After the collapse of the highway bridge in Genoa, public opinion and media in EU countries are raising the question of the infrastructure safety in the EU. Although maintenance has generally been neglected and investments have cut because of austerity policies throughout the EU, the ultimate cause of the Genoa catastrophe is known by the name of “Britannia.”
In fact, although many factors contributed to the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, we can state with high certainty that had the highway not been privatized, the bridge would be standing today.
Genoa Bridge Collapse Shows How Privatization Kill
A Note To Readers
The jam-up by both the Congress and the Trump administration to even get anything moving on rebuilding the nation's infrastructure, let alone the quality of upgrade of that infrastructure required for 50 to 100 years into the future, is due to not only the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan types in the Congress, who said that any infrastructure program will have to be paid for by taking the funds out of Social Security and Medicare, but, also by the foolish, stupid and just damn wrong idea that a nation's infrastructure must be built by private funding. Thus, President Trump's $1 trillion plan over 10 years is suppose to rely on private investments for $800 billion of it. This insanity has now spread to America's space program, where the lives of American astronauts is going to be put in the hands of profit driven corporations, which will not put safety first as does NASA. Just look at the great infrastructure projects of the past, like the Tennessee Valley Project, Hoover Dam, the Grand Coulee Dam, the Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project, and many, many more. They were all government funded, built and directed projects, mostly begun or built during the 1930s and 40s. Not only have they paid for themselves a hundred times over, but they are indispensable elements of our economy today. NASA's Apollo Project that put human beings on the Moon six times was one of the most successful projects in human history. The quote above, on the collapse of the bridge in Genoa, Italy, makes the principled point that when one puts public infrastructure in the hands of private corporations which put profit above safety, people die. In This Week's Report We begin this week's report with updates on the drought, the weather, and fires. I need say nothing more here about that. The Oroville Dam Update features a couple of nice videos. The California Water Wars' battles have taken a dramatic turn this past week. Those battles are the California WaterFix (the tunnels under the Delta) and the State Water Resources Control Board plan to increase the unimpaired flows of the four major rivers of the San Joaquin River system. First, the Trump administration may have just killed the tunnel project for the Delta. In addition, finally admitted is the fact that the price of the tunnels has now jumped to $20 billion from $16 billion-- a 22% increase! As for the second battle front, it appears the state is backing off of its plan to decimate agriculture in the Valley after both a mobilization of Valley farmers and farm organizations raised a little Hell, and the Trump administration weighed in. In both battles, nothing is yet settled.
Flash: Western water honchos secretly huddle on tunnels, fish https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060095217
Californians sometimes forget that 30 percent of Southern California’s water comes from the Colorado River. Not only does the Colorado River Project make a large contribution to the Metropolitan Water District of California’s water supply, but the entire Imperial Valley depends on the waters of the river. The Imperial Valley provides as much as 15% of the nation’s vegetables, especially during the winter. So, the threat of near-term rationing of the river’s water as reported in the articles below is of serious concern to not only people of this state, but also the nation. Several articles below report this.
The following two sections are titled, “Fallout From the Tariffs” and “Infrastructure.” The infrastructure section includes the entire article on the Genoa bridge collapse, from which the quote above is from. There is also an item on Ultra-High Voltage Technology. The Feature this week is the International Petition Drive For A New Bretton Woods Conference. I shall let you read it without any further introduction to it here.
