TRUE INFRASTRUCTURE AND TRUE ESSENTIALS

LOOMING POWER GRID VULNERABILITIES

The old joke amongst the DC government’s inbred pols and budgeteers goes:  ‘A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.’

Today, an update requires the substitution of the word “trillion” for “billion.”  Proposed is a $1.2+ trillion so-called “infrastructure” bill (that directs a mere 11% of funds to actual infrastructure) for which we’re printing money.  What’s the problem when the follow-on is another $3.5 trillion proposed Build Back Better “social infrastructure” bill?  Anyone of plain sense and sanity can make their own assessment for this bill’s deleterious effects as paired with no actual investment in true infrastructure.  

The deficit?  The debt?  Not to worry:  President Biden, a seer and bellwether for truth and accuracy, has assured us that $5 trillion in new spending will cost $0.  So, how to argue against student loan forgiveness, freebies for streams of people crossing our southern border, and expansion of government sponsored (and mandated) healthcare?  (To say the least).  Anyway, why would we worry about rampant federal spending when we’ve got COVID!!! to worry about?

Let’s get down to a very serious subject and where our attention and money should be going – a subject that would blow concern for COVID completely out of the water with a sane view of challenges:  Our country’s electrical grid.  If we had a rational government that focused on the things it is supposed to do (that is, things the states and local government cannot handle solely by themselves), and if we had a balanced and intelligent mainstream media, then we might achieve a directed-focus to things that truly matter.  Have a look at the two pictures below:

The first picture handily shows the state of technology for The Grid of the time, as well as vehicles.  In casting that against the second picture, we see the enormous advance in automobiles, and the stunning lack of same for an important element of The Grid.  First to The Grid:  Electric power was primarily delivered via above-ground wires strung on poles.  The second picture handily shows the state of technology around a hundred years later.  We’re still dispersing electric power via a Grid with similar wires and poles.  Electricity arrives at its destination – our homes, our factories, our offices, our commercial endeavors – via antiquated infrastructure.

While we ponder the abysmal notion that we have a seemingly stagnant imagination regarding power’s delivery to its destination(s), with an overwhelmingly above-ground vulnerablility to accidents, weather, solar flares, electro-magnetic pulse (EMP), terrorists, and even merry pranksters – let’s consider the cars and their steady progression; a one-way ratchet of constant improvement in getting you to your destination:

The first vehicle has virtually no safety features, and few conveniences other than a roof to keep the rain and sun off of you, a windshield to guard against… wind (and bugs and birds, etc.), and that’s about it.  Even a fender bender meant that an occupant, absent restraints, went straight into the harsh steering wheel and/or metal dash.  Broken bones were literally “around the next corner” far too often and in the otherwise most trivial of circumstances.  Death loomed with dismaying regularity.

Now consider the second vehicle.  The progressions are enormous, as we consider that first car and its lack.  This is by no means comprehensive:

Another consideration:  How is it that we can disperse water to homes through a “grid,” a network, of pipes and valves absent above-ground poles and pipes?  Maybe it was… planning.  With the electrical grid, we lose power two or three times in the course of a summer due to routine storms where I live – but we never lose water.  We’ve lost power in the winter due to heavy snows.  The sheer ugliness of these electrical poles and wires is easy enough to overlook because they’ve always been there, plus, most people deem them necessary and largely ignore them.  Until, that is, one or more come down. 

Further perspective on the electric grid and its lagging vulnerabilities: 

Once upon a time, this country had no interstate highway system; the interconnected freeways that allow 70 mph vehicular travel from Maine to California with nary a red light.  This highway system isn’t  here by magic.  How did it come to be?

The Eisenhower Administration mounted the plan, and apportioned the duties and cost between the federal government and the states (plus counties, townships, locales, etc.):  The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, generally  known as The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act was signed into law on June 29, 1956, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, with subsequent construction.  It is these sorts of plans and projects that are supposed to occupy the federal government’s time and attention – and budget.  Things that no individual state, or even a collection of states, could accomplish.

In comparing not just cars, but roads and highways of years past with today’s, anyone can see incredible progression and improvement.  However, when we examine telephone poles and lines from approximately 100 years ago, and compare them with today’s, we can’t help but arriving at a very uncomfortable realization:  They look markedly the same.  When given fair examination, this situation is quite astonishing.  Why no equivalent Act for our infrastructure such as what was done for the infrastructure of our highways?  Why no National Interstate Grid and Defense Infrastructure Act for our power?

Recognize, too, that above-ground substations are also vulnerable.  They often sit in fields, completely unattended with nothing but a chain-link fence around them.  The above ground infrastructure of the national electric grid is quite ugly and inconvenient, when you get right down to think about it.  Look around the next time you’re outside; the next time you drive down the street. 

All of us need to start lobbying the federal government to address this elephant in the room.  We need responsible, true, journalists to focus on this true issue involving infrastructure, and to ask President Biden the hard questions as to who is making the decision to steer attention away from actual infrastructure, and away from the ultimate safety of the American people.

NP (Now Playing): The Kinks; I’m Not Like Everybody Else . (With each column, ScottSense will close with an “NP” of note. I’m heavily into Be Bop (jazz) these days, but also enjoy classical, early (authentic) country, blues, soul, funk, and rock. This inaugural column deserves a remarkable track. This song by The Kinks is not only one of my fave rock songs on its simple merits, it has an added cache. For years, it was only available as the B-side of a 45rpm record - the flip side of “Sunny Afternoon”).