Get Your Shovel Ready, Mama; We Are Ready To Start Digging

Please enjoy the thoughts and musings of our friend, supporter, and long-time contributor Art van Bodegraven Jr., who passed away on June 18, 2017. Art was a prolific writer and had amassed a collection of unpublished blog posts he had planned to run well into the future. To honor his memory, we will continue to post these remaining blogs as he had intended. If you’ve been a fan of The Art of Art blog, check out our tribute.

 

Material Handling & Logistics reported this winter that President Trumpf's team had identified some 50 projects that would eat up the $137 billion earmarked for infrastructure projects.  So far, the usual suspects are working drafts awaiting input from the National Governors Association.

Criteria include: national security or public safety "emergency"; potential for increased US manufacturing; direct job creation; and "shovel ready" with  30% of initial design and engineering complete.

Of course, the Governors will have strong political input, rewarding the faithful, and punishing the left and other failures.  Never mind where the projects might fall in a spectrum of prioritized logistics and suply chain needs.

Some projects cross state lines, most are quite specific, such as: bridges (Gordie Howe, Lake Pontchartrain), Union Station redevelopment, Port Mojave Solar, Savannah Harbor enlargement - a potpourri of unrelated and un-coordinated efforts.

Please excuse my cynicism, but the list looks very much like the same-old, same-old, only with a much bigger pork barrel.  

Line up at the trough fellers; the slops have just been poured out.  

Looks like yesterday's slops, with yesterday's lack of order and rationale, and congratulations to Congresspersons' constituents. Welcome to the drained swamp . . .