Steve Green gets upset about rebuilding something which could basically be rebuilt exactly the same as it was, but won’t.
Could it really take twice as long and four times as much money to replace the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge than it did to build it in the first place?
The Key Bridge was built at a cost (adjusted for inflation) of about $200 million. Replacing it could take a decade and cost $400 million to $800 million dollars, according to experts in what has become a dismal field.
“To actually recreate that whole transportation network” could take a decade or more, structural engineer Ben Schafer told USA Today on Wednesday. Huge projects, Schafer said, now take “rarely less than 10 years.”
Steve gets upset; I don’t. Why not?
Because this boondoggle is located in Baltimore, a Democrat-run shithole which has become a festering boil on the face of civilization, largely due to the fact that it has been run by liberal Democrats and socialists for decades and decades.
Yeah, I know: traffic will be affected badly because the old FSK Bridge carried I-695 traffic around (as opposed to through) Baltimore.
Don’t care. The more it fucks up Baltimore, the better I like it. The longer it takes, the longer the pain will last. The more expensive it gets… well, I don’t care about that either.
Maybe the federal government will spend a little less on foreign aid to (say) Gaza or Gambia or [insert shithole of choice here] instead of on one of our own domestic shitholes. (But they won’t; they’ll just print more money to pay for it.)
I’m sure someone will produce some study or other which will show how wrong my attitude is, that the rebuild will Create Jobs And Feed Pore Starvin Kiddies or some such nonsense; or that the cumulative traffic detours made necessary by this calamity will cost some putative number of billions of dollars etc. etc.
Still don’t care.
The plain fact is that whatever the cost, it will be exacerbated by the over-large and inflated union salaries paid to the workers (Baltimore, duh), and the inevitable delays before the construction ever begins will be because the Greens will have issues about endangering some fucking minuscule / unimportant insect or sea-creature and therefore endless fucking studies will have to be made, and addressed, before the first load of concrete is poured or the first steel girder is welded together.
Did I say steel? Oh yeah, because our steel manufacturing industry has been largely exported to fucking China or somewhere, we’ll have to buy it and ship it all across an ocean or two rather than simply trucking it down from just-up-the-road Allentown or Pittsburgh.
And if those unionized construction workers decide to strike because of [insert stupid reason to strike here] the delay will grow still longer and so on.
Let me reiterate: I just don’t fucking care.
All the unnecessary cost overruns and delays will have been caused by our own sclerotic and self-inflicted regulatory clots in the infrastructure bloodstream, instituted by people who have no idea of consequence other than Harm Done To Mother Gaia (who is a total bitch in any case, ask anyone whose relative was killed during an earthquake).
As a society, we have sown the wind, and now it’s time for that whirlwind to come and blow the whole edifice of bullshit over — or not, in which case the bridge will never be rebuilt.
And I still won’t care.
Fuck ’em all.
