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A bridge too sturdy?

[Couldn't resist, because the star-studded flop about World War Two's Arnhem operation, A Bridge Too Far should have been titled An Hour Too Long.]

Yep: the government sure is spending that stimulus money to beef up the crumbling bridges of America:

From AP:

In making the case that the recovery program was not just economically sound but also good policy, [VP Joe] Biden noted that transportation money was replacing unsafe bridges.

"It is worthwhile to take some of those 5,000 bridges out there that are ready to collapse, follow what happened in the upper Midwest, and fix them," he said.

But most states are spending stimulus money on bridges that are already in good shape, another AP analysis found. Of the 2,476 bridges scheduled to receive stimulus money so far, nearly half have passed inspections with high marks, according to federal data. Those 1,123 sound bridges received such high inspection ratings that they normally would not qualify for federal bridge money, yet they will share in more than $1.2 billion in stimulus money, the AP analysis published in July found.


My favorite stimulus stat, by the way, is that NASA has $1,002,000 set aside in the stimulus package, and thus far reports spending $102 of that total. What? Did they need a low-gravity toilet seat?
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Comments

Miko said…
Given that Keynsianism's sole focus is increasing consumption by forcing people to spend money on things that they don't think are worth spending money on, it makes sense that most of the bridges being repaired wouldn't need repair. After all, if they had needed repair, we would have just repaired them without bothering to talk about stimulus.

How do you tell the difference between a Keynsian and a free-market economist? The Keynsian says that we have "underconsumption," whereas the free-marketer says that we have "overproduction." We free market supporters realize that production exists only to satisfy our desire for consumption; "underconsumption" is a misuse of language. The Keynsians are essentially shills for Big Business and are forcing us to buy stuff we don't want.
September 4, 2009 at 11:07 PM
Tyler Nixon said…
Why are you such a naysayer, Steve? Don't you know there are more important issues on which to focus....like the Libertarian party platform on discrimination in commerce?

This administration is perfect for Biden and vice versa....it may well go down as the biggest running flim-flam scheme in U.S. history. But no matter what it must go down.
September 5, 2009 at 11:11 AM
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