Letter to the editor

The tragedies of our times are personified on too many levels for most of us to fully grasp. While our government spends billions of dollars to finance wars in far off lands, our infrastructure has fallen into disrepair to the point where dams no longer hold back the waters, bridges and roads collapse in the wake of hurricanes and tornadoes and every time there's a heavy rain fall, flooding is rampant throughout the country. Time and time again we've been warned that if we did'nt deal with our deteriorating infrastructure there would be a terrible price to pay and the bill has come due big time. The dikes that failed to contain Katrina were long known to be inadequate and were in fact structurally unsound from the day they were built. Dams and bridges nationwide are in varous states of crumbling decay and thousands of high rise buildings are fire traps and will never survive an earthquake at any level. We seem to always be able to come up with however much money it takes to tear things down and blow things up, but the cupboard is always bare when it comes to fixing what's broken. What is it, I wonder, that blinds us to the obvious? Once the flood waters in New England have receded and the politicians recite their '"never again" vows, there will be a flurry of patchwork activity for awhile before the people's outrage diminishes and the waiting game resumes.

You'd think that somewhere in those trillions of dollars of national debt, there would be a few loose bucks to spend on a little house repair. Thanks to our compassionate goverment, there will always be a labor force out there to get the job done.....cheap.

George Morin
Auburn