Sorry Bert, no I didn’t forget them, how could I they are everywhere. I was talking primarily about the two billion dollar short fall as a result of large manufacturers like aerospace leaving California because of anti business regulations and taxes. There is talk of trying to split California into two, Northern and Southern, I sure hope it can happen, we in the Southeast of California (predominantly conservative) are sick and tired of the looney lefties in this State, the split would start in LA and up.I am sure you heard about the wonderful Chief of Police in LA who changed the rules at sobriety checks. Now only cars belonging to citizens and LEGAL aliens will be impounded if you have no drivers license, ILLEGAL aliens get to go free because it’s not their fault that they can’t get a license, GO Figure. We are not called LA LA LAND for nothing. Please pray for us conservatives on this other planet.

Actually the idea of a national infrastructure bank is a good idea, especially if directly funded without borrowing from the Fed or other countries. It’s the Federal Reserve, traitor corps and fickle investors moving/funds overseas that economically destroyed this country. We need to prevent the markets from being thrashed and prices driven into the stratosphere by mere investor sentiments.

JUST THINK IF THE PRES DID NOT EXTEND GEORGIES BUSH’S WAR AND PUT ALL THAT MONEY INTO THE INFASTRUCTURE we would be sitting pretty with ZERO UNEMPLOYMENT>>>>>>>>>

JUST THINK IF THE PRES DID NOT EXTEND GEORIE BUSH’S WAR AND PUT ALL THAT MONEY INTO THE INFASTRUCTURE we would be sitting pretty with ZERO UNEMPLOYMENT>>>>>>>>>

Who’s pockets is the money really going to end up in?

‘This fund is a response to the lack of money that has been generated by the gas tax’. Well “No s**t Sherlock”, why the hell do they think the gas taxes shrunk, it couldn’t have been that people are buying less gas because of the rise in price, NO that couldn’t be it, I mean I just love paying $3.90 a gal here in LaLa land, has been as high as $4.25. Don’t you just love these lib morons. California is a typical example of what libs can do when they have total control. California used to have a major aerospace industry, literally paying millions of dollars in taxes until almost all of them were driven out by over regulation and even higher taxes, and remember all those high paying jobs went too, so there was another loss of tax revenue. Then all of a sudden our ruling Dems in Sacramento were running around screaming “Where did all our money go”, and now it’s gone from bad to worse, I swear these people couldn’t organize a p**s up in a brewery.

The net worth of households and nonprofit organizations in the United States is published by the Federal Reserve in a report titled, Flow of Funds.[129] At the end of fiscal year 2008, this value was $51.5 trillion.
Before O’ B.

What is the Federal Resurve??? A Credit Union? Where does the Tax Revenue, Meet? Government Finance… Magicians! Slight of hand…
$$$.$$$,$$$,$$$.$$ … Disapear…

Thousands of progressive activists meeting in Vegas
By: CNN Senior Producer Kevin Bohn

Las Vegas, Nevada (CNN) – Organizers of the annual Netroots Nation convention, beginning Thursday, hope what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas.

With the president’s poll numbers hurting and chatter increases about the possibility of major defeats for Democrats in this year’s mid-term elections, sponsors of the fifth conference hope the ideas and techniques that emerge from the participants will help propel the progressive agenda and spur action by the more than 2,200 progressive activists participating. It is billed as the largest gathering of the Democratic base in advance of the November election.

While the president still has an over 80 percent approval rating among Democrats, it has slipped a bit. As for the Democrats running this year, they are facing a large enthusiasm gap. Only 32 percent of Democrats said they were extremely or very enthusiastic about voting this year compared to 54 percent of Republicans, according to a May 21-23 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll.

Some 80 groups and organizations, many of them key constiuencies of the liberal wing of the Democratic party, are sponsoring NetRoots, including the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME, MoveOn.Org as well as the Democratic National Committee’s Organizing For America wing.

There are over 150 different panels during the four-day event, ranging from voter contact: warming up the cold call; to channeling the power of jobs, populism and the angry voter; to how to respond to attacks on community organizers. Those sessions include a wide variety of activists, Democratic Party leaders, officeholders and candidates.

The convention occurs at a time when some in the progressive community are disappointed in the Obama Administration for not pushing harder for more of their agenda. Specifically they point to the exclusion of the public option in the health care overhaul and some of the nation’s biggest banks were not broken up in the financial overhaul package just signed by the president. Other attendees however have blamed Congress for blocking some of those actions, especially in the Senate through the use of the filibuster, and say that is why more Democrats need to be elected.

How to shrink that gap will be one of the key topics among attendees. Among the major speakers at the convention are House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Al Franken and Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer. Also speaking at a seminar is Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the congressional panel that oversees the government’s bailout programs. Several progressive groups are mounting a petition to encourage the president to select her as the first head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is part of the newly signed financial reform law. She has ruffled some in the administration for being too vocal in her actions.

Also present will be a large group of progressive bloggers. The convention, formerly known as Yearly Kos, first began with a technology and blogging emphasis as activists increasingly gathered on line to influence government action. Now it has morphed into a more general gathering for the wide range of progressive interests and organizations as well as those who want to use new media to communicate. Several of the panels emphasize that topic, including using new media to break through barriers, online to offline engagement and extending our reach: new tools for online progressives.
One interesting attendee is Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former Republican member of Congress. He is participating in a panel entitled Bikes, trains, stimulus and the Obama Cabinet’s biggest surprise.

Meanwhile, about 1,000 conservatives will also gather in Las Vegas this weekend in a convention to counter NetRoots. On Friday and Saturday RightOnLine, sponsored by the group Americans for Prosperity Foundation, will feature Nevada Republican Senatorial candidate Sharron Angle, Republican Reps. Mike Pence and Michelle Bachmann and several conservative radio talk show hosts. As is true with NetRoots, sponsors of the conservative version aim to teach attendees how to become more effecitve in online activisim and with new media.

The first simulous was supposed to have been to put people to work on road and infrastructure projects. What happened to all that money O.? Didn’t go for bridges and infrastructure did it?
Now you are trying to pull the same peice of wool over our eyes again?
And, just where are you going to get this money? Oh yes, print and borrow. We are now over 16 trillion dollars in debt with a trillion dollars or more deficet. AND YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE MOENY!
I bet you never got a spanking when you were young did you. You know how i know that? Because you still keep making the same mistakes over and over again. And constantly blame everyone for your own failures.

As a leader, Obama is hopelessly stupid and uninspired. As a conniver, he is astute. Therefore, I denounce any and all of his schemes. I am all for small, limited Federal government. Let the localities take care of infrastructure, not DC. Every Federal govt. boondoggle serves the Power Elite, not the average person. Look at the huge salaries the bosses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got. Obama is drowning in failures; lets make sure he can’t get any air!!!

As Alex and mar pointed out, we don’t have the money to capitalize this proposed “bank.” Besides that, the track record of Federal Corporations has been dismal. Every one of them has created distortions in the market that either ran up costs for everyone (Federal Reserve, Federal Student Loan Corporation) or crashed the market (“Fannie Mae” and “Freddie Mac”).

Mr. Obama has not explained how this “bank” would be an improvement over the private market for state highway construction bonds – probably because he cannot.

If states, counties and cities fail to allocate funds for basic maintenance and replacement, why should the Federal government force people from other states to pay for their shortsightedness? Eddie47d uses his home state as an example of inadequate infrastructure funding. To him I say, it’s not my fault Colorado is so inefficient. If Colorado doesn’t have the traffic or population to fund its existing highways, maybe it has more highways and bridges than it needs. The state should consider downgrading the capacity of or closing some of its less-traveled roads.

There is an old federal law on the books that prohibits recipients of federal highway funds from requiring a long-term warranty on contractor work (Democrats passed it to ensure contractors and their labor unions get repeat business). Even the Swedes and Norwegians are smarter than that. We can do a lot more good by repealing that regulation than by blowing more funny money over the bridges. When states can demand long-term warranties, private contractors will have the incentive to develop more durable infrastructure designs and construction methods. Until that happens, the lowest bidders will keep doing things the same old way, and we’ll still be behind on infrastructure upkeep.

Let us hope it does not happen. Totally unnecessary and another problem.

Has anyone looked at your local infrastructure lately?

Does it need fixing?

Well, the railroads do. Back in the earl 70s, the government stepped in to rebuilt the rail lines to the tune of several billion. The railroads immediately stopped maintaining their rail lines. No need to spend that money if the government does it, is there? However, I’m not really interested in increasing their profits.

But the highways? If you look at the main highways such as interstates and regional highways there is little or no problem. All are kept in good shape. Local streets can be bad but they wouldn’t be fixed with this money.

The whole thing is meant to simply provide the country with more highways so the military can move faster. We don’t really need this.

All politicians are the blame. But this administration went over board. All they do is spend. When will they listen to the American people

It sounds like just another bookkeeping trick to facilitlate more expenses being kept off-budget and otherwise deceiving the public on just how wasteful government is.

I knew this P.O.S muslim would BLOW millions more of our money on the unions as soon as he got his wish of the debt ceiling being raised.

First and foremost, no private company is going to be interested in borrowing money from the government to build or repair infrastructure when there is no lasting profit or productivity in doing so. Infrastructure doesn’t generate revenue. I can’t imagine a single entrepreneur being interested in such an alleged business venture.

Second … where is the money to “loan” to the entrepreneurs going to come from? News flash … the country is broke and functioning at a deficit.

Third … there would be enough money to develop or repair infrastructure if the tax revenue that is already coming in were not being sent back out in foreign aid, occupation of foreign countries, maintaining a standing army, providing extended unemployment benefits, and funding several dozen new agencies or committees. The problem is that the government has fine wine taste on a beer budget. They want to throw money at everything that comes across their plate, but there’s not enough to go around.

Fourth … infrastructure spending will lead to exacerbated unemployment and a recession. You can’t interfere with the natural order of things without causing ripples somewhere else.
One of the biggest chunks of that stimulus package went to government projects. It’s like Keynes himself came back from the grave shouting, “fill the gap.” It has his Consumption Function and Multiplier written all over it. If you put government borrowed money into public works projects, the theory, according to Keynesian economics, is that it provides employment and wages. Those wages are then put to consumption spending, which stimulates other aspects of the economy, such as shoe sales, or cucumbers, or what have you. But due to the horrible thrifts out there who save their money instead of spending it for the common good, we are left with gaps between the increase in money wages and the amount spent on consumption. That gap has to be filled through government spending in order to keep the flow of spending moving forward.
This is hogwash. The problem is that the government money is being spent on things that are not necessarily needed. If entrepreneurialism has shown us anything, it’s that where a need exists, someone is always ready to profit from it. If a park needed to be built (i.e. if there was an actual community demand for such a thing), an entrepreneur would capitalize on it if there is a profit to be made.
When projects are initiated by the government that do not yield a profit or some form of continuing production, the result is employment, followed by recession. A recession that is the result of malinvestment. If you commission the building of a bridge, for example, it will result in at least temporary employment. That employment will pay money wages to the workers who will spend that money in the local bar, at the hardware store, the grocery store, etc. The recipients of that consumption spending will spend their earnings on their own consumption needs, and the recipients of those consumption expenditures will spend according to their needs, and so on. But when the bridge is done being built, the party stops. Unless the bridge in its completed form is going to continue to employ those same workers, or will somehow create production in another form by its utility, its usefulness has just come to an end.
But the repercussions are a little deeper than that. The businesses that hired workers, increased stock, and otherwise spent money due to the increase in demand caused by the consumption spending of the bridge workers, will suddenly find themselves with a loss of expected revenue. They may default on debts they might never have taken on. They may find themselves with consumable goods that they can’t sell because they no longer have a ready market for them. They’ll have employees they can no longer afford to pay. So the bridge got built. Some people were employed. And when the bridge was finished, it resulted in worse unemployment than existed before the bridge project, recession on at least a local level if not worse, financial hardship for the local economy, reduced state tax revenues, reduced federal tax revenues, increased unemployment benefit pay outs, and a number of other things.

But at least you got a new bridge that people can drive across that doesn’t generate a dime of revenue to pay for itself or to continue employment for those who built it and “stimulated” the economy. Great way to malinvest!

Eddie47 you only mentioned the federal tax, most states have fuel taxes and charge for over-weight and over-sized loads using the roads as well. Penna. has over 7 million cars (at $36 each is 252 million dollars) and just as many trucks (with much higher fees) and other vehicles. How often do we see 4-5 guys on a road project when 2 or 3 could get the job done if they actually worked? And of course they are all public unions, so we know what that means. I recently passed a street storm water inlet replacement project on my way to/from work. It took the street department a week to do what a contractor would have dome in a day and a half (I know because I do that type of work!) I’m all for fixing and maintaining our infrastructures, but let’s examine the process, both funding and execution, before wasting more tax money on another bureaucratic slush fund that only benefits a few politically connected.

America’s infrastructure should be a top priority. If it wasn’t for the Stimulus money I doubt if even those projects would have gotten off the ground.We have 121 bridges in Colorado that are in serious need of repair. Only 6 have been completed and 18 are being worked on. The rest will have to wait which means other bridges will be added to the list as time goes on. Why some folks insist that they can ignore repairs even while knowing some will fail if this continues isn’t the smartest thing to come out of the mouths of those who put off the problems. Maybe some of you really do want this country to shut down and cripple itself. As I stated yesterday the Federal gas tax is only $.18 per gallon and hasn’t gone up in a couple of decades. We are regressing as a nation and no longer have the ability to pay for needed repairs. We are penny wise and pound foolish.

I thought the fuel taxes, road use taxes/permits and vehicle license fees were to be used to maintain our roads and bridges? Where has that money been siphoned off to?

We don’t need no more stinking government. What we do need is to clean up the mess and do away with all the departments in government that are not backed up by the Constitution. God, can we make it to 2012? I have never been soooooo tired to listening to the most progressive liar in the world. You cannot spend your way to prosperity and that is a proven fact…but this guy still cannot see that government is not the answer to the problems…government is the problem.

Can you just say : SLUSH FUND

How about we just tell Warren Buffett to put HIS money where HIS mouth is? Nawwww, we’ll just pi$$ away more money creating another f-ing government bureaucracy. Oh joy!

Just what we need another government agency with unlimited supervision to spend more money. Can you say NO!