VDOT wastes millions on unnecessary stand-by Re: “VDOT $70 million over budget on snow removal this winter,” March 22
As a former Virginia Department of Transportation employee, I am not surprised that it is over budget for snow removal. Even if the forecast calls for a very slight chance of winter precipitation 11 hours later, VDOT puts its maintenance staff on 24-hour standby.
Why such a readiness to waste millions of taxpayer dollars? Because VDOT has to appease the vocal politicians in Northern Virginia whose constituents call, yell and e-mail them that VDOT hasn’t plowed their streets yet.
Most people are unaware that VDOT has up to 12 hours after a snowfall of 2 inches or more to treat high-volume roads and only needs to sand residential streets. But people actually expect all the streets to be devoid of ice or snow as soon as it hits the pavement.
I was on one of those mandatory 12-hour shifts for two weeks straight during last year’s “Snowpocalypse” and we hardly got any “thank yous” for plowing someone’s street. If people would stop complaining about snow removal and have VDOT do its real job — building and maintaining roads — our roads would be in much better shape. Besides, snow eventually melts.
Susan Cheung Jones
Washington
Obama develops a bad case of Kerryitis
Re: “By what authority has Obama gone to war with Libya?” March 22
When John Kerry was running for president, he was widely ridiculed because he said that he was for a piece of legislation before he was against it. When Barack Obama was running for the presidency in 2007, he said that we should not take military action without congressional approval unless danger to the nation was imminent.
At the present time, danger to our nation is not imminent, but President Obama is taking military action in Libya without congressional approval anyway. In his variation of Kerryitis, Mr. Obama was against taking military action without congressional approval before he was for it.
Nathan Dodell
Rockville
There are limits to America’s power
Re: “America should lead on the world stage, not follow,” editorial, March 21
Your editorial criticizing President Obama for abandoning unilateralism in favor of multilateralism in enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya strikes me as willful obtuseness and delusional thinking about the uncomfortable reality of the United States as the world’s lone superpower.
With all the all-consuming debate about federal budget deficits running amok and the enormous costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is manifestly clear that there are limits to America’s power and its ability to manage events and impose its will in the international arena.
Historian Paul Kennedy’s remarks in “The relative decline of America” (The Atlantic, August 1997) are prescient: “The United States now runs the risk, so familiar to historians of the rise and fall of Great Powers, of what might be called ‘imperial overstretch’: that is to say, decision-makers must face the awkward and enduring fact that the total of the United States’ global interests and obligations is nowadays far too large for the country to be able to defend them all simultaneously.”
Craig Taylor
Alexandria
