Pictures of frustration: From a collapsed building to a faltering infrastructure deal

Nothing much seems to be working these days.

Roads and sidewalks are buckling in Seattle, where a record-setting heat wave pushed temperatures to 108 degrees, with rolling blackouts elsewhere in the state. And that was balmy compared to the 116-degree mark in Portland.

We can have all the climate-change debates we want, but this extreme weather — it’s usually in the 70s or 80s now in that part of the Northwest — has serious health effects, especially on the elderly. And it’s kind of a symbol for a world that increasingly seems out of control.

Government, and this is an understatement, keeps falling down on the job. The most dramatic example is the agonizing pictures we’ve had to watch for days now of the collapsed condo tower in Florida’s Surfside community.

The maddening thing is that government neglect turned the building into a death trap. Inspectors found major structural damage there back in 2018, and for three years nothing was done. The place should have been quickly evacuated. Turns out the repairs were supposed to start soon, which is cold comfort to the families of those who were killed as rescue efforts have fallen short.

What’s more, in a letter obtained by USA Today, the condo board president complained in April that damage to the basement garage had "gotten significantly worse" and the "deterioration" of the building’s concrete was "accelerating." This is a heartbreaking tragedy that absolutely could have been avoided.

Time and again, red-alert warning signs are ignored. A bridge falls down, a mine collapses, a defective plane crashes, the water (as in Flint, Michigan) turns poisonous, and we learn that inspectors or investigators had already sounded the alarm. But their bosses did nothing. Federal and state agencies failed to provide crucial oversight, as in the case of Boeing’s 737 Max. The pattern of criminal negligence continues.

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If there’s one national need that our warring politicians could agree on, it would be the need to repair and expand our crumbling infrastructure. But their efforts are slowly sinking into quicksand. And in classic Beltway fashion, the arguments are mainly about mind-numbing process and partisan advantage, not the urgency of dealing with roads, bridges, tunnels, rail and airports.

Instead, we’re treated to eye-glazing arguments about whether or not two bills should be "delinked" — a bipartisan version with Republicans on board, and a bigger, costlier measure that Dems would muscle through on their own.

There is no question that President Biden nearly blew up the deal by declaring the bills had to be sent to him simultaneously, an obvious veto threat that had Lindsey Graham telling Politico that they’d have to be blanking idiots to succumb to extortion.

Most of the press seemed determined not to blame Biden, instead praising him for his bipartisanship, but a Washington Post headline Tuesday cites the "flubbed rollout" — yet that’s OK, because Biden is trying to "move beyond" it.

Except there’s a new problem. Having reeled back some wavering Republican moderates, the president now finds a bunch of liberal Democrats threatening to sink the bill unless they’re absolutely guaranteed to get the big budget-busting measure. "If it’s not where it needs to be, we’ll vote it down," Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman said. It’s like an endless game of Whac-a-Mole.

There’s nothing stopping the progressive wing from trying to push through a second bill, which includes climate change programs, but they’re trying to exercise their leverage now — just like the other side.

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Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell is making threatening noises because Chuck and Nancy won’t back off their two-bills-or-none pledge, as Biden did. So this thing may never get 60 votes in the Senate.

There is of course an important issue at stake—how many trillions of dollars our red-ink government can afford to spend on important priorities like infrastructure, and how to pay for it. But average Americans could be forgiven for thinking the Washington elite is more concerned with political maneuvering and point-scoring than keeping crumbling structures from collapsing.

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And to add to the sense of futility, the vaccination rate has seriously slowed down — 54% of the population has gotten at least one dose, but the figure is just 28% in the bottom fifth of counties. Here scientists have created these miraculous life-saving drugs, and a substantial portion of Americans, despite the government’s urging, won’t take them to combat the devastating virus.

There are forces of nature that we can’t do much about. But politicians and bureaucrats — and the public — can’t get it together to stop buildings from imploding and a pandemic from surging back.