Why Can’t America Fill a Pothole? | 5 Minute Video
Why can’t America build or repair infrastructure on a par with countries in Europe or Asia? Why are our bridges, roads, and airports not what they should be? Aren’t we the richest and most technologically savvy country in the world? Who or what is holding us back? Kyle Smith of National Review has the surprising (and frustrating) answer.
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Script:
From left-wing Democrat to right-wing Republican, everyone loves infrastructure. We all want safe bridges, smooth roads, and world-class airports.
So why can’t we have them? Why are America’s bridges falling down, our roads riddled with potholes, and many of our major airports dilapidated?
Why can’t the United States build or repair infrastructure like European and Asian countries do?
The answer is not complex. America doesn’t have better infrastructure because of two groups: environmental activists and labor unions.
What has happened to the Keystone XL pipeline, a project to bring oil from Canada to refineries in the U.S., is a typical example. According to environmental groups, this vital piece of infrastructure is a guaranteed disaster. Never mind that pipelines are, by all measures, a much safer way to transport oil than rail cars. Say the words “fossil fuel,” and the Greens are against it.
In November 2018, in the U.S. District Court of Montana, Judge Brian Morris, an Obama appointee, halted Keystone’s construction—for the third time.
The first “final environmental review” approving construction was released by Hillary Clinton’s State Department in 2011. It concluded that the environmental impact would not be significant. A second “final environmental review” also approved the project. It was released in 2014 by John Kerry’s State Department, and also foresaw little environmental impact.
Judge Morris’s third review may be the charm for the Greens. At this point, a full decade into the process, it’s hard to see the pipeline ever being completed.
Keystone is a case study of what Brookings Institute scholar Robert Kagan calls “adversarial legalism”—environmental reviews of every aspect of every public improvement. In a given year, the federal government produces 50,000 environmental assessments. Individual states and cities add thousands more.
And this isn’t new.
A routine dredging project in Oakland Harbor begun in the 1970s wasn’t completed until the mid-1990s because of legal and environmental challenges.
Four such challenges gummed up a water-desalination plant, urgently needed in dry San Diego. That process started in 2003 and was needlessly delayed for 12 years.
Simply raising New Jersey’s Bayonne Bridge roadway a bit to allow taller ships through—a move that had almost no environmental impact, since it was merely an adjustment of an already-built site—proceeded only after five years of review and 20,000 pages of environmental studies.
Americans like to think of themselves as more free-wheeling and less regulated than European and Asian countries, but when it comes to infrastructure, this just isn’t true.
Europe and Asia don’t have the redundant layers of city, state, and federal bureaucracies that we do. As a result, their ideas get proposed, approved, and built in the time it takes us to agonize over a single environmental impact study.
And, to add insult to injury, their roads, bridges, subways, and airports are much cheaper to construct.
For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/why-cant-america-fill-a-pothole
source
Leftism destroy everything. The democrats will sinck the U.S, worried about gender, racism and other usefull bulshits.
It's simple. 27% of our annual budget is going to build DUMB facilities as well as off-world habitats. What's the point of spending money and time repairing stuff that will be destroyed by the solar pulse that finally triggers the pole shift. Good things and bad things are coming. Whether or not you survive is entirely up to how you deal with your entire reality being flipped. Hold on tight. This ride is about to shift into INSANITY mode and there is no way to get off…
It was two point four billion per mile for the Los Angeles metro rail subway system. There already is a subway in the Los Angeles downtown area. However it remains abandoned in favour of buses.
due to DEMOCRATS, the cost of illegal immigration : $ 150.7 BILLION
europe has an astronomical amount of labor unions
Nail on the head…if you go to Asian countries their rail is faster and more on time and more public transport than the US. Even their toilets are more advanced.
Slightly wrong.. Driving on roads in the UK is like driving on the moon.. If you want to see potholes, come to the UK…. Sorry but to say it's better in Europe is very, very misleading
The claim that environmental activists and labor unions are the two groups responsible for America's lack of infrastructure is not entirely accurate. While environmental reviews do contribute to project delays, they are also an important part of protecting the environment and public health. Additionally, labor unions play a vital role in protecting the rights and safety of workers, but they do not necessarily make construction projects more expensive. Furthermore, the comparison with Europe and Asia is oversimplified, as there are many factors that contribute to the cost and efficiency of infrastructure projects in different countries. Therefore, the article's intent seems to be to blame environmentalists and labor unions for America's infrastructure problems, which is not entirely fair.
I lived in Orange County, CA for 46 years. When the Navy closed the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, many people were enthusiastic that we'd get an airport to supplement the already-crowded LAX and John Wayne airports. Studies showed that Southern California needed more airport capacity because all the ones in the area were maxxed out. MCAS El Toro was perfect. Runways already built and to military specs as well. Lots of land to build the terminal, parking areas and other facilities, and immediate freeway access off I-5 and I-405. But the NIMBY's, (Not In My BackYard) opposed it. They lawyered up and fought the airport project tooth and nail. For almost ten years their lies were on TV talking about environmental issues, safety concerns, etc. Five times the issue was put to a vote by the public as a county-wide initiative. The first four times the airport passed even though the NIMBY's used confusing language to try to get people to vote their way by mistake. The fifth time it was voted on, the airport project was killed. Instead, the base property was handed over to a county-run, politically connected group to develop a "great park" featuring a botanical garden and museums celebrating the Hispanic and native American history of the area. Taxes were increased to fund it and environmental studies were done, and when I left California nine years ago not a single tree had been planted, not a road graded, nothing. The air base buildings were still standing when I left.
Wow, this is so insightful.
Labor unions once were about securing a safe and fair working environment for the worker. Now they have become overpaid, over inflated, corrupt organizations that only care about money, power and influence. Most of them need to be abolished. I say this as someone who is required to be a part of a union for my job. Their positive uses are very few and rarely needed.
Don't even get me started on environmentalists. They put the mental in that word. They have their heads so far up their you know what that they can't see that their policies and preferences do more harm than good. Example, a clean efficient nuclear power plant that can provide cheap reliable energy 24/7 requires as little as 1 square mile of land. A solar farm that produces the same amount of energy as that 1 nuclear power plant would require 70 times more land and a wind farm is about 300 times more land. So we are going to destroy more natural habit for power sources that only work when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing!? Those systems still need fossil fuel power plants to back them up when they aren't producing power. Wake up and smell the reality people. Fossil fuels aren't going anywhere. Why are so many "smart" people so ridiculously idiotic!?
This is why a normal president would do away with any and all of these "Environmentalists"
Worst part is it's often not even environmentalism, it's party politics using that as an excuse for lawfare and firing up the idiots in their voter base.
We're being fleeced. Always have been but it's getting worse. And they're laughing their heads off at us.
Many got scammed to migrate to US.
Unions also built the greatest middle class in history.
Someone's getting rich and it's not US.
I'm so sick of environmentalists
You lost me at 30seconds
No Labour union is getting in the way of a road bieng fixed, and enviornmental groups arn't going to stop you painting a bridge or fixing the electricity system.
The Keystone pipeline is a massive false equivalence, the problem is entirely that it would slow down green transition, which as much as you seem to hate it, green energy is both cheaper (yes really) and better for the enviornment and energy security, thousands of people die from particulate pollution from fossil fuels every year.
You are right about the burocracy though, having 3 layers of approval is kinda insane, BUT the way this is done in Europe isn't with less regulation, but better laid out and stricter regulations, if you're project fits within all the laid out frame work already, then it just needs 1 or two approvals, and a company or gov project (the vast majority are gov projects) can use prior experience and paperwork to make the future approvals faster.
In Europe we are much more willing to let the gov do all the infrastructure, and we pay higher taxes for it, but we have better day to day lives with less constant issues.
Lawyers and labor unions are 2 of the biggest problems we have. As a practice, for capital purchases ( cars, tractors, mowers, etc) I shop for products that are not made by union workers. I find a significant decline in quality when union made.
The legal-environmental complex gums up everything.
Stop paying corporate CEOs 400 times the average woker salary and maybe he unions will be more cooperateive.
Get money out of politics. The unions gather dues, and the due turn into campaign contributions, contribution turn into pro union policies and favor, and then the cycle continues. Costing Americans more and slowing things.
This video failed to mention one major issue in-play: From the 1950s to the 1970s, the US built TONS of infrastructure – namely, roads and airports. As such, we now have a disproportionate amount of infrastructure reaching 50 to 75 years of age and nearing the end of its useful lifespan.
Unfortunately, construction costs are much higher now than they were 50 to 75 years ago. We really didn’t think about that when we built those roads and airports.
Unions are the worst , they are all lazy and do nothing , screw the Unions
As a former UAW member "Work slowly and charge more" sounds about right regarding labor unions' motto.
Shut up, Walter Peck! And let the Ghostbusters do their freakin' jobs!
It's WORSE in Canada
Politicians who say they are green is actually watermelons. "Green" on the outside and Communist on the inside
Can't fill potholes because too expensive and against the law? Gov is whack
PargerU: "America is the best country in the world."
Also PragerU:
Of course you would think there's no environmental impact of doing construction, you're conservatives.
You might be mad that it takes a while for things to get done, but you should always measure twice cut once. Make sure what you're doing is correct, and optimal, so you don't have to do it again.
That is called someone getting paid for doing nothing. They did away with bribery and installed this mechanism instead.
I'm astonished that unions are worst and more pain in the arse in the US than in Europe. I was convinced that they are the absolute worst in Europe.
Its about time to nationalize some of these busineses and get the job done and stop issuing licenses to businesses that gouge the people of this country.
I have travelled much in East Asia and am convinced that, ultimately, this boils down to cultural differences. Asians take pride in having smooth roads, clean sidewalks and trains that run on time Americans don't.
So does Europe not have enviromental activists or labour unions? Typical PragerU video, no matter facts and logic end result = government bad
4:15 wow, if you have to compare yourself with Spain, you know that something is wrong.