How do you account for an increase in cars each year. According to the Federal Highway Administration, the number of motor vehicles has increased 3.69 million per year since 1960. In 2001, 38.3% of cars are older than 10 years, 22.3% between 7 and 10 years, 25.8% between 3 and 6 years and the remainder, 13.5% less than 2 years old. This same study found 60.6% were older than 7 years in 2001.

The refinery being shut down, was opened in 1902. In 1902, crude oil was still be pumped out of the ground in western Pennsylvania and other areas close to the refinery. The refinery is located in downtown Philadelphia, near the airport. It has lost money in 8 out of the last 10 quarters, for a total lose of $772 million since 2009. How much do you think it would cost to bring that refinery up to todays standards? Don't you think it would be less expensive to build a new refinery on the Gulf coast somewhere, closer to the supply of crude? Plus, most if not all of the southern states are right to work states. The Philadelphia employs union workers. I don't believe demand has anything to do with shutting down the refinery. It's all about dollars.

I voted yes, but fear the opposite is true. This country is too much in the grip of the MIC.

If infrastructure is outlawed; then only outlaws will have infrastructure!!!

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FEAR AND LOWERED EXPECTATIONS

Well, we got by a 9/11 and nothing happened even though President Obama didn't even make it off the stage after his jobs speech without getting hit with a running banner that warned of another attack. The fear machine gets bigger every year. My subject today is the question of why we are not marching in the streets. Economic conditions are worse than the 60s when we hit the streets hard. Why so little direct action?

First of all, people are marching. The media doesn't let you see it. But there is a bigger problem. The right wing think tanks know their psychology now. I was an undergraduate psychology major. I loved social psychology. I recently read up on the psychology of advertising and there it was. The advertising folks ate that stuff up and perfected it. They use it to sell us everything now including conservative politics. THE REASON WE ARE NOT IN THE STREETS IS BECAUSE OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FEAR AND LOWERED EXPECTATIONS. Now before I do this I must admit that I'm doing it myself right now. “Be afraid of the fear mongers.”

I'll try to remember that as I explain.

Humans have evolved socially and intellectually so fast that we have outrun our nervous systems. We still run on a fight or flight autonomic nervous system. We scare easy. They keep us out of the streets by feeding us fear. Look at the program guide on your TV. I'll do it right now. Let's see what's on.

My favorite example is the history channel. This is the History Channel International. I wish they would do a real history channel. VANISHINGS, A plane vanishes without a trace over the desert. HISTORY'S MYSTERIES, The Bible code predicts Armageddon. CLASH OF WARRIORS. A WWII reminder that we fight GOOD wars. ANCIENT ALMANAC, The biblical story of creation. The story of creationism. HAUNTED HISTORY, History of ghosts in San Francisco. You know what I mean. Look at all the shows. Earthquake, flood, hurricane, nuclear meltdown, asteroid heading for earth, UFOs, terrorism, poison food, epidemics, and my favorite: financial meltdown.

Listen to the news bites as they go by. “The economy” is always bad and getting worse. Think back over decades. When was the last time you heard on the news that the economy was great? You never do because thy don't want you to ask for a raise. Even during Clinton when things were super good all you heard was that it's all going to explode any minute now. When the Berlin wall fell and we started talking about a peace dividend the republicans had a real problem. With no more evil empire to keep us sacrificing for the cold war maybe we can get a raise, we thought. Bush gave the money to the rich, started new wars, and declared us broke again.

One more thing about fear before I talk about lowered expectations. The left does it too. I turn on Free Speech TV and what do I get but more fear. The CIA will be water-boarding us all soon. The banks are taking our homes. The right wing spin machine loves this. When you show a story about how a woman got fired for joining a union people become afraid to do that. When you never show a street march where people don't get beat up then people are afraid to march. Enough said. I love Amy Goodman and Free Speech TV.

LOWERED EXPECTATIONS. People who study why and when revolutions happen or don't happen discovered that what trips the switch and sends people into the streets is a large discrepancy between expectations and perceived reality. People need to be shocked by a sudden big downward push of oppression to get pissed enough to march. When they get hit with a downward push, they measure it against their current level of expectations. They feed us a constant stream of bad news and fear to lower our level of expectations. That makes us less likely to fight back.

Watch the media subject selection going by with this idea in mind and test it against what you see. They are always trying to lower your expectation. Even when you think the story is a win for the left, it still scares you and lowers your expectations. Say we see a story where they catch a big republicans running a secret company that tapped our phones and they send his butt to jail. Ten points for the left huh? Think about the effect that has on somebody considering going out on strike, or marching in a peace rally. This person thinks: Oh my God, can they really do that? Are they really that bold? If I march tomorrow, they could take my picture and call my boss and get me fired. When we see a story about an innocent man who gets picked up by the government, sent to a secret prison and tortured, what effect does that have? Is it really a victory for the left when it gets exposed? One more time. Even if the fear comes from the left it still lowers expectations, and scares people away from taking direct action.

What to do about it. 1. Explain this to people you talk to at the water cooler. Get them to test the idea against what they see going by in the media. 2. Get people to think in terms of the odds that this or that will happen. You can quickly Google search the odds for anything. What are the odds that I will be killed by a terrorist compared to the odds of being hit by lightning. Fear mongering doesn't work on people who can quantify the fear. 3. Raise your expectations. Expect the rich to pay taxes, that we deserve a real social safety net, that wars for empire will be opposed, and that all the things we got from FDR in the New Deal will be preserved and expanded to catch up with the rest of the modern world. Expect a defined benefits pension instead of a 401k. Expect national health care that covers everybody and makes corporate profit on life and death illegal. Expect real campaign finance reform that makes the penalty for bribing a politician greater than a kid selling an ounce of pot.

In short. Turn your level of expectations back up to where it was in the 60's, get pissed, and get out in the streets.

I had to vote yes even though I believe no. We lost touch with our son over 5 years ago now. At that time he had 5 deployments. In 5 additional years we don't know what the real number is. He joined the military in 84 and was in the Rangers for many of those years. I send him emails to his military address, and all we have is they do not bounce. He is 44 now, and at that age it is impossible to push it with contacting the Red Cross or anything. He had a couple of bad experiences, and as difficult as it is to say I don't know if my husband and I can face what he may be going through. His brother works with people who have lived on the street out in Oregon, and his work is almost dovetailing with what these troops are going through. I am 67 and my husband is 71. We think of him every day and are waiting for the day when a response will come back from the message I send out.

Well read, Ursel Twing post. This prevailing attitude is why the infrastructure is crumbling, along with everything with an American label. Maybe Kentucky will get lucky, Mitch McConnel will drive across one of their sorry bridges, and it will fail. Then they can blame it on Obama...........lol.

Thom,

I believe it's Norquist who wants to "starve the beast." When it comes to Reagan, I think the comment should be rephrased: Starve the beast and feed the pigs.

I give up!! What does it say?

Infrastructure Bank: A Bailout By Any Other Name

James E. Miller

// The night after a verbal trashing on his handling of the economy from the GOP presidential debate, President Obama took the stage in a Joint Session of Congress to reveal a new jobs initiative aimed at putting "Americans back to work."

Gee, where have we heard this before?

Included in this jobs plan rests the holy grail of liberal spending: an Infrastructure Bank. According to the teleprompter-in-chief, the Bank will provide "billions" to improve our roads, bridges, ports, and electric grids.

Easy translation: "We are going to throw more money at the economy and hope it works. Please believe in Keynesianism one more time."

In an effort to forget one failed stimulus effort, the President is hoping to co-opt both sides of the political aisle to back him on another government enterprise.

Unlike his effort to bring the unemployment rate down, Obama is succeeding on this front.

Both the AFL-CIO and Chamber of Commerce are backing the Infrastructure Bank. Since construction workers and large financial institutions benefit from this spending, both organizations see a prime opportunity to fill their coffers. And here in lies the true motive of the President's proposal. Like ObamaCare, Stimulus I, "cash for clunkers," and emergency loans to General Motors and Chrysler before it, the Infrastructure Bank is another bailout under the guise of "job creation."

When the financial crisis and Great Recession set in, state and local governments faced large shortfalls in tax revenue. President Obama and the Democrat controlled Congress came to the rescue with billions of direct financial support. With consumption down as many held their cash balances due to an uncertain job market, two of the big three of Detroit rushed to Washington in private jets to grovel for taxpayer money.

Who knew buying United Auto Worker votes cost a measly $80 billion?

The coup de grâce came when rising health care costs posed such a threat to the health care industry that our elected leaders decided to gift us by mandating the purchase of insurance. As former presidential candidate and expert primal screamer Howard Dean explained, "this is an insurance company's dream, this bill (Obamacare)."

Despite the calls of socialism, Obamanomics has always revolved around a collusion of big government and big business. With business reluctant to spend sufficient amounts of money, Obamanomics relies on bureaucrats to allocate capital who have no stake in profit or efficiency. Many times, they have no real experience even running a business. Just take a look at how wonderfully successful Solyndra, Obama's pet "green energy" project, has been with its recent bankruptcy.

Albert Einstein had a word for attempting the same thing over and over again expecting different results. But even insanity doesn't explain this administration's harebrained schemes for economic growth.

With the Infrastructure Bank, President Obama is looking to seduce two interest groups with one $60 billion cocktail. Wall Street will have a new mechanism to feed on taxpayer dollars. As Reuters points out, "private money is interested in being used for loans to infrastructure projects and guaranteed by the federal government and taxpayers. It's almost identical to senior bondholders who loaned money to too-big-to-fail banks. It's the best setup for private money because there is no loss."

Thanks to the Davis-Bacon Act which ensures prevailing wages for federal public works projects, unionized construction workers get to join the party. To wealthy special interests, the Obama administration has become the gift that keeps on giving. In the end costs go up, taxpayers lose out, campaigns are financed, and votes are purchased. Crony capitalism has a name: Barack Obama's presidency.

I think it really exhibited the extent of the problem of a secular government allowing freedom of religion. No religion really condones freedom of religion, it has to be inherently intolerant in order to define its unique path to salvation. And the USA is possibly the most modern laboratory for religious coexistance, and so it shows how deep the problem is for us (USA) and the whole world.

Republicans are the wolves and Democrats are the foxes...both want to eat you. The Republicans are more overt about it but the Democrats are more devious. The solution is not to keep voting for the lesser of two evils....but to vote for a totally different party....if for no other reason but to shake up the "no other choice" mindset and the mindset that who ever gets the major campaign contributions from wealthy donors is likely to win. The lesser of two evils is still an evil. Obama is still evil and he will continue to be evil because he is owned by Wall Street, the banks, and corporations who have "bought" him.

Obama's campaign speech quote:
"The last thing, the last thing we can afford is four more years where no one in Washington is watching anyone in Wall Street...because politicians and lobbyists killed common sense regulations. Those are the theories that got us into this mess. They haven't worked. And it's time for change. And that's why I am running for President."

And so we voted for Obama...and what has he done to re-instill common sense regulations or reign in Wall Street? He hasn't, because Wall Street owns him. Obama will promise you anything but he will still work against your best interests in support of his puppet-masters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljJLy7BM5fs&feature=player_embedded