What happened to the maintenance money over the last 40 years?

Wheph thank gawd! The stimulus money is finally beginning to flow and all is right with America again. There was some big deal about a bridge in MO that was going to be the first repaired with stimulus money.

Hey look, I’m as happy as the next guy that the bridge is going to be fixed before some family of four plummets to their deaths. But, here are a couple of rather obvious questions that I haven’t heard axed:

How did the bridge fall into disrepair in the first place?
Who is responsible for failing to perform the annual maintenance on the bridge for last 40 years?

Everyone who pumps a gallon of gas pays a small percentage of the price per gallon into the Federal Transportation Fund. That money is supposed to be used to maintain federal highways and bridges. States and counties also charge a few cents per gallon of gas to maintain their roads and bridges. That is why about 45 cents of every gallon gas goes to some tax. So why is the infrastructure falling apart?

Because it’s easier to get votes spending the highway money on new projects named after a local politician than slap a coat of paint on the underside of a bridge that no one sees and is impossible to name after yourself. When was the time you saw a sign on a bridge, “The Robert C. Byrd primer gray undercoat project?” That’s probably a bad example given the Klansman’s propensity to paint or chisel his name on every object that doesn’t move in WV.

The point is that the money to repair and maintain these structures should already be in the budget and should have been since they were completed. So now the very people who allowed the structures to fall into disrepair in the first place are going to be the ones collecting more money to do the job they didn’t do when they were supposed to do it.

Heh, what could go wrong with that?


ALERT!! ALERT!! Laugh out loud funny!! Iowahawk is BACK!

If you don’t do anything else today, read this in your best Thurston Howell III voice from Gilligan’s Island. You know the rich guy in the ascot, “Lovey dear, I feel a draft. Throw some more money on the fire.” Or, even better in the voice of Stewie from Family Guy.