at least in re bridges. I'm not a fan of his, but he seems to have a couple of points, and if they're wrong, I'd love to have someone point them out:
URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2216532
His main assertions are:
1) Things are a lot better now than they were 25 years ago. The current dire stat is that 25% of our bridges are "structurally deficient" or "functionally obsolete." In 1982, the figure was 45%.
2) Neither of those scary-sounding technical categories are really that scary. They don't mean the bridge is unsafe.
3) If we gives lots of money to localities to fix their bridges, the odds are very high that they will spend the money on new contruction rather than fixing existing infrastructure (based on past practice; and the fact that our accounting system gives us no ability to track whether money is spent on new construction or upgrading; and the local politics truism that "nobody ever got to cut a ribbon for upgrading a bridge."
All refutations gratefully accepted.
Michael