State’s Crumbling Infrastructure
The Column One story on the decay of the California infrastructure reveals a part of the national debt that the Bush-Reaganites like to ignore (Feb. 11). When they focus on the debt, they use a fiscal sleight of hand--as in the State of the Union message where it was described as just a piddling 1% of the gross national product.
But Republican Administrations have given us much more than this annual cash deficit. They have given us a physical deficit of decaying bridges, roads and airports and environmental catastrophes.
They have given us a human deficit of uneducated and under-educated children, millions more living below the poverty line and the homeless.
All this national neglect was done in the name of our longest stretch of prosperity. Big deal. Anybody can buy prosperity. All it takes is enough insensitivity to sell off huge chunks of America to foreign investors and run up the largest monetary, physical and human debt in the history of man.
PHILIP WILLON
Palos Verdes Peninsula
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