Reading transcripts this morning, dear worst-reader. About what, you ask. Well. About infrastructure investments of a once great structure. At first I didn’t give much of a hoot about recent train derailment. Planes fall out of skies. Rockets can’t reach their instellar destinations and plummet back to earth, burning up in the atmosphere. Buildings in major cities blow up because gas lines are rotting. A train derailment is just another added note on the chalk board where I list examples of the 3Ds. Yes, we’re blogging about #americant this morning. And all because a magazine recently published a figure about how much #americant spends on its infrastructure and that spending figure coincides perfectly with a train derailment in Philadelphia. The figure? 2.5%. That’s how much a once great structure spends on its infrastructure, according to a British magazine. Now. Do we need to worst-write about how much is spent on other things? Probably not. And you know, that’s not even the bestest thing in this post. Indeed. The bestest thing is this:
The problem is that, you know, elections have consequences. So when you continue to elect people that don’t understand the importance of these kinds of issues, you get the results that you get. -Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not quoting a union rep because I like unions. It’s just that I never thought I’d reach the point where a union rep would be the one promoting rational, functional idears regarding what’s wrong with #americant. I’m just not sure there is a precedence where unions–especially the union mind-set–have provided the leadership required to maintain infrastructure of any kind. But I digress.
The quote from the union rep above says almost everything that need be said about what’s wrong with #americant. May I be so bold as to accentuate it? I mean. Who is responsible for electing political representatives? Who the people involved in this chicanery? Where do these people come from? Indeed. A few hardest questions to ask. And since I can’t answer them (nor do I want to on account it would cause me to not laugh as hard each day) here’s something else one can worst-ponder. Just take a look at that recall election attempt in Wisconsin. Who elected recent governor of Florida? What mentality puts current Texass governor on national stage? And what about all those silly, bed wetting newbies in the US Congress spouting religious fanaticism, greater-than-thee morality and misconstrued economic policies, etc., etc. Add to that the conservative talking heads that obviously tell Americans how to vote/think… Again, I digress.
After reading through the transcript (link below) and seeing how easy it is to compare a failing infrastructure with those that aren’t necessarily failing, well, I guess that’s significant, too. But what really throws worst-writer for a loop is that this is all so obvious and yet there is nothing to be done about it. I mean, seriously, how does one fix something that transcends being broken only to find new ways to break everything?
Rant on. -Tommi
worstwriter 