http://www.californiadroughtupdate.org/pdf/20180322-California-Drought-and-Infrastructure-Report.pdf
What is crucial now, is that President Trump and the United States choose the offer of China, the Belt and Road Initiative, and let its paradigm of productive economic progress rub off a bit.
Tax cuts, Wall Street deregulation have not and will not revive American growth from its long stagnation, or fill its huge infrastructure deficit. The actions proposed by EIR Founder Lyndon LaRouche will, starting by breaking up Wall Street with a new Glass-Steagall Act. These actions, including the first national credit institution the United States has had since Franklin Roosevelt’s RFC, are aimed at joining the United States into a global cooperation of sovereign nations for “the common aims of mankind.”
https://larouchepac.com/20180320/londons-game-war-or-chinas-progress-which-choice-america
A Note To Readers
Never will either California’s water future be secured nor the nation be rebuilt by piecemeal, one by one projects. The poison of ideology and partisanship, which paralyzes the imagination and will, leaves the nation not only disgusted, but cynical. Damn it! Think big, like we use to do. Now, because it has been more than two generations since the nation has had a mission that could unify the population to achieve some great task, most merely live their lives to survive. It is pathetic and disgusting that this republic has been reduced to such a state. Not to speak of the horrendous poverty more and more Americans are sinking into.
Well, let the Paul Ryans and the Nancy Pelosies play their games, we have some real work to do. In 1933, within days of his inauguration as President, Franklin D. Roosevelt not only busted Wall Street and prevented a complete financial collapse, he also launched the great projects that you, today, depend upon for your water and electricity. And he did it by throwing partisanship in the garbage can. He used the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, created by a Republican Congress and a Republican President, and run by a Republican banker from Texas, to do so.
I have discussed what the policy today must be many times in these pages, so today I will just once again provide the link to that policy that does define such a direction for us today.
LaRouche’s Four Laws: America’s Future on the New Silk Road
https://larouchepac.com/sites/default/files/four-laws-pamphlet-high.pdf
Of course, examples are always useful to make clear what is possible, so this week our Great Project is China’s South-North Water Transfer Project. An introduction to it with a link will be found in the last section of this report: “Feature.”
In This Week’s Report
The chatter for the past couple of weeks has been about the possibility of a “miracle March,” meaning will the reliably unpredictable weather of California would bring the state all the precipitation that the middle of winter failed to do? Well, the answer to that wish is, sort of.
Following the weather and climate does make writing these reports interesting, and I hope my inclusion of usually some extensive coverage does not bore you. But, should you wish to learn a little about how climate and weather systems are among the most complex phenomenon of our planet, then you will usually find something of interest in these reports. This week is not an exception.
On the theme mentioned in the first sentence of this introduction, a piecemeal, project by project approach to building infrastructure is doomed to fail, we see that problem in spades in this state. Whether it is the Delta tunnels project or Jerry’s very slow high-speed rail failure, not only do they, even if they were completed, not transform much of anything, but create even more pessimism and cynicism among the citizens.
Not quite as visible, but just as pathetic is the debate about water storage projects. This week’s focus is Shasta Dam. A World War III is underway about raising the dam a few feet to store more water. You can read about it below.
There is a short construction update on the progress of repairing the spillways at Oroville Dam, and a couple of new videos.
Desalination, which will be a major element of the state’s water supply, whether some like it or not, again provides a lesson on how piecemeal projects will not do. We should be building dozens of plants like the Carlsbad plant, but all we are getting is a patch-job quilt of a small plant here and there. Three reports on the topic are included this week.
A million people in the state do not have safe drinking water. As one article puts it, you have heard of Flint, Michigan’s water, but there is a big problem here, mostly in the Central Valley. Damn! Another piecemeal approach is on the agenda to address this problem as you can see in a couple of reports.
Be it Old or New, American Infrastructure is Collapsing, is the title of the first item in our Feature this week. Most have heard of the new pedestrian bridge that collapse while under construction in Florida last week. But, few know about the breakdown of one of the oldest railroad bridges in the country, the Portal Bridge in New Jersey. Not only is it old, but it is the crucial transportation route for the entire northeaster part of the country.
As mentioned above, China’s great water project is covered in the Feature section, along with another example of how some U.S. economists or professors are discovering Alexander Hamilton’s great contributions to creating the American System of economics and finance.
