Key to the Highway

I haven't been able to comment on the accident that caused the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore to collapse in late March when it was hit by a container ship, what with everything going on elsewhere.  But I'd still like to - especially since now a path through the Patapsco River has been cleared to allow shipping to operate under the closest thing to normal circumstances as possible . . . under abnormal circumstances.

President Biden and the Department of Transportation have been very swift and effective in ameliorating the situation, but his efforts to get the federal government involved in the reconstruction of the bridge has met with considerable opposition from Republicans, who have a problem with rebuilding infrastructure because there's no money in it - especially when it's in a Democratic state.

The GOP has argued that there's no need for the federal government to share costs with Maryland to deal with the collapsed bridge - built in 1977 to supplement the harbor tunnels near the downtown area - the Federal Highway Administration’s emergency relief program already allows for a 100% federal cost share for the first 270 days, with one Republican leadership aide insisting that it is "premature to pass the 100% cost share because 90% of nothing is still nothing. . ..  We don’t need to change the cost share until the White House requests funding that would [require] state cost-share."

But a Democratic aide countered that  the 100% cost share during the first 270 days does not apply to rebuilding costs, and so the Maryland state government would have to contribute.  The aide said, "We believe it is necessary to provide the certainty of the full federal funding authorization as soon as possible as Maryland begins the process to replace the bridge, and are continuing to work to answer any questions members have about Maryland's plans going forward."

Yes, even a bridge is a partisan hot potato these days - and the fact that six bridge workers killed in the accident were immigrants mad the story about what these foreign workers who come here for a better life do for all of us - and how immigration is in fact an added value to America.

Meanwhile, civil rights activists in Maryland want the new bridge that is eventually built renamed for someone else . . . because Francis Scott Key (above) owned slaves and thought that blacks were inferior.  One civil rights leader in Maryland argued that whoever the bridge, paid by the taxpayers, is named after "should be somebody that all taxpayers can respect."  I agree - Key's name should be removed from the bridge.

"But Steve," you're saying, Key wrote our national anthem!  He wrote it about the Battle of Fort McHenry!"

Yeah, and that's why I agree.   Have you listened, really listened to the lyrics of that song?  Key celebrates "rockets red glare" and "bombs bursting in air," essentially glorifying war not unlike how Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler would do the same 150 years later in his right-wing pro-murder ditty "The Ballad of the Green Berets."  And Key's disdain for blacks doesn't stop at the sentiments he expressed to his friends and family.  Bear in mind that "The Star-Spangled Banner" has four verses; the first one is generally the only one sung as sporting events.  In the third verse, Key writes of how the British had they been allowed to take Fort McHenry and occupy Baltimore, would have freed the slaves and indentured servants, and boy, was he glad that didn't happen!

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.

So much for the land of the free.

And by the way, did you ever wonder where the official national motto, "In God We Trust," came from?  It came from the fourth and final verse of Key's poem-turned-song:

And this be our motto - "In God is our trust." 

Yes, let's put our trust in God that we may continue to own brown people!

Black leaders in Maryland have proposed renaming the bridge after Rep. Parren J. Mitchell, the first black Marylander elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, who died in 2007.  Sounds like a good idea to me.

And please, please, please let's make "America the Beautiful" our national anthem!