Scorn and hatred won’t fix a bridge

Infrastructure isn’t sexy. Then again neither is a bridge collapsing with a busload of children on it, or a child’s learning difficulties resulting from drinking water poisoned by lead pipes.

These are two of the many of America’s infrastructure failings targeted in President Biden’s $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed by a bi-partisan vote, with nineteen Republican Senators and thirteen Republican Representatives joining with the president and the Democrats in putting country before party.

Next thing you know “Hair Farce One” is running his mouth at a Republican Congressional Committee dinner, openly calling shameful the 13 congressional House members who abandoned their party in favor of “a terrible Democrat Socialist Infrastructure Plan”. It must really hurt when a real president accomplishes something he spent four years bragging about but never could “walk the walk”.

His former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, called for them to be removed from congressional committees. Marjorie “Traitor” Green, House Republican, keeping with the tradition of inciting the cowards in the GOP voter base tweeted out the names and phone numbers of the thirteen, saying they “will feel the anger of the GOP voter”.

The expected vile phone calls happened: Representative Kinzinger was instructed to slit his wrists and “rot in hell; another hoped Representative Bacon would slip and fall down a staircase; a profanity laced message told Representative Upton that he and his family should die.

Republicans know how to hurl scorn but they sure can’t figure out how to fix a bridge.

— Roger S. Beadle, Chico