Regarding “In Our View: Local media essential part of U.S. infrastructure” (The Columbian, May 18). The definition of infrastructure, from Merriam-Webster, includes both hard infrastructure such as bridges, roads, buildings, military installations and rails, along with soft infrastructure: the personnel and equipment that support them. Soft infrastructure extends to the underlying foundation of a system or organization such as health care, education, and the social safety net.
Republicans want to limit the definition of infrastructure to hard infrastructure. President Biden’s proposed infrastructure bill, which includes soft infrastructure, would mean better-informed citizens along with more jobs and better benefits for all our fellow citizens.
Ah, that’s the point. Republicans believe in a government of the elite who know what is best for everyone, by the elite who are smarter than everyone, for the elite who will eventually let “it” trickle down to us common folk. We have been waiting since the early 1980s for the trickle. In the meantime, they have offshored their wealth to avoid taxes, leaving us holding the debt they created with tax cuts for themselves and favoring large government contracts for their donors’ companies. Call it what it is, not trickle-down but trickle-on theory. Support local media – the grassroots of America’s democratic republic.
