[Azred]

Originally Posted by Timber Loftis Oh, to dream. Register Repug like I did and champion Ron Paul, it's the most viable option I see for getting there. But... and this is important... ■■■■ the teabaggers, they're not real conservatives, and they're not Ron Paul. They're establishment Repug shills.

Originally Posted by Timber Loftis Check this out, Felix (and others) -- noting that it's a bit dated: http://www.crowell.com/documents/fun...-briefings.pdf Notably, after the recent NYC and LA (remember the "Carmageddon?") projects to fix some big thru-highway problems (also, byline credit to Boston's "Big Dig", but I still can't find I-95 going North out of the city), the most silliest and dangerous traffic blockage in the nation is the interstate interchange 4 blocks from my house. And, with 1 million more cars hitting the roadway in Chicago over the next 10 years, it only promises to get worse. Falling bridges are worse, but even our stupid Gummint realizes the roadway clogs are a significant dent on our economy -- which is much of the reason why open-road tolling has been invented and implemented (somewhat). Don't get me wrong: open road tolling is tons better than what used to be, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. The doc I linked estimates about 1.5 T needed in infrastructure fixes, but I'd say the real number is closer to $2T. That's a lot of shovel-ready jobs begging to be done. It's employment, it's people with money to fuel economic recovery. In short, it's a start, and it's the kind of start that got us out of the Great Depression. Say what you will about FDR and his fallacies, but Hoover before him failed to address recession appropriately, and it was much the same we see as now. I'm with Warren Buffet in the basic notion we have to tax the rich more -- they've enjoyed 20+ years of incredibly low taxes, and trickle-down has not occurred. But, steadying the tax structure is not enough; we have to get government buying into the basic market externalities again -- such as roads, which any economic scholar knows is the textbook definition of a market externality. If we can't get people in office who will get this stuff done, there's really not much hope. We have to spend on the basic shit, scrap the BS, lower taxes on the barely-existent middle class, raise them a bit on the rich, and get back to working like a business and not like Nepotism-opoly.

hrm...how fascinating. We are on exactly the same page here.

I have said before that if the government were going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars they might as well spend it on something that needs the attention like the infrastructure. I have also been a Ron Paul supporter for several years--he really is the best choice.