California, and the rest of our poor, fragmented country, is a crippled tangle of old-century solutions to a turbulent new world. An additional 2,000 bridges in California are considered structurally deficient. We built bridges and roads and dams to make life easier, to light cities, to invest in tomorrow. And you can trace some of that farsightedness to the Brooklyn Bridge, built after the United States tore itself apart in the Civil War. Republicans hated President Obama’s injection in 2009 of much-needed financial support for all the bandaged bridges across the fruited plain.

Source: New York Times February 24, 2017 08:15 UTC