.” Wow! Do you live near a big dam?

One way or another, Americans are entitled to live in a nation where clearly preventable tragedies are addressed… and prevented. But that would require that taxpayers (read: those with the highest incomes would be most affected) to fund that massive infrastructure upgrade/expansion/ repair mandate… and for us to stop kicking that can down the road. The Biden administration, two years ago, passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which has since created hundreds of thousands of new jobs everywhere and initiated infrastructure projects all over the United States.

And while candidates for the US Congress and local legislative bodies from both parties are happy to tout all those recent improvements and new jobs in their local districts – and suggest strongly that they were responsible for those local projects – as Kristin Toussaint, writing for the August 16th FastCompany.com notes: “When the Inflation Reduction Act was passed into law two years ago today, not a single Republican voted for the legislation. But since its rollout, many of the districts represented by those politicians have seen the biggest benefits from the landmark climate bill.

“In two years, that climate investment has created more than 334,565 clean energy jobs, according to a new report from Climate Power, an organization focused on communicating climate progress. And more than half of those clean energy jobs—nearly 200,000—are located in congressional districts represented by Republican House members…

“Georgia leads the states with more than 32,000 clean energy jobs, followed by New York (28,934), Texas (24,122), Michigan (21,748), Kansas (21,077), and Nevada (20,448). That more than 190,700 of the IRA’s clean energy jobs (and more than $286 billion in investment) are in 150 Republican-led districts shows that this bill is impacting ‘everywhere,’ [Alex Glass, Climate Power’s communications director] says—even the places where politicians are trying to kill it. Since its passing, House Republicans have voted 42 times to repeal the clean energy plan. ‘They’re showing up at ribbon cutting ceremonies in their districts taking credit for job that are real,’ Glass says, and yet also trying to turn back this progress.

“Project 2025, the conservative playbook for the second Trump Administration, would also reverse these climate wins. ‘[Project 2025] would have a real impact on the middle class, and that’s not just hypothetical,’ Glass says. It would raise household fuel and utility spending by $240 a year, and lead to 1.7 million fewer jobs in 2030, compared to the current trajectory. ‘We should be talking about that every single day, because we can’t afford it,’ she adds.”

The dictionary defines a “plutarchy” as a society where the wealthy have control or rule over the people, like the United States. Just think back to 2017 when Donald Trump, as the benefactor for his elite coterie of billionaires, cut the federal corporate tax from 35% to 21%, creating huge trillion-dollar budget deficits (which all Americans bear) without making much of an economic dent in the lives of “the rest of us.” No real job creation (despite the long-dispelled theory that a “rising tide floats all boats”); only big companies and their mega-shareholders were laughing all the way to the bank.

I’m Peter Dekom, and America needs to stop electing people who are willing to make “culture war” concessions in order to shift wealth to those who really don’t need it… when the rest of us bear the cost.