>> This morning, a bridge in Pittsburgh collapsed. That is a disaster of its own.
And also in doing so, severed a gas line. We're gonna show you some footage as we go,
but you should understand that ten people had minor injuries, which I guess considering
everything that has happened in this story is amazing that, that is the extent of it.
And you can see it looks like the end of the world, it looks like the walking dead.
A bridge has collapsed if it had collapsed at another time in the day,
when traffic was heavier, the toll could have been absolutely devastating, still property damage,
damage to cars, ten people having injuries that is really bad anyway.
Now the bridge has been listed as being in poor condition. Back in 2018 there was a photo,
a tweet that went out of someone stating that they had seen that
some of these support structures had rusted through. So this is yet another,
this is a piece of American infrastructure that we've known for some time needs to be fixed,
needs to be replaced but America doesn't generally prioritize infrastructure.
And we'll talk about what's been done recently in just a bit,
but here's some more details on the bridge located on Forbes Avenue, near Frick Park.
It came down around 6 a.m. It was 447 ft long, had a steel structure and was finished back in 1970
was listed by Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation as being in poor condition.
Records show graded the road deck and upper part of the structure of 4 out of 10
and the lower part at 6 out of 10. When the best you can manage is
still an F. That's not good when it's not, it's not a performance of Shakespeare in the park.
It's supposed to hold cars as they travel across an extended distance. Records show graded the
road deck and upper part of the structure of 4 out of 10 and the lower part at 6 out of 10.
When clearly it was a failure.
People say we have crumbling infrastructure in America and that's because we don't invest in it.
And it's crazy that the distribution of wealth has gone to private individuals who don't even
use their highly generous tax structure in terms of what they themselves are allowed to aggregate
in terms of wealth. To put it back into the very distribution methods that keep their fortunes
coming and flowing because no one wants to pay for it, no one wants to invest in anything like this.
And the only time they do is they say, I want you to
to privatize this road so that I can collect tolls so I can maintain it. It's all a grift,
this is the bare minimum. That's my point, this is the bare minimum roads and bridges when you
ask people what their local politicians should do, it's like fill the potholes,
make sure the trains run like the water is clean, I'm protected from fire and crime.
Even republicans say that stuff. Stay out of my life as much as possible. Make sure the
bridge doesn't crumble beneath my car and they, and they fail. Yeah, yeah, yeah they seem to be
fine with the water being bad in general, but yeah, at least in their area, they want to have
those minimal things that is of course just a minimum we advocate for far more than that.
We believe that the government does have an obligation to do far more than that. But
not having bridges that people can have faith in is devastating. And in response to this
happening this morning, I saw people sharing on twitter other instances of like chunks
falling off of other bridges and like bits of buildings falling off and crashing into cars.
Like again, we've used the term crumbling infrastructure for a very long time. It's
generally used as a metaphor, it's also literally true. Now in this particular case,
Joe Biden, the president was going to visit Pittsburgh later on today. We will see
what ends up happening in terms of that visit but it does put the focus back on infrastructure.
Now let's give you a little bit of commentary from Ed Gainey, Mayor of Pittsburgh said,
right now we're still assessing the situation and getting information, but the good thing at
this point, there are no fatalities. And we have a bit more here is some of the mayor talking about.
>> This, this bridge collapse happened on the day that the president is headed here to talk about
infrastructure, I mean, what does that say about some of the improvements that need to be done.
>> We needed, I said it before this bipartisan infrastructure law, it's critical to southwest
Pennsylvania in the city of Pittsburgh, we know we have bridges that we need to take care of.
We're finding out now when the last inspection was and everything, but with him coming today
to talk about this infrastructure bill to discuss why funding is so important.
Today is significant in that, at the end of the
day we could have had some serious injuries >> And it was just two years ago, three years
ago that we had route 30 collapsed just a couple of years ago, another major arteries.
So at the end of the day this is critical that we get this funding
and we're glad to have the president coming today. >> Yes and and look, so let's talk briefly about
infrastructure. Finally, after four years of infrastructure week being exclusively a joke
under Donald Trump and he could have passed an infrastructure bill,
they had majorities in the Senate in the House.
He said he was going to build stuff, they built a bit of wall and that's pretty much
where it stopped. Finally, we got the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is not nearly as big,
it's not up to the task monetarily to fix all the infrastructure problems that the US has.
Let alone going any broader than the most explicit definition of hard infrastructure
generally slanted towards the sort of privatization that Brett was talking
about earlier. That passed and that sort of money will help in a lot of cases like this
redoing bridges and all sorts of things. But it only goes so far and we could have had far more,
we were continually strung along first by them seeming to abide by this.
We're only gonna do one if we do the other thing and then we'll don't worry, okay, it may not have
passed and you no longer have the leverage that you did, but we're going to bring it up. And then
that didn't happen, didn't work. Now they're going to strip out individual parts and try to
pass them and they have yet to provide us with any explanation why literally
any of that would make it past an automatic filibuster from the republicans.
So, there will be some help coming to communities across America from the
infrastructure bill that they did pass. We could have done far more. We had,
I think an ethical moral obligation to do far more, but it doesn't look like it's going to
happen at this point. And Brooke my wife said that when you mentioned Shakespeare in the park,
it was a challenge to me to cite some opening monologue bits from Othello.
So I'll say this when billionaires trick
the taxpayer into footing the bill for privatizing roads and bridges. Thus do
they ever make their fools their purse and we are being led about by the nose as asses are
there you go, there's your Othello quotes. >> To the billionaires and to the moderate
democrats, I bite my thumb at the, that's Romeo and Juliet.
Here's an FL01 to all the people who try to come after us
I will take by the throat the circumcised dog and smote him. Thus there you go.
Okay, I did not claim to be doing a fellow. I'm not a Shakespeare expert anyway,