DQ4-2

Dq 4-2 RESPONSES

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An important government project in my opinion that had a lot of stigma that came to mind was one that the local county that I reside in opted for. It was a special purpose local option sales tax. What these means is that in the state of Georgia a sales tax of 1 extra cent per dollar spent would added to the already existent 6% making the tax 7 cents a dollar instead of 6 cents a dollar(Georgia Municipal Association, 2004). The extra one cent increase per dollar was to be allocated for a purpose. The main purpose that was purposed for the usage of the SPLOTS funds was to fix thing like roads and other county and city infrastructures. To be ale to build local park and recreation centers as well.   

An incentive that was brought up during the planning process was that  the special purpose local option sales tax would or could be an option in working with local capital outlay needs without increasing property taxes (Georgia Municipal Association, 2004). I thought that this was a great idea, after all is just an extra penny per dollar. But many disagreed and did not want to give up that penny. Many thought the money would not go to good cause or that just did not want nothing to do with it all for whatever their reasons. The law did pass in the county I live in for a few years. And a few dirt roads were paved, two recreation parks built but not much more. At the city council meetings accusations would fly that not all the funds were being used but instead slid into the back pockets of officials. Needless to say in my local county the SPLOTS project did not last as long as it was suppose to due to being voted out after a few short years.

 

Georgia Municipal Association, (2004). Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax SPLOST: Building for the

Future. Retrieved from: http://www.gadoe.org/Finance-and-Business-Operations/Facilities-

Services//Splost.aspx

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Strategic planning is the process by which leaders of an organization, such as a government, determine what it intends to be in the future and how it will get there. It involves developing a vision for the organization's future and determining the necessary goals, priorities, and action strategies to achieve that vision

Government programs such as DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) are often a crucial ingredient in the growth of the private economy.

In 1939, Leó Szilárd sent a letter to his friend Albert Einstein about the possibility of a mysterious device that could level entire cities.  Einstein, in turn, passed it on to Franklin Roosevelt who, acutely aware that this otherwise unlikely idea had the sanction of the world’s most famous scientist, put the wheels of government in motion.

The result was the Manhattan Project, the most consequential government science program ever, which gave an enormous advantage to America and its allies.  After the war, the military looked for ways to keep scientists involved and in 1958 President Eisenhower authorized DARPA. Since then, DARPA has been a mainstay of technological development, funding development of the Internet, GPS and even Apple’s Siri, just to name a few.  More recently, ARPA-E has been created to support similar development in energy.

In the fall of 1942, less than a year after the United States was drawn into World War II by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers quietly began acquiring vast tracts of land in remote areas of three states. The few residents of these areas were summarily evicted and their houses demolished. Soon, thousands of young workers arrived from far and wide, initially occupying tents and other makeshift shelters within the newly designated military reservations.

Shielded from public view by natural barriers and security fences, the workers quickly erected hundreds of buildings, ranging from prefabricated houses to industrial structures of unprecedented scale. As they did so, thousands more residents arrived in a near-continuous stream. By the end of the war, a total of more than 125,000 people lived in the three cities that had been built from scratch on these sites. Yet these cities appeared on no maps, and the federal government did not acknowledge their existence. Unfathomable quantities of supplies were delivered, but very little seemed to come out, adding to the air of mystery surrounding these “Secret Cities.”

That mystery unraveled on August 6, 1945, when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, and President Harry S. Truman publicly revealed the purpose of the sites now known as Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford/Richland, Washington. In roughly two and a half years, the Manhattan Project—so named because it was managed by the Army Corps’s Manhattan Engineer District in New York—had produced a weapon of previously inconceivable destructive force. While the ethics and strategic necessity of the decision to use such a weapon in combat are still fiercely debated, there is no question that this initiative was one of the most significant milestones in the history of scientific research and development.

The Manhattan Project would not have been possible without the extraordinary achievements in architecture, engineering, and planning that yielded three entirely new cities in a remarkably short time. Built in the early years of the modern movement, these cities reflected cutting-edge ideas about town planning, mass housing, civil and mechanical engineering, and modular construction. They became important proving grounds for the large-scale suburban development that would dramatically alter the physical and cultural landscape of the nation in the post-war era.

If Manhattan Project had failed, the war in Europe would have ended just the same way. But when the war was reaching the end in Japan, instead of dropping the atomic bomb, the US and allies would have invaded the Japanese islands. This would have resulted in up to 1,000,000 US killed and wounded and possibly the virtual extermination of the Japanese people. The Japanese military didn't want to surrender and were preparing for a protracted fight against the American invasion. Considering the fanatical resistance shown on Okinawa and Saipan, there would have been even more fierce resistance on the Home Islands. It was known that even the women and children were practicing attacking Americans with spears. It would have been a bloodbath never before seen in the world. The Japanese would still have been defeated, but at a cost so horrendous that the world would never remember the war without a shudder.

Duncan, F. (2016). What would have happened if the USA had never made the atomic bomb during WW2?

https://www.quora.com/What-would-have-happened-if-the-USA-had-never-made-the-atomic-bomb-during-WW2

MRSC Rosters (2018). Strategic Planning

http://mrsc.org/Home/Explore-Topics/Governance/Community-Strategic-Planning-and-Visioning/Strategic-Planning.aspx

Satell, G. (2013). 4 Government Programs That Drive Innovation

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/07/02/4-government-programs-that-drive-innovation/#4328b5403978

“Secret Cities: The Architecture & Planning of the Manhattan Project @BuildingMuseum.” National Building Museum, www.nbm.org/exhibition/secret-cities/.

 

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According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, interstate system was born in two reports of Congress, in which they recommended the construction of a system of direct interregional highway with connections through and around cities. The interstate highway system was meant to meet the requirements of the national defense in time of war and needs of a growing peacetime traffic of longer range. The section 7 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 designated 40,000 miles National System of Interstate Highways by joint action of the State highway agencies, the approval of the administrator of the Federal Work Agency Major General Philip B. Fleming. But on August 2, 1947, Philip Fleming and the Commissioner of Public Roads Thomas H. MacDonald announced designation of only 37,681 miles of principal highway which included 2,882 miles of urban thoroughfares carrying the main line through cities. But the program didn’t have the money to pay and build the Interstate System.

After president Dwight D. Eisenhower took office on January 20, 1953, He asked the Governors to help devised a grand plan for a properly articulated system of highways on July 12, 1954. General Lucius D. Clay and his Committee proposed creation of a Federal Highway Corporation to issue $25 billion in bonds to pay 90 percent of construction costs, because they believed that the total cost for a 40,000mile interstate system proposed earlier in 1944 would cost $27 billion with $23 billion for rural segments.

On February 22, 1955, President Eisenhower submitted the Clay Committee's report to Congress along with legislative proposals. "Our unity as a nation," he said, depended on "individual and commercial movement over a vast system of interconnected highways crisscrossing the country and joining at our national borders with friendly neighbors to the north and south." But the president’s Republican allies in Congress only gave token support to the plan. This tied up the gas tax for 30 years to repay the bonds with $12 billion in interest. The highway-related interests that supported the Interstate system didn’t want to pay for it because they believed that a highway network will benefit the entire country not just people with vehicles. In result the legislation failed in 1955. Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey proposed the use of the Social Security Trust Fund as a model for the Highway Trust Fund. Revenue from taxes on highway user products would be credited to the Highway Trust Fund for use exclusively on the Interstate System and other Federal-aid highway and bridge projects.

On June 26, 1956, the Senate approved the bill 89 to 1 despite the opposition of one Senator Russell Long against increase of gas tax to 3 cents. Three days later, the President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 that expanded Highway System by 41,000 miles and authorized $25 billion to be made available in fiscal years1957 through 1969

In June 29, 1956, the Department of Commerce appointed $1,125,000,000 in FY 1957 IC funds to the States and on August 1, a second IC apportionment was made, this one for FY 1958

· On August 13, 1956, the Missouri State Highway Commission placed a sign on the project declaring it to be the first project on which "actual construction" was begun under the 1956 Act. The Missouri River bridge, the State's largest divided four-lane bridge to that date, would be completed with ceremonies on August 16, 1958.

· On August 31, 1956, the Kansas State Highway Commission awarded a contract for concrete paving of a two-lane section of U.S. 40 (future I-70) a few miles west of Topeka between Valencia and Maple Hill Roads, about 8 miles.

· Governor Fred Hall and Senator Frank Carlson (R-Ks.) joined State officials and representatives of the construction company for a ribbon cutting ceremony on November 14, 1956. A sign was posted proclaiming this project to be the first completed under 1956 Act. The two lanes would carry traffic in both directions until an additional two lanes were built on the other side of a wide median to allow separation of opposing traffic.

· On August 21, 1957, Tallamy and Secretary Weeks announced incorporation of 2,102 miles of turnpikes into the Interstate System. One of the controversial issues facing Congress in 1956 had been demands for compensation from States that had built turnpikes in designated Interstate corridors. The 1956 Act resolved the dispute by allowing BPR to incorporate turnpikes into the Interstate System rather than build parallel toll-free Interstates.

· Two months later, on October 18, 1957, Secretary Weeks announced the designation of 2,102 miles of new toll-free routes. The 1956 Act had authorized 1,000 miles of this amount, while the remainder had been freed by identification of more direct routes for the mileage designated in 1947 and 1955.

· By the end of 1958, projects had been completed that brought 4,831 miles substantially up to standards or at least to conditions adequate for current traffic

When the Eisenhower Administration ended on January 20, 1961, by then, 10,440 miles or 25 percent of the 41,000-mile Interstate System had been opened to traffic. This total included 2,264 miles of turnpikes, 3,041 miles that were adequate for present traffic but needed additional work to meet full Interstate standards, and 5,135 miles needing only minor work to meet full standards. Over $10 billion had been expended on the Interstates.

It was important for the government to go through a lengthy strategic process because it help them assess the environment, anticipate and respond to changes in the environment, to envision the future and increase effectiveness. They needed time to develop strategies that will align resources available and to put in place a long-term financial plan and implications. Because such a project involves everyone from the president to the citizens, less stringent planning could have cost economy falls, inefficient construction of highways and bridges, revolt from citizens because of increased tax, and political issues.

References:

Federal Highway Administration. (2017). The Greatest Decade 1956-1966. Retrieved from https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/50interstate.cfm

Cox, W. and Love, J. (1996). 40 Years of the US Interstate Highway System: An Analysis. Retrieved from http://www.publicpurpose.com/freeway1.htm

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