MORE THOUGHTS ON INFRASTRUCTURE:

Even before today’s fires and power outages disrupted downtown D.C., it had been a rough week for transportation infrastructure in the area. Commuting by the Metro’s Orange line was a disaster because of a derailment — and Metro officials bungled the back-up plans for shuttle buses, completely mishandling communications — even as high fuel prices push riders onto mass transit. And the MARC trains were the usual unreliable selves.

Plus this:

But the planning and much of the construction took place before the Great Society, before Medicare, before Medicaid, before welfare, before Food Stamps, before the Conservation Reserve Program, before the Low-Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program, before the Community Development Block Grant Program, before the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, leafy spurge management grants, before HUD, the EPA, the Department of Education, etc., etc., etc….that is, before the explosion of federal spending and programs that now draw dollars that might have been spent on infrastructure.

Yep. It’s not a money problem, it’s a priority problem.

UPDATE: Col. Douglas Mortimer emails:

Um…all that spending and construction was before something else, too. It was before the NEPA and the ESA. Before EAs, and FONSIs, and EISs were required before the federal government could do anything. Any big federal construction projects can, and probably would be, tied up in environmental compliance litigation for years before a spade of dirt is turned.

Absolutely right.