A liberalism that builds

[superrific]

This is going to be a bat signal for Paine, I think. LOL. The first post will be long. Hopefully interesting.

"A liberalism that builds" is something Ezra Klein has talked about a lot recently. The idea is that the government has become too burdened by administrative processes that it can't do basic things that it should be able to do, and did do in the past. Would it be possible for us to build an interstate highway system in today's world? Hard to say.

The sapping of the government's ability to build has been a product of an odd (and unintentional) coalition of three different groups: conservatives who like to muck up the gears of government; leftists who fear government's power and want to constraint it; and centrist lawyers who see process as a solution to ideological struggle. Let's go through these briefly, before coming to the policy discussion on this thread:

1. Conservative business interests hating government regulation is, of course, nothing new. The Administrative Procedure Act, passed Congress in 1946. Before FDR, business interests could effectively head off regulation because they tended to own Congress. The ownership of Congress was so extreme that it created the only flurry of constitutional activity in the history of the country (not counting the actual drafting of the Constitution/Bill of Rights, and the reconstruction amendments which were easier to pass because half the country had no power). But even well into the 1920s, businesses had little to fear from the federal government -- and the Great Depression was one result of that. The Treasury Secretary was Andrew Mellon.

But FDR created a bunch of agencies that could pass regulations, and this represented a threat to the business interests' corruption of Congress. So the business interests wanted to throw sand in the gears of the agencies, and the APA was one part of that. It takes forever for an agency to make any sort of significant rule making, and those rule makings can be disrupted if a new executive is elected. In other words, this was an intentional effort to sabotage government effectiveness.

2. Centrist lawyers. I'm not really a centrist politically -- I'm more eclectic than that -- but I'm pretty centrist when it comes to law. So I can speak to this point fairly well: there is a danger of agencies being TOO empowered to do, and thus able to do unconscionably bad things. This is pretty intuitive: for an example, just imagine RFK Jr. being able to set policy unrestrained by any need to provide actual evidence to justify those policies. The APA provides for judicial review of agency action, and a major component of that review is that agencies have to provide substantial evidence to justify any rules they pass. And in practice, "substantial" means more than what we normally think the word means. It's not exactly "exhaustive" but it's closer to that than the ordinary meaning of substantial.

In theory, of course you'd want this. And this is the centrist attempt to fit agency rulemaking within our constitutional structure. Our constitution is very old; it more or less predates science, and it certainly predates data collection of any sort. The world was very simple. It would have never occurred to the Framers that there would be issues far too complex for Congress to get a handle on. We clearly need agencies staffed with experts. But there's no provision for them in the constitution. The Administrative Procedure Act was a way to allow agencies to operate according to instructions passed by Congress, and reviewable by courts.

3. The leftist activists. This group, I would argue, came of age in the late 1960s. These were the people who created the mantra that the personal was political; that communities needed the ability to make decisions on a local level; and that the government was as likely to be oppressive as beneficial. They were, in short, deeply distrustful of the government -- which they saw as representing the rich, white business class.

A good microcosm of this viewpoint is the Robert Moses transportation projects in New York City -- i.e. the construction of highways that cut through the Bronx (and other boroughs, but primarily the Bronx) and tore neighborhoods apart. In essence, the highway was like a modern railroad tracks, in that they segregated the city and created pockets of being "on the wrong side." They created traffic and pollution. They were devastating to some extant communities. This was the abuse of power that the Left sought to protect against.

****
It's no surprise that, as these different groups started pulling on the system, it became unwieldy. Business interests were able to capture agencies, basically through constant pestering and hiring of agency staff. That fed into the Leftists' fears of the government working as a rubber stamp for industry, so the Leftists wanted even more procedural safeguards. But the leftists made a critical error: they ignored that the highway had been built. The Robert Moses equation was actually a cost benefit issue: benefit -- an efficient new highway allowing quick transport across the city; cost -- destroying neighborhoods. The leftist groups, wanting to make sure that the latter didn't happen, ignored that the former also did. [I'm simplifying a complex story because I'm not writing a book].

And the centrist lawyers? Well, the APA was good for them. Lots of lawyer jobs have been created by these administrative procedures. And these aren't grunt jobs either. Some of the most prestigious legal practices are the administrative law practices in DC. Lots of judges come from these areas of law. But even aside from the crass self-interest that undoubtedly existed but isn't the entire story, the lawyers didn't necessarily see the negative effects. The Robert Moses highway was, to them, a good thing because nobody told them about the consequences (not until much later, at least). And the lawyers also didn't necessarily appreciate time and hassle as a cost. So they were more than happy to settle the dispute with, in essence, more procedures.

And now we have a system with a lot of red tape. Nicholas Bagley at U of M law school has written about this. And even assessing the red tape, there are disputes. Right-wingers think of it as pure hassle, because they don't give a shit about what the red tape protects. The Robert Moses highway was, to business groups, unabashedly awesome. Efficient transportation, and if the locals didn't like it, they could just move. In economics, this viewpoint was justified by the famous Coase Theorem -- except they didn't apply the Coase Theorem correct. Whatever. Leftists want to protect the rulemaking, because it's one of the few ways to protect marginal groups. And the centrist lawyers . . .

Well, the centrist lawyers end up being the protagonist of this story. When I say "lawyers" I don't mean exclusively people with JDs. I'm using them as a microcosm for not just people like me, but also people like Ezra Klein. And the idea Ezra puts forward is that it's time for the centrist lawyers to find ways to break through the logjam, to reduce red tape without throwing the baby out with the bathwater as right-wingers tend to do.

*****
Which brings us to this thread. How can we construct a government that can do things, while also protecting the rights and interests of those who are less represented there? I have one thought which I'll get to in my next post.

 

[BlueSmoke]

It's no surprise that, as these different groups started pulling on the system, it became unwieldy. SUPER

Unwieldy are my thoughts exactly and I have a hunch the electorate sees it and is looking for a solution. May be somewhat of a contributor to the rise of Trump and the rejection of Democrats by some of its own.

 

[superrific]

So one huge source of red tape is the inexperience of local officials. Let's say we want to build an interstate that goes directly north from Chapel Hill, for whatever reason. That highway would undoubtedly pass through communities that really have no idea how to navigate the system of approvals necessary for that type of construction project. Why would they, especially small towns? Are they going to keep an experienced lawyer on staff sitting around doing nothing in case a major project presents itself? Of course not.

1. What ends up happening is that the communities hire consultants. Apologies to Reagan, but the scariest words in the English language are "let's bring in some consultants to help us." The consultants, of course, are private enterprise. They are expensive. And because the localities don't know what they are doing, the consultants have free reign. First, they bill a lot of hours to explain to the local governments how the process works, and why it's so complicated, and why the consultants are needed. Then they bill a lot of hours doing the work, at high costs. Then they bill a lot of hours fighting against the lawsuits they did nothing to avoid in step two, because otherwise there wouldn't be a step three for more hours.

2. Now, consultants aren't necessarily bad. The function of a consultant is to provide on-demand expertise. If a business wants to reorganize its operations, it could keep reorg experts on staff. But what would the reorg experts be doing when there's no reorg? Nothing. You therefore can't pay them enough to attract smart people, and you get full-time incompetence. Consultants basically let companies work together to fund a cadre of well-paid reorg experts that they can in essence rent out for a while when they need them.

But consultants are often dangerous, because they can create their own demand. It's like going to a doctor, except the doctor is unconstrained by conflict of interest rules or medical ethics. "Oh, what looks like a cold might be one of these five diseases -- let's go do some imaging at my imaging lab to sort it all out." And that's definitely the business model for a lot of consultants.

3. But the problem is even worse, because it creates a huge accounting bias for the status quo. Ideally, the cost of consultants would be amortized across many years, whether or not there are projects going on. After all, the consultants are there to replace staff who would be paid every year. But that's not how they are accounted for. The costs are just pinned onto the projects themselves. So the consultants make the projects more expensive; then they bill their expense-creation on top of their problem solving; and the whole thing ends up costing a fortune.

And this is one reason it costs so damn much to build things. It's partly accounting, and partly substance.

4. So what can be done? How about we create a multi-state agency staffed with experts that can be available to localities (and states, if necessary)? Basically, public consultancies who don't bill at $500/hr and who have no incentive to keep bilking. A town needs some assistance? It calls up the agency; the agency loans them some staff to guide them through; and the project gets completed without the consultants spending years of time educating local officials as to why they need consultants. And because the agency is public, it can be guided by principles other than private profit/graft.

I think these are the types of moderate reforms that we can take to rescue the ability of our government to build public projects. The way to have nice things again. Obviously this specific idea has some potential problems, and also I'm not a consultant or experienced in permitting so there are surely snags that would need to be worked out by people who know. But regardless of the merits of this specific idea, it's an example of what we need to be doing.

 

[SnoopRob]

I think you may be onto something from a theoretical perspective, that what Democrats and our country need is a "liberalism that builds" and that these 3 groups all impact the ability of the government.

However, from a practical standpoint, the real issue is Republicans who prefer to gum up government to letting it try to address issues. The other 2 groups, working together, don't do even half the damage to the functioning of government that Republicans do. And the only changes you could make to the structure of government that would address the situation (ending the filibuster) would also enable Republicans to just undo everything Democrats do as soon as they regain control of the government. You could fix the issues of leftist distrust of government and centrist lawyers tomorrow and you wouldn't put a truly significant dent in the issues that keep Democrats from being able to effectively address the issues facing our nation.

So the real question is: How do we ever get Republicans to see governing as an actual goal rather than being an obstructionist party first, second, and third?

 

[superrific]

I think you may be onto something from a theoretical perspective, that what Democrats and our country need is a "liberalism that builds" and that these 3 groups all impact the ability of the government.

However, from a practical standpoint, the real issue is Republicans who prefer to gum up government to letting it try to address issues. The other 2 groups, working together, don't do even half the damage to the functioning of government that Republicans do. And the only changes you could make to the structure of government that would address the situation (ending the filibuster) would also enable Republicans to just undo everything Democrats do as soon as they regain control of the government. You could fix the issues of leftist distrust of government and centrist lawyers tomorrow and you wouldn't put a truly significant dent in the issues that keep Democrats from being able to effectively address the issues facing our nation.

So the real question is: How do we ever get Republicans to see governing as an actual goal rather than being an obstructionist party first, second, and third?

1. I'm not sure your diagnosis is correct. It depends on the issue. For instance, one of the biggest holdups in real estate development is NEPA, the statute that requires "environmental impact statements" for every development projects. This, of course, was a liberal/left initiative and it remains supported by the left.

In practice, the EIS requirement can help address environmental racism. But it also can be used by wealthy people to impede construction. In CA, in particular, it's an often used tool. The government does an EIS. Then a landowner reads it, finds some theoretical environmental impact that hasn't been included, persuades a judge that the theoretical impact is important, and the judge orders the locality to redo the EIS. They do that, and find that the impact was indeed bullshit and its omission justified. By then, the private interests have found another problem, and the cycle goes on and on. Sometimes the projects just aren't even attempted.

2. At the federal level, the problem may very well be Republicans (although, again, not necessarily). But that's not true at the local level. I was thinking about this today after reading an article about how Biden was never able to push broadband funding out the door after it was allocated by Congress. The Biden people were negotiating with states and localities, and accepting competitive bids, and assessing them, and going back to the localities -- and three years later, there's still very little broadband actually built from the appropriation.

Biden's people were following the rules. Business as usual. The broadband rollout was designed to take place over a decade. In 1980, that would have been fine. In 2025, we need to move faster. First, you can't expect ordinary voters to vote on the basis of appropriations. We need to see results. And second, in a decade, whatever is being built now will be obsolete.

Biden saw the problem of delayed interpretation in the Obamacare rollout. The administration was aware of the need for speed. I don't think it's the Biden administration's fault. The way the law is set up, it just takes a long time. Does it have to be that way?

Or another example: the border policy unveiled in June 2024. People screamed, "why didn't you do this earlier?" Well, they did. They started it in 2022. That's how long it takes. And maybe it needs to be moved along faster.

3. Why do people think the government is full of fraud and inefficiency? Well, if it's reported that money was allocated, and then the promised thing doesn't get built, is that reaction a surprise? It's certainly not fraudulent. It's not that inefficient (because some of this stuff needs to be done). But people don't understand that. So they think the government is stupid and it does nothing and they don't know what they had until it's gone.

 

[Healing]

So the real question is: How do we ever get Republicans to see governing as an actual goal rather than being an obstructionist party first, second, and third?

Is that the real question, though? If enough centrist lawyer types and collective-good localists join forces, move towards building, and create buffer on the local and state levels to bad faith authoritarian obstruction, then we’re focused on what we might be able to control. we’ve seen ample evidence this isn’t about convincing maga/white nationalists/christofascists of the benefits of good faith cooperation.

 

[lawtig02]

Is that the real question, though? If enough centrist lawyer types and collective-good localists join forces, move towards building, and create buffer on the local and state levels to bad faith authoritarian obstruction, then we’re focused on what we might be able to control. we’ve seen ample evidence this isn’t about convincing maga/white nationalists/christofascists of the benefits of good faith cooperation.

I tend to agree with this. I'd never advocate for responding to MAGA's cruel desires by intentionally inflicting cruelty on them, but there's no realistic chance MAGA or MAGA-adjacent will ever be part of a functional governing structure. I think the key is blending the populist propensity to focus on the working family with the liberal propensity to look to experts and those with experience to guide our decision-making. Chris Murphy has been doing a better job of that than anyone else I've heard recently. MAGA will benefit from that, but will never stop being the fly in the ointment if they have the opportunity to do so.

 

[Paine]

I think this whole dynamic you describe also contributes to the image of Democrats and liberal government as lethargic. I forget where I read this, but there was a poll that asked people what type of animal people would associate with each party. For Democrats, it was a slug or sloth. For Republicans, it was a shark or wolf. Something along those lines.

This idea of cutting through the red tape is appealing to me. I think there is a growing segment of leftists who acknowledge the need for something like this. A jobs corps of some kind is something I think would provide meaningful opportunities to people (probably disproportionately young men, which is needed). If implemented though, we can’t let it labor through legal processes for years and years.

There are tons of states where Democrats have full control to begin trying out a strategy like this, but it will involve California and New York breaking out of the trap that super described. Rebuilding the brand of the party starts at the state and local level.

 

[Healing]

For Democrats, it was a slug or sloth. For Republicans, it was a shark or wolf.

It was the O’Brien pod you recently posted.

 

[superrific]

This idea of cutting through the red tape is appealing to me.

But it's hard, right? The red tape isn't useless. We wouldn't be able to build a Robert Moses highway in today's world -- which is to say that minority neighborhoods are protected against being decimated. That's good red tape. But then you have business interests who use those same tools to prevent any highway from being built (in this hypo, maybe they control a toll road and don't want competition). That's bad. It's the same red tape.

It's really hard to create rules that a) are useful; b) are administrable by ordinary people; and c) cannot be abused by bad faith actors using those rules for private ends. It's not impossible, but it's really hard. The tax code actually does a pretty good job of it, despite it having a reputation for containing tons of loopholes. There are loopholes, but there are way more potential loopholes that the IRS and/or Congress to shut down. But the job of the tax code is relatively simple in this regard, because usually intent doesn't matter (though sometimes it does), and because the issues are fairly objective.

I have my doubts that the IRS is going to continue to be effective in this regard. Usually, both parties have at least some incentive to close loopholes because they like having more money in the coffers to do the things they want to do (like give tax breaks -- i.e. close the loophole to free up money to lower rates). That is not true any longer, not when half of Congress and the president ran for these offices precisely to give themselves special tax breaks.

 

[BlueSmoke]

When it comes to building things, perhaps Democrats need to campaign on letting the States handle their part and passing the money to them. Voters would like that even thou in reality that's pretty much the situation now. I know this whenever I drive I-95 thru South Carolina. What a mess South Carolina is.

The one Federal Agency that seems to come into play for construction is the Army Corp of Engineers. Wetlands are their baby. Not sure you can trust the States because with water, what happens in one state affects another.

 

[SnoopRob]

1. I'm not sure your diagnosis is correct. It depends on the issue. For instance, one of the biggest holdups in real estate development is NEPA, the statute that requires "environmental impact statements" for every development projects. This, of course, was a liberal/left initiative and it remains supported by the left.

In practice, the EIS requirement can help address environmental racism. But it also can be used by wealthy people to impede construction. In CA, in particular, it's an often used tool. The government does an EIS. Then a landowner reads it, finds some theoretical environmental impact that hasn't been included, persuades a judge that the theoretical impact is important, and the judge orders the locality to redo the EIS. They do that, and find that the impact was indeed bullshit and its omission justified. By then, the private interests have found another problem, and the cycle goes on and on. Sometimes the projects just aren't even attempted.

2. At the federal level, the problem may very well be Republicans (although, again, not necessarily). But that's not true at the local level. I was thinking about this today after reading an article about how Biden was never able to push broadband funding out the door after it was allocated by Congress. The Biden people were negotiating with states and localities, and accepting competitive bids, and assessing them, and going back to the localities -- and three years later, there's still very little broadband actually built from the appropriation.

Biden's people were following the rules. Business as usual. The broadband rollout was designed to take place over a decade. In 1980, that would have been fine. In 2025, we need to move faster. First, you can't expect ordinary voters to vote on the basis of appropriations. We need to see results. And second, in a decade, whatever is being built now will be obsolete.

Biden saw the problem of delayed interpretation in the Obamacare rollout. The administration was aware of the need for speed. I don't think it's the Biden administration's fault. The way the law is set up, it just takes a long time. Does it have to be that way?

Or another example: the border policy unveiled in June 2024. People screamed, "why didn't you do this earlier?" Well, they did. They started it in 2022. That's how long it takes. And maybe it needs to be moved along faster.

3. Why do people think the government is full of fraud and inefficiency? Well, if it's reported that money was allocated, and then the promised thing doesn't get built, is that reaction a surprise? It's certainly not fraudulent. It's not that inefficient (because some of this stuff needs to be done). But people don't understand that. So they think the government is stupid and it does nothing and they don't know what they had until it's gone.

I'm not saying that leftist distrust of government and centrist lawyers have no impact. I'm sure they do. And if we can improve our government by working on those issues, we should. We should never let perfect be the enemy of good (or better).

I don't know enough about how environmental studies are used to delay/prevent building, so I'll concede what you post here, but it also sounds like we have a legitimate process that unfortunately gets abused. That doesn't sound like a failure of the government or the "centrist lawyers" but instead simply the results of folks motivated to abuse the process in whatever ways they can and a lack of penalties for those who do abuse it, which would be a different issue.

I agree that unveiling any plan on a national basis often takes quite a long time to achieve, we're simply a large country with a whole lot of cities, towns, and rural areas. There's simply no way to do things on a nation-wide basis in a quick manner unless you're willing to accept a really high degree of waste, misuse, and corruption. A great example of this is the COVID funding pushed out where speed was incentivized over a higher degree of review and approval. I work in the non-profit world and the amount of COVID funding that was used in ways to simply use funds was staggering...and in many cases not even in ways that benefited folks impacted by COVID and its direct or indirect effects. The only way you could likely speed up the implementation process without significantly increasing waste/misuse/corruption would be to significantly increase the number of employees who work on these projects, which would mean significantly increased cost, and which would make them even tougher to get approved.

But the combined impact of "solving" those two issues aren't going to really fix the problems with our government and aren't going to enable Dems to truly be a "liberalism that builds". Pubs have come to realize that they benefit when government doesn't function well and they've overcome any compunction they may have had about not only trying to stop the effectiveness of government but being willing to actively break it in order to ensure that it doesn't function. Even if you fixed both of leftist distrust and centrist process issues to as great of an extent as possible, you likely wouldn't really be able to create solutions to the biggest issues facing our society.

The real problem is that our government has to address complex problems that the free market has failed to address and do so over a large geographic area. That is going to inherently take a lot of planning and implementation to do well while keeping unintended consequences to a minimum. It would be hard to accomplish under the best of circumstances. However, the greatest barrier to efficient and effective government remains the Republican Party and there is absolutely nothing that Dems can do to fix that problem, even if they were able to address other barriers to inefficiency.

 

[SnoopRob]

Is that the real question, though? If enough centrist lawyer types and collective-good localists join forces, move towards building, and create buffer on the local and state levels to bad faith authoritarian obstruction, then we’re focused on what we might be able to control. we’ve seen ample evidence this isn’t about convincing maga/white nationalists/christofascists of the benefits of good faith cooperation.

First, centrist lawyers and collective-good folks can't create a universal buffer on the state and local levels to bad faith authoritarian obstruction because a lot of those bad faith authoritarian obstruction actors exist at the state and local levels. Take Obamacare, for example, when Obamacare passed, state officials across wide number of red states simply refused to put Obamacare into action, even though doing so harmed a decent percentage of their own citizens. The story is the same with Medicaid expansion, where red state governments refuse to accept greater resources from the Federal government because of some combination of not wanting to allow the federal government to work nor allowing Dems to get the credit, even to the detriment of their own citizens. The best you could do here is create solutions that positively help blue states, and that is good in practice, but that are missed by red states, which only serves in those communities to increase resentment toward the federal government and its programs.

Second, I'm not saying that fixing the parts "we can control" is a bad idea, in fact I agree we should try it to make government better, more efficient and more effective. But I am saying that we shouldn't expect such actions to make a material difference in how Dems are perceived as a political party because solving a small part of a problem isn't going to create a significant change in solving the entire problem. So unless somehow Pubs become a party that chooses to actually be a party with any interest, much less aptitude, in actually governing, Dems are stuck with a problem that can't be solved in this manner.

 

[ZenMode]

I heard the episode being referred to, I believe. Klein compared how quickly X number of NY subway stops were built within a year vs a current federal government program related to (going from memory) internet access for specific groups or a specific project - I don't remember exactly.

That project was approved and funded 3 (?) years ago and has not progressed an iota due to, again from memory, environmental studies.

We've seen that Newsom agreed to lift the cumbersome environmental impact requirements to allow the quick rebuilding of homes after the fire. It's those environmental impact requirements that have largely been the cause of CA's home shortage.

What is the answer? New leadership or sink more money into manpower to speed up processes, if that (speeding up) is even possible. I honestly don't know the details of environmental impact studies to know if it's possible to expedite.

 

[finesse]

A hell of a lot of California's problems with water, mudslides and fires come form the lack of understanding of how to deal with the environment 60 or more years ago. You could take the stance that they blew it and things can't get better and give up. I think that's stupid and shortsighted. Imo, as little as it's, remediation and research is the approach. Deal with the obvious problems which will take money and manpower and a lot of political will. Some of the rich people on the mountain sides and such are likely to get a mite upset with some of the changes needed.

There also need to be an integrated look at the future and that's less about money immediately but understanding which way is best for the whole state in terms of water, air and al other resources.

 

[superrific]

I heard the episode being referred to, I believe. Klein compared how quickly X number of NY subway stops were built within a year vs a current federal government program related to (going from memory) internet access for specific groups or a specific project - I don't remember exactly.

That project was approved and funded 3 (?) years ago and has not progressed an iota due to, again from memory, environmental studies.

We've seen that Newsom agreed to lift the cumbersome environmental impact requirements to allow the quick rebuilding of homes after the fire. It's those environmental impact requirements that have largely been the cause of CA's home shortage.

What is the answer? New leadership or sink more money into manpower to speed up processes, if that (speeding up) is even possible. I honestly don't know the details of environmental impact studies to know if it's possible to expedite.

Ezra has been talking and writing about this for years. It wasn't "an episode."

The environmental impact requirements are merely one piece of the problem with California housing. It's a useful tool for NIMBYs but far from the only one.

The solution is not to get rid of EIS. That's how we get disasters like Love Canal.

 

[ZenMode]

Ezra has been talking and writing about this for years. It wasn't "an episode."

The environmental impact requirements are merely one piece of the problem with California housing. It's a useful tool for NIMBYs but far from the only one.

The solution is not to get rid of EIS. That's how we get disasters like Love Canal.

I agree and I wouldn't want to get rid of EISs entirely, but there is a range. The only way to decrease the impact is to get new leadership who makes changes. CA, when it wanted to drastically speed up reconstruction, did one thing - waive environmental requirements.

 

[superrific]

I agree and I wouldn't want to get rid of EISs entirely, but there is a range. The only way to decrease the impact is to get new leadership who makes changes. CA, when it wanted to drastically speed up reconstruction, did one thing - waive environmental requirements.

Well, the EIS for reconstruction largely duplicates the original EIS. They've already studied the impacts, given that they had housing there. So this is not a good example of anything. There's a lot more to an EIS than you think, and again, most of it has been done.

 

[ZenMode]

Well, the EIS for reconstruction largely duplicates the original EIS. They've already studied the impacts, given that they had housing there. So this is not a good example of anything. There's a lot more to an EIS than you think, and again, most of it has been done.

I've heard that the average age for a home in the Pacific Palisades was 60 years. I don't doubt that California started environmental impact studies in the '70s or '80s, but It seems unlikely that those studies, to whatever percentage of homes they would apply to, are that similar to studies done now and a significant number of houses were likely built before they had the studies.

 

[Ramrouser]

The US can still build with the speed of the construction of the Empire State Building or Golden Gate Bridge when it puts its mind to it. Georgia folks still marvel at the I-85 Bridge rebuild. After the 2017 fire collapsed the bridge, the six lane bridge was engineered and constructed in 43 days! - relieving huge traffic issues for the metro area (250k cars travel across it per day). Gov. Kemp received well deserved praise for the rebuild.

Voters really appreciate government when it acts this promptly and efficiently - making a real difference in people's lives. The opposite of this is the "bullet train to nowhere" currently languishing in California.