As Bridges, Roads And Water Systems Crumble, GOP Remain Opposed To Infrastructure Investment

I35 bridge in Minnesota that was rated "structurally deficient"

President Obama’s plan to kick start the economy and put the American people back to work includes investing in the nation’s rapidly deteriorating roads, bridges and public water and sewer utilities. Studies show that America's public infrastructure is in critical need of as much as $2 trillion in immediate repair and replace just to keep it from crumbling in decay.

In the past, Republicans have agreed that infrastructure improvements are needed, but they remain opposed to federal spending on America's roads, bridges and water supply systems that Pres. Obama continues to prioritize. Republicans have chosen to ignore the nation’s infrastructure and jobs crises, in their demand to slash government spending while giving big tax breaks to multinational corporations, who use America's infrastructure earn record profits.

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, about 12 percent of the nation’s bridges are considered “structurally deficient,” the same rating given to the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed in 2007, killing 13 people. Roughly another 12 percent are considered “functionally obsolete.” In four of the states represented by Republican congressional leadership, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, Arizona and California the rate of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges outpaces the national average.

Roads, bridges and public water and sewer utilities in Texas also need attention, not to mention that Texas could use a few more water reservoirs.

Top Three Texas Infrastructure Concerns according to the American Society of Civil Engineers:

Jobs vs. Deficit -- Where the Public Stands

Following President Obama's address before a joint session of Congress on Thursday to lay out a plan to spur jobs creation, the political and policy debate in congress continues to be about stimulus spending to create jobs vs slashing government spending to cut the deficit.

While Republicans, and particularly the new Tea Party lawmakers who joined them on Capitol Hill this year, spearheaded the drive to put deficit reduction front and center, deficit reduction had risen at least modestly in the list of public concerns.

But public support for deficit reduction as the top economic priority over the job situation has been weakening under the weight of increasingly bad economic news in recent months resulting from the fragile recovery and the failure of the jobs market to improve.

A Pew Research Center/Washington Post poll conducted Sept. 1-4 shows a steady rise since March – from 34% to 43% – in the percentage of those saying that the job situation is the economic issue that worries them most. Those citing the budget deficit as their top worry declined from 28% in May and 29% in July to 22% in September.

A mid-August poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found a similar trend on a somewhat different measure.

In June, 52% had said the higher priority for government should be reducing the deficit, compared with 42% who favored spending to help the economy recovery. But the August poll showed the public almost evenly divided over whether the higher priority should be spending to help the economy recover (47%) or reducing the budget deficit (46%).

Those results showed the same sharp partisan split that characterized the budget battles throughout the year. Republicans favored deficit reduction over spending to help the economy by 66% to 29% and GOP Tea Party adherents held that view even more strongly, 82% to 16%. Democrats favored stimulus over spending reduction by 61% to 32%.

The big factor driving down overall public preference for deficit reduction over stimulus since June was a change in outlook among independents.

In June, they favored deficit reduction over stimulus by a 54% to 39% margin, but in the August survey, 47% backed spending on the economy while 46% stuck by deficit reduction as the higher priority.

The recent shifts in public opinion on the importance of deficit reduction comes as worsening economic news started to seep into the American conscience during August.

Obama Tells Congress To Pass $447 Billion Jobs Plan

Pres. Obama shares plan to create jobs with joint session of Congress. September 8, 2011

President Barack Obama Thursday challenged Republicans to halt a "political circus" and immediately pass a bigger than expected $447 billion jobs plan he said would jolt the "stalled" economy.

• Click here for a transcript of Pres. Obama's speech
• Click here for fact sheet on the Pres. Obama's Jobs Act

Perry Doubles-Down On Opposing Social Security

Another great post from our blogger friend Ted McLaughlin at the Texas Panhandle blog Jobsanger:

I have to give Rick Perry a little credit -- he actually showed up for the debate yesterday. I had thought he would once again use the wildfires as an excuse to duck appearing on the same stage with his fellow candidates. And he should have, because he made a giant mistake in the debate -- one that will haunt him on the campaign trail.

A few months ago Perry wrote a stupid and very ill-timed book. Evidently he thought at the time he wrote the book that he would never run for another political office, because he wrote in the book that he believed Social Security and Medicare were both unconstitutional. He went on to say that each state should be able to opt out of either or both programs.

This was not too bright, and now that he's a candidate, he should be begging forgiveness for ever saying such a thing. It probably wouldn't work (since he actually put his opposition to Social Security in print), but maybe he could have claimed he was "temporarily insane" when he wrote the book, or maybe it was a mis-print and the fault of his editor -- anything but what he actually did during the debate.

What he did was double-down on his hatred for Social Security. When what he had said about Social Security was brought up, he acted like he was proud of that and even went on to called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" and say it would not even exist when today's young people need it. That's right, he attacked Social Security on nationwide television. ...

Read the rest @ Jobsanger

Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

by: Mike Lofgren, Truthout

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that 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. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

Virtually every [Senate] bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.

John P. Judis sums up the modern GOP this way:

"Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery."

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

The media are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.'"

Read the full article @ Truthout

The Republican Party Has Been Captured By Far-Right Extremists

by Beverly Bandler - 09-06-2011

That the Republican Party has been captured by the radical right is not news. The 112th Congress has made it clear, however, that the party that calls itself the GOP has brought the United States to a crisis stage.

“One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime,” said journalist Bill Moyers, “is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe...for the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.” Moyers said this in January 2005.

In 2006, former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips charged that the: “Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. History.” Phillips went on further to remind us: “Unfortunately, three of the preeminent weaknesses displayed in past [nation] declines have been religious excess, a declining energy and industrial base, and debt often linked to foreign and military overstretch.”

Texas Faces Massive Wildfires, Record Drought as Gov. Rick Perry Rejects Climate Science

DemocracyNow! speaks with Forrest Wilder, Texas Observer reporter.

Wilder talks about his article "Texas' Permanent Drought: Our water deficit didn't start with this drought. And it won't end with this drought " and Texas Gov. Rick Perry's rejection of climate science at last night's Republican presidential debate.

On Wednesday, Perry announced he was returning home to focus on a historic wildfire season in which some 3.6 million acres have burned — an area larger than the size of Connecticut.

Perry has used the crisis to complain the federal government is not acting fast enough to give the state federal aid, but critics have been quick to note the governor has often bashed the idea of federal assistance programs. Perry this year signed legislation passed by the Republican dominated state legislature that slashed the budget for the Texas Forest Service, the first line of fire defense for most of the state. The wildfires come amidst a record drought. The state has seen its driest consecutive months since record-keeping began in 1895, and the impact on the state's agricultural industry has been devastating.

Obama's Jobs Plan That Doesn't Need Congress

Is President Obama finally testing his administration's muscle? On Wednesday, Obama directed several federal agencies to identify "high-impact, job-creating infrastructure projects" that can be expedited by administrative directive without congressional involvement or approval.

One week before he will make a major address to Congress on jobs, Obama is making sure they know he plans to move forward without them. The president has also directed the Education Department to come up with a "Plan B" updating the 2001 No Child Left Behind law in the absence of congressional action. The message to Congress is clear: Do your work or we'll do it for you.

Under Wednesday's order, the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, and Transportation will each select up to three high-priority infrastructure projects that can be completed within the control and jurisdiction of the federal government.

The effort is labeled as a "common-sense approach" to spurring job growth "in the near term." In practical terms, that means speeding up the permitting and waiver processes for green-building or highway projects to get the government out of the way. One of businesses' foremost complaints with government infrastructure projects is that the paperwork is too cumbersome and creates unnecessary delays, according to White House economic advisers.

What is left unsaid in the administration's rollout of the infrastructure project is that this may be the extent of the president's powers while Congress embroils itself in months-long talks on cutting the deficit and responding to the White House's jobs plan. Obama also pleaded with Congress on Wednesday to pass clean extensions of the Federal Aviation Administration and the surface-transportation laws, both of which expire this month.

Arizona Files Lawsuit Saying 1965 Voting Rights Act Violates 10th Amendment States' Rights

On August 25th Arizona's Republican Attorney General Tom Horne, who took office this year after winning election in the Tea-Party wave of Republican victories in the 2010 Congressional elections, filed a lawsuit challenging the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. Horne holds in his lawsuit (The State of Arizona v. Holder) that “Arizona does now and has always supported full and open voting rights for all residents and submission to pre-clearance procedures is not only unnecessary, but also unconstitutional.”

Horne's press release says: "Attorney General Tom Horne today filed lawsuit against the federal government for an injunction and a declaratory judgment that the portion of the Voting Rights Act requiring Arizona to pre-clear all voting changes with the Justice Department are unconstitutional..."

The filing itself says, "The State of Arizona, through undersigned counsel, brings this civil action for declaratory judgment that §§ 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended in 2006 (the "VRA" or the "Act") are unconstitutional..."

Horne filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., and asked for a hearing before a three-judge panel. The lawsuit asks the court to either eliminate the original criteria for scrutiny as well as the pre-approval requirement or at least exempt Arizona from the requirement.

The pre-clearance rule, included in Section 5 of the VRA, which has been reviewed by the Supreme Court as recently as two years ago, mandates that certain state, county and municipal jurisdictions with a history of racial problems must obtain a review and pre-clearance by the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) on any proposed changes in voting laws. The main reason for the DOJ pre-clearance requirement is to insure that any proposed changes would not "deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group," as guaranteed by the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Texas Cites Bush-Era DOJ Approval Of Voter ID Law In Pre-Clearance Petition

Texas officials cited Pres. Bush's Justice Department's approval of Georgia's voter photo ID law as a reason for the Obama Administration's Department of Justice (DOJ) to pre-clear the state's new photo ID law.

Gov. Rick Perry, now in the running for the Republican presidential nomination, signed Texas' voter photo ID bill into law in May. Perry had designated the measure as an "emergency item," despite a lack of evidence that voter impersonation fraud, that the law purports to prevent, is a major problem. The new Texas law requires voters show one of five forms of unexpired ID when they go to vote: a drivers license, military ID, a passport, a concealed handgun license or a voter ID card the state provides for free.

The bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures reports that altogether this year, 20 states which did not have voter ID laws and 14 states that already had non-photo ID laws have considered legislation requiring citizens have a photo ID to vote.

Of those 34 states which considered voter ID legislation, seven of them enacted laws prescribing a very limited selection of dated and unexpired government issues photo ID cards as acceptable for voting: Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. All must receive pre-clearance from the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division before the laws can be enforced. An estimated one million voting age U.S. citizens in Texas do not have any one of the prescribed unexpired government issues photo ID cards.

Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade wrote a letter to the chief of the US Dept. of Justice Civil Rights Division's voting section in July seeking pre-clearance of the state's new voter photo ID law, as required by section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

Andrade called the Texas law "remarkably similar" to Georgia's pre-cleared voter ID law. "In fact, DOJ pre-cleared Georgia's original photo-identification law even before Georgia enacted its free ID provision and its most recent extensive voter education mandate, which Georgia added in a subsequent legislative session."

But the approval of the Georgia voter ID law was done by political officials in the Bush Justice Department over the objection of career employees in the voting section, who had recommended that the law not be approved. Within a year of recommending that Georgia's voter ID law not be pre-cleared, three of the career employees who made the recommendation had either left or were transferred out of the voting section.

"They weren't really interested in investigating Georgia's submission," former DOJ lawyer Toby Moore told TPM back in 2007. "They were mainly interested in assembling evidence to support pre-clearance. Any attempt to bring up counter-evidence to suggest a discriminatory impact was ignored or critiqued. We were told it was our own bias.... Any evidence in support was embraced uncritically."

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division alumni joke it is recovering from post traumatic stress disorder following the politicization of the section that took place during the Bush administration.

"It is evident that the Section, at times at the behest of DOJ's highest ranking officials, prioritized a voter fraud prevention and prosecution agenda designed to suppress minority voter turnout; and decisions on some Section 5 submissions were crafted to serve partisan ends," an Obama-Biden transition team report on the Civil Rights Division found.

The two of the states which passed voter photo ID laws during their 2011 legislative sessions - Texas and South Carolina have have file pre-clearance requests with the DOJ. Both states are trying to convince the Justice Department that their laws don't have the intent or effect of suppressing the minority vote.

"There's a lot of reason to think that voter ID laws, depending on how they're constructed, could have a harmful effect on minority voters," University of Michigan Law School Professor Samuel Bagenstos told TPM. Bagenstos was the number two official in the Civil Rights Division until he returned to Michigan this summer.

The VRA, Bagenstos said, "puts the burden on the state to prove that the change in voting isn't discriminatory in purpose and effect."

Even so, in a 2008 ruling the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter photo identification law, which is very similar to Texas' new voter photo ID law, declaring that a requirement to produce photo identification is not unconstitutional and that the state has a “valid interest” in improving election procedures.

In a 6-to-3 ruling in one of the most awaited election-law cases in years, the court rejected arguments that Indiana’s law imposes unjustified burdens on people who are old, poor or members of minority groups and less likely to have driver’s licenses or other acceptable forms of identification.

So, even if the DOJ does not give its clearance for the new voter photo ID laws in Texas and the other states, the court will altimately give its clearance on appeal.

A Tea Party affiliated group True the Vote held a national convention in Houston last March to actively support restrictive voter photo ID measures.

Obama DOJ Questions South Carolina's New Voter Photo ID Law

In an Aug. 29, 2011 letter, T. Christian Herren, Jr., Chief of the Obama DOJ's Civil Rights Division, not only demanded that South Carolina, within 60 days, provide additional information about its recently enacted polling place photo ID restriction law, but stated that if SC failed to provide a timely "response...the [U.S.] Attorney General may object to the proposed changes consistent with the burden of proof placed upon the submitting authority."

Herren noted that SC has the "burden of demonstrating" that the new polling place photo ID law was neither enacted "for a discriminatory purpose nor will have a retrogressive effect."

SC's Republican Attorney General, Alan Wilson, in an apparent recognition that pre-clearance is likely to be denied, told those in attendance at a GOP fundraiser that he had "no faith" that the DOJ "will do the right thing." He vowed to litigate the matter "up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary."

The ACLU submitted a 15-page letter to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on August 5, 2011 asking that the DOJ to deny South Carolina’s request for pre-clearance of its new polling place photo ID law under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The ACLU letter argues that proponents’ unsubstantiated claims of "voter fraud" were but a pretext for unlawful discrimination and that statistics suggest that the new law would operate as an illegal poll tax, especially for the disproportionate number of African Americans who live below the federal poverty level in the state.

South Carolina's history of voting rights violations require federal oversight of election law changes, including requiring voters to show photo ID.

Sen. Durbin To Chair Hearings On Voter ID Laws

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) will chair a hearing next week examining the rash of voter ID laws passed by state legislatures this year amidst concerns that such laws could suppress Democratic turnout across the country.

Durbin, who chairs the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, announced Friday that the Sept. 8 hearing will feature testimony from Judith Brown Dianis, the co-director of the Advancement Project; Loyola Law School Professor Justin Levittl; and former Bush-era Justice Department official Hans van Spakovsky, who's now with the Heritage Foundation. It's titled "New State Voting Laws - Barriers to the Ballot?"

"These new laws significantly reduce the number of early voting days, require voters to show restrictive forms of photo identification before voting, and make it harder for volunteer organizations to register new voters," Durbin's office said in an announcement. "Supporters of these laws argue that they will reduce the risk of voter fraud. The overwhelming evidence, however, indicates that voter impersonation fraud is virtually non-existent and that these new laws will make it harder for hundreds of thousands of elderly, disabled, minority, young, rural, and low income Americans to exercise their right to vote."

The GOP War on Voting

In a campaign supported by the Koch brothers, Republicans are working to prevent millions of Democrats from voting next year. As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008.

Republicans have long tried to drive Democratic voters away from the polls. "I don't want everybody to vote," the influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1980. "As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." But since the 2010 election, thanks to a conservative advocacy group founded by Weyrich, the GOP's effort to disrupt voting rights has been more widespread and effective than ever. In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process.

Brennan Center for Justice On Voter Photo ID Laws

Brennan Center for Justice

While every voter should demonstrate that she is who she says she is before voting, restrictive documentation requirements are not the answer. Burdensome photo ID or proof of citizenship requirements for voting could block millions of eligible American voters without addressing any real problem.

Although most Americans have government-issued photo ID, studies show that as many as 12% of eligible voters nationwide do not; the percentage is even higher for seniors, people of color, people with disabilities, low-income voters, and students. Many of those citizens find it hard to get such IDs, because the underlying documentation (the ID one needs to get ID) is often difficult to come by. Those difficulties will increase substantially if documentary proof of citizenship is needed to vote or to obtain the identification required to vote.

At the same time, voter ID policies are far more costly to implement than many assume. A recent Brennan Center report provides a comprehensive analysis of jurisprudence on the subject, finding that in order to survive court challenges, restrictive voter ID policies would need to be accompanied by an expansion of access to official photo ID and massive public education campaigns. Depending on the state and the details of the proposed policy, this could also involve the purchase of new equipment, expansion of the locations and working hours of government ID-issuing offices, and the provision of official government photo ID to voters without charging a fee.

Right-Wing Commentator: Poor People Voting Is ‘Un-American’

Raw Story: Many conservatives appear to think badly of poor people, but Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center takes it a step further. According to the title of his latest article for American Thinker, he believes that "registering the poor to vote is un-American."

"Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?" Vadum asks. "Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery."

"Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals," he continues. "It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country-- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote. ... Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor. It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money."

Read the full story @ Raw Story

Political Spending For 2012 Election Year To Be $6 Billion

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Forget the struggling economy. There's one U.S. industry -- Big Politics -- that is looking ahead to a record year in 2012. The U.S. elections will be the most expensive ever, with a total price tag of $6 billion or even more, fueled by millions of dollars in unrestricted donations as Republicans and Democrats vie for control of the White House, Congress and state governments.

Read the full story @ The LA Times

The Growth of Social Media: An Infographic

Say what you will about the tidal wave that is social media: it’s over-hyped, a fad halfway through its 15 minutes of fame, that isn't as effective for influencing and motivating voters as television and print newspapers or old fashioned telephone and door to door canvassing.

But take a look below at the steep curve of the user growth rate in all age ranges and demographics, and the continuing pervasiveness of social networking into every facet of work, play, politics and life in general. It’s hard to argue that social media hasn’t changed forever how we interact and connect with each other. See for yourself: (below the fold - click more)

The U.S. Government Is Not Broke

by Beverly Bandler

To tell Americans that the United States Government is broke, as the Republican Party and some Democratic conservatives do, is not only a lie it is irresponsible and just plain idiotic propaganda. Too many Americans believe this hokum that defies common sense.