Rachel Maddow About the Damned Dam? (Did Big Government Build the Hoover Dam?)

National Review ^ | 11/03/2011 | Arthur Herman

[edpc]

Couldn’t build it today, under any circumstances. Environmental lobby would kill it.

[SF_Redux]

maybe they should dam the Ohio River and flood Chicago

[hattend]

All the great building projects of the 30s, 40s, and 50s would never be built today with the EPA guarding the gates.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Madcow should know all about dyk...er...I mean dams.

[buffyt]

It is amazing what I learn on F.R. Thanks for posting this!

[ken5050]

Amazing factoid about the dam.

Concrete "curing" ( setting/hardening) is an exothermic reaction...it gives off heat. In the base of the dam, so much heat, that there are miles of water pipes that run through the structure, to draw off the heat. Indeed, in the deepest parts of the dam, the concrete is still not fully cured....heat is still generated.

[hattend]

Interior Secretary Harold Ickes had seen the dam as essentially a federal make-work project for the unemployed. Kaiser and his colleagues had to point out that they needed men with genuine skills, not just people willing to turn up for a paycheck. Ickes wanted the door open to union organizing; the builders convinced him the key to happy workers was paying them well, not giving them a union card. Ickes wanted every federal health and safety regulation to be rigorously enforced, and counted no fewer than 70,000 violations of the letter of the contract. They patiently showed him that applying those standards would mean the dam would never be finished on time, let alone on budget.

Name rings a bell. Clintonista? Ickes? Like father like son.

[traditional1]

Hoover Dam was built with non-Union labor, which reduces costs probably 30%-50%, but without the Union Dues to funnel to Democrats, it can't be done the way things are today.

Between Davis-Bacon, and Federal Contract requirements of Union Labor, private companies that are non-Union are not included in the plans....taxpayers will pick up the slack, and donate through this money-laundering to keep the Unions funded, and pay off Democrats who look after them.

[taterjay]

That would be a feat!

[woodbutcher1963]

You can’t build any major project today without some environmental group filing an injunction to protect some woodpecker, snail or insect. A current example is the natural gas pipeline from Canada down to Oklahoma.

Dams are being removed all over the country because they prevent salmon & trout from swimming upstream.

[married21]

The safety standards were pretty funny. At the Hoover Dam a few years ago, we watched the short film and took the tour. There was one photo in the movie that was a guy standing on a skinny ridge with a steep drop off on either side, smoking a cigarette next to a crate of dynamite. He was shirtless and had no climbing rope. I can’t remember if he had a helmet. The situation of those workers was truly scary, and there were accidents that befell them.

Brave guys, and yet probably only a bit braver than average for that era.

[Rannug]

maybe they should dam the Ohio River and flood Chicago

Huh???

[Eric in the Ozarks]

That would be tricky...

[Former Proud Canadian]

Forget it, he’s on a roll.

[Michael.SF.]

the middle of the Nevada wilderness

Geography apparently is not the writer's forte.

[spodefly]

BTTT

[Erasmus]

Or, dam the Chicago River and flood Ohio.

[hattend]

the middle of the Nevada wilderness

Geography apparently is not the writer's forte.

Why, where is it? I guess he could have said Nevada/Arizona wilderness.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I’ve always wanted to sail down the Erie Canal.