Sunday, July 27, 2014

What Do Republicans Build Besides Weapons

The question is reasonable as FDR built lots of stuff so who else did the same.  Typically I get slashed for being a troll but that shows only that people don't know the material.

It's not clear who sponsored the idea for the Texas Super Collider that would have been bigger than the one CERN built but the thinking was taking place during the Reagan administration.  Jim Wright (D) of Texas was a huge supporter but there's no way to know if he did that because it was pork for Texas or he understood the value of the science.

The Texas Super Collider was canceled by Congress in 1993, perhaps you recall all the good things they say Newt Gingrich did.  Clinton made a half-hearted effort to defend the project but it got nowhere and the project was killed after a great deal of construction and the expenditure of over two billion dollars.  That's peanuts next to any military project but Congress wanted to be 'responsible.'

One of the reasons cited as the reason for the cancelation is that 'the United States did not feel the need any longer to establish scientific dominance over Russia.'  Pure science never had such an application since its inception so this kind of thinking was quite novel to behold.  (I have not done any research to determine if that's just hype and there's some real reason.)

The question has been quite simple:  what Presidents have built anything that created some substantive and lasting value for America (e.g. Interstate system).  What thing is there at which Americans can view and say, yep, we got our money's worth on that one.  It's a very short list.  These days they don't even fix the bridges.

No comments: