It’s hard to govern effectively when you’re crazy, and that’s the most basic way of understanding why the Republican-led Congress is simply incapable of funding the federal highway system. Follow the link if you want a more granular understanding of the problem and how it might all shake out in the near term. What I’m going to do here is give you a couple of excerpts. These are comments from Republican senators, but the translation for both of them is: “I’m trying to fund the roads but my colleagues are insane.”
“There’ll be something done,” Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, told reporters this week about the May 31 deadline. “I’m not saying it’s going to be the solution that we’re all ultimately hoping will happen.”
…
“Most everybody knows I’m sincere in trying to get this done,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), one of the lawmakers charged with finding the revenue for construction projects. “We’re so sick and tired of these doggone patches all the time. But there’s no quick answer to it.”
What they’re saying is that no matter what they try to suggest, they cannot find the votes from their Republican caucus to pave a fucking road or bolster a goddamned crumbling bridge. They’re assuring us that, despite this inability to overcome the lunacy that has taken over their party, there will be some money for our highways by the end of the month.
Yet, the best they can honestly offer us is an assurance that they’ll try to bridge the gap over how long the doggone patch will be this time. Some want a long patch because they don’t want to deal with this every two months for the rest of time, while others want a short patch because they think it will force the issue and result in some kind of long-term funding. Pretty much no one thinks they should risk putting the funding into some omnibus appropriations process because no can see any agreement on an omnibus package being in our future.
And the cause of this is pretty simple. The Republicans want roads, but they refuse to pay for them. They don’t want to raise the gas tax and they don’t want to repatriate offshore profits. They don’t want to govern, basically.
And yet the people keep giving them more chances to try.
this is who they are.
don’t look at me – I don’t vote for them.
Britain has just given them a big wet kiss for the kicks in the teeth they have received from theirs…
Did Labour expect all those people without jobs or with crappy, poorly paid and zero future jobs to keep showing up and also voting for Labour? One portion of that demo, correctly, recognizes the futility of voting and another portion blames immigrants for their plight and voted UKIP. OTOH, Scotland couldn’t look more different from Britain.
Well, given that Labour was fully on board with the Austerity Programme they had no real argument to make. Like Truman said, if people have to choose between Republicans and Republicans, they’ll choose Republicans every time.
I recently read a study where the fossil fuel industry has spent $1 billion annually promoting climate change denial – and this has been an incredibly profitable investment for them. It’s pretty clear that the ultra-rich are putting far more money into politics than we can imagine, and in doing so have managed to take ownership of both major parties in many western “democracies”. This isn’t new – Bill Clinton and his gang were sell-outs, and didn’t seem phased at all when they lost Congress for the first time in forever. Ditto the current guy in power.
Iceland was the only country to get it right – Greece may be on the right course now. It’s the rich who should pay the price for their horrible governance.
Also, anyone else note that in the last 15-20 years whenever the polls have been significantly wrong the shift is almost always in the favor of the conservative party? As in, 49-times-out-of-50.
Too ashamed to admit that they’re voting for the 1%, god, or against people of color?
A cautionary tale for the US Democratic Party!
If they couldn’t get it from the multiple election results over the past thirty odd years, no reason to expect that Democrats will consider that the 2015 UK election results are a “cautionary tale” for themselves.
Sadly, UK Labour and US Democrats have destroyed their brands and economies in exactly the same ways. Now they don’t win except when the Tories and Republicans go too far and voters give Labour and Democrats another chance. They don’t deliver when those opportunities arise and they lose again.
Or keep the public schools open in Kansas.
That’s by design. They only want Christian home schools – to keep people ignorant.
Best outcome of all — “Christian” home “schools” cost the state the least amount of money. If successful, they’ll end up with a population willing to accept “faith healers” in lieu of high priced modern medicine.
The people of Michigan decided to forgo a sales tax to help out as well. I’m just not sure I should care about this. The roads in Michigan, I suppose, are good enough.
Michigan voters in a special election on Tuesday overwhelmingly voted down Proposal 1, an amendment to the state’s constitution that would have increased the state sales tax to fund transportation infrastructure.
Of nearly 1.8 million Michigan residents who voted, 1.4 million — 80 percent — voted against the amendment, according to the Office of the Michigan Secretary of State.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/06/tax-increase-rick-snyder_n_7226016.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
The other interesting number from this vote is the low turnout. There are over 7 million registered voters in Michigan. Voter turner has been declining in general all over the country. It’s as if we’ve given up on democracy.
Breaking our government and our elections are part of the GOP plan and about the only thing they seem to be able to accomplish. Sickening.
I don’t understand why they would want to have this go in to the voters in a special election… in May. It practically guaranteed defeat by the motivated tea party types.
Well, I oppose general sales tax to fund road also. An annual tax based on vehicle weight would put the cost more proportional to damage inflicted. A gas tax is a pretty good proxy for that also.
The money is there, it’s called the Social Security Trust fund.
That’s the end game. And it’s not just republicans that are playing it.
This is what a good portion of america wants. I don’t know why anyone bothers to fight them.
I totally blame the Republlicans for making TAXES a dirty word. People are so stupid that they don’t even know what our taxes pay for. Bridges, roads, all the nation’s infrastructure could crash and burn, and all they would squeal about is the poor people sucking up “their” money.
I wish we could shake them up and make them see, but it’s never gonna happen.
I blame the opposition for not standing for enough of anything to fight back against the rightwing nonsense. Probably by design since Wall St. has captured both parties.
FDR and his team shouldn’t have bothered — Americans deserved the Great Depression and would have adjusted accordingly to it had it never ended.
They would’ve adjusted like they did in Germany and Spain, of course.
When are liberals going to accept that maybe, just maybe, Traditional America post-Nixon just plain did not like our policies? That they weren’t confused or duped or disappointed, they saw what the Democratic Party stood for and flat-out did not like it.
It’s almost insulting to the intelligence of the American people (even more than what yours truly does) how a lot of liberals think that the problem is that post-Carter Democrats et. al didn’t do enough leftsplaining or that they missed up on minutae like allowing a warhawk in the administration and that the keys to a liberaltopia was someone in avoiding these for-want-of-a-nail gaffes.
Bollocks. What you call “Traditional America” is white folks. And the vast majority of those white folks liked their rising incomes, 40 hour work weeks, good schools for their kids, social security, medicare, their VA and HUD mortgages, secured bank deposits, etc. All goodies that they got because of Democratic policies. They also liked birth control because fewer mouths to feed and bodies to clothe meant a higher standard of living for them.
What they didn’t like was having to share the existing and expected to continue to grow bounty. Not with people of color — and white men also resented having to compete with white women for jobs that had been predominately or exclusively the domain of white men. That’s what Republicans exploited while slowly working on, and mostly hidden from voters, their primary agenda. Democratic politicians became so lame that they colluded with Republicans on the hidden agenda.
Ordinary Americans became such good consumers of stuff that they didn’t recognize what they lost in their bargain with the devil. Twenty year mortgages turned into thirty years and thirty into forty. Etc.
I don’t get the sense that you experienced the changes in real time and have formed your opinions from a cursory and misread (or poorly written) study of the post WWII history.
You two are essentially talking past each other in my mind, because I agree with both of what you say.
With regard to England, however, while Ed Miliband is worse than useless, only second in line to Nick Clegg, I honestly think that southern England likes things the way they are, and a far left party with better leadership would not have been successful. UKIP is getting what? 12-13%? No far left party could dream of those numbers in the south. Scotland has just given up trying to exert influence on southern England, which explains their votes (and good on them, I say). In other words, they agree with what Thatcher wrought, and would like some more helpings of it.
You agree that “Traditional Americans” didn’t like that long list of “goodies” Democrats had delivered to them? That they voted for Republicans because they wanted all that to be taken away from them? Although wouldn’t dispute that they’re so stupid that they think that Republicans will let them keep their “goodies” and only take them away from people of color and anyone else they don’t like.
WRT to the UK election, the arguments will probably go on for years because the polling in each individual seat is far more complicated than the top line results disclose. For example — South Swindon:
What did that 17.6% Liberal Democrat vote mean? Was it like the 18.9% that Perot got in 1992? With the conclusion that Perot had picked DEM and GOP pockets equally? One obvious difference is that the Lib/Dems is “home” to a portion of the UK electorate and does serve as a “way station” for disaffected CON and LAB voters. Another difference is that LibCons do manage to win seats in some election cycles. But in any one election, it’s difficult to sort out the composition of the disaffected voters.
The “Perot factor” is easy to read from the two subsequent elections. When more than half defected in 1996, most went to Clinton. When it collapsed in 2000, the GOP regained the remainder.
Check out the 2015 South Swindon results:
LD’s loss, UKIP’s gain? Don’t know. Easier to postulate that CON’s gain was at the expense of LD. However, it’s not implausible that LAB captured more of the LD vote than CON did. But also bled more to UKIP. Nobody knows what the results would look like if there were only two parties (or two major parties and several third parties that combined get around 2% of the total vote).
Truro and Falmouth is interesting because Labour had nothing to bleed away to UKIP.
2010
2015
The combined gain for Labour and Greens was 12.4% and combined CON and UKIP was 10%.
So how does this change what I’ve said? The pre-American Civil Rights Democratic Party said that you could have sublimated white supremacy and economic prosperity. That won them a lot of votes from Traditional America. The New Left said that you couldn’t have both, but you COULD have the economic prosperity. The post-Goldwater conservatives said that you couldn’t both both either, but you COULD have the sublimated white supremacy. In the end, Traditional America went with the conservatives.
That should be ample evidence that when the chips are down, what these people want are cultural domination. It doesn’t matter how plainly and sincerely the post-New Left Democratic Party would’ve agitated for economic justice, it wouldn’t have worked unless they stabbed the Rainbow Coalition in the back. Which is why I call the regret and resentment towards Carter and Dukakis et. al for not giving it their all towards economic leftism bathetically mistaken. As long as there was a political party offering cultural supremacy and they weren’t, Democrats were fucked on first principles.
Considering how in denial and how parochial your typical American is about most of its history, I take any historical analysis from people who had a stake in that timeframe with a huge grain of salt. If they deflect an empirical or sociological analysis with a ‘you just had to have been there’ one, I hold them in open contempt.
Your tidy little boxes didn’t exist like that in real time.
The GOP did exploit what became known as the “southern strategy” that emerged in 1964 directly from two factors: racism and war. The first from the early gains of the civil rights movement and the second because Goldwater was willing to nuke N. Vietnam. Those factors hardened by 1968 (’65 -’67 was a busy time for social democratic legislation and far more white folks benefited from Medicare/Medicaid and the war on poverty than black folks). Nixon barely won that year. And those industrial workers outside the south that voted for Wallace hadn’t a clue that they were choosing their racism over their income. Didn’t know it four years later when they went with Nixon. The Vietnam War ripped apart the Democratic Party as much if not more than racism did.
Here’s the thing, in the experience of most voters at that time, war=economic prosperity. WWII – jobs and money. End of war – fewer jobs and less money. Korean war – more jobs and money. End of Korean war – less jobs and money. Vietnam War – again more jobs and money. Some of the latter was a function of the minimum wage peaking in 1968.
The GOP never promised that they would retain a minimum wage at that level. From 1/69-4/74 (the Nixon years before he was totally on the ropes) there wasn’t a single increase. Under the eight Reagan years there was none. In constant dollars, over the past sixty years the federal minimum wage was at its lowest in 2006, second lowest in 2005, and third lowest in 1989.
They would’ve adjusted like they did in Germany and Spain, of course. Certainly a much better outcome for America and humanity and a small price to pay for putting them in their place.
When are liberals going to accept that maybe, just maybe, Traditional America post-Nixon just plain did not like our policies? That they weren’t confused or duped or disappointed, they saw what the Democratic Party stood for and flat-out did not like it.
It’s almost insulting to the intelligence of the American people (even more than what yours truly does) how a lot of liberals think that the problem is that post-Carter Democrats et. al didn’t do enough leftsplaining or that they missed up on minutae like allowing a warhawk in the administration and that the keys to a liberaltopia was someone in avoiding these for-want-of-a-nail gaffes.
The more you study people and politics the more you realize that genetically there is a segment of the population that is fundamentally paranoid. This generates free-floating fear and, subsequently, hatred of anything different. For these paranoids there is a desperate need to be part of a group – a comfort derived from feeling that they belong and that their tribe is better than all the others.
These people call themselves conservatives.
Under normal conditions they can be contained. If they live in homogeneous conditions where the enemy is seen to be safely off in a great distance you may not even detect their paranoia. But their paranoia can be exploited by those who have the money, power, and motivation to convince them that they are under constant threat. Over time, the paranoid will cease to be able to properly function, as they will no longer be able to distinguish reality from the paranoias they are fed by their leaders.
Welcome to the US, 2015. Also pretty much most other English-speaking countries – the UK, Australia, and possibly even Canada.
Interesting. If I was going to describe the conservative zeitgeist in one phrase it’d be ‘arbitrary hierarchical domination’ instead of ‘paranoia’. Maybe the paranoia results from realizing how unjust and fragile their vile and perverse desire for domination truly is? You know, like antebellum slave owners and their constant pants-wettings over slave rebellions.
Oh my, now the calendar is full…infrastructure? A Clinton testimony? Reworking the Patriot Act after the ACLU win today in the courts? It’s just too much, too much I tell ya!
BuzzFeedUKPol
Upheaval in Britain’s politics … Lib Dem with Nick Clegg have been devastated, wiped out after 5 years as coalition partner to David Cameron’s Conservatives. Cameron is on track to form the next government, but may fall short of a majority. His next term may well be the last for Britain as we know it today. In Scotland, Labor has been removed by an great surge of the Scottish Nationalist Party who nearly made a clean sweep op all 59 seats. Cameron used the fear of a Labor and SNP coalition that will cause the break-up of London’s power center. Cameron also moves away from the European Union, promising a referendum which very likely will cause the UK to break with Europe. Fear for immigrants and workers coming to England from the EU is a great motivator. The UKIP didn’t make the gains that were expected, certainly not translated into new seats in parliament. All big whigs of the Liberal Democrats lost their seats in Westminster and a final tally as low as 10 seats has been predicted. The polls were completely off, the exit poll came as a great schock, but appears to be quite accurate as the evening and night progressed. A day in UK politics that will resound for years to come … a tsunami no one saw coming.
○ British election results – LIVE!
After Netanyahu used fear to make a last-minute push for voters, Democrats are warned that the party of fear in the USA may be a lot tougher to beat … even for Hillary Clinton.
The difference in the US is that Republicans can get veto proof majorities in the House and Senate and Clinton could still win the WH. That’s the only prize she and Bill have spent the past fifteen years working to get, and Democrats have deluded themselves into believing that’s good enough because they have fond memories, based on completely false information, of the 1990s.
BuzzFeedUK: A Complete Guide to Every Scottish Labour MP. Almost as good as carlyfiorian.org
Latest prediction Cameron will win an outright majority of 328 seats. The 50 seats SNP won in Scotland: 40 taken from Labor and 10 from Lib Dems.
Farange of UKIP may lose his seat in his own constituency … that would be a dream outcome.
…
The difficult night began with an exit poll predicting the party’s tally of seats would represent Labour’s worst result since 1987. It was compounded by a dismal morning which saw shadow chancellor Ed Balls lose his Morley and Outwood seat by 422 votes.
Mr Balls said that his personal sadness was nothing compared to his “sense of sorrow I have at the result Labour has achieved across the UK”.
He said the country now faced five years of doubt over the union and over Britain’s continued membership of the European Union.
…
Labour’s John Mann tweeted: “Can’t say that Labour leadership weren’t warned repeatedly – those who even bothered to meet that is. Never hurts to listen.”
Labour also lost what was its safest seat in Scotland, with Nicola Sturgeon’s party seizing the Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency which had been held by former prime minister Gordon Brown.
The Federal Highway System originated in the Defense Department. It was designed to get troops and tanks, etc., cross country quickly in case of war. I guess every one of a certain age just never knew that.
Most economists agree the central driver in the economic woes of Greece is that they simply are very poor at collecting taxes. Those who can pay and many who do not know they in all likelihood won’t be held to the taxes they owe.
Ironically in the US the right fearmongers that the US scream about the US becoming the next Greece when they are simply unwilling to tax those who can afford to pay more and oppose any and all taxes. The net result is the same, except the US consumer market is still believed by most as the best place to invest. At some point it will no longer be held as true and then we are really screwed.
FWIW I recently met several 20 something low educated/low information guys recently who considers themselves as an Independent with Libertarian leanings. They all consider the best presidents to be Reagan and Clinton. YMMV
It’s sad and depressing to consider the number of reasonably intelligent people I encounter — such as yesterday w/a 50 yo Brit immigrant here who switched from Tory to Democrat once she was here a few years — who despise the Republicans of today but who maintain a warm exception for Reagan.
The Right has been beating us for years in the PR battle on taxes and the legacy of Reagan. On taxes, we’ve long been in defensive posture, though Eliz Warren and Bernie Sanders might lead a revival of the notion of a progressive tax system and paying more if making more, which moderate Repubs like George Romney used to believe in. On Reagan, as usual the Dems and libs have been much too polite and willing to give the GOP their hero with little resistance.
Reagan and Clinton are admired because of the economic rebounds that occurred on their watch. IMHO, Presidential policies did little for those gains and might (maybe even probably) been counterproductive.
IMHO, the “boom” of the ’80s was due to the collapse of OPEC and the “genuine” boom of the ’90s was due to the microprocessor/internet boom.
Agree with your observations. Except there wasn’t an economic rebound in the 1980s. And while there was one in the 1990s, it had a lot to do with increased consumer debt load and that gas guzzling SUVs were made fashionable. So, it wasn’t really sustainable.
I think statistics point to increases in GDP and such in the ’80s along with greatly diminished inflation. Most (I’ll even concede “all”) of those gains went to the 1%. Ordinary people thought they were good times compared to the ’70s because gasoline prices were down (OPEC collapse), and inflation was down (OPEC collapse).
The stock market boomed (lowered inflation and gasoline prices). The DJI went from 789.75 at the end of March 1980 to a peak of 2756.2 at the end of December 1989.
Yes, the electoral power of cheap gasoline. Meanwhile the rubes didn’t notice the flatlining of their income and the housing and medical care cost inflation. And those years were so rough for farmers that charity concerts for farmers were created.
I started that decade working for International harvester. I’m well aware of the farm situation.
The ’80s were not a good decade for me. My real income peaked in 1973.
Unless a woman was in the later stages of her career, doubt that any had peak earnings in 1973.
In the 1980s mine did peak in 1983, but I chose to leave and later it took a while to get back to where I’d been. My peak earnings were in 2003 and in real dollars was 50% more than where I’d once been. (Bennies were equivalent at both those times.)
(O/T) Can’t understand the stupid move by Obama not to attend Russia’s important Victory Day (VE Day) celebration about to begin in a few hours. Or at least to go the next day, as Merkel will, to note the importance of the event.
Apparently Obama offered to send Biden, but the Russians rejected it. They are clearly not pleased with the second-rate offer. Ditto the UK and France I believe, who also will not be sending their heads of state. We will only send our ambassador it turns out.
None of the other important stuff matters if we continue to poke a stick in the eye of the proud Russians and Putin. We will be headed to actual war, as Salon writer Patrick L. Smith has been warning about lately. It’s rather clear the Russians have been quietly beefing up their military strength in recent years. and have become more aggressive in patrolling the waters of western states such as in Scandinavia.
Obama is supposed to be smart, or so I’m told. WTF is he thinking with this snub and his aggressive posture towards Ukraine.
Perhaps it’s because of Putin’s naked aggression against the Ukraine. If you haven’t noticed there has been an escalating war of trade reprisals and currency restrictions.
So in your view Obama thought the way to respond to “naked aggression” was to offer to send the VP and end up sending our ambassador? Makes no sense. Wouldn’t a boycott have been a more appropriate response a la Jimmy Carter?
And what about out naked aggression in the Feb 2014 coup? This after all is their backyard, their sphere of influence, or zone of security, not ours, even though we absurdly consider nearly every nook and cranny on the globe to be in our national sec interests.
Sphere of Influence? You mean part of their Empire? Eastern Europe was freed at the breakup of the Soviet Union. Czar Putin is trying to put it back together.
I’m not aware of any coup by the USA. Certainly Obama has not acknowledged that we performed a coup. Do you trust Putin more than Obama?
Yes historical ties between Ukraine and Russia, many people in the eastern half coming from Russian stock and/or speak Russian.
And do you think a U.S. president is going to acknowledge something like a U.S. sponsored coup? Intentionally I mean.
Finally, yes, on the Ukraine situation I do think we’ve gotten more truth from Vladimir than Barack. Our MSM has been spectacularly one-sided in its coverage as well. Pure propaganda on our side, more truth than propaganda on theirs on this issue. See Stephen Cohen, Rbt Parry, Patruck Smith, etc.