Reach in your pocketbook and take out a nickel. Look at it; look at it hard, for it is your piece of silver. It is what we would not pay to repair the roads and bridges, including the bridge that collapsed to the ground in Minneapolis; a five-cent gas taxes that would have repaired the roads and bridges. Across this country, we have elected officials who promised us no new taxes, the promise was kept and a bridge fell down, people died, cars crushed, kids traumatized.

Neil Coleman, of the Star Tribune, said it perfectly in his August 2, 2007, column. “There isn't any bigger metaphor for a society in trouble than a bridge falling, its concrete lanes pointing brokenly at the sky, its crumpled cars pointing down at the deep waters where people disappeared. ----Only this isn't a metaphor.” It isn’t a metaphor, it is a reflection of us, of our values, in action. We live in a representative democracy and we elect people to represent us; to make decisions that reflect our values. We haven’t want to pay the price of running a competent government, and so we have elected people who promised us no new taxes. Now we are paying the price.

Neil Coleman goes on to tell us, “So far, we are told that it wasn't terrorists or tornados that brought the bridge down. But those assurances are not reassuring. --They are troubling.---If it wasn't an act of God or the hand of hate, and it proves not to be just a lousy accident - a girder mistakenly cut, a train that hit a support - then we are left to conclude that it was worse than any of those things, because it was more mundane and more insidious: This death and destruction was the result of incompetence or indifference. ---In a word, it was avoidable.----That means it should never have happened. And that means that public anger will follow our sorrow as sure as night descended on the missing.”

The problem is, whom do we get angry at? The officials we elected; the ones who kept their promise to us, no new taxes. Paying for things like bridges is not new. I sure you remember the nursery rhyme London Bridge, “London Bridge is falling down.” Well the verses, the ones you may not remember talk about the bridge, “How will we build it up… Build it up with gold and silver… Gold and silver I have none…Build it up with pins and needles…. Pins and needles bend and break…. Build it up with wood and clay… Wood and clay will wash away…” Our infrastructure cannot be built and maintained on the cheap.

One of four bridges in this country is deficient. Neil Coleman asked, “Would you drive your kids or let your spouse drive over a bridge that had a sign saying, "CAUTION: Fifty-Percent Bridge Ahead"?” The truth is we do allow our kids, our spouse, our friends, our neighbors, and our businesses to drive over bridges that are fifty percent. There is a connection between falling bridges, exploding steam pipes, sinkholes, failing levies; they are all part of the failing infrastructure of this country. Infrastructure we have chosen to neglect, because we wanted no new taxes. We got no new taxes and now we have the blood of those died when bridge collapsed on our hands. So take that nickel, your piece of silver, with you when you go to your house of worship, place in the collection plate and ask for forgiveness for the price we were willing to pay to keep that nickel.