3 injured after I-5 bridge collapses

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/injured-bridge-collapse-sends-cars-water/story?id=19246839

We've been getting repeated warnings for years about how shitty the infrastructure of this country has gotten, in particular how many bridges are "structurally deficient" like this one was. I can't wait to hear about how smaller government and decreased government spending is what'll solve the infrastructure problem.

:lol being a 1st world country with a 3rd world infrastructure
:lol maybe we should pray that the bridge fixes itself

[Blake]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/injured-bridge-collapse-sends-cars-water/story?id=19246839

:lol maybe we should pray that the bridge fixes itself

Jesus needs to put dem carpenter skills to good use

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

Jesus needs to put dem carpenter skills to good use

Hopefully he's able to duplicate bridges that properly function the same way he duplicated fish and bread :lmao

[Blake]

Come to think, Jesus don't need no bridge to walk over water.

1st century mustard seed faith > 20th century bridge

[Ignignokt]

I don't see what's the point of this thread. Are you saying that we don't spend enough as a govt? does 16trillion in debt mean we don't have a govt that's big enough?

[LnGrrrR]

Quick DoK, make a "Was the collapse of the I-5 bridge engineered by the US govt?" thread. Guaranteed that mouse, Che and SA will affirm it.

[Ignignokt]

Also, Neither Jesus nor Secular Liberal Cuck Snark can fix the bridges, do any of you guys have solutions?

[LnGrrrR]

I don't see what's the point of this thread. Are you saying that we don't spend enough as a govt? does 16trillion in debt mean we don't have a govt that's big enough?

Obviously Ig thinks that fixing bridges is something only dirty commies would support.

[Ignignokt]

Obviously Ig thinks that fixing bridges is something only dirty commies would support.

so if we have 16 trillion dollars in debt, do we need to go 20 trillion dollars in debt to fix bridges? In your world are there only Jesus freaks and Progressives? Fox and MSNBC??

[Ignignokt]

I mean, i don't even see how this snarky humor is remotely funny. I mean if you have aspies and you're an economic ignoramus, i can see how you could eat this up.

[Rick Santorum]

building and maintaining infrastructure is one of few tasks government should actually have the power to do, maybe if they weren't so obsessed with dominating the american people 1984 style and sticking their hands down our pants at the airport they could focus on shit government is supposed to focus on like our bridges imho.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

I don't see what's the point of this thread. Are you saying that we don't spend enough as a govt? does 16trillion in debt mean we don't have a govt that's big enough?

I think we don't spend enough on the right things. The trillions of dollars we spend rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan would have been much better used rebuilding America.

[Ignignokt]

building and maintaining infrastructure is one of few tasks government should actually have the power to do, maybe if they weren't so obsessed with dominating the american people 1984 style and sticking their hands down our pants at the airport they could focus on shit government is supposed to focus on like our bridges imho.


No it's not. But I'll make concessions, and if govt had to have services besides defense and law, i would say infrastructure would be one of the most important. But the dumbasses in this thread think we need to spend more money to fix infrastructure, when we have no money to spend. IF you want to do it that way, then you should cut alot of govt excess and then fund these little shit shovel ready projects.

[Ignignokt]

I think we don't spend enough on the right things. The trillions of dollars we spend rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan would have been much better used rebuilding America.

Cool, so we slash 7% of the budget (WOT expenditures) and redirect it towards infrastructure. Now we'll have a beautiful bridge where everyone can drive to and from the unemployment office and we'll celebrate our still crippling debt and dimininishing purchasing power because of it (the debt) by having cool daddy bridges!!

[Ignignokt]

I mean, you know what you sound like?

Like this.


Hey fuckwad conservatives, if we're going to fuck up our country with massive debt, atleast grow it some more so we can have spiffy bridges brah!

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

Cool, so we slash 7% of the budget and redirected towards infrastructure. Now we'll have a beautiful bridge where everyone can drive to and from the unemployment office and we'll celebrate are still crippling debt and dimininishing purchasing power because of it by having cool daddy bridges!!

:lol thinking our excess military spending is only 7% of the budget

So what should we do when bridges start collapsing, tbh?

[Ignignokt]

:lol thinking our excess military spending is only 7% of the budget

So what should we do when bridges start collapsing, tbh?

You mentioned the iraq and afghanistan war, they're not anywhere near the biggest part of our expenditures. Without vet benefits and pay, our budget for military spending is 18%. It's discretionary and entitlement spending which is growing at the fastest rate and contributes more to it.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

I mean, you know what you sound like?

Like this.
I really don't care how spiffy the bridges are, I just care about them functioning properly (but you already knew that). I also care about other infrastructure problems.

Conservatives also seemed to celebrate the crippling debt plenty from 2001-2008.

[Ignignokt]

I mean, you already know this, but instead you go back to your tribalistic secular liberal reflexes.

[Ignignokt]

Conservatives also seemed to celebrate the crippling debt plenty from 2001-2008.

Well yeah, fuck those conservatives. To retaliate, the liberals should show em' up and reveal to the country what real fucked up bloated govt looks like!! Muricka!!!!

[Ignignokt]

This is the option alot of repugs and all Democrats have given us.


1. Balanced Budget

2. 'Murica!

You can only have one.

And this thread is damn good proof of it.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

You mentioned the iraq and afghanistan war, they're not anywhere near the biggest part of our expenditures. Without vet benefits and pay, our budget for military spending is 18%. It's discretionary and entitlement spending which is growing at the fastest rate and contributes more to it.

Yeah and it's not like I think those don't need to addressed too, just that the 1,000+ international military bases we have are some of the easiest cuts to make. 18% of our expenditures is also a pretty big amount when you look at how much other modern countries spend on defense.

I also think addressing infrastructure with one-time expenditures is OK now given how low the cost of issuing debt currently is. Issuing debt for one-time expenditures on infrastructure doesn't led to long term deficit problems with the interest on the debt is as low as it currently is, issuing debt to pay recurring costs is the issue.

[baseline bum]

You mentioned the iraq and afghanistan war, they're not anywhere near the biggest part of our expenditures. Without vet benefits and pay, our budget for military spending is 18%. It's discretionary and entitlement spending which is growing at the fastest rate and contributes more to it.

What is it with veterans' benefits and pay?

[LnGrrrR]

so if we have 16 trillion dollars in debt, do we need to go 20 trillion dollars in debt to fix bridges? In your world are there only Jesus freaks and Progressives? Fox and MSNBC??

Youre right, it's much better not to fix bridges and to have the economy lose a ton of money when those bridges collapse.

Oh and :lol 4 trillion to fix bridges.

[Rick Santorum]

Youre right, it's much better not to fix bridges and to have the economy lose a ton of money when those bridges collapse.

Oh and :lol 4 trillion to fix bridges.

Don't you have some rich oil tycoons dick to suck?

[Blake]

Also, Neither Jesus nor Secular Liberal Cuck Snark can fix the bridges, do any of you guys have solutions?

the solution is to have the government properly appropriate our taxes and build/maintain bridges correctly.

What's your solution, lol gtown?

[boutons_deux]

Feds/Treasury can find $10T+ to save the financial sector (including European banks), which did nothing for the Real Economy, gave the Real Economy 99% NO RETURN on Investment.

But spending $5T on sewers, water, bridges, roads, electrical grid, solar/wind incentives, all of which creates real and good jobs and have huge returns for decades, receives: "We're Broke. Austerity is Necessary"

Just another indicator how the corrupt plutocracy takes care of itself while fucking the unfuckable 99%.

[Wild Cobra]

Wow...

Don't any of you verify anything before opening your mouths?

This was not due to a structural problem. The driver of the truck had an oversize load that was 15' 9" tall, driving in the right lane when he should have been in the left while going thorough the bridge because of its curved opening. The bridge at the far left only had a 14' 6" clearance. The driver hit the bridge structure with his heavy steel load.

link: UPDATE 2-Investigators looking at height clearance in U.S. bridge collapse (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/26/usa-bridge-collapse-idUSL2N0E60FU20130526)

[Blake]

Wow...

Don't any of you verify anything before opening your mouths?

Nobody likes a finger pointing hypocrite

[leemajors]

Even bridges that are deemed structurally fine, like the bridge outside Seattle, can fail if they are hit in a critical spot. Several of these spans, which were built without redundancies, date from the fifties and sixties, when the government was trying to complete the nation's interstate highway system cheaply and quickly. About 18,000 "fracture critical" bridges are spread throughout the country.

[sook]

I think we don't spend enough on the right things. The trillions of dollars we spend rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan would have been much better used rebuilding America.:clap

[Cane]

I think we don't spend enough on the right things. The trillions of dollars we spend rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan would have been much better used rebuilding America.

Mt. Vernon, WASH can go fuck themselves. They're not real Americuns.

[BobaFett1]

Cut out welfare.

[Das Texan]

they should just take what they spend on the defense department and put it into infastructure funding.


hell even have the military build the roads and shit.


would be better for the long term health of this nation anyway.

[DMC]

I think we don't spend enough on the right things. The trillions of dollars we spend rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan would have been much better used rebuilding America.

The bridges we're rebuilding in Iran and Afghanistan are much more important, since we will have to blow those up someday. Hopefully we built them with C4.

[angrydude]

You know how many train derailings, bridge collapses, and other such massive infrastructure fuckups china has? This is the same place that proponents of infrastructure spending always hold up as the pinnacle of infrastructure development.

Things break. Get over it.

Infrastructure spending is great if you have saved up and can afford it. It isn't great if it's just going to get you in greater debt. We already have roads. We already have bridges. Blowing up the old ones and replacing them with new ones isn't going to help the economy.

[Das Texan]

You know how many train derailings, bridge collapses, and other such massive infrastructure fuckups china has? This is the same place that proponents of infrastructure spending always hold up as the pinnacle of infrastructure development.

Things break. Get over it.

Infrastructure spending is great if you have saved up and can afford it. It isn't great if it's just going to get you in greater debt. We already have roads. We already have bridges. Blowing up the old ones and replacing them with new ones isn't going to help the economy.


The New Deal would argue otherwise.

[ChumpDumper]

You know how many train derailings, bridge collapses, and other such massive infrastructure fuckups china has? This is the same place that proponents of infrastructure spending always hold up as the pinnacle of infrastructure development.

Things break. Get over it.

Infrastructure spending is great if you have saved up and can afford it. It isn't great if it's just going to get you in greater debt. We already have roads. We already have bridges. Blowing up the old ones and replacing them with new ones isn't going to help the economy.


The New Deal would argue otherwise.Heck, lost productivity due to traffic in Austin would argue otherwise.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

IMO this country's infrastructure problem goes beyond bridges/roads/highways/etc. We also lose tons of productivity to power outages because of how ancient our grid is. Germany's power grid is underground, thus they don't have a major outage to deal with every time there's inclement weather. I agree with gtown that it would cost way too much to go across the country and make our entire power grid underground, but in major cities/places prone to extreme weather we should ditch overhanging power lines.

[boutons_deux]

there's sewers, water treatment, water conservation, the power grid which is now unreliable and retarding/blocking the development of wind and solar.

I expect TX and SoCal will have to build gargantuan desalination plants and pipelines, as Melbourne AU is doing, as reduced snow pack and mega-droughts risk to be chronic.

[Blake]

The bridges we're rebuilding in Iran and Afghanistan are much more important, since we will have to blow those up someday. Hopefully we built them with C4.

:lol

[coyotes_geek]

I think we don't spend enough on the right things. The trillions of dollars we spend rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan would have been much better used rebuilding America.

:tu

So true. A trillion dollars on domestic infrastructure improvements over the last decade would have done a lot of good things.

[coyotes_geek]

I expect TX and SoCal will have to build gargantuan desalination plants and pipelines, as Melbourne AU is doing, as reduced snow pack and mega-droughts risk to be chronic.

Yep. Just a matter of time before we'll be pumping gulf water to Dallas and pacific water to Phoenix.

[boutons_deux]

Yep. Just a matter of time before we'll be pumping gulf water to Dallas and pacific water to Phoenix.

desal costs so much because it takes so much electricity, sorta like smelting aluminum. If TX off shore wind farms and coastal solar farms would supply the electricity, then we'd have a real winner.

I have no confidence that TX repugs, esp the tea baggers like Cruz, give a shit about renewables and stuff like desalination.

[Wild Cobra]

Desalination isn't going to become a needed infrastructure, until water prices due to supply and demand justify the cost of it.

[boutons_deux]

Desalination isn't going to become a needed infrastructure, until water prices due to supply and demand justify the cost of it.

They won't let water prices skyrocket due to it being essential to every household's daily life, and esp water-greedy industry. This isn't a simple "free market" supply/demand issue, so you're stupid ideology doesn't apply (it never does).

Orange County now treats municipal brown water, injects it into the aquifer cleaner than it come out of the aquifer, because people don't want to drink sewer water.

[coyotes_geek]

desal costs so much because it takes so much electricity, sorta like smelting aluminum. If TX off shore wind farms and coastal solar farms would supply the electricity, then we'd have a real winner.

I have no confidence that TX repugs, esp the tea baggers like Cruz, give a shit about renewables and stuff like desalination.

Texas gives enough of a shit about renewables to be the #1 wind producing state in the nation by a wide margin.

[coyotes_geek]

Desalination isn't going to become a needed infrastructure, until water prices due to supply and demand justify the cost of it.

Correct. Just a matter of time.