This afternoon, President Joe Biden signed the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, into law. At a celebratory signing ceremony on the White House lawn, he and several of the lawmakers who worked to pass the measure, Democrats and Republicans both, joined in praising the new law.
Strolling down Memory Lane, screenshots almost 5 years ago.
"How sad it must be-- believing that scientists, scholars, historians, economists and journalists have devoted their entire lives to deceiving you while a reality tv star with decades of fraud and exhaustively documented lying is your only beacon of truth and honesty." Most of today's republicans wouldn't recognize truth and honesty if it bit them in their fat a$$es.
"This really is a BFD!" -Joe Biden. This is the best, most candid, and down right funniest comment I have herd from a public official in decades. It filled me with blue collar hope. Our democracy (okay, we actually live in a constitutional republic - for now) is MUCH safer today than it was on Sunday. That is a large reason why this is such a BFD. What the neo-con(federates) feared the most has come to pass - the passage of a bipartisan bill through the process of hard negotiation. Yippee ki yay! Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. Please, let's work from where we are, progressing toward an ideal, rather than trying to jump right to that ideal.
Another bit of surprising news: "Today the central committee of the Wyoming Republican Party voted 31–29 that it would no longer recognize Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) as a member because of her stand against Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection." 31 to 29. That means the Wyoming Republican central committee is divided almost in half. That was not the case a month ago.
Remember: "It will all be all right in the end. If it is not all right, it is not the end". - The Best Marigold Hotel. :)
Hopefully Democrats will call out every lying hypocrite Republiscum who touts what the infrastructure bill will do for their state, who voted against it. The campaign ads write themselves for those turds.
Over my lifetime, I came to realize that "white privilege" was a long list of economic, social and political benefits that white Americans unknowingly obtained over hundreds of years of sidelining indigenous people, people of color, non-Christians and women.
I am now realizing that this system was actually built and perpetuated by white men able to get away with murder and crimes against the country, like Trump, Bannon, Meadows and Flynn with facilitators like the Trump Republican Party. Until we have justice, law and order protecting every American from these white collar political criminals, there will be no peace or prosperity for most Americans.
The priority now must be voting rights. Republicans know a bona fide majority is beyond their reach and are legislating to make honest election results almost irrelevant. The handful of Republicans who helped pass the infrastructure bill might be smelling something in the political wind that might encourage them to help out with voting rights as well.
While I agree that the Infrastructure legislation is of immense importance, I'm worried that the Social Spending part of the bill was not included, as it should have been and was originally agreed to, but POTUS desperately needed a win, and he got it.
However, for months progressive House legislators have been demanding that both bills become law together, while conservative Democrats preferred separate legislation (why?).
Progressives were and are fearful that the safety-net portion will be whittled down, and I suspect they're right.
Yes, Reagan's neoliberal governing philosophy greatly enhanced the power and wealth of corporations and wealthy individuals, to the point where much of our legislation is practically written by these corporations and the ultra-wealthy, leaving very slim pickings for the average American (as it was designed to do).
And every U.S. president since Reagan (Democrat and Republican) has followed his cruel blueprint.
Biden (to his credit) is attempting to change this script, which is why it was important to progressives that both these bill became law together.
Biden promises the social-spending bill in weeks, let's hope he can keep his promise.
This nation is the wealthiest in the world, perhaps in history, and yet we are light years behind othey major industralized countries when it comes to protecting and supporting the average American.
A "Big Deal" indeed, especially after the crap Ronald Reagan sold to America. Consider Heather's point:
"Since 1981, we have badly underinvested in our infrastructure as we turned to private investment to develop our economy. In order to stimulate that private investment, we have focused on cutting taxes on the wealthy, but the promised investment never materialized. Now our bridges are crumbling, and some of our water pipes are still leaching lead into our drinking water"
Turning to the private sector to manage and care for our infrastructure was a mistake. Expecting a loose confederation of profit-hungry interests to cooperate on what is a service rather than a business interest will not work. Those interests are fundamentally opposed to each other. They will stop cooperating the second they realize that their quarterly numbers will not look good. Despite all the hoopla about how business and government came together when we have been at war, a deeper look reveals that business made sure they got theirs one way or another. Government should never trust its responsibility to serve the public to interests that will demand a return other than the honor of having served the public interest.
Dr. Richardson: In many respects, your November 15th missive captures the two realities happening simultaneously. On one hand, we see the Democrats and a handful of Republicans trying to deal with the issues that exist in people’s lives in the real world. On the other, we see a massive threat to the integrity of American democracy that, since January 6th, is actually getting worse. Consider, for example, what Steve Bannon, let alone much of the Republican Party, would unleash on American politics were the Republicans to retake power. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy already has threatened to punish the 13 Republican House members who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Despite such indisputable disfunction, because I want to end on a partially positive note, I see an opening for Democrats to take on Republicans face to face, demanding they explain not what they oppose but what they are in favor of for their communities. For example, are they for fixing the lead pipes, for building and fixing roads and bridges, for expanding broadband, and so forth? I fear, if Democrats don’t get more aggressive on a host of issues, that yesterday’s signing ceremony could be the last opportunity for any President to stand in front of a bipartisan audience and say this is how Washington should work.
Morning, all!! Morning, Dr. R!! Woohoo...let the spending begin!
So now do we look toward BBB next or The Freedom to Vote Act? Personally, I'm partial to the voting thing because as we all know, if we can't vote how can we act? (Beware: Many double entendres in this video):
AZ Governor Ducey is already thanking his state legislators for doing some things were a part of the infrastructure act. Not federal legislators but state.
And with regards to the unwashed/unshaven guy, sounds like he is threatening people? Why isn’t he in jail?
I just can't help make a side by side comparison of the first year of TFG and Joe Biden. In 2017 the rich got a juicy gift of a tax cut - setting into motion an exploding deficit. The rest of us got bupkis. No, wait. We got the debt so the rich could get richer!
In 2021 our government rescued an economy from the ravages of a pandemic and applied science to slow down the disease's progress - saving hundreds of thousand of lives. And as a Thanksgiving gift, our government just passed a bill to upgrade (salvage!) our nations infrastructure and provide hundreds of thousands of good jobs.
Think about the kids who will be saved from the impacts of lead poisoned water. Think about the kids who will now be able attain a better education because they have a decent internet connection. Think about the kids in the cars that won't plunge into a river as their crumbling bridge collapses.
To think this bill is "communism" is utter insanity. I think those that buy into such self destructive nonsense should get tested - for lead poisoning. Because there is something organically wrong with their brains. Nobody is born that stupid. It takes training or chemicals...or both.
Heather writes: ..........'have attacked any Republican who supported it as “a traitor to our party, a traitor to their voters and a traitor to our donors.”
What is missing in that list? The country. In case there was any doubt in people's minds about what this cabal cares about, this omission should clear things up, pronto. They don't give a husky ***k about the country.
I've just finished reading Evan Osnos's book, "Wildlands", and I cannot praise it enough. It brought these last five years into focus for me in a way that none of the other 'Trump era' books I've read (and I've read the more serious ones), did. Towards the end of the book he talks about revisiting Greenwich, Ct., where he grew up, and talking to some of the Republican residents who sided with Trump. Their reflections made clear that it was all self-interest. Like a CEO I read interviewed years ago, who said he felt no more loyalty to the United States than he did any other country where his company did business, these movers and shakers are so far removed from the every day reality of real people, they live in such a rarified bubble, that they can't even see what their complicity in the Trump take down of America really means.
I'm reminded of the song in in the play, Cabaret, "Money". It's fitting the play takes place in pre-war Berlin.
It appears punk Bannon Is determined to carry on with his creeping -- and creepy -- coup d'etat, and is not shy about announcing this to the world. Why is he not in preventive detention being interrogated instead of holding impromptu press conferences? It seems that as a nation, we lack the survival instinct.
Rupert Murdoch could put a stop to this in a NY minute, just 24 hrs of truth telling would make a huge diff to some half sane people. Instead he is raking in fools money with a big, evil grin and his pathetic ego is as happy as tfg. Just look at the chaos they have brought to the world. Rupert said he got into politics because he wanted world leaders to answer the phone when he called. He hit a jackpot when he rang trump’s number, and we hit the skids…
The Republican boondoggle of 'small government' is in service of the rich. Through deregulation of the industries from which they exploit and extract America's resources to pocket America's wealth and through preferential taxation from which they derive and perpetuate private wealth. From finance to manufacturing, from speculation to production, and from labor to natural materials, from human and natural resources. Through tax laws and tax loop holes, the wealth of the nation is shoveled into the private nosebags and corporate troughs of the privileged. No matter the cost to everyone else, from our most vulnerable neighbors to our fragile planet.
Republican government is unconscionable and unsustainable. And through the inversions and untruths of Republican rhetoric and through the credulity and resentments of the majority of Republican voters, it is undoubtedly popular. Republican lawmakers can 'say no and take the dough' and get re-elected.
During WW ll, while in Congress Harry Truman pushed for strict congressional oversight of unprecedented government spending. After the war, Fred Trump was hauled before Congress as a most egregious example of war time profiteering on government contracts. Think of it. The purpose was to improve the laws and close the loopholes through which low down yellow bellied snakes like Trump had wriggled their way to wealth while Americans were giving their all to defeat racist right wing authoritarianism. Trump also wriggled through loop holes in the relatively progressive tax laws of the Eisenhower era by passing on his wealth to his pit of snakelets.
Let's compare this to Republican lawmakers today, who fought tooth and nail to define 'pass through corporations', such as parts of the Trump real estate empire, as small businesses for the purpose of tax and pandemic relief. Republicans also went to the mats to obstruct Congressional oversight of pandemic spending - while self righteously bellowing about government waste and fraud.
Elected Republican puppets and their paymasters will do everything they can to obstruct government work on infrastructure while abstracting government funds. Republicans (and their fellow travelers and quislings) will resort to every trick in the book and then some new ones to perpetrate their schemes. We know this. The only way to mitigate and/ or prevent this is to secure a solid Democratic majority committed to the Biden Harris Build Back Better platform. The only way is through smart and disciplined election strategy and tactics. Through a summer of volunteering as much as we can for Democratic candidates who have the best chance of winning - with our work. By us putting our lived personal experience in service of our shared goals.
Strolling down Memory Lane, screenshots almost 5 years ago.
"How sad it must be-- believing that scientists, scholars, historians, economists and journalists have devoted their entire lives to deceiving you while a reality tv star with decades of fraud and exhaustively documented lying is your only beacon of truth and honesty." Most of today's republicans wouldn't recognize truth and honesty if it bit them in their fat a$$es.
"This really is a BFD!" -Joe Biden. This is the best, most candid, and down right funniest comment I have herd from a public official in decades. It filled me with blue collar hope. Our democracy (okay, we actually live in a constitutional republic - for now) is MUCH safer today than it was on Sunday. That is a large reason why this is such a BFD. What the neo-con(federates) feared the most has come to pass - the passage of a bipartisan bill through the process of hard negotiation. Yippee ki yay! Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. Please, let's work from where we are, progressing toward an ideal, rather than trying to jump right to that ideal.
Another bit of surprising news: "Today the central committee of the Wyoming Republican Party voted 31–29 that it would no longer recognize Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) as a member because of her stand against Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection." 31 to 29. That means the Wyoming Republican central committee is divided almost in half. That was not the case a month ago.
Remember: "It will all be all right in the end. If it is not all right, it is not the end". - The Best Marigold Hotel. :)
Hopefully Democrats will call out every lying hypocrite Republiscum who touts what the infrastructure bill will do for their state, who voted against it. The campaign ads write themselves for those turds.
Over my lifetime, I came to realize that "white privilege" was a long list of economic, social and political benefits that white Americans unknowingly obtained over hundreds of years of sidelining indigenous people, people of color, non-Christians and women.
I am now realizing that this system was actually built and perpetuated by white men able to get away with murder and crimes against the country, like Trump, Bannon, Meadows and Flynn with facilitators like the Trump Republican Party. Until we have justice, law and order protecting every American from these white collar political criminals, there will be no peace or prosperity for most Americans.
The priority now must be voting rights. Republicans know a bona fide majority is beyond their reach and are legislating to make honest election results almost irrelevant. The handful of Republicans who helped pass the infrastructure bill might be smelling something in the political wind that might encourage them to help out with voting rights as well.
The ‘22 midterm elections loom large. Gigantic.
While I agree that the Infrastructure legislation is of immense importance, I'm worried that the Social Spending part of the bill was not included, as it should have been and was originally agreed to, but POTUS desperately needed a win, and he got it.
However, for months progressive House legislators have been demanding that both bills become law together, while conservative Democrats preferred separate legislation (why?).
Progressives were and are fearful that the safety-net portion will be whittled down, and I suspect they're right.
Yes, Reagan's neoliberal governing philosophy greatly enhanced the power and wealth of corporations and wealthy individuals, to the point where much of our legislation is practically written by these corporations and the ultra-wealthy, leaving very slim pickings for the average American (as it was designed to do).
And every U.S. president since Reagan (Democrat and Republican) has followed his cruel blueprint.
Biden (to his credit) is attempting to change this script, which is why it was important to progressives that both these bill became law together.
Biden promises the social-spending bill in weeks, let's hope he can keep his promise.
This nation is the wealthiest in the world, perhaps in history, and yet we are light years behind othey major industralized countries when it comes to protecting and supporting the average American.
Thanks for your post.
A "Big Deal" indeed, especially after the crap Ronald Reagan sold to America. Consider Heather's point:
"Since 1981, we have badly underinvested in our infrastructure as we turned to private investment to develop our economy. In order to stimulate that private investment, we have focused on cutting taxes on the wealthy, but the promised investment never materialized. Now our bridges are crumbling, and some of our water pipes are still leaching lead into our drinking water"
Turning to the private sector to manage and care for our infrastructure was a mistake. Expecting a loose confederation of profit-hungry interests to cooperate on what is a service rather than a business interest will not work. Those interests are fundamentally opposed to each other. They will stop cooperating the second they realize that their quarterly numbers will not look good. Despite all the hoopla about how business and government came together when we have been at war, a deeper look reveals that business made sure they got theirs one way or another. Government should never trust its responsibility to serve the public to interests that will demand a return other than the honor of having served the public interest.
Dr. Richardson: In many respects, your November 15th missive captures the two realities happening simultaneously. On one hand, we see the Democrats and a handful of Republicans trying to deal with the issues that exist in people’s lives in the real world. On the other, we see a massive threat to the integrity of American democracy that, since January 6th, is actually getting worse. Consider, for example, what Steve Bannon, let alone much of the Republican Party, would unleash on American politics were the Republicans to retake power. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy already has threatened to punish the 13 Republican House members who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Despite such indisputable disfunction, because I want to end on a partially positive note, I see an opening for Democrats to take on Republicans face to face, demanding they explain not what they oppose but what they are in favor of for their communities. For example, are they for fixing the lead pipes, for building and fixing roads and bridges, for expanding broadband, and so forth? I fear, if Democrats don’t get more aggressive on a host of issues, that yesterday’s signing ceremony could be the last opportunity for any President to stand in front of a bipartisan audience and say this is how Washington should work.
Morning, all!! Morning, Dr. R!! Woohoo...let the spending begin!
So now do we look toward BBB next or The Freedom to Vote Act? Personally, I'm partial to the voting thing because as we all know, if we can't vote how can we act? (Beware: Many double entendres in this video):
https://act.represent.us/sign/electiledysfunction/
AZ Governor Ducey is already thanking his state legislators for doing some things were a part of the infrastructure act. Not federal legislators but state.
And with regards to the unwashed/unshaven guy, sounds like he is threatening people? Why isn’t he in jail?
I just can't help make a side by side comparison of the first year of TFG and Joe Biden. In 2017 the rich got a juicy gift of a tax cut - setting into motion an exploding deficit. The rest of us got bupkis. No, wait. We got the debt so the rich could get richer!
In 2021 our government rescued an economy from the ravages of a pandemic and applied science to slow down the disease's progress - saving hundreds of thousand of lives. And as a Thanksgiving gift, our government just passed a bill to upgrade (salvage!) our nations infrastructure and provide hundreds of thousands of good jobs.
Think about the kids who will be saved from the impacts of lead poisoned water. Think about the kids who will now be able attain a better education because they have a decent internet connection. Think about the kids in the cars that won't plunge into a river as their crumbling bridge collapses.
To think this bill is "communism" is utter insanity. I think those that buy into such self destructive nonsense should get tested - for lead poisoning. Because there is something organically wrong with their brains. Nobody is born that stupid. It takes training or chemicals...or both.
Who gave Trump and his minions the right to terrorize this country?
Heather writes: ..........'have attacked any Republican who supported it as “a traitor to our party, a traitor to their voters and a traitor to our donors.”
What is missing in that list? The country. In case there was any doubt in people's minds about what this cabal cares about, this omission should clear things up, pronto. They don't give a husky ***k about the country.
I've just finished reading Evan Osnos's book, "Wildlands", and I cannot praise it enough. It brought these last five years into focus for me in a way that none of the other 'Trump era' books I've read (and I've read the more serious ones), did. Towards the end of the book he talks about revisiting Greenwich, Ct., where he grew up, and talking to some of the Republican residents who sided with Trump. Their reflections made clear that it was all self-interest. Like a CEO I read interviewed years ago, who said he felt no more loyalty to the United States than he did any other country where his company did business, these movers and shakers are so far removed from the every day reality of real people, they live in such a rarified bubble, that they can't even see what their complicity in the Trump take down of America really means.
I'm reminded of the song in in the play, Cabaret, "Money". It's fitting the play takes place in pre-war Berlin.
It appears punk Bannon Is determined to carry on with his creeping -- and creepy -- coup d'etat, and is not shy about announcing this to the world. Why is he not in preventive detention being interrogated instead of holding impromptu press conferences? It seems that as a nation, we lack the survival instinct.
Rupert Murdoch could put a stop to this in a NY minute, just 24 hrs of truth telling would make a huge diff to some half sane people. Instead he is raking in fools money with a big, evil grin and his pathetic ego is as happy as tfg. Just look at the chaos they have brought to the world. Rupert said he got into politics because he wanted world leaders to answer the phone when he called. He hit a jackpot when he rang trump’s number, and we hit the skids…
The Republican boondoggle of 'small government' is in service of the rich. Through deregulation of the industries from which they exploit and extract America's resources to pocket America's wealth and through preferential taxation from which they derive and perpetuate private wealth. From finance to manufacturing, from speculation to production, and from labor to natural materials, from human and natural resources. Through tax laws and tax loop holes, the wealth of the nation is shoveled into the private nosebags and corporate troughs of the privileged. No matter the cost to everyone else, from our most vulnerable neighbors to our fragile planet.
Republican government is unconscionable and unsustainable. And through the inversions and untruths of Republican rhetoric and through the credulity and resentments of the majority of Republican voters, it is undoubtedly popular. Republican lawmakers can 'say no and take the dough' and get re-elected.
During WW ll, while in Congress Harry Truman pushed for strict congressional oversight of unprecedented government spending. After the war, Fred Trump was hauled before Congress as a most egregious example of war time profiteering on government contracts. Think of it. The purpose was to improve the laws and close the loopholes through which low down yellow bellied snakes like Trump had wriggled their way to wealth while Americans were giving their all to defeat racist right wing authoritarianism. Trump also wriggled through loop holes in the relatively progressive tax laws of the Eisenhower era by passing on his wealth to his pit of snakelets.
Let's compare this to Republican lawmakers today, who fought tooth and nail to define 'pass through corporations', such as parts of the Trump real estate empire, as small businesses for the purpose of tax and pandemic relief. Republicans also went to the mats to obstruct Congressional oversight of pandemic spending - while self righteously bellowing about government waste and fraud.
Elected Republican puppets and their paymasters will do everything they can to obstruct government work on infrastructure while abstracting government funds. Republicans (and their fellow travelers and quislings) will resort to every trick in the book and then some new ones to perpetrate their schemes. We know this. The only way to mitigate and/ or prevent this is to secure a solid Democratic majority committed to the Biden Harris Build Back Better platform. The only way is through smart and disciplined election strategy and tactics. Through a summer of volunteering as much as we can for Democratic candidates who have the best chance of winning - with our work. By us putting our lived personal experience in service of our shared goals.