Following the tragic I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, I was fascinated to read the following, in the conclusion to an article by Time Magazine's Ed Magnusen:

After decades of a "build and forget" policy abetted by irresponsible officials who were only too happy to hand on problems like maintenance and repair to their successors, the nation has no choice but to reorder its priorities and search for long-term funding.

I found it fascinating because the article was published in 1983. The decaying of America's infrastructure---not only bridges but highways, airports, waterways, public transportation, sewers, levees, dams and water lines---has been setting off alarms for more than two decades, with minimum response from the public, the media, and especially elected officials. In 1982 researcher Pat Choate published his frightening report America in Ruins, sounding the alarm as loudly and clearly as possible with a thorough examination of just how badly America's infrastructure was decaying. Bridges? Choate quoted federal authorities who estimated that close to a third of the bridges in the U.S were structurally insufficient…twenty years ago. And bridges weren't the worst of the infrastructure problems by a long-shot. Just wait until your sewers stop working and your tap water won't come out. You may not have to wait long. Choate's estimated price tag to the maintenance and repair needed to avert multiple catastrophes? Three trillion dollars.

And that was 25 years ago.

Since then, only a tiny percentage of the critical problems identified by Choate (and many other researchers) has been addressed. States like Virginia are devising deceptive schemes to pay for road building and repair rather than do what would be responsible, which is to charge gasoline taxes. Boondoggle "earmarks" like the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska distribute public works funds where they will win the most votes, not where they are most needed. National leaders of both parties, in the White House, in Congress and the Senate, in governors' mansions and state legislatures, have willfully, intentionally, negligently and irresponsibly neglected infrastructure maintenance for half a century, because it isn't sexy, it is expensive, and they want to spend the money on new programs that will get headlines and cheers from the Right, the Left, or USA Today. The equivalent conduct for an adult head of a household would be to let the family's roof rot so there could be a flashy new family luxury car every year. And then to blame someone else when his child was crushed.

As Minnesotan Garrison Keillor wrote in a recent column, "The way to get money to fix a bridge is for it to collapse and kill people, and so Congress promptly gave Minnesota $250 million for the fallen I-35W." Exactly. This was the pattern in New Orleans, and it will be the pattern when a major city's sewers stop working because they are dependent on 80 year-old pipes and thousands become sick. This is the pattern when there is no leadership and no integrity in public service, and it kills people. It killed motorists in Minnesota, and it will kill again.

The motorists who died on I-35 weren't killed by bad engineering. They were killed by bad ethics, by cowards in power---thousands of them--- who neglected to tend to one of the most basic and inarguable duties of government: keeping the public infrastructure safe and functioning. The last major upgrade of the nation's infrastructure came under the stewardship of President Eisenhower, and it has all been downhill since then. Ike left office almost 50 years ago. The culprits line up from there.

And none have been more irresponsible than today's unethical hacks. Joseph Romm, President Clinton's Deputy Assistant Secretary from 1995 though 1998, had the brass to use the bridge collapse as just another opportunity to prove the deadliness of global warming in an article entitled "Did Climate Change Contribute to the Minneapolis Bridge Collapse?" Just as unforgivable was conservative pundit John McLaughlin on PBS's "The McLaughlin Group" who opined that uncontrolled immigration was the culprit behind the disaster:

We have a number of immigrants coming every year. One hundred million new Americans will be in this country by what, 2015? Now that's wear and tear. It's  on emergency rooms, it's on roads, it's on bridges  and so forth...Are you surprised that the American government -- the Federal government, did not anticipate (that) the waves of immigrants that have been coming into our country and joining this great society (would) exact wear and tear on the infrastructure?

Sure, Mr. Romm, hot weather was a factor in the bridge collapse, but nowhere near as much of a factor as the Clinton (and Ford, and Carter, and Reagan, and Bush…) Administration's neglect of the infrastructure. Of course, John, I'm sure all those illegal Mexicans driving over bridges in Minnesota created some wear and tear, but since the deterioration of the nation's bridges was thoroughly documented in 1982, I don't think you can claim that a major bridge collapsing should have come as a surprise.

But Romm and McLaughlin are typical. Nobody is going to advocate spending trillions on the asphalt and steel it takes to just go safely and healthily through life, working, driving, drinking, and using the toilet; not when all the lobbying money, press profiles and public accolades will follow national health care programs, expensive illegal immigration enforcement plans, elimination of "the two Americas," free college tuition, or hydrogen vehicle research. It is a classic ethical choice: perform one's duty because it is the right thing to do for those whose welfare is at stake, or reap the personal benefits of doing something else. The choice made by two generations of public officials across the country has been the non-ethical one: ignore the infrastructure until the public cares---that is, until somebody dies.

Deadly bridges are created by deadly ethics. Remember that when the next bridge collapses.