This page was last updated on October 12, 2010.
Road to ruin; Editorial; Beaver County Times; October 12, 2010.
This is simply the latest in a string of similar editorials over the past 5+ years.
As I’ve noted previously, the ASCE is not exactly an independent observer. I’m not saying the ASCE assessment is incorrect, but we need to keep in mind low grades help the ASCE because low grades mean more civil engineering projects and this benefits ASCE membership. Over the last several years, the Times has used the ASCE at least 32 times as a source for its infrastructure-related editorials, yet I believe you’ll find the Times never mentioned the possibility of a conflict of interest. Among the previous editorials were “Woe are we,” “Sound the alarm” (a companion to “Woe are we”), “Falling down,” “Cutting corners,” “Look ahead,” “Attack of the E. coli,” “Looking ahead,” “Future shock,” “Bitter harvest,” “Failing grade,” “Tough calls,” and “Bottoms up.” At least five of the editorials (including this one) conjured up images of a “Third World” country.
The editorial refers “to the collapse of an eight-lane, interstate highway bridge in Minneapolis in 2007” as if the collapse was the result of insufficient maintenance. Either the editorial writer doesn’t read the news, or this is yet another attempt at deception. As a reminder, the Minnesota bridge collapse had nothing to do with poor maintenance. The collapse report attributed the main cause to a design flaw (Gusset plates were ½ the thickness they should have been.) and a contributing factor was the weight of construction equipment/materials on the bridge. Since the Times jumped on the poor maintenance bandwagon (“Bitter harvest”) just after the collapse, Times editorials were predictably silent when the collapse report came to a different conclusion.
Did you note how the editorial skimmed over the recommendation to charge “a penny or two for each mile that is driven?” It’s none of the government’s business to know how many miles an individual drives or where. You’ll remember this is the newspaper that whines about a lack of privacy when it comes to a private citizen taking pictures with his cell phone, but I don’t recall any editorials about government sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong regarding the financial full body cavity search we go through every year when we must detail every aspect of our finances for multiple levels of government (income taxes, property taxes, wage taxes, etc.) or the government access to our healthcare records required by government healthcare programs like Medicare. Tracking miles driven would be yet another government assault on our privacy.
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