Thousands of US Bridges Could Be On Verge of Collapse

 

We hear over and over again from Republicans that they seek to starve and shrink government and relentlessly lower taxes.   The result, of course, is that many critical needs and services go without proper funding.  In addition to throwing the poor and needy to the curb, this policy of spending less is taking a severe tool on the nation's infrastructure some of which could be a minor collision away from collapse.  American bridges are among the ticking time bombs that this failed GOP policy has set in motion.  George W. Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney and their GOP accomplices in Congress cause the USA to squander billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Meanwhile our infrastructure at home is crumbling.  Talk about misplaced priorities.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at some of the dangers that could have deadly consequences with little or no notice.  Here are excerpts:

Thousands of bridges around the U.S. may be one freak accident or mistake away from collapse, even if the spans are deemed structurally sound.

The crossings are kept standing by engineering design, not supported with brute strength or redundant protections like their more modern counterparts. Bridge regulators call the more risky spans "fracture critical," meaning that if a single, vital component of the bridge is compromised, it can crumple.

Those vulnerable crossing carry millions of drivers every day. In Boston, a six-lane highway 1A near Logan airport includes a "fracture critical" bridge over Bennington Street. In northern Chicago, an I-90 pass that goes over Ashland Avenue is in the same category. An I-880 bridge over 5th Avenue in Oakland, Calif., is also on the list.

Also in that category is the Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River north of Seattle, which collapsed into the water days ago after officials say an oversized truck load clipped the steel truss.

Public officials have focused in recent years on the desperate need for money to repair thousands of bridges deemed structurally deficient, which typically means a major portion of the bridge is in poor condition or worse. But the bridge that collapsed Thursday is not in that deficient category, highlighting another major problem with the nation's infrastructure. . . .

The most famous failure of a fracture critical bridge was the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis during rush hour on Aug. 1, 2007, killing 13 people and injuring more than 100 others. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the cause of the collapse was an error by the bridge's designers - a gusset plate, a key component of the bridge, was too thin. The plate was only half of the required one-inch thickness.

Because the bridge's key structures lacked redundancy, where if one piece fails, there is another piece to prevent the bridge from falling, when the gusset plate broke, much of the bridge collapsed.

Fracture critical bridges, like the I-5 span in Washington, are the result of Congress trying to cut corners to save money rather than a lack of engineering know-how, said Barry B. LePatner, a New York real estate attorney and author of "Too Big to Fall: America's Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward."

About 18,000 fracture critical bridges were built from the mid-1950s through the late 1970s in an effort to complete the nation's interstate highway system, which was launched under President Dwight Eisenhower, LePatner said in an interview. The fracture critical bridge designs were cheaper than bridges designed with redundancy, he said.

Thousands of those bridges remain in use, according to an AP analysis.   "They have been left hanging with little maintenance for four decades now," he said. "There is little political will and less political leadership to commit the tens of billions of dollars needed" to fix them.

There are 66,749 structurally deficient bridges and 84,748 functionally obsolete bridges in the U.S., including Puerto Rico, according to the Federal Highway Administration. That's about a quarter of the 607,000 total bridges nationally. States and cities have been whittling down that backlog, but slowly. In 2002, about 30 percent of bridges fell into one of those two categories.

There is wide recognition at all levels of government that the failure to address aging infrastructure will likely undermine safety and hinder economic growth. But there is no consensus on how to pay for improvements. The federal Highway Trust Fund, which provides construction aid to states, is forecast to go broke next year. The fund gets its revenue primarily from federal gas and diesel taxes. But revenues aren't keeping up because people are driving less and there are more fuel-efficient cars on the road.

The GOP's "starve government"policy - triggered by Tea Party and the 1% greed -  is creating life threatening dangers yet morons in the GOP base just keep eating up the anti-tax demagoguery. 

GOP Extremism Hits Hampton Raods Defense Industry

Hampton Roads is about to be dealt a harsh economic blow as sequestration hits next month and the irony is that many local voters elected a trio of GOP extremists - Randy Forbes, Scott Rigell and Rob Wittman - who are part cadre of GOP saboteurs in the House of Representatives that are about to inflict the grievous economic wound to the region.  As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.  Besides delaying the deployment of the carrier Harry S. Truman, the U.S. Navy has announced that it will delay sending the carrier Abraham Lincoln in for a lengthy and expensive ($3.3 billion) overhaul at Newport News Shipbuilding, Virginia's largest private employer.  Literally thousands of jobs are in limbo.  What's disturbing that Forbes, Rigell and Wittman never miss a beat in pandering to Christofascists and Tea Party elements of the Republican Party base, but when it comes to the jobs and livelihoods of thousands of Virginians they are missing in action and as Rhett Butler said to Scarlett, "don't give a damn."  A further irony is that but for GOP gerrymandering of congressional districts prior to the 2012 elections, Rigell would likely have been voted out of office back in November.  Both my partner and I have several family members employed at Newport News Shipbuilding, so these worries are personal.  But on a larger scale, perhaps some local knee jerk supporters of the GOP will finally open their eyes to the fact that today's GOP is toxic and a threat to the region's and nation's future.  Here are details from a Virginian Pilot piece on the coming GOP caused economic blows to Hampton Roads:

Ever since the Abraham Lincoln pulled into its new homeport at Norfolk Naval Station in August, the crew has been working to prepare the aircraft carrier for its midlife nuclear refueling.

But less than a week before the ship was set to steam to the shipyard in Newport News, the Navy announced it was postponing the elaborate overhaul because of a lack of funding - the latest in a line of drastic defense cuts tied to the federal budget crisis.  The Lincoln will remain moored at the Norfolk base until Congress resolves the shortfall created by its inability to agree on a budget, a Navy spokesman said.

"The fiscal uncertainty created by not having an appropriations bill, and the measures we are forced to take as a result, place significant stress on an already strained force and undermine the stability of a fragile industrial base," Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Chris Servello said in a statement. The overhaul was timed to take place midway through the 50-year lifespan of the Lincoln, which was commissioned in 1989.

In addition to the Lincoln not being ready to deploy for a longer period, the postponement also affects other carriers scheduled to enter the shipyard. Particularly affected will be the dismantling of the recently inactivated carrier Enterprise, set to begin in June, and the pending refueling of the carrier George Washington, scheduled for 2016.

The change will affect numerous jobs at Newport News Shipbuilding. The Lincoln's "refueling and complex overhaul" is expected to take at least three years and cost $3.3 billion. Servello said the Navy's funding is short by $1.5 billion.

The move will also affect the local economy.  Weeks ago, the Navy released a list of tentative cuts because of the budget squeeze, including plans to cancel third- and fourth-quarter ship maintenance. Retired Rear Adm. Joe Carnevale, a defense adviser with the Shipbuilders Council of America, said those cancellations will cost tens of thousands of shipyard jobs nationwide and will have ripple effects for companies down the supply chain.  "In delaying the Lincoln's midlife overhaul, that's just going to add to the job losses," Carnevale said.

"The men and women who serve our nation in uniform deserve better than this," said Rep. Bobby Scott, a Newport News Democrat. "The men and women at Newport News Shipbuilding who build, repair, and maintain the most advanced naval fleet in the world, deserve better than this."

The announcement comes two days after defense officials canceled deployment of the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman. The 5,000 sailors in the Truman strike group were to have deployed Friday, but the budget squeeze will keep them in port.

I hope that employees that end up being laid off take the time to thank their neighbors who voted for Messrs. Forbes, Rigell and Wittman.  Like most in the GOP these men talk a lot about supporting our troops and the military, but it's all talk.  The lunacy of extremists in the GOP base count far more to them than our men and women in uniform and hardworking men and women who build and maintain our nation's naval fleet. I increasingly find it embarrassing to admit that I was ever a Republican given what the GOP has become.

Virginia's GOP Created Fiscal Cliff

An article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch looks at the Commonwealth of Virginia's own approaching fiscal cliff.  It's interesting that many of the problems cited that will make Virginia less competitive in the future and more fiscally insolvent track directly to the policies of the Republican Party of Virginia and its refusal to raise taxes to fund desperately needed spending on transportation, infrastructure and education.  While not specifically mentioned in the article I would also cite the Virginia GOP's continued push for reactionary social policies that make the state unattractive to progressive businesses that are hesitant to try to relocate employees with almost Medieval laws on equality and women's rights.  Should Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli be elected governor next November, the state's decline would likely accelerate. Here are some article highlights:

A national task force says Virginia may be heading toward its own version of a “fiscal cliff,” despite the state’s well-deserved reputation for prudent financial management.

Virginia could be heading for a major fall because of its reliance on federal government spending and its failure to fashion a sustained source of revenue for transportation improvements essential to economic growth.

“The problems that threaten other states the Task Force studied also threaten Virginia; but, most of the problems are less worrisome thanks to the state’s sound financial management and good fortune,” the report states. “The two exceptions are potential cuts in federal spending and chronically unmet transportation needs.”

The study released this month also raises concerns about the decline in state spending for public education, the gradual privatizing of higher education by substituting higher tuition and fees for state support, and declining state investment in infrastructure because of limited debt capacity.

Options for raising revenues to pay for public services are dwindling, especially for Virginia’s 170 counties, cities and towns, it says, while costs are rising, especially in the state’s bare-bones Medicaid program for the poor and the public employee pension obligations that the state has systematically underfunded.

“The state’s planning documents indicate that Virginia’s general fund revenues will not be adequate to fund obligations from prior years (debt service and pensions), keep up with health care costs, restore recession slashes to local aid, improve health and education services, and maintain and improve transportation and other infrastructure,” the report concludes.

[O]ne of the advisers on the Virginia report said the state is living off past accomplishments that can’t be sustained without changes in approach.  “The problem now is we need some investments,” said James J. Regimbal Jr., a former Senate Finance Committee budget analyst who advises local governments on fiscal policy and recently authored a biting critique of the McDonnell administration’s approach to funding transportation through tolls and private partnerships.

Local government advocates focused on the report’s warning of a reckoning ahead in the next four to six years as Virginia runs out of money for transportation improvements and other investments.  “We’re coming to a time in which the ‘Virginia way,’ which means relying on economic growth to generate the revenue that pay for public services, is no longer going to be able to pay the tab,” said Neal Menkes, director of fiscal policy at the Virginia Municipal League.

Virginia is more dependent on federal spending than any state in the country, said the task force, which noted that Moody’s Investors Service already has placed the state on a credit watch because of the potential for federal spending cuts that could cost the state 122,800 jobs, $7.3 billion in wages and $10.5 billion in annual state gross product.

Transportation is the other elephant in the room for state policymakers, the report states. “Inadequate funding has proved chronic and resulted in the substitution of capital funds for operations and maintenance and a growing dependence on federal funds.”  The task force notes gridlock on transportation funding since Virginia last increased the gasoline tax 25 years ago, as well as changes in vehicle efficiency and driving habits that have eroded the value of the tax by 45 percent.

Virginia’s Medicaid program ranks 48th in the country in eligibility and benefits even though the state ranks seventh in per capita income, the report notes. Expansion would bring an estimated $21 billion in federal spending the first seven years and generate more than 30,000 jobs in health care by some estimates, as well as provide health coverage to more than 400,000 Virginians without it.  But expansion also would cost Virginia more than $1 billion over 10 years, according to the McDonnell administration’s most recent estimate, at a time when Medicaid costs outpace revenue growth to pay them.

In the end, the task force suggests that Virginia faces a politically difficult decision about taxes and investments.  “Will the state’s leaders determine which crucial public investments must be made?” it asks. “Will they make the case to taxpayers for the need to raise revenues and use the golden AAA credit to leverage those revenues for tomorrow’s infrastructure?”

As long as the GOP controls the General Assembly and the governorship, the answer to the study's last question is a resounding "no."   Virginia will continue to decline thanks to the Virginia GOP's backward and greed driven policies.

Tax Policy Center Reaffirms Findings on Romney Tax Plan

Mitt Romney had no problem relying upon the findings of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center during the GOP primary battles and approvingly cited the center's analysis of his opponents' tax proposals.  However, when the Tax Policy Center later slammed Romney's own plan, suddenly Romney is seeking to paint the center's analysis as flawed and unreliable.  Well, the center re-reviewed everything and guess what: it stands by its conclusion that Romney would cut taxes for the wealthy while everyone else would pay more.  It's all in keeping with the Romney/Ryan reverse Robin Hood approach to society.  The hypocrisy of Romney and Ryan is only worsened by the fact that both pretend to be deeply religious yet ignore the Gospel teachings.  Indeed, their true God seems to be money and how much they can amass (Ryan recently amend his financial disclosures to include a trust from which he and his wife have received significant income claiming he had "forgotten about it").  Here are excerpts from the New York Times on the Tax Policy Center response to Romney's whining:

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, after considering conservative critiques of its recent, much-publicized analysis of Mitt Romney’s tax agenda, said on Thursday that its conclusion stands: His proposals would mean big tax cuts for the highest-income taxpayers and increases for everyone else.

“A reform proposal that meets the five goals” that Mr. Romney has outlined for overhauling the tax code “would have to raise burdens on middle-class households,” the three authors of the analysis wrote in a nine-page response to the criticism.

That is inevitable, they said, mainly as a consequence of two of Mr. Romney’s five goals: His insistence that any tax overhaul should be revenue-neutral, neither reducing nor increasing annual budget deficits, and that it should protect or even sweeten existing tax breaks for savings and investment like those for dividends and capital gains income.

If Mr. Romney were willing to either increase deficits or reduce the tax breaks for investors, the authors said, then taxes would not necessarily have to go up for lower- and middle-income Americans.


As his other three goals, Mr. Romney would cut income tax rates by 20 percent, eliminate the estate tax and end the alternative minimum tax, which was designed to ensure that the richest taxpayers did not escape liability due to various tax breaks but which increasingly threatens moderate-income households.

The authors also rebutted criticisms that their initial report did not sufficiently account for the potential benefits of Mr. Romney’s separate proposals to lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent, reduce other business taxes and cut domestic spending deeply.

The authors said they initially had assumed that Mr. Romney would offset the cost of his proposed cut in the corporate tax rate by scaling back other business tax breaks, but Romney advisers said that would not be the case. Yet that would mean “an even larger tax cut on high-income individuals, requiring even larger cuts to tax expenditures” – that is, tax breaks like those for mortgage interest – “and correspondingly larger increases in taxes on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers.”

Deep cuts in spending would have a similar impact, the authors added, hurting mostly low- and middle-income households because they disproportionately benefit from government programs and benefits.

I will give Romney one thing: he and his allies like the Koch brothers have done a masterful job in duping the cretins in the Tea Party crowd into supporting policies that are strongly against their own best interests.  I'm sure Romney and the Koch brothers must be laughing their asses off behind closed doors.

Good Bye to the GOP - Part II

Yesterday I noted an article that quoted Michael Stafford, a former Republican Party officer, who has left the Republican Party because of the GOP's down right inanity, meanness and religious extremism.  These are the same attributes of the GOP that caused me to leave the Party over a decade ago (although the party was still quasi-sane when I left compared to its current state).  Now, I've found a column written by Stafford that goes into to even more detail and confirms many of my own views of what has happened to the GOP.  Here are some highlights from The Cagle Post:

I’m a life-long Republican. My political affiliation has been woven intrinsically into the very fabric of my being.

As an adult, I continued to be a rock-solid Republican- I helped run my law school’s chapter of the Federalist Society and its Republican club. And after the election of President Obama in 2008, I served as an officer in my state Republican Party. For the next two years, I devoted substantial amounts of my time, my talent, and my treasure to supporting local candidates running for office and to building the Party organization.  Today, however, I am a registered Republican no longer.

I came to the decision to leave the GOP not with a heavy heart, but with a broken one.  I reached this point through a long series of awakenings and realizations - a path marked by literally years of wrestling with, and finally accepting, the political implications of a number of difficult truths. It involved ever-increasing levels of cognitive dissonance, as I tried to square my experiences, concerns, and knowledge, with my continued loyalty to the GOP.

As a local GOP official after President Obama’s election, I had a front-row seat as it became infected by a dangerous and virulent form of political rabies.  In the grip of this contagion, the Republican Party has come unhinged. Its fevered hallucinations involve threats from imaginary communists and socialists who, seemingly, lurk around every corner. Climate change- a reality recognized by every single significant scientific body and academy in the world- is a liberal conspiracy conjured up by Al Gore and other leftists who want to destroy America. Large numbers of Republicans- the notorious birthers- believe that the President was not born in the United States. Even worse, few figures in the GOP have the courage to confront them.

Republican economic policies are also indefensible. The GOP constantly claims that its opponents are engaged in “class warfare,” but this is an exercise in projection. In Republican proposals, the wealthy win, and the rest of us lose- one only has to look at Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget to see that.

Its [the GOP's] reckless behavior helps drive the political dysfunction crippling our nation.  In the end, it offers a dystopian vision of our future- a harsher, crueler and more merciless America starkly divided between the riders, and the ridden.

Ultimately, leaving the GOP was necessary in order to maintain my own integrity. Leaving is also a public act of personal protest. I am under no illusions about its broader significance- it will have no impact on the trajectory of the political narrative in this nation. But that does not make it futile. On the contrary, as the shadows lengthen, such minor individual acts of defiance and dissent are more critical now than ever before.

Perhaps, one day, a reformed and responsible Republican Party will reemerge.

But until then, the GOP and I have reached a parting of the ways. In the poignant words of “Kathleen Mavourneen,” an old Irish ballad: “It may be for years, and it may be forever”

If it's any consolation to Stafford, he is but one of countless life long Republicans who have left the GOP in order to maintain their own integrity and moral decency.  Of course what I find most ironic is that the GOP continues to pretend that it is the party of Christian values even as its policies reflect little but greed, cruelty to the less fortunate and a total lack of compassion or caring for others. Oh, and then there's the rejection of objective reality that I find most troublesome.

The Republicans Are The Problem.

I'm sure some regular readers will be near foaming at the mouth over the title of this post and some of what I'm about to say, but just because the truth hurts doesn't make it any less the truth.  And the truth is that the GOP has turned into something foul, extreme and a danger to the country.  And fueling this decline of the GOP are the ignorance embracing hate filled Christianist and their allies in the Tea Party (in fact, the two factions typically overlap each other).  Coming from a family that once was almost all Republican going back for at least 60 years, what has happened to the GOP is not only disturbing, but also an indictment of the party leaders who first made a pact with the devil - i.e., the Christian Right - and in the process jettisoned all logic, reason and, I would argue, integrity and decency.  Nowadays, the more someone talks about their religion and feigned piety, generally, the more morally reprehensible they are in my view.  They hate the poor, they hate minorities, they hate immigrants, and, of course, they hate gays.  The better question is couched in terms of who don't they hate.  Yet the party leadership continues to prostitute themselves to these nasty, ignorance worshiping people.  A lengthy piece in the Washington Post aptly looks at why the GOP is now responsible for the gridlock in Washington and much else that is wrong in America.  Here are excerpts:

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.
 
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.   When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

 It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California’s Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.

[T]he forces Gingrich unleashed destroyed whatever comity existed across party lines, activated an extreme and virulently anti-Washington base — most recently represented by tea party activists — and helped drive moderate Republicans out of Congress.

Norquist, meanwhile, founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 and rolled out his Taxpayer Protection Pledge the following year. The pledge, which binds its signers to never support a tax increase (that includes closing tax loopholes), had been signed as of last year by 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of the 47 GOP senators,  .  .  . 

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington.  .   .  .  The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

 In the face of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the party’s leaders and their outside acolytes insisted on obeisance to a supply-side view of economic growth — thus fulfilling Norquist’s pledge — while ignoring contrary considerations.   The results can border on the absurd: In early 2009, several of the eight Republican co-sponsors of a bipartisan health-care reform plan dropped their support; by early 2010, the others had turned on their own proposal

Democrats are hardly blameless, and they have their own extreme wing and their own predilection for hardball politics. But these tendencies do not routinely veer outside the normal bounds of robust politics. If anything, under the presidencies of Clinton and Obama, the Democrats have become more of a status-quo party. They are centrist protectors of government,  .  .  . 

The GOP’s evolution has become too much for some longtime Republicans. Former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska called his party “irresponsible” in an interview with the Financial Times in August, at the height of the debt-ceiling battle.

And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site.

Republicans are now more conservative than they have been in more than a century. Their data show a dramatic uptick in polarization, mostly caused by the sharp rightward move of the GOP.  If our democracy is to regain its health and vitality, the culture and ideological center of the Republican Party must change.

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality.  .  .  .  Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?   Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be.

If they can punish ideological extremism at the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get worse before it gets better. 

The Far Right's "Reign of Terror" Has Crippled Congress

In remarks that are sure to cause hyperventilating among some readers, David Axelrod has blamed a "reign of terror" by far right extremists for the gridlock in Congress and the refusal of members of the Congressional GOP to put the interests of the nation ahead of partisan politics.  Axelrod also maintains that Mitt Romney is out of touch with the reality faced by most Americans, a statement that I believe is 100% on point.  As for the extremists, Axelrod doesn't name them, but it's pretty obvious that he's referring to the Christofascists in the GOP base and the anti-tax extremist led by Grover Norquist and his minions.  Then, of course, there is the ignorance embracing Tea Party crowd.Here are highlights from Huffington Post of Axelrod's statements:

Republicans in the U.S. Congress are under a "reign of terror" imposed by the party's conservative wing that also has pushed presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to the right, President Barack Obama's senior campaign strategist said on Sunday.

David Axelrod, in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" program, cited the Obama administration's plans for immigration reform as an example of Republican intransigence in Congress.  The political process in Washington should not be "monolithic opposition to everything the chief executive wants to do as a political strategy," Axelrod said, adding that an "implacable group of Republicans" had blocked any possibility of immigration reform.  "I think there are a lot of Republicans in Congress who want to cooperate ... but they're in the thralls of this reign of terror from the far right that has dragged the party to the right," he said.

Axelrod said Romney, the former Massachusetts governor in line to be the Republican challenger to Obama's re-election in the Nov. 6 election, has nothing new to offer voters.  People don't know Mitt Romney very well," he said on CNN. "They see a businessman. They hope he has new ideas. When they find out what his ideas are, slashing taxes at the top for the very wealthy ... they're going to think, 'This is very familiar. We've tried this. This was a big failure.'"

Axelrod said Romney's campaign for the Republican nomination had been a negative one, based on attacking his opponents rather than spelling out ideas. When he does, I think people are going to judge them for what they are, which is backward-looking and a repeat of what got us into this mess in the first place," he added.

Business Bets on the G.O.P. May Be Backfiring

With the Republican Party's obsession of pandering to its Christianist/Tea Party base and seeking to balloon the deficit by increasing tax cuts for the wealthy, there may be little money available to throw in the direction of business interests that foolishly thought that the GOP is the party of big business which would answer the call of big business to fund construction projects and other measures that would put money in business coffers. Frankly, it's more evidence that the GOP of yesteryear is gone and has been replaced by a sectarian party that is stridently anti-government. A piece in the New York Times looks at the perhaps misplaced bets made by the business community on the GOP acting rational and in the best interests of business. Here are some highlights:

Big business groups like the Chamber of Commerce spent millions of dollars in 2010 to elect Republican candidates running for the House. The return on investment has not always met expectations.

Even though money for major road and bridge projects is set to run out this weekend, House Republican leaders have struggled all week to round up the votes from recalcitrant conservatives simply to extend it for 90 or even 60 days. A longer-term transportation bill that contractors and the chamber say is vital to the recovery of the construction industry appears hopelessly stalled over costs.

At the same time, House conservatives are pressing to allow the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which has financed exports since the Depression, to run out of lending authority within weeks. The bank faces the possibility of shutting its doors completely by the end of May, when its legal authorization expires.

And a host of routine business tax breaks — from wind energy subsidies to research and development tax credits — cannot be passed because of Republican insistence that they be paid for with spending cuts.

Business groups that worked hard to install a Republican majority in the House equated Republican control with a business-friendly environment. But the majority is first and foremost a conservative political force, and on key issues, its ideology is not always aligned with commercial interests that helped finance election victories.

There could be real-world consequences to the conservative rebellion. The 90-day extension of the highway trust fund that House Republican leaders say they will pass this week in lieu of a broad highway bill would keep existing projects moving for now. But business groups say few new government-funded infrastructure projects can get under way without longer-range certainty about federal backing.

Exports have been one of the bright spots of the fragile recovery, but without Export-Import Bank financing, companies could struggle to complete contracts with overseas buyers. Those buyers will most likely turn to foreign competitors whose governments have more robust versions of the bank, businesspeople say.

With its charter set to expire in May, the bank is the target of conservative groups. They are making the case to Republicans that the bank, created in 1934 to finance sales to the Soviet Union, has no place in a free-market system. Club for Growth is holding it up as the next Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, crowding out private lending and offering dangerous loans that ultimately could be left in the laps of the taxpayer.

If anything, the anger over the stalled transportation bill is even more acute, business lobbyists say. The Senate, in a bipartisan vote, has passed a surface transportation bill that would keep money flowing for two years. The House, however, appears stuck.

Some Republicans are growing worried about the ramifications of these fights. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, has pressed to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, but at the insistence of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, he joined his party in opposing Democratic efforts to add reauthorization to a small-business finance bill. Now Mr. Graham says his party has to find a way to move a stand-alone bill, and fast.

“Come June, if this program dies, it will be the end of job creation for thousands of businesses for no good reason,” he said. “And it’ll happen on our watch, with our fingerprints on it.”

The GOP leadership should have thought through the consequences of allowing the patients to take over the asylum.

More Details on the Heinous Hampton Roads Toll Plan

I've noted before how Hampton Roads is being singled out from the rest of Virginia in terms of new taxes. Of course, in typical Virginia GOP fashion, the reach into residents' pockets isn't called a "tax" but rather "tolls." No matter how one describes it, Hampton Roads residents will be out the money. Even as other areas of the Commonwealth see huge highway expenditures made without similar tolls. As the Virginian Pilot notes, the deal stinks and Bob "Governor Ultrasound" McDonnell is screwing local residents while running up a bill that will be left for future governors to pay. It's not exactly a pretty picture of leadership, but the norm in today's Virginia GOP. Here are some highlights:

[A]s Del. John Cosgrove, a Chesapeake Republican recently put it, the state's relying on "borrowed money."

The deal also ensures Hampton Roads drivers pay tolls to cross the Elizabeth River - $1.84 one way for cars during rush hour and $7.36 for trucks; $1.59 for cars in off-hours and $4.77 for trucks - for the next four years, perhaps more, until the new Midtown tube is finally completed.

Starting in 2017, when the Midtown is set for completion, tolls on both tunnels can be increased by 3.5 percent per year - or more - until 2070.

Drivers using Interstate 264 through the Downtown Tunnel will pay tolls for the duration of the contract without ever seeing a new lane of capacity.

ERC will be allowed up to a 13.5 percent annual return on equity, at a time when few investments pay anything close to that.

McDonnell often justifies this plan by declaring that there are "no free lunches" when it comes to transportation. But it's doubtful that any one expected lunch to be this expensive.

Never mind the nearly $1,000 annual tax hike that McDonnell's Elizabeth River Crossings deal imposes on thousands of working men and women. Most, if not all, settled in Hampton Roads under the assumption that their government wouldn't tax them disproportionately for roads that benefit the entire state's economy. Most, if not all, never thought they'd be ordered to pay an inordinate fee to sit on a daily basis in the same traffic they're sitting in now.

The $4 billion that McDonnell mentions comes mostly in the form of "borrowed money" that will be repaid from heaven knows what sources.

It allows the governor to reap the political reward that comes with racking up projects on the commonwealth's credit card; the bill, meanwhile, is a problem for Virginia's taxpayers and a future governor. McDonnell will be long gone by the time it comes due.

Yep, the deal sucks for those of us in Hampton Roads and benefits the private company disproportionately. And worse yet, this is the type of leadership Governor Ultrasound wants to take to Washington. That's scary.

Fight Over Tolls Showcases Virginia GOP Error on Gas Tax

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UPDATED 3-19-2012: The Virginian Pilot has another story that makes it clear that the negative impact of tolls will be a regional problem. And again, the question to be asked is why Hampton Roads Interstates are being singled out for tolls unlike the rest of Virginia.

One of Governor Ultrasound McDonnell's other "big ideas" that is beginning to cause troubled waters in Hampton Roads is his love of so-called "public-private partnerships" that would build long over due highway improvements in the region by places economy killing tolls on bridges and tunnels. The idea rates right up there with Governor Ultrasound's idea of "government so small it fits in a woman's uterus." While only the Downtown and Midtown Tunnels are currently slated for tolls, the scheme eventually would put tolls on numerous more interstate bridges and tunnels - even though no other interstate highways in Virginia are similarly burdened. In short, Hampton Roads is slated to be f*cked over royally compared to other regions in Virginia. It's all part of the GOP's mantra of never raising taxes no matter what - even though the gasoline tax was last raised 25 years ago. The Virginian Pilot looks at the situation with the gas tax and the impact of tolls on local residents who must use tunnels and brides compared to the impact of modest increases in the gasoline tax. Here are some highlights:

The Midtown Tunnel project has revived a debate about the state's gas tax and triggered a fresh round of questions: Why hasn't the tax - a key source of road money - been raised in 25 years, a time span exceeded only by Alaska? And why, if Virginia has the seventh-lowest gas tax in the nation, are our pump prices in the middle of the pack?

With the uproar over tolls rocking Hampton Roads, the answers are more relevant than ever. Since the first dirt road acquired a coat of asphalt, citizens have argued about how to pay for it. Each of us contributes to the cause every time we gas up, paying a tax that's embedded in the price. Part of it goes to the federal government for interstates and the like, and the rest to the states for their own roadways.

But both funds fall shorter by the year, sapped by an aging transportation network, escalating construction costs and a refusal to allow the tax rate to keep up.

Virginia hasn't hiked its rate since 1987, a flat tax of 17.5 cents per gallon (plus a 0.06 cent storage tank fee) that's been whittled by inflation to about 8 cents. "Imagine if you hadn't had a pay raise in 25 years," said Tamara Rollison, a spokeswoman at VDOT. "You've got dwindling dollars to take care of ever-increasing needs."

$10 billion a year is being lost to stagnant rates. With a 10-cent hike, Virginia would bank an extra $500 million a year, while costing the typical driver just under $8 a month. Tolls, on the other hand, swap a smaller, shared pain for a bigger burden on individuals - often those who can afford it the least. The Midtown deal will cost commuters nearly $1,000 a year to travel between the two poorest cities in South Hampton Roads.

[L]ogic says a low gas tax should be mirrored at the pump. But that's not the case, at least not statewide. On AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report, Virginia prices routinely rank in the midrange - even though 43 of those states have a higher gas tax. . . . .Where does the extra money go? "I don't know the answer to that," said Bill Bush at the American Petroleum Institute.

I represent a number of gasoline retailers and they're not making tons of money from retail sales, so one does have to ask where is the money going? Another question to ask is whether all gasoline tax revenues end up going to highway construction and maintenance? Virginia is notorious for shifting revenue streams from the supposedly dedicated use to other purposes - typically without admitting the monetary slight of hand.

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Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan on the GOP and Gays

The contempt of today's Republican Party is palpable and it seems that there is no limit to the measures the party will endorse in its effort to demean and demonize LGBT Americans. In commenting on Newt Gingrich's response to Scott Arnold, a university professor and Iowa voter, to go vote for Obama, Andrew Sullivan summed things up wonderfully:

I wasn't there and cannot verify this. But it qualifies as a Kinsley gaffe, in as much as the GOP does not merely have no outreach to gays, but actively promotes candidates who seek our disappearance from the face of the earth through "reparative therapy", whose supporters boo openly gay servicemembers in public, who wish to amend the federal Constitution to deny us core civil rights, who find a defense of gay people from violence and persecution abroad to be against "American values", and who back every hate crime laws but those that protect gays from violence.

In another post, Andrew went on to speculate as to whether the GOP is near the point of imploding (we can only hope). Here's his apt question:

The House Republicans have now all but guaranteed that taxes will go up on middle-class Americans because of what they themselves have called "high stakes poker." And this moment may as well sum up why Americans despise this Congress as deeply as they do.

For the GOP to vote down sustaining a tax cut - after a huge majority in the Senate and president had both signed off - and to stalk off into the Christmas vacation leaving a struggling workforce in the lurch ... well, it's a novel form of politicking, don't you think?

If you wonder why Obama is slowly rising again, I'd look less to his own smart re-framing of the issues than to the utter fecklessness of the opposition party. The circus of the primaries and the farce of the House will not leave the public consciousness very soon.

The GOP and the Supercommittee Debt Impasse

Will the Democrats let themselves get rolled by the GOP yet again as the so-called supercommittee works to come up with a debt reduction plan? My bet - and that of Michael Thomasky at The Daily Beast - is yes. The Democrats seem to only know how to be played for fools and how to prematurely surrender. With leadership like that now coming from the White House and Democrats back during WWII, we'd all be speaking German now. As a previous post indicated, the USA is rushing towards a third world style society of a small group of "haves" and the rest in the "have not" category, yet the GOP continues to want to give more to the obscenely wealthy while flushing more and more Americans down the economic toilet. Here's Thomasky's analysis of the coming Democrat surrender:

[P]olitically, it would be nice to see Washington function for a change. Hard experience suggests to us, however, that when all the smoke clears, there will be no deal. What will happen then? The Republicans will then go in for even emptier posturing than they’re engaging in now, this time with regard to defense cuts. You think things can’t get worse? Just wait.

But eventually and inevitably, the negotiators had to start talking numbers. And as soon as they got to specifics, two things happened. First, they realized how far apart they were. Second, the leaks started, at which point the rest of us realized how far apart they were.

Let’s compare the plans. The Democratic proposal, released by senator and committee member Max Baucus the other day, looks to cut $3 trillion from the budget. The Republican plan, leaked in parts to The Wall Street Journal and Politico after Baucus moved, cuts just $2 trillion. If it seems odd to you that Democrats are proposing more deficit reduction than Republicans, you aren’t alone. The reason is that the Republicans—surprise, surprise—are doing it all by cuts with no tax revenue, while the Democrats include $1 trillion to $1.3 trillion in new revenue.

The GOP plan says the government will raise $200 billion by cutting corporate and individual taxes. You know, the way the Bush tax cuts increased revenue, which is to say, not in the real world, but in the minds of Mitch McConnell and other delusionals who think the Bush tax cuts raised revenue.

It bears noting, once again, that the Democrats have said with the Baucus plan that they’re ready to deal if Republicans will. Their plan includes $500 billion in entitlement program cuts. . . . . But the Republicans are staying in the dugout. They aren’t even bothering to take the bus to the stadium. A trillion in taxes, one dollar in taxes, it doesn’t matter; Republicans will not permit a tax increase of any kind.

[T]he Democrats should not and cannot accept a deal in which there are no tax increases, because they have two-thirds of the country with them and because it’s the right thing.

Assuming no deal, here’s what I’m told is likely to happen after everyone has acknowledged the collapse. The Republicans will, as John McCain and others have suggested, turn up the heat on the question of defense cuts. They will introduce legislation to exempt the Pentagon from cuts. . . . .
Republicans, being the clever dialecticians that they are, will decide that the course of history has changed, and that deal will mean no more to them than one of those secret treaties Lenin routinely abrogated back in the day.

So they’ll advance a bill saying: cuts to domestic social programs, sure; cuts to Pentagon, nyet. It will pass the House. It will go to the Senate, and all the Republicans will be for it, and they’ll need 13 Democrats. So then the questions will be: will the Democrats be willing to hold the line and risk the silly accusation of being “soft on defense”? And will the White House also hold the line . . .
I think we know the answer.

So the Republicans will have killed another deal with their indefensible and immoral position on taxes, and then, having stuffed that carcass in the trunk, they will retroactively work to kill the deal they agreed to last summer . . .

Once again, the current GOP makes me ashamed that I was ever once a member of that party. Truth, honesty, and fair dealing, and the best interest of the nation as a whole mean nothing to today's Republican Party. It's all about greed on the part of a few and demagoguery.

Poll: 71% Disapprove of GOP Handling of Debt Crisis

A new CBS News poll shows that a majority of Americans disapprove of all the involved parties' conduct in the ongoing debt crisis debate. However, the Republicans in Congress fare the worst - just 21% approval versus 43% approval for the White House's conduct. Not, of course, that such a resounding condemnation means anything to Congressional Republicans who have become the cheap whores of the Tea Party and the ignorance embracing Christianists. It's further proof that the GOP has become the party of ignorance, religious extremism and the rejection of objective fact. William F. Buckley, Jr., must be rolling like a top in his grave. Here are highlights from Political Hotsheet on the poll's finding:
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Americans are unimpressed with their political leaders' handling of the debt ceiling crisis, with a new CBS News poll showing a majority disapprove of all the involved parties' conduct, but Republicans in Congress fare the worst, with just 21 percent backing their resistance to raising taxes.
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President Obama earned the most generous approval ratings for his handling of the weeks-old negotiations, but still more people said they disapproved (48 percent) than approved (43 percent) of what he has done and said.
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Even half of the Republican respondents (51 percent) voiced disapproval of how members of their own party in Congress are handling the talks.
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While the poll shows little confidence in the men and women doing the negotiating, there still seems to be hope that the politicians will be able to stop politicking for long enough to avert financial disaster. Sixty-six percent of those polled said they believe an agreement will be reached before the Aug. 2 deadline, while only 31 percent say it's unlikely.

Has the GOP Ceased to Be Normal?

The caption of this post is the question that David Brooks - hardly a flaming liberal by any definition - ask in a op-ed in the New York Times. Brooks takes a good look at the extremism and utter disregard for facts and/or the consequences of the fanaticism that are the hallmarks of a political party that once prided itself on reason and deliberative decision making. Many old school Republicans would be horrified to see what they party has become under the puppet strings of religious extremists, Tea Party demagogues and a leadership that doesn't give a damn about the good of the country. Yes, there are still a few sane voices to be heard, but I truly do not know how they can bring the party back to the world of the rational world where objective facts matter. Here are highlights from Brooks' column:
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If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases.
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A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.
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This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers. But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no. The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities.
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The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor. The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name.
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Over the past week, Democrats have stopped making concessions. They are coming to the conclusion that if the Republicans are fanatics then they better be fanatics, too. The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the G.O.P. is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.
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If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern. And they will be right.

Republican Governors Could help Obama in 2012

My continued dissatisfaction with Barack Obama's leadership - or more accurately the total lack thereof - is the topic for another post. That said, it is interesting how many of the GOP governors swept into office in 2010 may prove to be among the best campaign boosters for Obama in 2012. Their combination of arrogance, lack of concern for the poor and unemployed and efforts to benefit the most wealthy seem to be alienating moderates and energizing Democrats in ways that few campaigns can accomplish. Granted, much can change between now and November 2012, but somehow I don't see governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Florida's Rick Scott allowing any checks on their hubris or extremism. All of which bodes well for Obama. A story in the Washington Post looks at the phenomenon and here are some highlights:

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The sluggish economy and stubborn joblessness are being heralded — or lamented, depending on your perspective — as the chief reasons that President Obama will face a tough reelection campaign. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll had Obama getting low marks on his handling of the economy . . .
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But there is another indicator of Obama’s prospects, one that may boost his chances in the key swing states that will determine the 2012 electoral majority: the deep and growing unpopularity of the Republican governors and state legislatures.
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Republican governors such as Kasich, Scott and Walker — usually with the avid support of GOP-dominated legislatures — have deployed combative policies and politics, promoting confrontation and eschewing compromise, cutting benefits for the poor and middle class while adding tax breaks for the rich, and in many cases trying to eliminate or at least cripple collective bargaining by public employees. Those tactics have energized the Democratic base, certainly, but even more significant, they have turned off independent voters.
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Things are likely to get worse for Republican governors. Raising taxes is not an option, and the only areas left for meaningful budget reductions are education, Medicaid and prisons. At the national level, the Republican House is intent on further reducing states’ margin for error with dramatic cuts on the table for Medicaid, including its largest components: long-term care for the elderly and aid for the most seriously disabled. . . . . And many Republican governors who try to change their messages and policies will face the wrath of their tea party bases.
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In swing states, any GOP presidential candidate will have to convince voters that he or she has the best plan to improve the economy. The only problem is that every Republican contender supports the same types of economic policies that have driven GOP governors into a ditch.
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[I]f the economy continues to falter, Obama will have plenty to explain himself. . . . Nonetheless, the huge Republican victories in the states in 2010, along with the immense hubris they brought to the winning governors, has had a serious down side, there to be exploited to the hilt by Obama’s reelection campaign.*

The World Through the Delusional Eyes of the GOP

In a column in the Washington Post that hits at points I've tried to make concerning the reality denying and untethered mindset of today's GOP, E.J. Dionne looks at the Republican Party of today in the post New York 26th election world. Given that the GOP used to pride itself on being the party of educated reality, the transformation of the party into a quasi sectarian party where ignorance is embraced has been truly amazing. The first step towards today's delusional mindset was the leaderships cynical acceptance of reality denying Christianist. The rest of the party's decline decline in recent decades traces from that cynical, short sighted decision. I have no sympathy whatsoever for today's GOP which continues to subvert the Constitution it claims to revere. Here are some column highlights:
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When Richard Nixon won his 49-state landslide over George McGovern in 1972, Pauline Kael, the legendary New Yorker film critic, was moved to observe: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.” All of us can have our vision distorted by the special worlds we live in, and what was a problem for Kael in 1972 is now an enormous obstacle for conservative Republicans.
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Both the leaders and rank-and-file of the Republican Party devoutly believe “the people” gave them a mandate last November to slash government, including that big-government health-care program known as Medicare.
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More than that: They see their mandate as including an obligation to oppose any tax increases, period, even if more revenue is essential to balancing the federal budget in the long run.
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Then came Tuesday’s thunder out of western New York. Democrat Kathy Hochul won her surprisingly comfortable special-election victory in the very Republican 26th Congressional District, largely because of the early endorsement her Republican opponent, Jane Corwin, gave to Ryan’s budget and its Medicare proposals.
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You wonder: Will Republicans realize that this is their Pauline Kael moment? Will they understand that the anti-government cries they think they hear from “the people” are the voices of no more than 20 to 25 percent of the electorate who constitute the diehard conservative core?
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And by the way: Hochul’s victory wasn’t just about Medicare. Her most effective ad argued that Ryan was cutting Medicare while promoting tax cuts for the wealthy. . . . Kathy Hochul says cut the deficit but do it the right way: Protect Medicare and no more tax breaks for multimillionaires.”
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Note to timid Senate moderates who race from the battlefield even before they smell gunpowder: Hochul ran against tax cuts for the rich and won — in a district John McCain carried in 2008 by six points. Republicans might also notice that the voters’ retreat from their party is not confined to the 26th. As Washington Monthly’s always- instructive blogger Steve Benen noted, Democrats picked up formerly Republican state legislative seats in special elections this month in both Wisconsin and New Hampshire.
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Let’s see: Voters don’t seem to like cuts to Medicare, cuts to education, or tax cuts for the rich. So what are “the people” trying to say? From the beginning, too many Republicans (and too many in the media) saw the Tea Party as a broadly based movement whose extreme anti-government views reflected the popular will.
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This was never true. The Tea Party consisted of citizens on the right end of politics who were always there but got angrier and better organized after Obama was elected.
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[M]iddle-of-the-roaders never bargained for what Paul Ryan — or Govs. Rick Scott, John Kasich of Ohio or Scott Walker of Wisconsin — had in mind for them. Now they’re talking back. They’re not as loud as the Tea Party. But as Hochul’s victory showed, they’re starting to be heard.

S&P Lowers Outlook for U.S. Securities Based on Deficit; GOP Seeks More Tax Cuts That Will Increase Deficit

There are times when I ask myself WTF has happened to the Republican Party? Years ago when I was active in the GOP, the party stood for fiscal responsibility and reasonable, responsible small government. Now? Fiscal insanity - and insanity in general - are prerequisites to membership in the GOP. Today, Standard and Poors ("S&P") downgraded the outlook for U.S. issued securities - e.g., Treasury bonds, etc. - because of the refusal of Congress to responsibly address the nation's budget deficit. When I say "responsibly" I mainly am targeting the Republican Party which wants more and more tax cuts for extremely wealthy Americans (who as noted below, are paying historically low tax rates) and corporations which will only further exacerbate the budget deficit. One can only hope that independents and moderates will open their eyes and wake up to the fact that the current GOP will be the ruin of this country if people do not wake up to the extremism of the GOP and its base. Here are highlights from the New York Times:
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Washington’s deficit reduction debate came to Wall Street on Monday, after the Standard & Poor’s rating firm lowered the outlook for the United States to negative, saying there was a risk that lawmakers might not reach agreement on how to address the country’s fiscal issues.
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Indexes fell sharply as the S.&P. revision pushed the federal deficit problems out of the political arena and into the financial one. By noon, Wall Street indexes were down at least 1.6 percent in afternoon trading as bond prices rose and yields declined.
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Many analysts were surprised by the market response to the revision, which cut the long-term United States debt rating to negative from stable.
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Stanley Nabi, chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management Group, said the policy makers and lawmakers should “realize there is a very serious problem, and you are going to see more consideration on how to rein in expenditures.”
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For their part, administration officials played down the revision while reiterating Washington’s determination to act. Treasury officials “believe S.&P.’s negative outlook underestimates the ability of America’s leaders to come together to address the difficult fiscal challenges facing the nation,” an assistant secretary for financial markets, Mary J. Miller, said in a statement.
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As I noted, while the GOP continues to pretend that tax rates are high, the real truth is quite the opposite (I guess the Christianist control of the GOP has Congressional Republicans thinking that they are now exempt from the Commandment against lying and bearing false witness just like the Christianists themselves). Indeed, tax levels at the highest brackets are at the lowest level since the 1950's - that's right 60 years. Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot on the real story on tax rate levels:
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The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.
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Over the same period, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.
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The top income tax rate is 35 percent, so how can people who make so much pay so little in taxes? The nation's tax laws are packed with breaks for people at every income level. There are breaks for having children, paying a mortgage, going to college, and even for paying other taxes. Plus, the top rate on capital gains is only 15 percent.
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There are so many breaks that 45 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2010, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
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In all, the tax code is filled with a total of $1.1 trillion in credits, deductions and exemptions, an average of about $8,000 per taxpayer, according to an analysis by the National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent watchdog within the IRS.