Potential Victims of Deficit Hawks

This morning BBC News ran a story based on an independent study by Transportation for America. The bottom line is at over 66,000 of our bridges are "structurally deficient." This comes to around one out of nine bridges currently in use. Part of the problem, of course, is that, thanks to the deficit hawks in our Congress, the money is not there for inspection and/or amelioration of a growing problem, whose consequences can only be measured in terms of loss of life as bridges collapse. These are the ideologues who advocate private enterprise as advocates for the public trust. However, private enterprise is more likely to view loss of life simply as a Darwinian process to "reduce the surplus population" (as Ebeneezer Scrooge put it). After all, look at how successful private enterprise has been in managing health care!