US-12 Bypass of Fort Atkinson Preferred Route Selected

[hobsini2]

Oh please, you can easily discuss roads without bringing the political bickering into it.

Agreed!

He could have simply announced that Governor Walker 'back burnered' the US 12 project without taking that political cheap shot at him in the process.  Yes, political tensions are fairly high here in Wisconsin right now, but the cheap shot was uncalled for.

BTW what's your stand at buying B-2 bombers at $1 billion and F-35 fighters at $200 million each? For just the cost of 1 B-2 bomber the entire US 12 upgrade from Elkhorn to Madison would be paid.

My stand is that I do not follow 'red herrings'.

Mike

That's not a red herring. It is a perfectly legit question.  If the government spends $1 billion dollars on a single bomber, then why is there not outcry from the same people who cry about the national debt?

Also, The Department of Defense Budget for Fiscal Year 2010 is a total of $683.7 Billion. The Department of Transportation Budget for the same time period is $73,248,000,000.  So the military budget is over 9 times that of the transportation budget. And comparing the military budget of the US to that of other major countries shows even more of a disparity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

Another contrast near and dear to me is the budget of the National Weather Service via Homeland Security.
The entire budget for the NWS is down to $872.2 million which has to be divided among 120 offices in the US, Guam, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico.  The dopplers at each NWS office have a max range of 150 miles radius. The first problem is because of the curvature of the earth the radar beam's effectiveness is between 20 to 100 miles. The beam can see the top of a storm 150 miles away from the radar but can't give an idea of what is really going on at the surface up to about 10,000 feet. The other problem is because of the spacing between radars especially out west, there are "dead zones" that are not covered by any radar and the office responsible for a specific town in the dead zone has to make a complete guess based on previous scans and the current satellite imagery.  For example, Clayton, NM is in a dead zone between the radars of Albuquerque, Pueblo, Canon AFB/Clovis, and Amarillo. Albuquerque is the office responsible for the area. The radar is 15 miles west of Downtown ABQ. Clayton is 200 miles as the crow flys.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46430601/Weather_Service_In_Eye_of_Budget_Cut_Storm

I would not have a problem with people who worry about the debt if they also worried about how much we spend in military when it could be used for other departments within the government.

[SEWIGuy]

I would not have a problem with people who worry about the debt if they also worried about how much we spend in military when it could be used for other departments within the government.

The problem is that we have taken it upon ourselves to police the world - first against communism now against terrorism.  We have almost completely underwritten the self-defense of Western Europe for instance. 

[Scott5114]

Okay, this thread appears to have long since stopped discussing US-12.

** Topic Locked **