Sunday, Feb 21, 2016 12:30 PM PST America’s shameful state of decay: Sanders is campaigning on rebuilding the country’s infrastructure — will it work?

From:  Salon 

 

Bernie Sanders (Credit: Reuters/Jim Young)

 

“Every generation needs a new revolution.”

                                                                                                Thomas Jefferson

Infrastructure. Not a very exciting word, and certainly not one to whip up the hysteria of the electorate in an election year. We have other words for that: immigration, terrorism, religious extremism or Russian aggression. The usual suspects.

Yet, perhaps the word “infrastructure” will become more exciting if we unpack it, learn what it is – and understand that it is not any external cause that most threatens America, but instead decades of negligence to the very “infrastructure” of this nation. There is that word again: infrastructure. But, what does it mean?

A short list will suffice: water treatment, roads, bridges, public housing, passenger and freight rail, marine ports and inland waterways, national parks, broadband, the electric grid, schools, hospitals, government buildings, dams – in other words, to use a medical metaphor, the conditions for the healthy life of a nation.  MORE