The Iraq War Comes Home to Roost

Like the Katrina disaster two years ago, the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis, MN is yet another reminder of the real effects of the capitalist policy of “guns before butter”. A key bridge in a city with some of the worst rush hour congestion in the country, it is just one of the 73,784 U.S. bridges found by the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) to be “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete” – including 64.8 percent of the bridges in Washington, DC. The thirteen people who lost their lives are just part of the tragedy.

The disrepair of the country’s roads and the lack of an efficient public transportation system results in an incalculable amount of lost time, stress, and exhaustion, as over ten million U.S. workers now spend an hour or more each way on their way to work. In the ten years beginning in 1995, the number of miles driven has increased by 23 percent, while the length of the roads has gone up by 2 percent. That’s a tremendous increase in traffic and wear, particularly on urban arterial roads, 27 percent of which are now classified as “poor”. Between 1960 and 1965 the U.S. built 144,000 miles of new highway. Between 2000 and 2005 it added just 59,000 miles, although the population has grown by over 60 percent since 1960. This graphically reflects the real priorities of the ruling class – to invest the minimum necessary to keep commerce moving and profits flowing.

During the post-WWII economic boom, the capitalist class could afford to make some concessions to the working class while still pursuing its aggressive foreign policy. Now, faced with a looming economic crisis and a choice between imperialist adventures abroad and fixing crumbling schools, social services, and infrastructure at home, the ruling class’ only solution is to increase the attacks on workers at home and around the world.

The ASCE report gave U.S. public infrastructure an overall grade of “D”, concluding that $1.6 trillion would be needed over a five-year period to address problems with roads, bridges and other systems. This seems an incredible amount of money, which we are constantly told is not there. And yet billions upon billions of dollars have been spent in Iraq, which has benefited no one but the big corporations and their cronies in government. It has certainly not benefited the 3,750 U.S. soldiers killed so far in the war, or the 1,809 Iraqi civilians killed in July alone. And just think how many bridges, schools, and hospitals could be built with the estimated $12 million being spent every hour on the occupation?

A safe and efficient transportation network is clearly in the public interest. Massive investment is needed to rebuild and modernize it, including the expansion of rail, light rail, bus, and other forms of mass public transportation, which will not only increase the system’s efficiency, but also reduce fuel costs and the impact on the environment. Further privatization of the system is not the answer; a “solution” some have advanced in the aftermath of the Minneapolis collapse. On the contrary, the entire system should be nationalized under democratic public control.

To ensure that public resources are put to efficient and fully accountable use, the government must end the practice of using private contractors, and instead launch a massive program of public works, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs with union wages, benefits and representation. It is clear that the current big business government will never do this. Nor will the big business government to follow. For this to happen, U.S. workers will need a party of their own, a party that puts the interests of the majority first. We cannot expect the representatives of another class to defend our interests.

For its part, the Bush administration is in a mess, with the rats jumping ship faster than ever. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and chief architect of Bush’s electoral campaigns and presidency, Karl Rove, have all left in recent weeks, the latter two under a cloud of scandal and controversy.
With the Iraq War rapidly draining the national treasury and the public’s patience, it’s no wonder they want to get out while they still can, most likely into lucrative careers in the private sector. A recent opinion poll showed that Americans are as concerned about corruption in government and the economy as they are about the war in Iraq. This is an indication of things to come, as opposition to the war begins to shift to domestic issues, as the war inevitably starts to wind down.

General Petraeus’ much-anticipated report will be more of the same: partially-reached benchmarks that herald “progress”; vague promises of at least a partial withdrawal of the troops at some point in the future; an impassioned appeal for “just a little more patience and time”; and the assertion that the light can be seen at the end of the tunnel. General Westmoreland dragged out the Vietnam War in much the same manner.
U.S. imperialism has already been strategically defeated in Iraq, it is now a question of what they can salvage. Although they will eventually be forced to pull out the bulk of the combat troops, they will resist and delay a total withdrawal as long as possible, as they are compelled to defend their interests in the region, chiefly the Saudi oil fields and to combat Iran’s growing influence.

Even more alarming for the ruling class is the danger to the economy presented by the meltdown in the housing and mortgage market. The stock market has swung wildly up and down over the last few weeks, as investors alternate between extreme panic and irrational euphoria. The Federal Reserve has been forced to lower interest rates, which will only exacerbate already rising inflation. Despite this effort to loosen credit, demand for homes fell 12.2 percent to a six-year low in July. Home foreclosures rose 9 percent in July from June, a 93 percent increase from a year ago, as once white-hot housing markets now suffer the greatest number of loan failures.

According to Martin Feldstein, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, “The multiplier effect of home price declines and declines in consumer spending could push the economy into recession.” Ironically, even “free marketer” President Bush has promised a government bail out to prevent the total collapse of the sector and its spread to the rest of the economy.

This is the picture confronting U.S. workers as we enter the 2008 electoral campaign. None of the main candidates are speaking seriously about universal health care and education, repealing anti-labor laws, immediately ending the war or creating jobs through massive investment in rebuilding the country’s infrastructure. Working people are being made to pay for the crimes and greed of the capitalist class. The end of even the illusion of an economic “boom” will mean an intensification of the class struggle. The only lasting solution is a fundamental transformation of society: socialism.John Peterson

Minneapolis Bridge: Sorrow then Anger

Nick Coleman is a second generation journalist, who writes for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and is heard locally on Air America Radio.

Nick Coleman: Public anger will follow our sorrow

The cloud of dust above the Mississippi that rose after the Interstate
35W bridge collapsed Wednesday evening has dissipated. But there are
other dark clouds still hanging over Minneapolis and Minnesota.

By Nick Coleman, Star Tribune

Last update: August 02, 2007 ? 11:33 AM
The cloud of dust above the Mississippi that rose after the Interstate
35W bridge collapsed Wednesday evening has dissipated. But there are
other dark clouds still hanging over Minneapolis and Minnesota.

The fear of falling is a primal one, along with the fear of being
trapped or of drowning.

Minneapolis suffered a perfect storm of nightmares Wednesday evening,
as anyone who couldn't sleep last night can tell you. Including the
parents who clench their jaws and tighten their hands on the wheel
every time they drive a carload of strapped-in kids across a steep
chasm or a rushing river. Don't panic, you tell yourself. The people
in charge of this know what they are doing. They make sure that the
bridges stay standing. And if there were a problem, they would tell
us. Wouldn't they?

What if they didn't?

The death bridge was "structurally deficient," we now learn, and had a
rating of just 50 percent, the threshold for replacement. But no one
appears to have erred on the side of public safety. The errors were
all the other way.

Would you drive your kids or let your spouse drive over a bridge that
had a sign saying, "CAUTION: Fifty-Percent Bridge Ahead"?

No, you wouldn't. But there wasn't any warning on the Half Chance
Bridge. There was nothing that told you that you might be sitting in
your over-heated car, bumper to bumper, on a hot summer day, thinking
of dinner with your wife or of going to see the Twins game or taking
your kids for a walk to Dairy Queen later when, in a rumble and a
roar, the world you knew would pancake into the river.

There isn't any bigger metaphor for a society in trouble then a bridge
falling, its concrete lanes pointing brokenly at the sky, its crumpled
cars pointing down at the deep waters where people disappeared.

Only this isn't a metaphor.

The focus at the moment is on the lives lost and injured and the
heroic efforts of rescuers and first-responders - good Samaritans and
uniformed public servants. Minnesotans can be proud of themselves, and
of their emergency workers who answered the call. But when you have a
tragedy on this scale, it isn't just concrete and steel that has
failed us.

So far, we are told that it wasn't terrorists or tornados that brought
the bridge down. But those assurances are not reassuring.

They are troubling.

If it wasn't an act of God or the hand of hate, and it proves not to
be just a lousy accident - a girder mistakenly cut, a train that hit a
support - then we are left to conclude that it was worse than any of
those things, because it was more mundane and more insidious: This
death and destruction was the result of incompetence or indifference.

In a word, it was avoidable.

That means it should never have happened. And that means that public
anger will follow our sorrow as sure as night descended on the
missing.

For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly
that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It's been popular
with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that
Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase - the first in 20 years -
last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to road
repair. And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone
through, because we are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes
to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but wingnuts in
coonskin caps agree is one of the basic duties of government.

I'm not just pointing fingers at Pawlenty. The outrage here is not
partisan. It is general.

Both political parties have tried to govern on the cheap, and both
have dithered and dallied and spent public wealth on stadiums while
scrimping on the basics.

How ironic is it that tonight's scheduled groundbreaking for a new
Twins ballpark has been postponed? Even the stadium barkers realize it
is in poor taste to celebrate the spending of half a billion on
ballparks when your bridges are falling down. Perhaps this is a sign
of shame. If so, it is welcome. Shame is overdue.

At the federal level, the parsimony is worse, and so is the
negligence. A trillion spent in Iraq, while schools crumble, there
aren't enough cops on the street and bridges decay while our leaders
cross their fingers and ignore the rising chances of disaster.

And now, one has fallen, to our great sorrow, and people died losing a
gamble they didn't even know they had taken. They believed someone was
guarding the bridge.

We need a new slogan and we needed it yesterday:

"No More Collapses."
RENEGADE EYE