... whereby we divert more money from the "haves" to the "have nots", with much of it slipping through the cracks to be spent on the worthless pet projects of our elite congressional members who are mortgaged lock, stock and barrel to special interest groups.

We need to spend the money shoring up our infrastructure of dams, bridges, water/sewer, and electrical grid systems first.

There are a huge number of bridges in the US that are in the same or worse shape than I-35W in Minneapolis which collapsed in 2007.

Most of the dams in the US have a viable lifespan of 50 years. The average age of our dams is 51 years. I'm not real happy about the condition of Wolf Creek Dam which is 240 river miles upstream of Nashville. They lowered Lake Cumberland water level by about 40 feet to take pressure off the dam while they repair it, but if it ruptured, it would flood parts of Nashville with 20 feet of water or more.

The water systems are in a precarious position, with each section of the country having different problems. Central California's water system is extremely vulnerable to earthquakes, and the wrong move of the San Andreas Fault will flood it with salt water from the Pacific Ocean.

Many municipal sewer systems are obsolete and unable to provide needed capacity. Most of them combine sanitary [why do they call that shit "sanitary"? :)] sewage systems with storm water drainage systems, and in rainy weather, the aggregate flow vastly exceeds the ability to treat the sewage, and raw sewage is discharged to the tune of billions of gallons into our streams, rivers, lakes and coastal areas.

Also, our electrical grid is a bit shakey and in need of an upgrade to the tune of about $1 trillion.

Altogether, just to get our current infrastructure modernized to support the current demand and consumption is a $15 to $25 Trillion consideration.

The History Channel is pretty good at pulling all this detail together ... and they have indicated an overall rating of D^-- ... they might be off a bit here and there, but overall, their assessment is spot on. I have done independent research on these issues, and I don't see anyone contradicting anyone else really ... we're in deep doo-doo, and it's time to pass out the hip boots and get "crackin'".