Crickets Chirp while Fort Worth Politicians Promise Bridges Where There Is No River

This morning I was searching for a photo of Nikita Khruschev and Shirley Maclaine when I came upon that which you see here.

A quote from one of my favorite dictators of the Soviet Union, the aforementioned Nikita Khruschev opining....

"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river".

Well.

Guess what came to my mind when I read what Nikita had to say?

If you guessed an American town building bridges where there is no river, proudly trying to build these bridges over dry land, you know, to save money, when there will never be water under those bridges until a ditch is dug under them, with water added to the ditch, well, you guessed right.

How Fort Worth's governing morons got away with spewing that ridiculous lie, the bridges being built over dry land to save money lie, has appalled me for years now.

The three simple little bridges were being built over dry land to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island because there was no funding to pay for digging the ditch into which the Trinity River could be diverted. And if that ditch had been dug at the same time the bridges were being built there would be no water in that ditch until the Trinity River was diverted into the ditch.

In other words, there never was any other option than to build those three simple little bridges over dry land.

And yet the BIG LIE about the bridges being built over dry land in order to save money.

Repeated over and over again.

I point you to the Wikipedia article about the Big Lie for instructive insight into how propaganda works in a town like Fort Worth.

Fort Worth lacks any real newspaper doing this thing called journalism, reporting on this thing called news. Well, all the news. Fort Worth's fake newspapers do cover murders, mayhem and the rare construction of a new downtown Fort Worth building, and other things which do not contradict the party line of the good ol' boy network which runs Fort Worth in what is known as the Fort Worth Way.

In other words, run the town with a large dose of delusional propaganda.

So, unless I missed it, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth Weekly and Fort Worth Business Press have all failed to investigate, and report on, what has gone wrong with the building of those three simple little bridges.

What was the design problem which caused the long construction halt? What was the alleged solution to this design problem which allowed the slow construction to supposedly resume?

It was way back on Tuesday November 11, 2014 I blogged about a big TNT big boom announcing the three month late start of bridge construction at a big celebration hosted by those aforementioned Fort Worth government morons, such as Mayor Betsy Price, Congresswoman Kay Granger, and Granger's embarrassing son J.D., he the master of stupidly ironic quotes and Executive Director of what has become America's Biggest Boondoggle, of which those three simple little bridges are only one part.

I forgot to mention, when that TNT big boom marked the start of bridge construction those three simple little bridges being built over dry land had a four year construction timeline.

Four years to build three simple little bridges.

Over dry land.

Longer than it took to build the Golden Gate Bridge, over deep, fast moving water, and other actual feats of engineering. Such as actual signature bridges built over the actual Trinity River in Dallas. Or the new Dallas Cowboy stadium, in Arlington.

The Dallas Cowboy stadium, also built over dry land, also costing over a billion dollars, would seem to be a more complex engineering effort than Fort Worth's three simple little bridges being built over dry land, and the rest of Fort Worth's vitally needed flood control/economic development scheme known as the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision, which has been boondoggling along for most of this century, built in slow motion, even though, you know, it's a vitally needed flood control/economic development scheme.

And an apparently lifelong employment opportunity for Kay Granger's son who had zero experience directing a project such as what has become America's Biggest Boondoggle.

I wonder if there is any connection between this project becoming an embarrassing boondoggle and the project's director being an unqualified embarrassment?

There is one thing the construction of the new Dallas Cowboy stadium and Fort Worth's embarrassing boondoggle have in common. Both outrageously abused eminent domain to take property from its owners, including both bulldozing property whilst the owners still had not had their say in court.

But, with a big difference. Four years later Arlington saw a big new stadium and a Super Bowl where all that private property was taken.

Meanwhile in Fort Worth crickets chirp...