Last night in Flint

"He was not there in person, but he was sure there in spirit..."

I said earlier I was done watching Republican debates. And I meant it. I simply could not take another one. I did not however, say I was done watching the other side debate. So last night I watched Santa and Mrs. Claus debate in Flint Michigan. 

I truly do get a kick out of watching a Clinton/Sanders debate. There is a reason why I call them Santa and Mrs. Claus. The amount of money they want to spend makes me think we have a $19T surplus instead of a deficit. However, Bernie Sanders did bring up a good point last night on some of the spending he would like to do. And Flint Michigan was a perfect town to do it in. 

Our infrastructure. If anyone tells you we don't need to modernize our infrastructure, that person is a fool. Some of our water pipes in big cities are over a century old. And many contain lead. It seems like every year there is a story about at least one city having a major water pipe give way. And it is not just water pipes. Sewer pipes, natural gas pipes, of course our electrical grid, as well as many of our transit roads. 

Bernie quoted a number of "trillions" to fix our infrastructure. A question which nobody ever seems to ask is "and where does that money come from?" Bernie does already has an answer. Wall street. Big banks. Big business. They all have extra trillions laying around from sucking it out of the vanishing middle class. Listening to Bernie is like reading one of my old high school textbooks on old school European socialism. He sees the struggle the same way Karl Marx saw it in 1848. It is the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.

One more word about the water problems that continue to plague the citizens of Flint. Both Bernie and Hillary want to tie this around Rick Snyder's neck like a bow tie. Kind of like the Democrats were after "Brownie" after the Katrina mess. But in Katrina, Michael Brown was only part of the problem. The blame went far and wide and crossed party lines. The same is true for the water mess in Flint. The EPA, local government, state government - they all have their fingerprints on this one. Plus what we are finding out, it is much easier to blame someone than to fix this thing.

One final thing about the Democrats. Last night they were really punching at each other. However, they each saved a couple of hay makers for the Republicans. The Republicans? They never seems to go after the Democrats. Killing each other is a much better blood sport for them.