Dam(s)

I like what Jonah Goldberg writes. He gets to the point and has an insightful angle on whatever the situation may be. In this article on an MSNBC ad, he calls out the inconsistency in  a typical leftist plea for infrastructure investment and then discusses how government has lost/never was flexible when it comes to adapting to new situations. Below are a few excerpts:

"The reason the ad is so funny is that nobody thinks liberals such as Maddow would support anything like the Hoover Dam today. The Hoover Dam is a marvel. But by today’s green standards, it is a crime against nature. If you tried to build it, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace would be in court tomorrow blocking it, with Ms. Maddow cheering them on."

"Look, I’m no Keynesian, but there should have been at least an economic sugar rush from the stimulus. There wasn’t, in large part because government has lost its flexibility. We poured money down the same mostly clogged bureaucratic drain. When the last bit burbled away, we were told we must “invest” even more in infrastructure and education. We’ve been doing that for decades. In terms of spending, adjusted for inflation, the size of government has increased 50 percent over the last decade alone."