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纽约慢慢恢复,大选更多悬念

(2012-11-02 03:34:29)
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杂谈

    自从上篇博文周一晚发出以后不到20分钟,我家的英特网就断了,有线电视也断了。一下与世隔绝一般,不知道外界发生了什么。昨天还是到下面星巴克发邮件。
    接下来就是,这个叫做桑迪姑娘的超级飓风,确实如预期是个万圣节的妖怪(Frankenstorm),也是搅局美国总统大选的风。
    纽约地铁瘫痪几天,今天刚恢复小部分。公共汽车免费,但像蜗牛式在爬行。早上花了一小时才开进只有2公里远的林肯隧道。我下面的哈德逊河渡船平时稀稀拉拉没有几个人坐,今天队伍长的不见尾,据说要排两个多小时才可以。
    纽约和新泽西数百万人仍旧没有水和电。皇后区那100多幢烧毁的房子的镜头难以让人忘记。附近的霍伯肯部分被淹地区水还没有排完。虽然,奥巴马昨天到新泽西视察,与共和党的州长克里斯蒂表现出难得的跨党派团结,但今天奥巴马又投入的竞选集会。是的美国11月6日的大选在即,如果不能连任,不是一切都完了?所以即使目前仍占优势的奥巴马也不怠慢。只能把受灾老百姓暂时忘却一下。
    这次飓风把纽约和新泽西等地弄得这样不堪一击,确实显现纽约这个世界最伟大的城市的脆弱。就这么瘫痪了,要一周甚至更长时间恢复。美国的基础设施越来越显示出第三世界的症状。
    可惜,美国的总统选举辩论根本也没有谈到投资基础设施。反而,罗姆尼大谈增加军费。美国现在的军费在过去十年增加了一倍,超过是世界后十个国家的总合。世界上最强的空军是美国空军,第二强空军是美国海军。一架B-2轰炸机花费22亿美元,足可以修几个纽约老旧的隧道。
    加强国防是必要的。但是否有必要在忽视民生和基础设施的前提下进行(象原苏联一样),值得美国、中国和很多国家思考。一个国家最值得投入的是教育、基础设施和民生等社会长远发展的根本,当然加上一个高效廉政的制度。
    周日要去芝加哥,观察下周的总统选举。奥巴马一周前在芝加哥提前投票。他的选举总部在芝加哥。如不出意外,竞选晚上他会在那里庆祝。而罗姆尼就会在自己的波士顿总部,发表落选声明。
    当然这次受灾严重的纽约和新泽西,是民主党的地盘。但投票人数因灾害锐减,可能导致奥巴马在赢得选取的情况下,失去总选票数,而当选。这也是对2000年戈尔输给小布什的报复。
    本周日,纽约一年一度的马拉松将照样进行,引起很多争议。当然组办方希望向人们显示纽约的精神。脆弱的纽约是打不垮的。今天纽约斯坦顿岛仍然被水围困的一位老妇对奥巴马的嘶喊“已经三天了,我们要死啦”。 听后让人心碎。

Farewell to outdated infrastructure

By Chen Weihua

New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town. But I never realized how fragile it was until Hurricane Sandy hit the Big Apple and the whole East Coast early this week.
The images of the carnage caused by Sandy resembled those from a war zone, and more than 20 people in New York are known to have died as a result of the rampaging superstorm.
In the aftermath of the hurricane, tens of thousands of New Yorkers have been living without tap water and electricity and one of the world’s oldest and most extensive subway systems, which millions of people depend on every day, was paralyzed due to flooding in some of the tunnels. A fire in Breezy Point, Queens, turned more than 100 houses into ashes.
Looking across the Hudson River at the Manhattan skyline from my apartment, the normally glitzy skyline is now dark at night. In fact, on Monday night around 9 pm, the Hudson overflowed, turning my apartment building into an island. The flood inundated the ground floor, shutting down the elevator, Internet and cable TV. For a day, we were without access to information and didn’t know what was happening beyond our window.
But we are among the lucky ones compared with the millions of people in the states of New York and New Jersey who are suffering from power and water outages that will continue for at least days to come.
As New York started its difficult recovery, some of my colleagues spent three or four hours driving or riding a bus from Queens to Manhattan on Wednesday. The traffic was so bad that my colleague and I spent 50 minutes getting to the entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel only 2 kilometers away.
Many shops and businesses, including some large financial institutions on Wall Street, are still closed and will remain so for some time.
The city’s infrastructure is old and vulnerable, and the disruption has been so much and so prolonged that many people are questioning whether the city that claims to be the greatest in the world still lives up to that billing.
And we have not really heard the two presidential candidates debating how to improve the United States’ outdated infrastructure.
Instead, we have heard Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, arguing for more defense spending, even though the US defense budget has doubled over the last decade and is more than the rest of the 10 top-spending nations combined.
In fact, many Americans do not know that a B-2 bomber costs $2.2 billion, which would be enough money to reinforce some subway tunnels and upgrade utility systems in New York, and be of great help to disaster relief efforts in the hurricane-hit areas.
Sandy has blown away the bland campaign rhetoric that the news media had been bombarding us nonstop just days ago.
Romney is still campaigning, but no one, at least not in the East Coast, seems to care what he has to say these days. Instead of labeling Russia the No 1 geopolitical foe, it would have been more sensible for Romney to declare Hurricane Sandy the biggest threat to the US. But it is too late for that now.
Meanwhile, Obama has been widely praised for being a true commander-in-chief by responding rapidly to the crisis and visiting disaster zones in New Jersey and other East Coast cities.
It is time for New York to live up to its claim to be the greatest city in the world, which means Americans need to say “farewell, floods and power outages”. And this means a farewell to arms.

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