TWIN CRISES: IMMIGRATION AND MASS TRANSIT INFRASTRUCTURE
By Frosty Wooldridge
April 6, 2009
NewsWithViews.com
Former U.S. House of Representatives congressman Tom Tancredo guest-hosted the Mike Rosen Show in Denver last week, www.koa850.com. With unemployment spiking at 11.1 percent nationally and a whopping 32.2 million Americans depending on food stamps for survival, Tancredo asked the question of the decade, “Why are we still importing 138,000 immigrants every 30 days, month in and month out, with our problems threatening to devastate our nation?”
As you can see in this series, everyone suffers with added persons onto U.S. soil. Little know to most Americans, every added person causes the destruction of 12.6 acres of wilderness habitat to support that person. Each year, the U.S. population grows by 3.1 to 3.4 million. We stand at 306 million today. With the projected 100 million people added in 26 years by 2035, that means 1.26 billion acres of land must be turned into concrete and asphalt, and other development. The plants and animals don’t stand a chance.
This week, however, let’s turn our quill to mass transit infrastructure. As you all know and experience, our nation’s highways feature gridlock, rising gas prices, air polluted cities and road rage. But what about our mass transit?
“The Twin Crises: Immigration and Mass Transit Infrastructure” by www.thesocialcontract.com, Volume XIX, No.2, pages 38-40, Winter 2009, by Edwin S. Rubenstein—addresses mass transit infrastructure.
“Increased transit ridership has pushed many cities to a ‘tipping point’ at which adding new mass transit infrastructure makes economic sense,” Rubenstein said. “Mass transit has increased for decades…in most cities, even if the share of trips using mass transit were to triple, the drop in highway congestion would soon be overwhelmed by population growth.”
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Without a doubt, the reason stems from the 1965 Teddy Kennedy Immigration Reform Act that pushed immigration limits from 170,000 a year since 1924 to 1.2 to 1.5 million annually starting in 1965. That single act added 100 million people to the USA in 40 years. If left unchanged, that same act adds 100 million in 30 years.
Unfortunately, infrastructure costs run sky-high in 2009. Voters disdain new taxes for construction. Additionally, federal gas taxes fail to fund projects because people drive less with higher prices.
“So while the public’s desire for mass transit systems is up, the reliability of the infrastructure is on the decline,” Rubenstein said. “More than 54 percent of bus fleets will reach the end of their expected service lives over the next six years.”
To maintain mass transit systems at their current levels will require close to $35 billion annually through 2025. That’s $560 billion folks! Anybody you know have that spare change?
If we could achieve commensurate mass transit in the USA to Europe, our foreign oil imports would decline by 40 percent. Nothing reduces greenhouse gases more than mass transit per capita. “Public transportation reduces CO2 emissions by an estimated 37 million metric tons annually,” Rubenstein said.
While Rubenstein thinks mass transit may aid our future transportation needs, I find it interesting that the federal deficit hit $10.3 trillion last month. Most states run an empty financial tank as the U.S. unemployment rate hit 11.1 percent last month.
As with my last column on our failing hospitals, CBS “60 Minutes” on Sunday night, April 5, 2009, ran a special on how Americans in Las Vegas, Nevada lost their big hospital that cared for cancer patients. Americans with cancer found themselves shoved out the door—expecting to die without care.
Scott Pelley interviewed top medical staff and dying patients. Nowhere in the interviews did he or the hospital staff mention that thousands of illegal criminal migrants financially ‘broke’ the hospital with non-payment for services. Yet, they knew that 86 hospitals in California had bankrupted in the past six years from criminal aliens overrunning them.
When I dive below the surface of these crises, I find our media and government complicit in the biggest scam on the U.S. taxpayer in the history of the United States. I think our infrastructure crises reaches beyond our ability to solve it on multiple levels.
The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said, “Twaddle, rubbish and gossip is what people want, not action. Politicians know this. Aided by the media and cheered by intellectuals, they peddle illusion, fantasy, myth, faith and hope.”
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What we all face: reality as this migration invasion advances across our land!
And, by the way, why are we importing another 138,000 immigrants every 30 days that cause this relentless infrastructure mess? You need to ask your U.S. Congress and soon, before the next 100 million people make America their new home.
Listen to Frosty Wooldridge on Wednesdays as he interviews top national leaders on his radio show "Connecting the Dots" at www.themicroeffect.com at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning in to your time zone.
� 2009 Frosty Wooldridge - All Rights Reserved
