It is Saint Patrick’s Day a day when we honor the American Irishman who helped build this country. In the early 20^th Century they were building our cities and our bridges and our dams and our interstate roads. Tough men of whom many lost their lives in the process. They say there are many an Irishman dead in the concrete from falling into the cement in the making of a dam. Did they say, “Oh Damn!”  at  least when they lost a good man? Not funny but possibly a true phrase.

 The most not funny now is our tanned Congressmen not voting on anything to preserve and maintaining with repairs to our nation’s infrastructure. All that was built by a good Irishman now a hundred years later needs to at least be inspected. Congress is too busy playing President by wineing  and dining other world leaders that us Americans have protected well throughout the years. It is time to protect the beautiful descendants of a hard working Irishman and all Americans from danger by just traveling on a road or over a bridge or living near a Dam. Damn It!

Must America conduct their own tea party? I say throw all the bums out in Congress and start over. Many of them have guaranteed salaries and jobs for the rest of their lives in those seats. Every time they decide to close down the government, they make sure they vote that their salaries are exempt somehow. We need competent professionals in those seats not just some bum that was voted in one day because of a popularity contest ad a good tan. We should have thematic parades. Let’s call this year’s parades dedicated to our nation’s Infrastructure.  It is a big word that encompasses our roads, bridges, dams, levies, airports and power grids. Basically anything that hasn’t been built for the poor people of Africa or can be destroyed in an   action movie.

The reality is that our infrastructure is not being destroyed by alien war ships but just needs some tender loving care like paint and maintenance or even to be replaced for the next hundred years of good service to our citizens. Real roads have curves and not straight lines of our interstate. They all need repair.  Our dams are the most powerful man made structure we have to hold back large amounts of heavy water. The spirits of the dead Irishmen are in them still holding back the walls. We used to love our dams and boasted how they were the world’s largest structures. Now we marvel at the world’s tallest buildings.

Our dams are America’s mighty pyramids our crypts but they create energy for a population of people. They represent ingenuity, brawn and bravery. The problem is that our monuments to civilization and energy production is in serious disrepair. The average age of   America’s 84 Damns is 52 years old and many have problems from when they were first built. They are sick and old.  Like a good old Irishman, they can still take one more drink. The way we ignore old drunks, we are ignoring our dams. The last time statistics were even taken on them was in 2007. Then and I am sure it is worse now, Texas had just 7 inspectors responsible for 74 hundred dams. Our tanned Congressmen are more concerned about keeping new immigrants out rather than looking at our dams. That is over 1,050 dams per inspector. They don’t have time to get a tan.

The state was only able to look at 239 dams. Alabama doesn’t even have an inspection agency to monitor it’s 2,000 plus dams. Maybe our Republican President Bush and now Congress should be looking to assist our homeland and leave the Middle East alone to work out their own problems for a while after 15 years of our good young handsome Irish boys coming home missing important parts of their bodies from unsolvable wars. Yes. I said No inspectors in Alabama. We are doing a terrible job of not only maintaining our largest man- made structures but bridges, roads and pipelines are in need of renovation. Give a brave returning home soldier a job taking care of America now.

The American Society of Civil Engineers gave America a D+ grade. Our kids go to engineering schools to create video games and not bridges. Other studies have found that our infrastructure is lacking. The World Economic Forum rated America 16^th in the World because when infrastructure fails, terrible things happen. It now becomes a lethal surprise and very expensive to repair. Right now everyone’s cars are either rusting from the ice melt on the roads or are in the shop for expensive repairs due to unrepaired pot holes. We are paying our taxes right now while we pay with our lives and our repairs due to the tanned guys doing nothing for our roads.

The Secretary of Transportation pays more attention to his fancy suits than our roads. There are 70,000 bridges that have been deemed “structurally deficient.”  Stop with the big words and get permanent crews on every bridge in America working 24/7 for a good wage. Let Americans see their good tax dollars at work for them for a change. Do we even have to live on the luck of the Irish every time we pay our bridge toll and hope to get across safely? Pittsburgh is known as the city of bridges. The minimum repair to one bridge was to build a concrete path under the crumbling bridge to catch debris falling off to protect the highway under the bridge. Stupidity.

All the politicians agree on both sides that infrastructure is important but no one does anything. Both business and labor in the form of the US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO are in favor of infrastructure spending. Repairs are boring and spending money on boring stuff like that doesn’t look good for re-election. A fancy ribbon cutting ceremony looks cool to politics but building new stuff is expensive. No tanned suit wants to be the guy known for spending money on Capitol Hill. We have the United States Highway Trust Fund that will go bankrupt on May 31 unless Congress acts on it. The reason it is bankrupts is because it is federally funded by the gas tax. The tax has not increased with inflation since 1993. It gets 18 cents per gallon.   No one wants to be known for raising taxes. The gas tax has gone down 39 cents since 1993 compared to other things that have gone up.

We have not had long term infrastructure legislation in Congress for over a decade. Those bums wasted time according to CONGRESS.GOV since 2003 barely passed 2 partial authorizations and 23 short term extensions of which in July of 2005 was for just 2 days. Let’s get some naked skirted Irishmen to throw the misleading lazy bums out of Congress. I am half Irish and even with a belly full of some good Irish Whisky I can think of bring back Municipal Tax Free Bonds that people could buy as investments or even better, tax those bastard top 1 per centers every time they take American hard earned corporate dollars to Swiss Accounts in Dubai or the Cayman Islands to hide their billions that belong here rebuilding our country.

Obama is not in favor of raising the gas tax. He is in favor of closing the loophole that allows corporations to benefit from stashing their profits overseas. We all know that would guarantee to solve the problem. Our tanned Congressional leader swatted Obama’s plan away in favor of his own plan that still has not been presented to us. Swat all the corporate funded re-election so called leaders out of our Congressional chairs. We could get a few good Irishmen together I am sure to get the job done. Sigh! If only life was like a good old Irish movie. Enjoy your heritage and be Irish for a day.