Biden's Infrastructure Proposal

deedsker said:
There are more of these than people think. When I lived in Lincoln, my house/apartment had lead pipes until 2015. When I first started living there I thought the water had a weird metallic taste and I bought jugs of water for drinking. Just before moving out I went to a construction meeting to learn from an engineer doing a water main upgrade project that my house had a lead pipe connection to the water main. I was like, this is a real thing still? Couldn't get out of that place fast enough.
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Lead poisoning is a serious issue. There's a lot of theories that crime started dropping in the 1990s when we banned lead-based paint. Another interesting theory I heard is that many of the water pipes/conduits in Rome were lead lined, and the lead leeching into their water supply contributed to the mental decay and eventual fall of Rome. 

 
BigRedBuster said:
There would have to be huge improvements to technology for satellite service to be high speed like fiber.
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There has been. Look up Starlink, which is satellite internet at broadband speeds. The only drawback is that it cannot handle as many simultaneous connections, so it will be limited to rural/sparsely populated areas.

 
deedsker said:
There are more of these than people think. When I lived in Lincoln, my house/apartment had lead pipes until 2015. When I first started living there I thought the water had a weird metallic taste and I bought jugs of water for drinking. Just before moving out I went to a construction meeting to learn from an engineer doing a water main upgrade project that my house had a lead pipe connection to the water main. I was like, this is a real thing still? Couldn't get out of that place fast enough.
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I wonder if you lived in the same house as me... The house I lived in until 2015 once had a leak coming down into the kitchen from the floor above me and their solution was to add more cement to the lead pipe to seal it. Then they didn't patch up the hole in the ceiling for like 3 months and during that time a bat flew into my kitchen from the hole. There was also once a bat in the basement and since I'm a genius I used the lights against it to coax it upstairs and through the front door. Probably my most proud moment.

 
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Moiraine said:
Based on the past 12 years, we know the Republicans will try to stop the infrastructure plan if they think the Democrats will get credit for it. So rather than try to make improvements to it they will just try to stop it.
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Infrastructure is the ultimate political no-brainer; big government, perhaps, but a huge boon to private contractors and a wide variety of jobs across the sectors. It's stuff that needs to be done, brings immediate tangible benefits, and the whole notion of American Exceptionalism falls apart without it.

It's worth remembering that on the day Donald Trump was scheduled to announce his own infrastructure program, he was still stewing about the events at Charlottesville. Reportedly, Trump was upset that he had chastised the white supremacists, giving in to the people who told him he had to denounce them -- and interrupted what should have been an unassailable and positive infrastructure announcement by going off the rails into his "good people on both sides" tangent that totally hijacked the news cycle. I honestly don't remember the infrastructure plan he introduced or what was done about it.  

 
Guy Chamberlin said:
Infrastructure is the ultimate political no-brainer; big government, perhaps, but a huge boon to private contractors and a wide variety of jobs across the sectors. It's stuff that needs to be done, brings immediate tangible benefits, and the whole notion of American Exceptionalism falls apart without it.

It's worth remembering that on the day Donald Trump was scheduled to announce his own infrastructure program, he was still stewing about the events at Charlottesville. Reportedly, Trump was upset that he had chastised the white supremacists, giving in to the people who told him he had to denounce them -- and interrupted what should have been an unassailable and positive infrastructure announcement by going off the rails into his "good people on both sides" tangent that totally hijacked the news cycle. I honestly don't remember the infrastructure plan he introduced or what was done about it.  
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Agree but both parties want to get credit for it so they do stupid things. And voters have already showed they will fall for pretty much anything, so they can be convinced it's a bad idea.

 
Infrastructure is one of the most frustrating things for me when it comes to government.  It's literally one of the most important things they do, it creates jobs and the vast majority of Americans benefit from it.  But, it seems like neither party is good at passing an infrastructure bill.  Instead, we spend a trillion dollars on an airplane that doesn't work and a lot more military that we don't need 99% of the time.

 
Moiraine said:
I wonder if you lived in the same house as me... The house I lived in until 2015 once had a leak coming down into the kitchen from the floor above me and their solution was to add more cement to the lead pipe to seal it. Then they didn't patch up the hole in the ceiling for like 3 months and during that time a bat flew into my apartment. There was also once a bat in the basement and since I'm a genius I used the lights against it to coax it upstairs and through the front door. Probably my most proud moment.
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I lived in the basement of a victorian house that was divided up for apartments in the historic district that encompasses the R.O. Phillips house. I had direct access through the yard while all the other tenants had to use the side door and stairs. My bedroom was the old boiler room and still had many pipes across the ceiling. The space between my bedroom and the living room was just a one foot space that the current pipes ran through with drywall on both sides to hide them and an access panel. 

Saved a lot on rent though. 

 
RedDenver said:
Not really. There was some concern over the early satellites but SpaceX worked to get the albedo of the satellites down to negligible levels before launching a lot of them.
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Good! I hadn't heard that. It seems like the kind of thing SpaceX would do - they don't seem to be intentionally antagonistic toward anyone, especially the astronomy community.

I just want to see a starlink launch. That'd be an impressive sight. 

 
deedsker said:
I lived in the basement of a victorian house that was divided up for apartments in the historic district that encompasses the R.O. Phillips house. I had direct access through the yard while all the other tenants had to use the side door and stairs. My bedroom was the old boiler room and still had many pipes across the ceiling. The space between my bedroom and the living room was just a one foot space that the current pipes ran through with drywall on both sides to hide them and an access panel. 

Saved a lot on rent though. 
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What's that district called? I lived about 9 blocks from the house, but the basement in my house was just cobwebs and a laundry room.

 
Archy1221 said:
Hopefully the R’s and D’s can find some common ground and pass an infrastructure bill that will be both beneficial and cost effective.  Airports, roads, bridges, fortifying our electrical grid, would all great projects. 
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I'm somewhat hopeful, but Rs have no intention of voting for it. Compromise is political suicide. They can't vote for a bill with tax increases or for a bill that increases the deficit. 

This is not unique to Rs, Democrats are guilty as well. They had no intention of passing a COVID relief bill prior to the election last fall. It's sadly what voters reward and what extreme gerrymandering has done to our politics.

 
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