With 13.1 million Americans waking up every morning with no job to go to, how should we make sense of the three-time Senate “no” vote at the end of 2011 to President Obama’s commonsense, job-creating, infrastructure-improvement bill?  Is there a defensible explanation for this knockdown proudly embraced by every Senate Republican and aided and abetted by two now-retiring senators—one Blue Dog Democrat and one Connecticut Independent?

What could have been

The American Jobs Act (S. 1769) would have provided $50 billion in immediate investment for highways, transit, rail, and aviation.  An additional $10 billion would have been provided as seed money for a newly created National Infrastructure Bank intended to jumpstart private investment in construction.  All was to be responsibly paid for by a scant 0.7 percent surtax on wealthy Americans earning more than $1 million a year. Most importantly, forecasts published by independent agencies indicate that S. 1769 would have boosted non-farm employment to the tune of hundreds of thousands to 1.3 million jobs by the time we’d be ringing in the new year in 2013.

With all those unemployed and under-employed and a crisis of crumbling infrastructure—68,842 deficient bridges alone—it defies logic to justify opposition to a jobs-creating bill of the magnitude of this importance to the country’s middle class as well as to the country’s future competitiveness.  In fact, no one in Congress challenges the need for boosting employment opportunities, nor is there disagreement about the necessity to provide safe, reliable, up-to-date infrastructure that is vital to business expansion.  So why this outcome, which flies in the face of mainstream economic theory?  Did the nays represent an honest disagreement about economics, or was the vote another cruel and cynical slap in the face to the interests of the middle class in an ugly battle for the presidency?

Reagan roots

To explain the vote, think just three destructive words:  “starve the beast.”  Since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have been staunchly loyal to a starve-the-beast strategy that attempts to shrink the role of government, no matter what the economic or social fallout. The strategy is as brilliant as it is cynical: Cut or cut back funding for government programs.  For lack of funds and staff, programs and departments fail to fulfill their missions.  When they fail, make the claim that “government doesn’t work.”

The flip side, of course, is that the needs government services address do not simply fade away.  When government can’t deliver, services get shifted to private businesses that pick up the slack from cash-strapped federal and local agencies, often profiting handsomely.

In this round of the battle, the beast being starved is America’s infrastructure.  And make no mistake about it, the profits generated by bridges, roads, airports, shipping ports, utilities, water supply, and public parking are up for sale to the highest bidders.

First embraced by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, the strategy of putting cash-strapped public assets up for sale or long-term lease led to large-scale privatization in Britain, with other European countries following suit. Not surprisingly, investment bankers in the U.S. took note. Fast forward to 2012, and many of the largest investment firms in the U.S. and abroad now have special departments dedicated solely to identifying and securing privatization of public assets through outright purchase or long-term leasing. More than thirty of the most highly capitalized funds across the globe—including our at-home giants, Goldman-Sachs, Morgan-Stanley, the Carlyle Group, and Citicorp—together wield a whopping $500 billion in assets that are out there trolling for infrastructure profits.

And why not? Infrastructure investment is monopolistic and extremely low risk as competition is limited. The result is a captive customer base with no alternative but to pay up on ever-higher tolls and charges.  Older Americans may remember a time when utilities, such as electric generation and water supply, were owned by local municipalities. In twenty-first-century America, these same utilities are overwhelmingly privately owned.

As bridges, toll roads, water systems, shipping ports, airports, and utilities across the U.S. age and are increasingly in need of a significant infusion of capital for repair and updating, they are being sold or leased to the private sector. Many of these transfers span 75 to 100 years, thereby decreasing public influence and oversight for the long term and raising questions of pricing and adequate delivery of services when and if leases are sold.

Consequences

In many instances, the fallout of privatization hasn’t been pretty. Unexamined rate hikes, questionable maintenance, loss of public oversight (particularly concerning security issues), and revenue loss over the long term have become the norm. For example, in 2006 Republican governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana sealed a deal for a 75-year lease for the Indiana East-West Toll Road with Cintra of Spain and Macquarie of Australia. The $3.8-bilion deal was the largest privatization of a U.S. roadway to date.  The consequences for users of the road, particularly truckers, has been devastating. Prior to privatization, the toll was $14. Five years later, the toll price has skyrocketed to $32.50—a 151% increase.

Not surprisingly, cash-strapped local governments whose share of federal funding has been steadily decreasing are turning in desperation to privatization in order to help retire debt, balance budgets, and prop up desperately needed social programs for, you guessed it, the unemployed and the working poor—the very people who would have benefited from the jobs created by The American Jobs Act.

The post Starving the infrastructure beast: Privatization vs. the American Jobs Act appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Picture this fictional scenario: a telecommunications representative knocks on your door trying to sell you television and internet services. Part of the sales pitch is that the service works only half the time, is subpar when it does work, and forget about customer service. The rep would more than likely get the door shut politely in his/her face. Who would knowingly spend hard-earned money on such a shoddy service? What kind of salesperson makes such a pitch?

Consider that career Republicans and their media representatives are constantly beating the bad-government drum. “You want the government running your health care?” they scoff. “Government can’t do anything right,” the pundits joke. Now consider that they are the government. And they want your campaign contribution dollars so that they can continue purposely running the government poorly, self-fulfilling every bad government prophesy ever told.

This Hitchcock-like universe is the one we currently live in, according to retired career Republican Mike Lofgren who says of the Republican agenda:

Far from being a rarity, virtually every 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.

When Republicans win elections, they consider themselves victorious in some fictitious war against big government. This, even though they spend most of their time in office throwing wrenches into government cogs and the rest of the time making government bigger in individual lives–or non-existent where it is vital.

Lofgren summarizes GOP logic:

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.

And while we bemoan the failure of the mainstream media to “catch on” to these self-incriminations, they are doing the same thing. In their case, they are considered successful failures due to high viewer turn-out. Fox consistently wins the ratings war though they are arguably the least trustworthy (and most biased) source of news and information in the mainstream media lineup.

The talking heads on Fox regularly warn viewers about the so-called liberal bias in mainstream media while they are so obviously being biased in the other direction…and part of the mainstream media they pretend to reject. They perpetuate the GOP stratagem that both parties are equally awful, that the only good government is an invisible, unheard, and benevolent government.

The Republicans, as well as their corporate and media cohorts, have successfully violated information security. This breathtaking hypocrisy has so permeated the political landscape that some voters either fail to see it for what it is or dismiss it as part and parcel of the system. People are now quick to assure others that they don’t watch cable news or that they think “both parties” stink. They have bought the Republican snake oil and thirstily drank it down.

Mike Lofgren calls these folks “low-information voters”:

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).

Good news for progressives

Republicans are great at convincing people to vote against their self-interests and that free market money-handlers have the best interests of this nation well in hand. Lofgren explains how they accomplish it and in doing so offers the only solid piece of advice in his exposé:

How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what? – can anyone even remember it? No wonder the per jorative “Obamacare” won out. Contrast that with the Republicans’ Patriot Act. You’re a patriot, aren’t you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is supposed to be? Why didn’t the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep pounding on that theme?

Language is a powerful political tool and we are finally getting it. President Obama named his 2011 jobs bill the “American Jobs Act” and polls show enormous public support for it. The phrase “earned benefits” instead of “entitlements” is getting a lot of play with online media in light of Rick Perry’s attacks on Social Security. And Stephen Colbert satirizes the use of language to manipulate voters by hiring Frank Luntz to sell his Super Pac to the public.

While we [liberals] generally oppose the use of slogans and catch phrases as condescending “dummy-speak”, members of the GOP are using them to evade real answers and lie. Sometimes we are loath to call a good idea a good idea because it is being used in unethical ways. Understood. Lofgren boldly explains why this approach isn’t working for us and how we can harness the power of good ideas–in an honest and positive way–to accomplish great things. I agree. I think the President does too.

The post Powering up progressive political language appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s already being picked apart, peeled off, stripped down and pooh-poohed by Congressional Republicans, but President Obama’s job-creation plan still is seen as more workable than anything offered by Republicans so far. That’s the overall finding of a poll conducted recently by National Journal.

The overall margin of approval is slim—37 percent favor the President’s plan, to 35 percent for ideas proposed by Congressional Republicans and presidential candidates. And many have doubts that any of the competing ideas will work. According to National Journal:

The poll suggests that Americans remain unconvinced that either party’s agenda can significantly dent the nation’s longest period of sustained unemployment since the Depression. The share of Americans who said that Obama’s policies have compounded economic difficulties was nearly double the portion who said he has improved conditions. And just one-in-six said they expected the jobs plan he sent to Congress will significantly reduce unemployment. Yet, nearly half of those surveyed thought his plan would help somewhat, and the president still held a 37 percent to 35 percent advantage over congressional Republicans when respondents were asked whom they trusted more to revive the economy.

The proposal survey respondents like most was President Obama’s plan to reduce taxes for employers who hire new workers or give current workers a raise. Seventy-five percent said that this idea would be either highly or somewhat effective in creating new jobs. The President’s proposal to provide funds to prevent layoffs of teachers and first responders was the next most favored idea, with a 70 percent favorable rating.

The Republican proposal most favored by survey respondents was to pass a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget and limit spending as a share of the economy. That idea received a 67 percent favorable rating.

[Personal interjection: Have Republicans actually offered a job-creation program other than “cut taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations, and pray that the money will magically trickle down to the rest of us and somehow create jobs?”]

Anyway, National Journal offers a handy chart that summarizes the questions and findings of the survey, where you can draw your own conclusions.

The post Survey says: Obama’s economic plan is better than GOP’s appeared first on Occasional Planet.