Democracy for Vancouver

But it’s nothing to cheer about:

Officials in Des Moines, Iowa, have ordered a mandatory evacuation as a second levee in the city fails under the cresting Des Moines River.

Early Saturday morning, the river breached a permanent levee, flooding a nearby high school. Crews rushed to set up a temporary sand levee, but the rain-swollen river pushed through that barrier hours after it was erected.

As flood waters flow toward a residential area, people in more than 250 homes have been ordered to leave. Many residents in Iowa’s capital city have already left following an earlier voluntary evacuation request.

Meanwhile, 100 miles east in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Cedar River is beginning to recede, but hundreds of city blocks are under water. Much of the city’s drinking water is polluted and 10,000 people have left.

Back in January of last year, the Corps indicated that at least 146 U.S. levees were at risk of failure:

After “further study” the Corps whittled the list down to 122; but since that list included none in Iowa and at least two have failed so far, how many more than the 122 listed (pdf) are at risk?

During the present flood, at least one levee has been breached by floodwaters in both Indiana (listed levee) and Illinois (unlisted levee), and more have been overtopped - a failure not incorporated into the Corp’s at-risk list.

Many have been saying that health care needs to be the first item on an Obama administration’s agenda; others have said alternative energy and dealing with rampant oil speculation needs to come first.

While these are both important - and any “first” on the domestic agenda should go hand-in-hand with a safe and sane pullout from Iraq - putting together a WPA-type massive infusion into fixing the public infrastructure of this country would have such wide-ranging benefits that nothing should take precedence over it.

If we put the funds we are currently spending in Iraq into public works investment, we would attack unemployment and the stagnating economy while keeping jobs in the U.S. and getting employer-based healthcare to millions more Americans who would have full-time employment. The trickle-up from this employment would strengthen the service sector and the market for goods, and would help put back to work the hundreds of thousands of construction workers who have been idled by the housing crash.

Yes, we need to make universal, single-payer, non-employer based health insurance a priority. And yes, we need to spur the growth of the green economy so that jobs are created in the private sector and the public sector does not need to incur the debt necessary to support the U.S. economy. And, yes, letting the Bush tax cuts expire must also be a priority to pay down the debt and get the deficit under control.

But there is no question that there is at least $1 trillion in infrastructure investment desperately needed now; and since not fixing our highways, bridges and flood control will lead to catastrophic losses of life and property that will tap our national resources even further, there could be no better beginning to 2009 that a program to rebuild this country from the ground - and levees - up.