Conservative pollster Frank Luntz takes to the pages of the L.A. Times to share the news that everyone loves infrastructure:
Last month, I conducted a national survey of 800 registered voters on their attitudes toward infrastructure investment ...
The survey’s findings were unlike any other issue I have polled in more than a decade. Iraq, healthcare, taxes, education—they all predictably divide and polarize Americans into political camps. Not infrastructure.
Consider this: A near unanimous 94% of Americans are concerned about our nation’s infrastructure. And this concern cuts across all regions of the country and across urban, suburban and rural communities.
This demonstrates yet another reason why Obama’s attempt to appease conservatives by bumping transit infrastructure investments to make room for tax cuts is pointless. The people want infrastructure, they want stimulus, and those two happen to be the same thing, so who gives a f*ck what Republicans want?
Nate Silver follows up with this excellent point:
I’m not sure why Obama isn’t doing more to highlight the green portions of the stimulus bill. The public seems to tolerate the spending on bridges and highways—but they also see it, perhaps not wholly improperly, as make-work. The long-run benefits of the alternative energy programs, on the other hand, are far more intuitively appealing. If the central critique of the stimulus is that the debt we’re creating will be burdensome to future generations, that concern could be mitigated if the spending in question is portrayed as a down payment made on behalf of those future generations toward cleaning up the environment and mitigating dependence on fossil fuels. It also provides for some sense of purpose to the stimulus: we’ll come out of this, Obama can say, with the greenest, most energy-independent major industrial economy in the world, etc. etc.
Exactly. I really don’t see why Obama has to trim his sails one bit on this stuff. It’s overwhelmingly popular and substantively correct policy, a combo that doesn’t come along very often.
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Comments
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JMG Posted 7:56 am
27 Jan 2009
http://is.gd/hrSX
You have to give the GOP credit -- when they get their guy in through a Supreme Court putsch, they govern like they got a 50-state sweep.
And when the Dems get someone in, they demand --- AND GET!!! --- endless concessions from spineless Dems eager to appear "bipartisan." Dump mass transit to fund more tax cuts, slash Amtrak funding, etc. etc. etc.
Similarly, Max Baucus, US Senator from InsuranceLandistan says that everything is on the table for health care reform -- except single-payer:
THE SENATOR WHO WANTS TO KILL GOOD HEALTHCARE POLICY
Single Payer News - Montana Senator Max Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has said that in writing his new healthcare legislation "everything is on the table" except single payer
After Baucus ruled single payer "off the table" in his search for an "American" solution to the healthcare crisis, Montana's newspapers have carried several articles calling for Senator Baucus to put single payer back on the table.
Writing in "The Great Falls Tribune" under the headline "Tell Sen. Baucus Single-payer Should Be On the Table," Gene Fenderson, who served for twenty-five years as a union trustee of a Taft-Hartley joint healthcare fund, wrote: "I maintain that a single-payer system must be on the table because it can help save our present and future economic well being as a state and nation." Fenderson criticized the Baucus plan directly saying: "Unfortunately, the Baucus plan simply adds even more layers of confusion to this hodgepodge, which is already driving costs up and up for all Americans. We can do better. We must do better. That is why a single-payer system must be on the table."
A second article, in the Helena Independent Record, reported on results of meetings held throughout Montana at the urging of President Obama's healthcare transition team. The meetings were to report to the transition team what ordinary citizens think about healthcare reform.
"The consensus of (our group) was that we did not see a lot of change coming unless we went to a single-payer, universal health system,'' said Deborah Hanson of Miles City, who organized a meeting of local citizens at the behest of Obama's transition team. "That was sort of a general consensus - knowing, of course, that may not happen.''
"The Miles City meeting, held Dec. 21 at Hanson's home, was one of several in Montana and thousands held across the nation during the last two weeks of December."
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Senator Baucus was attending a lavish pre-inaugural ball at a posh nightclub where he told Brian Ross of ABC News that "lobbyists just want what's best for America." Baucus also had praise for the drug, insurance and other lobbyists who paid for the party, saying: "They really care about our country."
The 5% Project
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
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Jon Rynn Posted 8:19 am
27 Jan 2009
So Karp documented how, throughout the decades, the Democrats have thrown away opportunity after opportunity (I mean, this goes back to Woodrow Wilson screwing the Progressives), the main modus operandi being that "they won't let us do it", until the 1960s that "they" being the Southern Democrats, who of course were way too conservative.
However, ironically, there is no conservative southern wing anymore so....they have to say "the republicans won't let us do it". Whoa to the Democrats if they get a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in 2010...ooops, I've gone into Karp-cynical mode, sorry.
Anyway, the only thing the works is massive grassroots pressure, is the moral of his stories.
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Pompey Road Posted 10:22 am
27 Jan 2009
Estimated to go to 5 Billion this year and what adds insult to injury is a large part of that lobby money will come from the bailout and economic recovery money. The chicken S*#t corporations that got the money will use some of it for corporate lawyers to sue EPA over the new mileage and pollution standards, you know the one that Bush said no to and Obama just threw back to EPA. The corporate lobby and lawyers will get their share. Was this to be part of the 3 million jobs saved or created?
Yes, everybody loves the bailout and the economic recovery money!
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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Backcut Posted 10:31 am
27 Jan 2009
http://westinstenv.org/news/2009/01/26/senators-support-l ...
Also, I want to see the land swap of private clearcuts for pristene Forest Service land dropped from the Stimulus package. Ski resort development on Mount Hood isn't a good idea, especially with a warming environment.
Scenic pics at http://Lhfotoware.blogspot.com
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Backcut Posted 10:34 am
27 Jan 2009
Scenic pics at http://Lhfotoware.blogspot.com
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JMG Posted 2:28 pm
27 Jan 2009
The 5% Project
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
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