GOVERNMENT FAILURE.

The weather around here has been more like Silicon Valley this time of year, or perhaps mid-summer on the South Island of New Zealand.  The snow-fences are being placed along the county roads, all the same.  The snow is falling in Russia (fitting, with all the Prokofiev-like music in this year's crop of Christmas commercial messages.)  The road between Moscow and St. Petersburg would never be mistaken for Interstate 94 between Chicago and the Twin Cities.

The M-10 highway links Moscow with Russia's second largest city St Petersburg, some 700 km northwest of the capital, and stretches on to the border with Finland.

Russia's roads have been the butt of criticism since Tsarist times and its infrastructure has been plagued with problems since the Soviet era, when defense spending was high at the expense of roads, housing, healthcare and other civilian needs.

You mean that U.S. military spending in the Cold War was effective? And when drivers get caught in the snow, there's no equivalent of Triple A or the Amoco Motor Club?  And Road Rangers and McDonald's ancillary to a service station are bourgeois decadence?

Count your blessings, U. S. readers.