Spartanburg Tea Party

As I toured hundreds of miles of I-35 through Missouri and Iowa, the construction could not possibly have gone unnoticed.  The fact that they were completely ripping up a concrete road to replace it with another concrete road quickly got my attention.  Isn’t concrete supposed to last 50+ years? Most of I-35 was built in the mid to late 1960’s, so at 40+ years old could it have really needed this?

As I observe, they first drive a very large piece of equipment over the road with a jack-hammer effect and leave the road in ruin.  Next, they drag through the rubble to pull out all the rebar, and then they crush the concrete even further until they eventually get it down to stone size. Finally, they dump the stone-size pieces of concrete into a machine which grinds it down to sand. The 10” to 12” thick concrete road is then replaced with another 10” to 12” thick concrete road.

Supposedly, one of the advantages to concrete is that it will last a very long time and is easy to repair.  According to the ACPA (American Concrete Pavement Association):

“Restoration techniques can extend the life of concrete pavements up to nine times their original design life.”

So again, did this 40+ year old road really need this extreme replacement?

A couple of other interesting facts about concrete from the ACPA:

“Concrete can best withstand the heaviest traffic loads. There’s no need to worry about ruts, shoving or washboard effects possible with asphalt pavements.”

“Make it unnecessary to impose weight restrictions during the spring thaw. The U.S. trucking industry would be more profitable, more efficient and more competitive. Seasonal restrictions now cost approximately $50 million annually.”

Maybe it should say, “The Mexican trucking industry would be more profitable.”  Just sayin’.

Now supposedly, the NAFTA Super Highway is going to be four football fields wide and parallel to I-35.  Well, it’s not.  This is how they work, blending enough fact with fiction to confuse the masses.  While people are looking for such a wide highway to be built, the actual construction is ongoing.  Just think about it!! Imagine a highway that wide (eight lanes), then imagine the amount of traffic it would take to fill it up for more than 1500 miles. I would bet, you could put every 18-wheeler in this country on a road like that at the same time and traffic would still flow.  A normal four-lane highway will sufficiently handle the traffic to and from Mexico and Canada through most of this country.  It would naturally have to be wider near cities to handle local traffic, but the “Super” Highway does NOT have to be all that “super” to accomplish the mission.

They seem to be moving rapidly on this construction project as much of what we were driving on had been completed and they are working seven days a week.  The above photo of construction was taken on a Sunday.

My tour for hundreds of miles up and down this highway had pretty much the same scenery; cornfields.  Traffic was nothing compared to our South Carolina highways and the I-35 unrepaired sections were not as bad as much of ours up and down I-26 and I-95.  Why does federal funding exist for these highways in the middle of nowhere, but not our highly traveled east coast roads? I believe we all know the answer to that at this point…

NOTE: Written for Political Vise

This report by 24thstate over at Redstate this morning is the best analysis I’ve seen on yesterday’s vote on the Missouri Healthcare Freedom Act.

In the first time that voters have had a chance to weigh in on Obamacare, 71% of Missouri voters voted to pass protection AGAINST Obamacare in their state. As the article notes, that includes 1 in 6 of Democrat primary voters! Across the state, almost 100,000 voters voted for this Healthcare Freedom Act who did not also vote in the Republican primary.

Of note is the work of the St. Louis Tea Party and and their lessons learned on turning “tea party rallies” into effective activism.

In April, we organized a last-minute effort around phonebanking, an internet campaign, and some email blasts to encourage people to vote against Prop A, the Metro Tax. The results were very disappointing. Our initial efforts to turn from protest to GOTV were not effective, and we were forced to come to grips with the reality that there was no magic pot of voters who would rise from their slumber and ride to the rescue.

So we organized. We started building groups of volunteers. We passed out constitutions, paid real attention to building our email lists. We started the Block Captains program. And we focused on campaign work and training.

This is the challenge of the tea parties, of the newly awakened conservative activist. Holding “tea parties” and having rallies was an essential step in the nascent stage. We needed to express our frustration and build confidence that we were a large group of patriots. We needed to hear from conservative leaders who had been working for years on issues like state sovereignty and protection of the Constitution. Having helped plan two tea parties, each with thousands in attendance, I can attest that those months of planning were invaluable in deepening my convictions and gaining resolve. But now, as the St. Louis tea party learned, it is time to work. To go all in working our precincts, to get absorbed by the mundane, to spend the hours of tedious recruiting and building a volunteer base. And, just as important, to learn to ignore the frivolous distractions.

Thank you Missouri for speaking loud and clear! and to the St. Louis Tea Party for sharing your lessons learned.

Andrew Clark writing at Politics Daily alerts us to the August 3 vote happening in Missouri where voters will cast a vote that:

…would amend state statutes to effectively shield Missourians from complying with the federal health reform law, protecting them from fines and penalties, and would “prohibit any person, employer, or health care provider from being compelled to participate in any health care system.”

Clark’s article outlines the impact of passage or failure of this Missouri bill on overall repeal of Obamacare, Obama’s re-election, the re-energization of the Tea Party, and the current state lawsuits. His most compelling paragraph is this:

After months of rallies and protests for and against the bill, the American people have not yet had a single chance to actually cast a vote on Obamacare. August 3 will be the first time anywhere in the country that voters will be able to make their voices heard in a clear-cut fashion. As one blogger from Red State opposed to Obamacare phrased it: “We’ve been forced to speak through rallies and a diminished Republican party, until now. Now there is an opportunity for the average voter to act upon that disgust.”

I’ll keep my calendar fixed on this August 8 vote and bring you the scoop.