Infrastructure gamesmanship puts wealthy ahead of jobs, good bridges, and country
By Linda Beale
Infrastructure gamesmanship puts wealthy ahead of jobs, good bridges, and country
For those who are paying attention to the House and Senate these days, it seems like a frustrating exercise. Mostly it is one of watching the “do-nothing” Republicans find excuses for never requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes while making up excuses for not doing anything of the varied real approaches to stimulating the economy in ways that will create jobs for ordinary Americans.
Take the vote on the infrastructure bills. The Senate leadership asked the Senate to vote for funding $60 billion of much needed infrastructure projects (just a tip of the iceberg of everything that is needed to bring this country’s infrastructure into nonembarassment). The GOP refused, because it was funded by a de minimis tax on millionaires.
There’s no end to things that can be said about this further evidence of the craven state of the GOP in the US today. Political advantage for the wealthy class is to be given primary importance, no matter what happens to the vast majority of Americans and the country we all love. Jim Maule has it right, in The Tax and Spending Stalemate: Can It Destroy the Nation?, MauledAgain (Nov. 7, 2011).
When partisan loyalties mean more than the nation’s well-being, when money means more to wealthy “world citizens” than does the long-term physical security of the nation, and when protection of millionaires who fund campaign treasure chests means more than the lives and safety of the rest of America, the literal physical survival of the nation is imperiled. …
[A]s long as this absurd tax and spending stalemate continues, where decisions are not made on the merits of the issue but on the partisan attachments of supposedly public servants, the nation and its infrastructure, the nation and the health of its citizens, the nation and its economy, will continue to stagnate, deteriorate, and crumble. The question now is how close we are to the point of no return.
Our government is the club of one percenters and by no means are the Republicans a group of ” do-nothings”
When it comes to their own interests they go in high gear to protect their own interests, and their own interests are with Wall St. and corporations and the farming industry, the military industrial complex as well as health care. When their interests are at stake they have no shame, they can say and do the darnedest things, like corporations are people, money is free speech, if you are unemployed blame yourself, the poor and low wage working people should pay more taxes, and so much, much more. They are the modern day aristocracy.
In a way, they kill the goose that lays the golden egg, no productive middle class no growth in wealth either. In the end they all want to move to nicer places where the roads are better and they will have electricity all the time.
It is a strategy for undermining the state amplified by the natural sentiments as people of european descent who are now a minority, begin acting like every other minority.
Don’t expect it to change.
Linda,
You seem to forget it was teh Dems who fixed into place the Obama Tax Cut in 2010 (formerly know as Bush Tax Cut). Obama and the Dems had to do absolutely NOTHING to raise taxes.
Yet, they proceeded to sheperd and push through the Obama Tax Cuts and sign them into law. The Dems had the chance to raise taxs and actively made sure it wouldn’t happen.
And now you blame the Rs? Especially since the last bailout obviously didn’t work and was targeted to payoff Obama’s supporters and line the pockets of the state public employee unions.
Basically Linda you are, once again, pointing out that the Democratic President Obama has less leadership chops than the last President. Or is just plain incompetant. Or both.
But yes, its all the Rs fault. I get it, can’t critique a sitting D President – see the anti-war movement for example #1….
Islam will change
Well Buff, I guess you haven’t taken into account that it is not the President that enacts legislation. He may encourage, and then sign into law, all manner of crappy laws that were championed by he supposed antagonists in the Republican Party, but it is they who have controlled the Congress either with an actual majority or by use of filibuster. Of course there are enough Democrats In Name Only that can be relied upon to assist their Republican cohorts to pass the crap that we see signed into law. The problem is that when the Democrats try to enact any legislation that might assist the middle-working class they can count on those same Republicans to take every measure to block its passage. Like the so-called Jobs Act that is currently being batted around the Congress like a cheap balloon which is deflating quickly.
Yes! Both sides do it! Great argument.
Except, of course, that she’s talking about Congress, not the President. Since you are not commented on Congress, I assume that you are happy with the Republican House passing bill after bill of the “In God we Trust” type, most of which cannot be passed by the Senate or signed by the President, the Senate Republicans blocking nearly 100% of bills and even appointments with procedural hurdles (and not even on the bills themselves, but on whether to even debate the bills).
You don’t think that she could maybe have the tiniest bit of a point about Congressional Republicans? Not even the eensiest, itty-bittiest?
We’re making a list.
We’re checking it twice.
We’re gonna make sure
Who’s naughty and nice.
We, the people, are coming to town.
🙂
Min,
I very much doubt that. The left doesn’t protest a D President and teh right is spending its time organizing for the 2012 elections…
So who’s left?
Islam will change
Jack,
It was obvious that the first ‘stimulos bill’ did not work. All it did was increase the US debt and keep a lot of state employees on the payroll for another year. What it did not do was fix the underlieing problems. So why would they pass another, much smaller bill, that will have no effect either? And that’s before we talk about the Solyandra’s etc.
But lets state that the bill will work, the R’s believe that, and the bill will help the economiy turn the corner (albeit slowly). Considering the timing (i.e. election) the R’s would want to pass the damn thing. Or at most delay until Jan-Feb at the latest. From and R point of view the best situation would be for the economy to have solidly turned by Sept-Oct 12. They could still run against Obama’s pitiful economic performance, win the election and then reap the benefits as the economy rebounds in early 2013.
Do you ever take in the fact that some people just thinks its throwing good money down a drain?
Like that chart posted earlier this week. Private sector hiring (wealth creation) is coming up on a nice slope and government jobs (overhead) are decreasing or flattening out. Why would a R want to change those curves? Heck why would anyone?
Islam will change
The “stimulos bill” didn’t work? Does anyone say that who doesn’t work for a right wing think tank? It certainly wasn’t big enough to turn the economy around entirely (and Krugman gets a nice “I told you so” out of that one) but there’s broad consensus that it did keep us from going into a depression, which is not, in fact, very similar to “didn’t work”.