Why do Republicans really oppose infrastructure spending?

[Scuba]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/15/1383149/-Why-do-Republicans-really-oppose-infrastructure-spending

2. Privatizing the nation's infrastructure: This is the big kahuna that the press generally feels uncomfortable reporting. Republicans - at the behest of their mega-bank/private equity patrons - really, deeply want to privatize the nation's infrastructure and turn such public resources into privately owned, profit centers. More than anything else, this privatization fetish explains Republicans' efforts to gut and discredit public infrastructure, and it runs the gamut from disastrous instances of privatizing private parking meters to plans to privatize the federal highway system.

...

3. Private Activity Bonds: This one is a real unreported doozy, and is directly related to both privatization efforts and the Starve the Beast scheme. Known as "Private Activity Bonds," under current law, state and local governments are allowed, effectively, to delegate the ability to issue tax-free bonds to private corporations and investors. As a result, the private investors have the lower borrowing costs associated with government financing and the interest earned on such bonds is tax-free at both the federal and state level. Do you get that? Local governments are financing the efforts to privatize their own public assets and the private equity investors earn tax free profits on their investment. Privatization is not just a golden opportunity, but a tax-payer subsidized, tax-free opportunity - - with no demonstrated public benefit:

...

4. Repeal Labor and Environmental Laws: Finally, Republicans refuse to fund infrastructure spending because the larger goal is to repeal or weaken labor and environmental laws associated with such large scale construction projects. For example, while you may be rightly worried that your commuter bridge is structurally unsound, Republicans are much more concerned with first repealing laws like the Davis-Bacon Act, a 1931 New Deal law which requires payment of the local prevailing wages on all public works projects for laborers and mechanics. Repealing this employment protection law is a much larger Republican priority than repairing any specific bridge or tunnel. As Republican Senator Mike Lee explained the priorities of his "infrastructure proposal":

...

In sum, the question of why we cannot enact needed, common-sense infrastructure spending is truly mystifying . . . so long as we ignore that the Republican party is hyper-partisan, engaged in a destructive Starve the Beast agenda, wants to privatize public infrastructure, promotes an increasing "financialization" of the economy, and is ideologically opposed to labor and environmental laws. Most importantly, all of the above must not be even acknowledged in public reporting on this vital issue. Right?

More at the link.

[Octafish]

1. Chamber of Commerce is still angry about the child labor laws of 1938.

The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto)

The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971

Introduction

In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell “might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice…in behalf of business interests.”

Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.

Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building — a focus we share, though often with sharply contrasting goals.* (See our endnote for more on this.)

So did Powell’s political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment “right” for corporations to influence ballot questions. On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.

CONTINUED...

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

Old news to you. Unknown to 99-percent of Americans.

[Dont call me Shirley]

10. "No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack."

The American economic system is not a free enterprise system. The system Powell speaks of is a copy, an extension of The East India Tea Company system.

My ancestors did not fight in the Revolutionary War so companies could operate like feudal kingdoms.

[MisterP]

14. the goal is to get rid of the whole IDEA of the commons

people LOVE the USPS--and so do FedEx and UPS! that's the PROBLEM, that there's something the government does that people like

again one of the roadblocks to HSR is that it'll be profitable and popular, and that's not what government's "supposed" to be

this setup scratches the itches of both the right-liberts and the megacorps

[One_Life_To_Give]

2. One person to shovel and two people to supervise.

You all know the tired old jokes about Road Construction and Works crews. Largely it stems from a perception that it is not a lack of funds that causes poor infrastructure. But the perception that it's a result of excessive waste in the management and execution of infrastructure projects.

[hughee99]

11. For your run of the mill republican voter

I think this might be a very large factor.

[deutsey]

3. Their god is Moloch

and they don't care how many lives they have to sacrifice and whose future they have to squander to appease him.

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

[Dustlawyer]

4. We have to fight for Publicly Funded Elections! We have to break the ties between business and the

politicians. It's ridiculous that we allow bribery of our politicians, call it what it is!

[bullwinkle428]

5. K&R. And all of this distasteful shit gets COMPLETELY BURIED during the campaign

seasons by the media, who just insist on pushing the meme of "let's see what all the candidates can say in the spirit of bi-partisanship"!

[Scuba]

13. I'm not a grammar Nazi, but I have to correct your spelling ...

It's "buy-partisanship."

[rurallib]

6. 30,000 americans killed by guns a year isn't enough to stir any action

will one infrastructure failure be enough?
do we need more spectacular images like planes falling out of the sky? More bridges collapsing?

Sometimes I think Americans have become so stupefied by all their gizmos and the movie, TV and game graphics that they come to view reality as if it were just more entertainment.

[Dont call me Shirley]

7. Because they are Slumlords. They are not going to invest in that which they are later going to

either sell or turn into big profits.

[L0oniX]

8. DUH! Because they are asscarrots.

[99Forever]

9. They don't, as long as it's...

... done in other countries, by their cronies, at US taxpayers expense.

[world wide wally]

12. Half of the people in this country cannot, or will not, recognize our enemy when they see it

They are destroying our infrastructure, aiding our enemies overseas, poisoning our water , and bankrupting our economy. Then half of us say, "Oh that is wonderful. I am voting for him."

I don't know that the US has much more time to even fake it.

[Jefferson23]

15. Leave no stone left unturned, it's all they know, all they do. n/t

[sadoldgirl]

16. They vote against it, and so later

when complaints come in, they can say:

We told you government does not work!