Lately, the dead Amtrak conductor; now this.

Biden Claims 5 Past Fed Chairs Back His Jobs Plan, But 2 Are Dead and 2 More Have Been Quiet About It
Reason.com | Elizaeth Nolan Brown | 5.11.2021

Biden claims dead economists love his jobs plan. The past five leaders of the Federal Reserve have come out in support of President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan, the president told reporters at the White House last week. “What’d they say? They said, ‘Biden’s plan is going to grow the economy,'” Biden claimed.

That’s not true. In fact, two of the five chairs before incumbent Jerome Powell—G. William Miller and Paul Volcker—are now dead.

Two of the three living previous Fed chairs—Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke—have been quiet or vague about the $2.3 trillion spending proposal Biden has put forth in the name of “infrastructure” and “jobs.”

Greenspan’s only comments on it seem to be about infrastructure spending generally, and I can find no comments from Bernanke.

Only former Chair Janet Yellen, who is now Biden’s treasury secretary, has really been promoting it.

So what the heck was Biden talking about?

A White House official told CNN that Biden had misspoken and meant to reference a May 4 Washington Post op-ed written by five former commissioners of the IRS.

But this, too, falls somewhat short of accuracy. “The former IRS commissioners did not say anything about how Biden’s plan would affect economic growth,” notes CNN.

Rather, they said Biden’s proposals—including a well-funded effort to crack down on the non-payment of taxes owed—would make the tax administration system “far fairer and more effective” and “produce a great deal of revenue by reducing the enormous gap between taxes legally owed and taxes actually paid.”

. . . like Hunter’s? Like Al Sharpton’s?

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via freerepublic.com, a discussion of the bridge situation — not by journalists or pundits:

Not very smart officials when they call that a crack.

Honestly, I could repair that with no problem whatsoever and it would be stronger than the original in a few days at most if given all the resources I know the state has at their disposal.

They say a good weld is stronger than the steel itself. It means they could fix this particular break and get stuff moving again, assuming an inspection turns up no other problems.

It is true that the actual weld is stronger than the original in most cases. It is also true that the heat of welding often weakens the the steel in proportion to how much and how many times the original steel gets heated during the process. NOT an easy fix. In addition they will have to dig out the engineer samples (If they kept them) of the original steel and conduct testing to see if it is becoming “work hardened”. Sometimes , when steel is stressed and de-stressed millions of times (as in heavy load after heavy load for decades) it can become brittle and actually harder than it should be which makes it more prone to cracking. If that is the case replacement will be necessary.

The view showing the small bolted on plate looks curious. Doesn’t look like a lot of support between the vertical and horizontal elements. The large bolted plate with the 100+ bolts doesn’t appear to do anything. Maybe the workers got paid by the bolt hole.

The shift is probably due to the rest of the structure deforming once it had to take up the load. That means it isn’t just about replacing that one broken structural member. Now others that have been over-stressed, over-strained will have to be replaced too. Along the way some analysis and consideration will have to be made as to why did this member fail in the first place?

Overall though it is a testament to the (over) design & construction of the bridge that it could continue to take the load even with this failure. But it is probably operating at just about zero margin of safety now.

Yep. As a guy that passed a nuclear pipe weld test 40 years ago and has burned probably 1000 lbs of rod and wire since, that picture doesn’t scare me in the least.

Clamp something to straighten the 2 ends ( I bet it would align a lot easier than most would believe) a few 7018 rods, grind it flat, fish plate it, and be done.

Of course we don’t know how badly rusted it is inside……………..

Normally fatigue failure once repaired simply translates to the next unfailed and fatigue limited point.

The bridge is worn out. Another failure is just a matter of time.

How convenient! RIght when the Biden admin is pushing trillions in “infrastructure”!

Suggest those designers who did the pedestrian overpass in the Miami area which collapsed a few years ago NOT be hired for this project.

It should buff out…..