11 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

1. The Ronald Reagan/Republican philosophy of Infrastructure Investment and Privatization of Government Funtions:

   Why are modern Republicans ideologically opposed to infrastructure spending today?  For example:

   In 2012, House Republicans introduced a transportation bill (including cuts in Amtrak subsidies and increases in truck-weight limits) that Ray LaHood, secretary of transportation during Obama’s first term, called “the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen during 35 years of public service.” LaHood himself had been a seven-term Republican congressman from Illinois before he agreed to serve in Obama’s cabinet.

   The most accepted (or easily reported) explanation is that today's Republican party is dominated by Southern states, the center of heavy infrastructure (and costs) is located in the Northeast, and Republicans refuse to spend on states that don't vote Republican.  There is truth to this explanation and, frankly, it is not properly reported as part of the wider partisan scandal that it is.  For example, although federal disaster relief is uniformly passed in the wake of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, etc., the Hurricane Sandy relief bill was passed only when (as one of a few instances) the "Boehner Rule" was lifted to allow a bill to pass with largely Democratic votes. Why?  Because only 70 House Republicans could be found who were willing to vote for federal emergency hurricane relief if the affected area was the the East Coast.  Nice.

   While as egregious as that geographic partisanship is, there are also at least four other fundamental reasons that explain the new Republican refusal to invest in infrastructure – all of which are largely undiscussed in general reporting.

   1.  Starve the Beast: While Republicans continue to refuse to raise revenue necessary to fund infrastructure spending (traditional Starve the Beast), the latest application – Starve the Beast 2.0 – looks to hold hostage any and all necessary spending for cuts to other, unfavored, government spending.  In that sense, you have to understand the crucial (even threatening) need for infrastructure spending as identical to the "debt ceiling."  For Republicans, the hundreds of billions to trillions of unmet infrastructure spending represents a massive, annual golden opportunity to extort draconian cuts to social, regulatory, non-defense spending.  That is why Republicans also reject deficit-financing for infrastructure spending (at historically low interest rates) or alternative proposals like a private-public infrastructure bank.  The goal here is not to invest in the country, but to seize upon any vulnerability to "drown the government in a bathtub."

   This is plainly evident, btw.  When President Obama proposed increased infrastructure spending in 2011 Republicans opposed it with a plan that would have "paid for the spending with a $40 billion cut in unspent funding for other domestic programs . . . and would block recent clean air rules and make it harder for the administration to issue new rules."  In 2014,Eric Cantor explained that  "Congress should not be adding new money, but instead streamlining the process for getting current resources to state and local governments." …

   2.  Privatizing the nation's infrastructure: This is the big kahuna that the press generally feels uncomfortable reporting.  Republicans – at the behest of their mega-bank/private equity patrons – really, deeply want to privatize the nation's infrastructure and turn such public resources into privately owned, profit centers.  More than anything else, this privatization fetish explains Republicans' efforts to gut and discredit public infrastructure, and it runs the gamut from disastrous instances of privatizing private parking meters to plans to privatizethe federal highway system.  

   Indeed, if you listen to Republican proposals for "infrastructure reform," what you hear is: privatization and a longing for private tolls, tolls, tolls….

   3.   Private Activity Bonds:  This one is a real unreported doozy, and is directly related to both privatization efforts and the Starve the Beast scheme. Known as "Private Activity Bonds," under current law, state and local governments are allowed, effectively, to delegate the ability to issue tax-free bonds to private corporations and investors.  As a result, the private investors have the lower borrowing costs associated with government financing and the interest earned on such bonds is tax-free at both the federal and state level.  Do you get that?  Local governments are financing the efforts to privatize their own public assets and the private equity investors earn tax free profits on their investment.  Privatization is not just a golden opportunity, but a tax-payer subsidized, tax-free opportunity – – with no demonstrated public benefit…..  

   4.  Repeal Labor and Environmental Laws:  (Surprize!) Finally, Republicans refuse to fund infrastructure spending because the larger goal is to repeal or weaken labor and environmental laws associated with such large scale construction projects.  For example, while you may be rightly worried that your commuter bridge is structurally unsound, Republicans are much more concerned with first repealing laws like the Davis-Bacon Act, a 1931 New Deal law which requires payment of the local prevailing wages on all public works projects for laborers and mechanics. Repealing this employment protection law is a much larger Republican priority than repairing any specific bridge or tunnel.  

   Does E470 "work"? There have been more than a few bumps in the road for this quite minimal, yet quite special, project. Do red-light systems work? They sure do for the subcontractor. Yet any of the failures in contracting out infratstructure work that  is typically done by government entities does little to sway Republicans from continuing to push for more and more privatization. I wonder why?

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   1. Part of the Republican philosophy is "if it ain't broke, don't fix".  The whole idea is to save money by getting as much usage as possible from infrastructure.  Therefore, maintenance is deferred until the last possible moment.  Perhaps a best case scenario is an old bridge collapsing at 3 AM when no one is on the road.

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      1. I don't think even Republicans can view infrastructure that way since, when it breaks, they're as likely to get killed crossing a collapsing bridge or pancaked under a collapsing over-pass as anyone else. Its as explained above, the desir provided subsidies from the little people for the private profiteers while holding all the funding for what remains unprivatized hostage in attempts to extort cuts to the social safety net for the poor, low income and lower middle class people they hold in such contempt as losers. Also to cut finds for the science and education that challenges the world view of their bigoted, fearful, religious conservative base. They probably figure when things get bad enough, Dems will finally cave.

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         1. 

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            1. The gay sex is icky one is spot on. Googled the wither and die one and came up with 18 sources before I typed past the word "guts".

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         2. Don't know what happened with the editing! A chunk got lost that makes my comment incoherent.  The desire to privatize everything while collecting tax payer provided…. should have preceded …. subsidies from the little people. Finds for funds? Sorry. Must have gotten distracted before I finished. 

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2. There was a time when the average Republican used public roads and bridges, and put their children in public schools. Today, the average Tea Partier home schools his or her children, and rarely ventures out of the survivalist bunker let alone travel on paved roads.

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3. Call me an unreconstructed lib if you must, but Bernie and Liz, sitting in a tree, is OK for the liberal me:

   "I believe there is more discontentment with establishment politics, with the greed of corporate America, than many people perceive," Sanders said when asked about his role in the 2016 presidential race.

   Asked if he was courting those who hoped to goad Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) into the presidential race to challenge Clinton from the left, Sanders said, "I think on many of the same issues, Elizabeth Warren and I come out on the same page."

   Imagine if Udall or Bennet had the guts to state views like those………instead, Udall catered to the trash Social Security coalition (no where to be found in CO, but plenty of constituents among CNBC hosts), and Bennet has catered to the big banks and multinational trade coalitions (also no where to be found in CO, imho).

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4. Has it occurred to anyone else that Bennet isn't catering to anyone, that he's not a phony? I think, now that we're stuck with the Blue Dog sumbitch, he's showing his true colors. The things he does that infuriate real Dems are who he is. And all we get out of this Cracker Jack box is a "D", to shore up the flagging Senate numbers. A real Dem would eat him for breakfast in a primary.  

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   1. There is no "real " Dem riding in on a white horse to beat him in a primary. His votes on many issues, social issues particularly, are well within the "real" Democratic fold. While it's possible for a conservative R (as long as the public doesn't view the candidate as a wacko extremist. See Cory Gardner) to win statewide in Colorado, a Dem must be reasonably close to center to do so.

      It would be nice if we had a viable alternative to Bennet, someone to his left but still enough within the centrist range to have a chance of winning.  We don't. It's going to be him or a materially worse Republican whose votes on all energy, environmental, conservation, climate, economic, tax, health, education, voter rights, women's rights, gay rights, minority rights, workers' rights and vets' issues will all be uniformly awful where Bennet's will not.

      Also, funny thing, outside of his pipeline votes he is very much in step with Obama. By any objective standard if you consider him a Blue Dog sumbitch Cracker Jack box Dem, then Obama HRC and good ol' Bill fit into the same category.

      I'm not happy with the guy either but this over the top hatred and condemnation of a pol who is, in reality, no worse on liberal (I'm sick of cooperating with the hostage takers by insisting on "progressive" as if I agree that "liberal" is a dirty word) issues than Obama or HRC is getting increasingly irrational. Seems to me like many here are taking out all their frustration and disappointment on Bennet, perhaps because it would hurt too much to admit that at least 99% of the time he and Obama may as well be two peas in a pod and our Dem option for President in 2016 is pretty much the same.  

      In light of, ummm, any semblance of objective reality, I suggest the Bennet is the anti-Christ crowd get a f—ing grip. It's even sillier than the old objective reality defying view of former Colorado DLC Chair Romanoff as a liberal white knight in shining armor. You know, the guy who wanted to talk about some kind of federal balanced budget requirement before mentioning a thing his liberal supporters cared about in his very first ad in 2014? Let's leave the alternate reality creating and irrationality to the righties. 

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5. Some fun charts at:

    https://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/09/1320193/-Three-Charts-to-Email-to-Your-Right-Wing-Brother-In-Law-Updated?detail=emailclassic

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