US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1440

On November 20 2014 05:08 RCMDVA wrote:
Obama's immigration pre-annoucement sounded like the "executive action" announcement he had after Sandy Hook. And signed the 23 orders that did nothing.

If there was a way to bet the Over/Under on the strength of the immigration executive actions, I'd take the Under.

On November 20 2014 05:08 RCMDVA wrote:
Obama's immigration pre-annoucement sounded like the "executive action" announcement he had after Sandy Hook. And signed the 23 orders that did nothing.

If there was a way to bet the Over/Under on the strength of the immigration executive actions, I'd take the Under.

On November 20 2014 03:07 xDaunt wrote:

Frankly, you're not going to find many conservatives objecting to road and other core infrastructure expansion projects. That's something that large numbers of conservatives will almost always fund. It's always liberals -- particularly green groups -- that get in the way.

EDIT: And I like this movement towards privatizing portions of highways and adding toll lanes in exchange for getting private money to maintain and expand the subject road.

On November 20 2014 05:06 Falling wrote:
I hope the rejection of Keystone will push Canada to think more in terms of refinement rather than pumping crude oil for other people to refine. Even now Chevron in Vancouver hasn't been able to get Kinder-Morgan to give priority in selling oil to them to refine. Kinder-Morgan would much rather sell the crude at $20/ barrel, forcing Chevron to bring in oil by train or truck. We'd get far more jobs refining on our own land, even if they keep bringing American engineers over our own.

On November 20 2014 03:07 xDaunt wrote:

Frankly, you're not going to find many conservatives objecting to road and other core infrastructure expansion projects. That's something that large numbers of conservatives will almost always fund. It's always liberals -- particularly green groups -- that get in the way.

EDIT: And I like this movement towards privatizing portions of highways and adding toll lanes in exchange for getting private money to maintain and expand the subject road.

On November 20 2014 06:47 Sub40APM wrote:

Couple points here.
1) Seems like plenty of Repubican legislatures are fine with starving infra projects on state levels.
2) privatization of roads doesnt seem to be a particularly spectacular success -- the inherent nature of geography makes this area a natural monopoly extravaganza and since users are already paying for these roads via gas taxes what does the extra layer of fleecing add? But I am be willing to be convinced otherwise if you have a concrete example.

On November 20 2014 06:42 Sub40APM wrote:

why doesnt Canada have its own refineries anyway? Especially in the West. Precious Western oil has to be shipped to the parasites in the East or the Republicans in the South.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A federal judge in Montana has overturned the state's ban on gay marriage.

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris ruled Wednesday that Montana's constitutional amendment limiting marriage to between a man and a woman violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in September that Idaho and Nevada's bans are unconstitutional. Montana is part of the 9th Circuit, and Morris cited the Circuit Court's opinion in his ruling.

The move comes after four same-sex couples filed a lawsuit in May challenging Montana's gay marriage ban.

On November 20 2014 05:35 aksfjh wrote:

Even if they do nothing, Republicans will still paint it as an outrage, abuse of power, etc.

Congressional Republicans want to make fighting the Environmental Protection Agency's climate regulations and President Obama's greenhouse gas reduction targets a centerpiece of their agenda over next two years -- now that they have wrested control of the Senate as well as House.

But how will the politics of that look 10 years from now?

Several commentators have suggested that climate change could become the gay marriage issue of the future for the GOP. In other words, demographic changes within the Republican Party itself and in society in general could leave GOP leaders looking badly out of step with their own constituency and scrambling to switch sides.

Over the past decade, support for gay marriage has grown within the Republican Party, especially as young Republicans grew older and swelled the ranks of the party. Opposition to gay marriage -- and the party's support for a slew of state ballot initiatives banning gay marriage -- may have looked mainstream with the Republican Party 10 years ago, but now looks outdated. "The ballot initiative wins masked the rapidly rising tide of gay acceptance fueled by younger generations," wrote Bill Scher of the Campaign for America's Future, who likens the issue to climate change.

Will the climate change issue really follow the same course? To test that theory, we looked more closely at the data from a series of global warming questions asked by the Washington Post-ABC News poll back in June. In particular, that poll asked a nationally representative sample of respondents whether they believed the federal government "should or should not limit the release of greenhouse gases from existing power plants in an effort to reduce global warming?"

People overwhelmingly supported this idea of doing so, with 70 percent in favor.

On November 20 2014 07:02 xDaunt wrote:

Gas taxes aren't as efficient as tolls roads for funding a particular road. Also, fuel economy standards have been eating into gas taxes to such an extent that states have been looking for alternatives to them for years. You can certainly argue that toll roads are regressive. However, so long as there is a toll free option, I don't see the problem. I think that the US36 project out here in Colorado is going to be good model for how to do it in the future. In short, a company bought the right to install and operate a toll lane on the highway. However, the company also had to rebuild the highway and many of the overpasses/interchanges as well as assume maintenance obligations on the entire highway. When it's complete, I think that there will be 1 toll lane, 2 non-toll lanes, and a bus lane running in each direction. I don't see any potential monopoly issue there. We'll see how it turns out (it'll be operational next year).

On November 20 2014 13:19 Sub40APM wrote:
Ya that sounds like an interesting test. Just help me understand it, it was a 4 lane road, and they bought the right to basically add an extra lane or was it always an 8 laner? And how long is the lease for? I noticed some of the more egregious-monopolist leases are for pretty insane durations -- 99 years and so on!
I agree that fuel taxes arent perfect but again neither is the sale of monopoly power -- and thats what roads are -- for a prolonged period of time.