Page 1 of 1
Some Things Should Not Be Controversial
Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 1:32 am
by Andrew D
Here are some things on which all rational people ought to agree:
Bridges ought not to fall down.
Freeway overpasses ought not to fall down.
Schools ought not to fall down.
Hospitals ought not to fall down.
But the leaders of the Republican party do not want to spend the money necessary to prevent the bridges, freeways, schools, and hospitals from falling down.
Why?
Because better bridges, freeways, schools, and hospitals would make Obama look good.
And that is anathema.
Anything which might make Obama look good is to be avoided at all costs.
All costs.
Including the deaths of innocents.
They will be perfectly happy to found their careers on the soil of the graves of the innocent.
Go ahead. Vote for that.
Re: Some Things Should Not Be Controversial
Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 6:49 am
by MajGenl.Meade
Is any of this true?
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government ... econd-time
Apparently Obama and his administration operate under that old, underhanded adage that if you tell a lie long enough and loud enough it becomes "truth" because Obama has done it again by lying about how his jobs bill was to have been instrumental in the repairs of bridges that span the Ohio River.
Back in September, President Obama had another one of his campaign rallies disguised as a press conference in downtown Cincinnati in front of the Brent Spence Bridge, a span that connects Ohio and Kentucky. At that time he claimed that his jobs bill and stimulus money was to pay for much needed repairs on the bridge. Afterward, newspaper fact-checkers in Cincy as well as Washington DC noted that Obama's claims were simply untrue, no stimulus money was going to any of the bridges over the Ohio river, much less the Brent Spence.
The scolding of the media doesn't seem to have deterred Obama, however, for this week he's done it again, misleading about how his stimulus money and jobs bill cash was to go to repair bridges across the river.
Back in September, the Washington Post's Fact Checker blog gave Obama its Three Pinocchios rating for his false claims. Today WaPo has upped the ante giving Obama's claims four Pinocchios for his newest assertions, this time campaign rhetoric that Republicans are making the bridges unsafe by blocking his big spending plans.
On April 30 in remarks made at a D.C. conference of the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department, Obama made the direct claim that Republicans "said no" to his jobs bill and this, he said, was making the bridges across the Ohio unsafe. At the conference he said:
I sent them a jobs bill that would have put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back to work repairing our roads, our bridges, schools, transit systems, along with saving the jobs of cops and teachers and firefighters, creating a new tax cut for businesses. They said no. I went to the Speaker’s hometown, stood under a bridge that was crumbling. Everybody acknowledges it needs to be rebuilt. Maybe he doesn’t drive anymore. Maybe he doesn’t notice how messed up it was. They still said no. There are bridges between Kentucky and Ohio where some of the key Republican leadership come from, where folks are having to do detours an extra hour, hour-and-a-half drive every day on their commute because these bridges don’t work. They still said no.”
But is any of this true? WaPo says no. The Post fact-checker said he understood the need for symbolism but that need "does not give a president license to stretch the facts."
Obama’s lies this time were even more egregious than those of last September. Last time Obama simply made vague claims that he was going to fix the Brent Spence Bridge -- claims that were not true as his federal money outlays were not going to that bridge in the first place.
But this time he's gone full-on liar-liar with his campaign rhetoric that the Republicans have actually blocked funding that was to go to bridge repairs.
In his remarks to the union thugs, Obama alluded to a bridge that "won't work" implying that it has been shut down. The only bridge across the Ohio that fits this description is the Sherman Milton Bridge that connects Indiana and Kentucky near Louisville. A crack was discovered in that bridge last year but, as it happens, it was discovered that this crack had been there since 1962. Further, the bridge was quickly repaired and none of Obama's jobs bill money or stimulus cash was used.
As WaPo notes, "While Obama claimed 'these bridges don't work,' the Sherman Milton Bridge has already been repaired, ahead of schedule, and motorists are driving over it again."
Finally, Obama's claim that it was only Republicans that blocked his jobs bill is also simply untrue. The bill he was touting at the time had bipartisan opposition and couldn't even get past his Democrat controlled Senate.
WaPo concludes:
Calling out the Republicans at the Brent Spence bridge was bad enough, given the bipartisan support for its reconstruction. But pointing to the Sherman Milton Bridge, which already has been repaired without funding from the president’s jobs bill, is ridiculous.
Perhaps the president was using outdated talking points, but that’s little excuse. Given that the president earned Three Pinocchios before, we have little choice but to up the ante this time.
Once again we see a president that makes outright false claims over and over again imagining that if he just says the lies enough people won't notice that he's lying any more. Still, Obama does know one thing. He knows that most news outlets will uncritically report his words as "news" without noting where he is lying and voters will hear his fantasy "facts" and imagine that he is telling them the truth.
In that case, he's right. All he has to do is tell any lie he wants and most of the time his words will be taken as fact whether they are or not. Bloomberg, for one, never noted that Obama lied in its report. Neither did ABC News. And neither did the National Journal which happily noted Obama's attacks on Republicans but didn't note his lies. In fact, only the WaPo Fact-Checker noted his outright lies at the union event. Many other followed suit reporting Obama’s words as if his claims were legitimate political points.
As Obama’s preceding ideological father once said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
Re: Some Things Should Not Be Controversial
Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 8:01 am
by Andrew D
breitbart
BWAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Re: Some Things Should Not Be Controversial
Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 10:06 am
by Lord Jim
Back in September, President Obama had another one of his campaign rallies disguised as a press conference in downtown Cincinnati in front of the Brent Spence Bridge, a span that connects Ohio and Kentucky. At that time he claimed that his jobs bill and stimulus money was to pay for much needed repairs on the bridge. Afterward, newspaper fact-checkers in Cincy as well as Washington DC noted that Obama's claims were simply untrue, no stimulus money was going to any of the bridges over the Ohio river, much less the Brent Spence.
The scolding of the media doesn't seem to have deterred Obama, however, for this week he's done it again, misleading about how his stimulus money and jobs bill cash was to go to repair bridges across the river.
Back in September, the Washington Post's Fact Checker blog gave Obama its Three Pinocchios rating for his false claims. Today WaPo has upped the ante giving Obama's claims four Pinocchios for his newest assertions, this time campaign rhetoric that Republicans are making the bridges unsafe by blocking his big spending plans.
Live links to original source material in the article Meade linked to back up and substantiate every one of those claims. So unless
The Washington Post is making stuff up to try to discredit Obama, those accusations are accurate.
Re: Some Things Should Not Be Controversial
Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 12:33 pm
by rubato
Breitbart was a shameless liar who was caught multiple times editing videos to give an impression which was 180 degrees opposite from the truth. When he was caught he said it was ok for him to lie. Not a source worth repeating.
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/17/g ... s_missouri
http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/03/ ... tbart.html
"...
I spell out all of these details because they illustrate two points.
One, Breitbart and his cronies have proven with this stunt—actually, re-proven—that they are deliberate and systematic liars. There is nothing secret about the Harvard protest, Obama’s speech or the WGBH footage. There never has been. All of the utterly banal details of Obama’s utterly banal remarks have been readily available for two decades and were re-visited amid the first election. But like any professional liar, Breitbart knew none of those facts mattered. All that was important was that he scream bloody murder loud enough that someone pay attention to him. That someone, of course, is Fox News, which exists primarily to amplify deliberate lies promoted online by rightwing operatives.
..."
http://gawker.com/5810425/the-three-lie ... -breitbart
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... anard.html
Breitbart even lies about his own lies:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201104200041
Breitbart is more likely to lie than Ahmedinejad . His organsation is not a "source" for anything.
yrs,
rubato
Re: Some Things Should Not Be Controversial
Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 12:36 pm
by Lord Jim
Breitbart was a shameless liar who was caught multiple times editing videos to give an impression which was 180 degrees opposite from the truth. When he was caught he said it was ok for him to lie. Not a source worth repeating.
yrs,
rubato
Live links to original source material in the article Meade linked to back up and substantiate every one of those claims. So unless
The Washington Post is making stuff up to try to discredit Obama, those accusations are accurate.
Re: Some Things Should Not Be Controversial
Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:25 pm
by dgs49
(1) It is difficult to get people excited about structurally-deficient bridges. My home town has hundreds of bridges and I've been reading for as long as I could read that they are all falling apart. One of them (going over the "Parkway") has been raining chunks of concrete on a major thoroughfare for decades, to the point where they built a permanent structure to catch them. And yet this bridge is still standing (with minor dress-up repairs from time to time), and no other bridges have ever fallen down. Boy crying "Wolf!"? You decide.
(2) People do get excited about bad roads. Pot-holes damage cars and make driving rather un-fun. State and local governments somehow find the money to fix bad roads when the complaining reaches the appropriate level of hysteria.
(3) Funding of school buildings is a state and local issue. Period. The Federal Government should have nothing to do with it. If a municipality is short on cash (e.g., Detroit), that is the STATE'S PROBLEM, not mine, as a federal taxpayer.
(4) Federal roads are SUPPOSED TO BE FINANCED AND MAINTAINED with federal fuel taxes. While I haven't checked the figures lately, I suspect that there is a virtual river of money flowing into Washington DC from these taxes to keep our interstate highways in fine shape. Doesn't this include keeping bridges and tunnels in safe condition? If not, it should.
(5) Few people are stupid enough to credit the President when a local bridge or tunnel or road is being built or repaired. There are some temporary construction jobs created,but this affects a miniscule portion of the population and economy. And anyone stupid enough to credit the President for this is already voting Democrat, so really,I fail to see the political point. I really doubt that construction funding is being blocked so that the President will not receive a popularity windfall.
The President's "jobs program" has basically two prongs: (a) Hire an army of new government employees ("...the private sector is doing fine..."), which is stupid on its face, and (b) fund a ton of government construction projects. This is the one to which you are apparently referring.
Each project should be reviewed on its own merits and funded if necessary (not giving overwhelming credence to those parties who will profit or benefit from a decision to fund a particular project). But it might be helpful to repeal Davis Bacon first.
Not that that will happen in my lifetime.
Where's the controversy?
Re: Some Things Should Not Be Controversial
Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 6:59 am
by Andrew D
What if any portion of the stimulus package and/or jobs bill money went to repair this or that or the other is totally irrelevant. It is a distraction. Its sole purpose is to divert our attention from the things which matter.
The things which matter are: (1) the US's infrastructure is falling apart, (2) the Democrats in Congress want to fix it, and (3) the Republicans in Congress do not want to fix it.
Re: Some Things Should Not Be Controversial
Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 5:57 pm
by rubato
dgs49 wrote:"...
(4) Federal roads are SUPPOSED TO BE FINANCED AND MAINTAINED with federal fuel taxes. While I haven't checked the figures lately, I suspect that there is a virtual river of money flowing into Washington DC from these taxes to keep our interstate highways in fine shape. Doesn't this include keeping bridges and tunnels in safe condition? If not, it should.
... "
Fuel taxes have gone down while use of the roads has gone up from 1975 to the present.
IN 1975 the federal fuel tax was 4 cents/gal
Now it is 18.4 cents
1.
Inflation had reduced the value of the tax.
http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi
4 cents in 1975 is 16.75 cents today eating up most of the increase.
2.
Cars are more fuel efficient so that we are driving more miles/gal and hence miles / $1 of fuel taxes.
http://www.pewenvironment.org/uploadedF ... tsheet.pdf
1975 average 2010 average
16 mpg ........... 26 mpg or 2 times as many miles driven per gallon.
Fuel taxes need to be increased so that we are collecting the same amount / mile driven, inflation adjusted, that we did in 1980 in order to claim that taxes are the same or that we 'ought to be able to' maintain roads with the current taxes. This is assuming that the level of taxation was optimal then; an assumption which we can address.
So that the current level of taxes to have the same revenue / mile driven as 1975 would be (1975 rate) x (inflation) x (fuel efficiency increase)
or
4 x 4.0075 x 2 = 32.06 cents per gallon or an increase of 1.75 times the current rate.
This is assuming that the level of taxation was optimal then; an assumption which we can address.
Our infrastructure is falling apart because Republican idiots think you can always pay less and get more. Grover Norquist's tax pledge is a mark of extreme stupidity.
The Democrats deserve a better party of opposition.
yrs,
rubato
Re: Some Things Should Not Be Controversial
Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 6:01 pm
by rubato
There are two other factors as well, weather deteriorates roads and bridges independant of use so that periods when spiking fuel prices or a recession cut the miles driven the roads still aged due to weather, and as infrastructure ages (and maintenance is cut by anti-tax jackasses) the repairs / replacement gets more expensive. Older roads need more extensive work to maintain than they did when they were newer.
yrs,
rubato