Bridge closed in Jefferson Township

Sooooo.... another bridge bites the dust..... this county will be out of bridges soon....

It’s time to invest in infrastructure. Apparently it’s past time for that investment, but you gotta start somewhere. Remember that when you vote next time.

When was the last bridge inspection, and what was the recommendation? Was any action taken? Just posting a bridge closed notice leaves lots of unanswered questions.

It does raise many questions. At the rate of bridge closures we have seen over the last year plus the biggest question should be what is being done to maintain and improve them. Apparently not enough currently.

I think this will stay a trend. Expect the same for sewage and water lines. All over the country, they are very old and probably needing attention. Can't imagine the cost but is necessary.

I thought about bridges yesterday as I was driving over the Bay Bridge. Many are getting aged while facing heavy traffic. Traffic that the builders couldn't imagine.

In Central MO, the bridges over the MO river are very old and just have that "I should be concerned" look.

Koios, both parties have offered investment packages over the years. As for local governments, most seem to be reactionary vs proactive, no matter the party in charge.

I understand the need to make this political but I don't talk to politicans in favor of bad infrastructure. The issue is usually the spending that is attached to these bills.

We live at one of these closed bridges. It has been closed 17 years! We are constantly picking up trash dumped there, dealing with animals dumped there, painting over the graffiti painted there. We drive miles out of our way with the closure and wonder how it affects our property value. When the creek is high and the road is flooded we are trapped at home. Despite all this we know the bridge will never be dealt with as it is such a low traffic area. We just hope it isn’t left to collapse into the creek.

Maybe having some context on county bridges, percentage of funding from all sources and other states by comparison would provide some clarity for the BG.

https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/EC/EC-775-W.pdf

They reported last month that Putnam Co. was asked to join a new state bridge maintenance program. I guess it's supposed to do a better job at keeping the bridges open? But it also said that state officials were shocked the county was only budgeting $80,000 for bridge maintenance, that it needs to be more like $500,000! It's not related to the grant. This is what I was trying to remember the other day, it was this article https://www.bannergraphic.com/story/2984642.html

I bet a lot of this stems from trade-drain...

Bottom line is that you can b**** and moan about the local officials not managing local taxes well and in part that is true. e.g. (artificial grass or a bridge?)

The elephant in the room, in case you haven't noticed, is the one that can literally print money. The "administrative class" can spend to their political hearts content despite what the revenue stream is into the U.S. treasury. It's all politics now.

They haven't balanced the books in years! But they keep spending because there is no end to what they can imagine spending federal dollars on. They have the limitless credit card you know.

Meanwhile hard-working people are paying up for all of this nonsense. (e.g. Silicon Valley Bank bailout: 98% of accounts were over the FDIC limit, many are big time donor billionaires)

Remember all the "shovel ready" infrastructure bills passed in Congress that the elite politicians touted?

Too many bites at the apple before us.

Didn't get here.

I'm not going to pretend to know all the ins and outs of the different levels of government, but one thing's for sure is that the county government, who are all republicans, have control over the county tax rate and how money's spent. They could definitely raise the taxes a little bit. But republicans are selfish, cruel and greedy, they put caps on taxes and say "we just have to make due this amount, even though it's not enough." Everything always being put in a desperate state is just natural for republicans. Even if they raise the county tax now I don't think it would go in effect until 2025. Republicans - the party of mismanagement and bad ideas!

I meant to say 2024 not 2025

Because republicans doing everything they can to avoid raising taxes is selfish, cruel, and greedy? Ha! Okay!

The party of mismanagement... Cute. Because banning gas engines and plastic bags, encouraging gender confusion and enabling educational indoctrination, encouraging public harassment of political opposition, and doling out billions to foreign countries known to publicly-profess hatred for the United States rather than using those monies to do things like fix our infrastructural issues and other domestic struggles (such as providing appropriations to K-12 institutions for armed security), and much more, are all hallmarks of republicans? Right, sure...

Look, when it comes to pretending to not know "the ins and outs" of the different levels of government, Raker, trust me: you don't have to *pretend*.

Democrat: "Hey guys, these plastic bags are filling up our landfills. They take, like, a thousand years to break down, and become toxic. They're just blowing all over the planet and polluting everything. How about if we try to switch to reusable bags like a lot of the world is already doing?"

Republican: NO GET AWAY FROM MY FREEDOM, YOU SOCIALIST!

Democrat: "Oil is polluting the planet - It's killing us! It's polluting the air, the water, and the soil. It's literally killing people and animals. How about if we use technology to create other types of energy and transportations and transition to using those instead of fossil fuel?"

Republican: HOW DARE YOU TELL ME I CAN'T DO SOMETHING I WANT TO DO! ROLL THAT COAL!

Democrat: "If you're gay or transgender, that's cool with me. Be happy and live your life. Doesn't affect me on way or the other. As far as transitioning with medication before puberty so your body matches more closely to who you are, I'll leave that to the professionals. According to studies, about 1% or so have at least temporary regrets, but I doubt that anything in life has 100% of people satisfied."

Republicans: WHAT ARE THESE SICK PEOPLE DOING TO THESE POOR CHILDREN? BEING GAY OR TRANSGENDER IS JUST A PERVERSION! THEY NEED JESUS AND THERAPY TO BECOME STRAIGHT AGAIN, NOT TO HAVE THEIR BODIES MUTILATED! FREEDOM!

Democrat: "When it comes to geopolitics, USA safety and reputation are what's important. We achieve this not just by threatening war and invading other countries, or completely ignoring them as they get taken over by criminals, but by being strategic in terms of giving aid (carrot instead of stick) and who we show other countries we are allied with (the enemy of my enemy is my friend), and so on..."

REPUBLICANS: LET'S GO TO WAR! I CAN'T BELIEVE WE LEFT AFGHANISTAN! WHY ARE WE GIVING MONEY TO UKRAINE WHEN THERE'S THIS HUGE POTHOLE IN MY ROAD THEY STILL HAVEN'T FIXED?

>Democrat: "Hey guys, these plastic bags are filling up our landfills. They take, like, a thousand years to break down, and become toxic. They're just blowing all over the planet and polluting everything. How about if we try to switch to reusable bags like a lot of the world is already doing?"

>Republican: NO GET AWAY FROM MY FREEDOM, YOU SOCIALIST!

And that’s a perfect example of the current democratic caricature: masters of conflating self-contrived republican motifs and embracing operational models consisting of dictatorial apperati, like banning or mandating things rather than trying to elevate their own critical thinking and problem-solving processes to correct existing deficiencies inherent to an overall system, which would translate better to a more unified approach to ongoing problems. Instead of simply devising better ways to dispose of plastic media, like those which plastic bags are comprised of, they would rather just ban them without considering what that would mean for everything else. They do the same thing with firearms. Options exist to have the best of both worlds, the least of which is penalizing trash disposal vehicles for using tax-payer roadways without bed covers or incorporating forms of better waste capture and separation systems at waste hubs. What about designing a governmental service centered on junkyard remittance and prolonged sustainability processes? Nah, we can’t think along those lines, can we? It’d be too sensible! Hell, I’d even be okay with making plastic bag use optional in the areas where it’s been banned, that way those who wish to avoid using them can without penalizing or inconveniencing their opposition. Win-win. But no, let’s instead leverage the situation to continue our quest at painting republicans in bad light while simultaneously instituting additional layers of Big Government to continue making our lives even more inconvenient.

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>Democrat: "Oil is polluting the planet - It's killing us! It's polluting the air, the water, and the soil. It's literally killing people and animals. How about if we use technology to create other types of energy and transportations and transition to using those instead of fossil fuel?"

>Republican: HOW DARE YOU TELL ME I CAN'T DO SOMETHING I WANT TO DO! ROLL THAT COAL!

Right, because republicans are so prone to throwing childish tantrums in public, looting stores, harassing people, destroying livelihoods or property in the name of maintaining carte blanche freedoms of killing babies whenever they wish or their interpretations of what constitutes gender rights, racial and or environmental justice, or even public safety nowadays… I can’t even recall a single instance of republicans toppling a statue for the sake of some perceived ideological value, and yet, the democrats...

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>Democrat: "If you're gay or transgender, that's cool with me. Be happy and live your life. Doesn't affect me on way or the other. As far as transitioning with medication before puberty so your body matches more closely to who you are, I'll leave that to the professionals. According to studies, about 1% or so have at least temporary regrets, but I doubt that anything in life has 100% of people satisfied."

>Republicans: WHAT ARE THESE SICK PEOPLE DOING TO THESE POOR CHILDREN? BEING GAY OR TRANSGENDER IS JUST A PERVERSION! THEY NEED JESUS AND THERAPY TO BECOME STRAIGHT AGAIN, NOT TO HAVE THEIR BODIES MUTILATED! FREEDOM!

Republicans embrace a live-and-let-live mantra much more than today’s democrats do (who are always first at exercising social and governmental apparati comprised of executive fiat, attrition and invisible-hand tactics, fine-print clauses, and more to achieve their ends). Even republicans, as conservative as they tend to be, still provide ways for women to acquire sensible abortion services as long as they do so within reasonable circumstances (much to the chagrin of most insane feminists I’ve known or crossed paths with who never seem to understand the laws in play). Funny enough, I have yet to see legislation preventing gender treatment for aspiring *adults* and there’s a reason we should not all be for preventing it for children. I mean, heaven forbid we commit the audacious crime of allowing children to develop into actual adults before allowing them the luxury of making adult decisions, like those which result in irreparable body alterations. Crazy, I know…

Today’s democrats are always the first to mandate and ban. They were the first to mandate masks and deficient therapeutics whereby failure to comply resulted in job loss and the destruction of lives (to say nothing about the actual deaths one can argue as being related to said “vaccine” that democrats love to pretend is nonexistent)… They were the first to ban plastic use or mandate electrification, first to mandate racial hiring or admissions policies, first to mandate training workshops centered around ongoing social fragilities, first to compel speech, first to ban accounts for failure to comply with right-think, first to track financial transactions under the guise of safety, first to use environmental, social, and governance scores for things like acquiring loans! I can’t even think of a single time when it was a republican who made headlines for parental litigation seeking to control custody of and force medical treatment for his or her child in the name of gender transitioning as was the case with Jeff Younger, or gain notoriety for lecturing (threatening) a son for forgetting to use his dilator post-surgery as was the case with Jazz Jennings. And if you really want to expose statistics associated to gender-confused individuals’ regret, we can absolutely do that: data indicates how 82% of transgender individuals considered suicide whereas 40% have actually tried it (NIH). The American Academy of Pediatrics, according to a 2018 study, indicated that more than half of all transgender male teens and 29.9% of the transgender females who took part in their survey attempted suicide. Or, we can just pretend that these shocking stats are nothing more than the result of being bullied or harassed by your republican bad-guy archetype (at best) or just fake or manipulated results (at worst) the same way I guess we’ll also pretend that recent mass shootings had no correlation to being gender-confused…

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>Democrat: "When it comes to geopolitics, USA safety and reputation are what's important. We achieve this not just by threatening war and invading other countries, or completely ignoring them as they get taken over by criminals, but by being strategic in terms of giving aid (carrot instead of stick) and who we show other countries we are allied with (the enemy of my enemy is my friend), and so on..."

>REPUBLICANS: LET'S GO TO WAR! I CAN'T BELIEVE WE LEFT AFGHANISTAN! WHY ARE WE GIVING MONEY TO UKRAINE WHEN THERE'S THIS HUGE POTHOLE IN MY ROAD THEY STILL HAVEN'T FIXED?

I’m not even going to waste my time with this one because of how insanely stupid it is, not that I'm surprised...

I just skimmed over all that, it's a little too much... but if it's your job to maintain the roads and bridges, and it's not being done to the point where bridges are unsafe and being permanently closed, then you're not doing your job! And if the only reason is because you have some baseless philosophy about doing everything you can to never pay any more taxes, then yes... you are selfish, cruel, and greedy, aka republican!

> I just skimmed over all that, it's a little too much...

Your ideas convinced me a few posts back that I was interacting with an adolescent amateur who had the intellectual depth of a sheet of graphene, so I can't fault you for cowering in a corner...

Here's some free advice: STAY THERE.

Okay, you win! I just don't feel like spending an hour debating someone who's irrational. You're so brainwashed that you can't even tell that you're playing the devil's advocate on everything, or maybe you do, I don't know. You're a Tucker Carlson. You were blabbering about the school shooter and how you think being trans was the cause. Nevermind the FACT that every mass shooter in 2022 was a far-right extremist (like you), this time they were trans so you want to focus the blame on that? Not interested.

I'm no more or less irrational than you are, Prius pilot, and stop pretending to care about facts now when you've already admitted to being unable to ingest those you fear because they undermine your ideological footing. You never had anything except tantrums about republicans for things nobody should be blamed for, democrats included.

You're just a tired, noisy, entitled cliche in need of a safe space.

You're right, I am tired... but have you seen the breaking news? I bet he gets convicted. What's your prediction?

Wow

Nice screed DQ

Pruis pilot? I can't stop laughing!

DQ wrote, "I'm no more or less irrational than you are, Prius pilot, and stop pretending to care about facts now when you've already admitted to being unable to ingest those you fear because they undermine your ideological footing. You never had anything except tantrums about republicans for things nobody should be blamed for..."

I'm sharing this with my friends! This is entertaining!

I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say I'm "having tantrums about republicans for things nobody should be blamed for..." if you're talking about the bridges, it's 100% the county council and commissioners' fault. They just don't want to raise the income or property taxes enough to pay for it. It doesn't really matter if other counties or states are having the same problem, I'm sure it's for the same reason, that they are ran by republicans that aren't doing their job.

But more importantly - Oh. My. Lord. Do you realize we are going to get a Trump mugshot? We're talking t-shirts, mugs, fridge magnets! Probably one of the best things that will ever happen!

Raker, if you had the capacity to read books without pictures, you'd be better prepared for these exchanges and less prone to responding with phrases like, "I'm not sure what you're talking about."

As for the indictment, my bet is that the crybabies are going to be served yet another crash course of why they call him "Teflon Don," but what would be HILARIOUS is him winning in 2024 despite all of this. His indictment could tip things in his favor, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

In the meantime, go get your vaseline and toys ready, Raker. All I ask is that you keep whatever you're planning on doing with your republican fetish and Trump's mugshot confined to the privacy of your home. Nobody wants to see that.

Well maybe if you wouldn't write a multi-page essay in the comments that covers ten different topics, then I could respond. But some of us have a full-time job...

Holding a political party responsible for engineering phenomena, among other things, is a situation which merits detailed exchanges. If that confounds attention deficits, that's on you. But to the chagrin of most, I believe I was rather reserved and controlled in my posts. Given you now confuse multi-page essays with a few paragraphs, I'd say you not only struggle with basic reading, but you also can't count. I mean, you just keep digging your hole deeper and deeper. Ha.

At the end of the day, you're just a crybaby who's full of blame. You blame paragraphs, you blame your job, you blame political parties, you blame time, and without a doubt, you probably blame Trump, too (given your political masochism and Trump fetish)... I almost feel sorry for you. You're blind to yourself. I can only imagine what kind of problems this has caused your relationships.

You said, "Holding a political party responsible for engineering phenomena, among other things, is a situation which merits detailed exchanges. If that confounds attention deficits, that's on you." First off, where do people even talk like that? So "engineering phenomena" is what you blame for seven closed bridges and two partially-closed? One has been closed since 1997! Two others have been closed since 2003 and 2006. Why don't you take a look at Tippecanoe County, or Monroe, or even Hendricks Co. and tell me how many closed bridges you think they have? My guess would be zero, unless they are under construction, or soon to be. Granted, they have a much larger tax base, but that's my point! It's about money! Sorry if the truth hurts, snowflake!

Raker, people talk like that when they possess something called "intelligence," an alien concept for you, I know. It's what allows me to use proper punctuation and organize word walls into these things humanity discovered long ago called "paragraphs." Don't worry, we won't revisit that touchy subject. I know how they make you feel.

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> So "engineering phenomena" is what you blame for seven closed bridges and two partially-closed?

That's usually why bridges close, Mr. Strauss, but why they *stay* closed can be an assortment of reasons ranging from financial and legal issues to supply chain and or even staffing problems. (To say nothing about any involved political bottlenecks small towns and cities are known for having.) We'd have to commit the crime of examining each bridge and corresponding contexts to better understand the rationale behind their closures instead of assuming wholesale that it's all Donald Trump's fault.

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> Why don't you take a look at Tippecanoe County, or Monroe, or even Hendricks Co. and tell me how many closed bridges you think they have?

Sure, and while we're at it, we could then examine other metrics corresponding to things that Putnam County does better at.

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> Granted, they have a much larger tax base, but that's my point! It's about money! Sorry if the truth hurts, snowflake!

Raker, the soy in you never had any points to make beyond crying over republicans.

In typical con-servative grifter fashion, you're deliberately ignoring the fact that there wouldn't be a bridge problem if they'd been maintaining them all along like they're supposed to. And reason they haven't been is because republicans would rather have government be dysfunctional than to raise the necessary amount of taxes. You're clearly too scared to address that crucial point and would rather invent excuses for them, as though we wouldn't have heard them by now if the reason was more than just "we don't have it in our budget and we don't want to raise taxes to pay for it." And talking like Eugene from the walking dead doesn't make you any smarter than average, just fyi.

> In typical con-servative grifter fashion, you're deliberately ignoring the fact that there wouldn't be a bridge problem if they'd been maintaining them all along like they're supposed to.

And in typical naive fashion, you fail to appreciate the complexities inherent to governance, and, well, reality.

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> And reason they haven't been is because republicans would rather have government be dysfunctional than to raise the necessary amount of taxes.

You should reach out to Biden to become one of his advisers. You'd do really well.

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> You're clearly too scared to...

YOU TOTALLY SUSSED ME OUT! I'M SHAKING! COMPLETELY TERRIFIED! HA!

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> And talking like Eugene from the walking dead doesn't make you any smarter than average, just fyi.

Actually, given the norm, I think it would, but regardless, I'd still rather run the risk of reading like him if the chance exists that it would raise the intellectual bar instead of appeasing your lowest common denominator sensibilities. If that's not your cup of tea, well, there's always TikTok.

Okay, Mr. intellectual... or perhaps you prefer "stable genius"? Please enlighten me, since I'm so naive about the complexities of government. Can you give just one possible explanation why these bridges have been closed for so long? If it has any merit then I'll concede.

Been there, done that.

"Been there, done that." I read those words and started laughing, again, which is a great way to start the day!

DennisQuaid bro, you're too goofy to have a real discussion with. It's actually you who is out of touch with how things work in reality. If there was any unique circumstances as to why a bridge must stay permanently closed, we would've heard about it! Thanks for wasting my time, I'll let you get back to the Qanon message board.

> If there was any unique circumstances as to why a bridge must stay permanently closed, we would've heard about it!

They probably already explained it, but since it was in written form, you remained trapped on your island. Ha.

And I'll take the Q association as a compliment! At least those people remain secured in the reality of what exists between their legs, triple-masker.

You live in a fantasy world where all these dramatic scenarios are keeping the bridges closed! You're ridiculous! Despite the commissioners own admission that they don't have the money, and also being the most logical reason, you would rather invent excuses that, if you give them even a moment of consideration, are just completely absurd. But that's world you live in.

Triple masker? You apparently think dying from covid is brave. That could be why Trump lost in 2020, because so many Trumpers got covid and went to see Jesus! Dang, give me four masks!

HAHA! Looks like someone needs another booster...

...of soy.

> Gets their arguments absolutely demolished

> “But Trump”

> mfw

That's exactly right! Trump is no soyboy! If he was a commissioner, he would just come out and say, "look, these bridges are, frankly, out in the middle of nowhere.... low, low traffic.... so what we're gonna do is just shut it down, shut it all down, dump a truck full of rocks in front of it... and we're gonna cut taxes. Why not? We've got plenty of roads!" (Commissioner Trump is later arrested for tax fraud and sentenced to three years in federal prison)

I don't get it. So much confusion over a few bridges. It seems that fixing them would be a no-brainer. America builds roads, highways, and bridges all over the world for everyone else. America built 2.8 to 3 billion dollars of roads in Afghanistan alone. In 2021, America gave away 8.5 billion dollars in aid to Africa. What about Iraq, or any of the other countries we have invaded or whose governments we have financed? Biden just announced another 9 billion dollar spending plan to invest in foreign democracies. Maybe Putnam County could apply for some of that aid.

POSH: that's the first sensible comment since Day 1 of this article!!