by Joseph Whalen

Created on: March 19, 2008

Given the proclivity of government to mismanage, misappropriate and outright steal money from the public, it would be unwise to trust it with such a huge responsibility as the safety of our national infrastructure. Decades ago when the Eisenhower administration instituted the national highway system in an effort to build out our nation's infrastructure it was a different time. Our nation was very different then, our leaders were far more noble and deserving of our trust. America was different, it's citizens far more united after having suffered through the great depression and the Second World War

Today things are different, Americans are different and our politicians are different. Unfortunately not all of the changes that have occurred in American culture since the 1950's have been for the betterment of our nation. Our politicians are more self-serving than ever before. The two political parties are more divisive to society than any differences we've ever faced along racial, ethnic or gender lines. The politicians of today have become masters of manipulating the most subtle prejudices in our vast array of cultures, and doing so to their own advantage. Political offices are held today by lawyers and the wealthy elite, far removed from the common people they are supposed to represent. Far more concerned with the advancement of their own agendas and careers, today's politicians lack the same unified sense of purpose that made this nation so great.

It is this disappointing group of charlatans that we leave the legacy of our infrastructure system if we choose to let government continue to hold the reigns of management of our vast and complicated highway system. Given their historical inclination to ignore the will and needs of the people in order to serve themselves it is difficult to believe that they would take the deteriorating conditions of our highway systems seriously enough to do anything constructive about it. With little financial or political benefit to be found in funneling millions or billions of dollars into road projects to shore up our bridges and repair our tunnels there is hardly an incentive for today's crop of money grubbing politicians to step forward and seriously tackle the epidemic of deterioration that afflicts our roadways.

While having private businesses assume the management of infrastructure is far more likely to see the job done right, it also opens up a fertile opportunity for corruption and additional mismanagement of federal and state

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