The best way we can use the funds to improve jobs is to repair and build roads, bridges, sewers, electric grid, and dams. Many are on the brink of disaster. I know the stimulus helped greatly improve the roads in Eugene and even build and repair bridges. Oregon still has workers who almost always finish the job early and do a great job.
The Republicans are trying to steal the governorship. They want a recount when the Democrat won by over 10,000 votes in Oregon. It is ironic that the reason when I was a Republican who supported Al Gore because I was worried what Bush would do to the Supreme Court. My worst fears were realized.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has been filibustering for Eight Hours so far. I was going to watch only a few minutes, but was so mesmerized by his speech that I ended up watching for three hours before taking a break. www.c-span.org
He was particularly effective when he talked about letters from his Vermont constituent who live mostly in small towns. Heating oil, gasoline costs, and average $10/hour wages if they have jobs, makes this recession especially worrying for many Americans.
Sanders Filibuster: Part 1
Sanders Filibuster: Part 2
Sanders Filibuster: Available Shortly
Speaker Pelosi Statement on Tax Cuts
Bloomberg: Dems Oppose Obama's Tax-Cut Plan
Sen. Reid tax cut legislation introduced yesterday
WSJ: Senate Unveils Tax Bill's Price Tag
He convinced me that we should all call our senators and House representative to vote against Obama/Republican Deal. Call your senators in your state after you listen to any part of Sanders’ speech and agree with him. www.vote-smart.org and your zip code. With the addition of 4 digit postal code, you can get your representative.
Obama should keep trying to pass the House bill on tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans. Trickle down economics never worked and won’t work this time. How many castles can they buy here? The top percent makes more yearly income the the bottom 90 percent of Americans.
The top 0.24 percent now pay estate taxes because they cannot hide all their net worth. The danger of inherited wealth is that they are and will exert great power in electing senators, representatives, Presidents, and Supreme Courts that support them getting even richer as long as they get some of their offerings.
We already know that the current tax cuts by Bush in place has not resulted in extra spending by the rich. Continuing the tax cuts for the middleclass is very important. The bill on Social Security is based on an idea from Republicans who want to get rid of Social Security.
If Obama going to be another Bill Clinton who sacrificed the working Middleclass with NAFTA and the poor with Welfare Reform and Signed the deregulation bills which led Wall Street crash. Both Clinton and Obama have the weakness of needing the love of their enemies. Funding Social Security cuts with funds from our Treasury can be easily stopped because it will be considered Welfare Payments which it is not now.
During the Bush years the medium income of the middleclass went down $2,000 plus while the top one percent doubled already from a high basis.
Interview with John W. Dean who wrote Broken government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches
… Amazon.com: You describe yourself as a "Goldwater conservative on many issues," but note that conservatives' "fundamentally anti-governmental attitude" can make it hard for them to govern effectively. In other words, if people hate government, why would they be good at it? What do you think are the models of good conservative governance?
Dean: Senator Goldwater said during the 1964 presidential campaign--and I have found him saying the same thing years later in speeches--that when history looked back on his political philosophy that he would be called a liberal. Goldwater conservatism is actually drawn from classic liberalism.
I particularly admire Senator Goldwater's positions on "process" issues, the way he rejected the incivility and intellectual dishonesty that has overpowered conservatism. While he did not like big government--in fact, nobody does and he was merely ahead of his time in raising the issue--he believed that which was essential must function in the best interest of all Americans, not merely Republicans.
He never embraced the Reagan mantra that government is the problem not the solution. I always thought Senator Goldwater's definition of conservatism a good motto for good conservative governance: "a conservative draws on the wisdom and best of the past to apply it to the present and the future."
Today, conservatives are drawing on the worst of the past, not because they are true conservatives; rather they are radicals more interested in power for themselves and other Republicans instead of serving the general public interest.
Jim Kawakami, Dec 10, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com
ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2008) — Political conservatives operate out of a fear of chaos and absence of order while political liberals operate out of a fear of emptiness, a new Northwestern University study finds. … http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080924124549.htm
ScienceDaily (Nov. 2, 2008) — Does your personality influence who you vote for? The short answer is yes, according to John Mayer, professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire. As Americans go to the polls in record numbers to vote for the next U.S. president, some voters will crave social stability and others will crave social change. Liberals and conservatives divide according to these personality preferences … http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081031161623.htm
ScienceDaily (May 18, 2007) — How much money would it take to get you to stick a pin into your palm? How much to stick a pin into the palm of a child you don't know? How much to slap a friend in the face (with his or her permission) as part of a comedy skit? Well, what about slapping you father (with his permission) as part of a skit? How you answer questions such as these may reveal something about your morality, and even your politics--conservatives, for example, tend to care more about issues of hierarchy and respect, while liberals concentrate on caring and fairness. … http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070517142545.htm
ScienceDaily (Dec. 9, 2010) — http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101209074403.htm
… "Getting things done in politics typically depends on competing viewpoints finding common ground," Smith said. "Our research is suggesting that's a lot tougher than it sounds, because the same piece of ground can look very different depending on which ideological hill you view it from." …
It goes without saying that conservatives and liberals don't see the world in the same way. Now, research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln suggests that is exactly, and quite literally, the case.
In a new study, UNL researchers measured both liberals' and conservatives' reaction to "gaze cues" -- a person's tendency to shift attention in a direction consistent with another person's eye movements, even if it's irrelevant to their current task -- and found big differences between the two groups.
Liberals responded strongly to the prompts, consistently moving their attention in the direction suggested to them by a face on a computer screen. Conservatives, on the other hand, did not.
Why? Researchers suggested that conservatives' value on personal autonomy might make them less likely to be influenced by others, and therefore less responsive to the visual prompts.
"We thought that political temperament may moderate the magnitude of gaze-cuing effects, but we did not expect conservatives to be completely immune to these cues," said Michael Dodd, a UNL assistant professor of psychology and the lead author of the study.
Liberals may have followed the "gaze cues," meanwhile, because they tend to be more responsive to others, the study suggests.
"This study basically provides one more piece of evidence that liberals and conservatives perceive the world, and process information taken in from that world, in different ways," said Kevin Smith, UNL professor of political science and one of the study's authors.
"Understanding exactly why people have such different political perspectives and where those differences come from may help us better understand the roots of a lot of political conflict."
The study involved 72 people who sat in front of a white computer screen and were told to fixate on a small black cross in its center. The cross then disappeared and was replaced by a drawing of a face, but with eyes missing their pupils. Then, pupils appeared in the eyes, looking either left or right. Finally, a small, round target would appear either on the left or right side of the face drawing.
Dodd said the participants were told that the gaze cues in the study did not predict where the target would appear, so there was no reason for participants to attend to them. "But the nature of social interaction tends to make it very difficult to ignore the cues, even when they're meaningless," he said.
As soon as they saw the target, participants would tap the space bar on their keyboard, giving researchers information on their susceptibility to the "gaze cues." Each sequence, which lasted a few hundred milliseconds, was repeated hundreds of times.
Afterward, participants were surveyed on their beliefs on a range of political issues to establish their political ideology.
In addition to shedding light on the differences between the two political camps, researchers said the results add to growing indications that suggest biology plays a role determining one's political direction. Previous UNL research has delved into the physiology of political orientation, showing that those highly responsive to threatening images are likely to support defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism and the Iraq War.
Traditionally, political scientists have accounted for political differences purely in terms of environmental forces, but this study shows the potential role of cognitive biases -- wherever they may come from -- as a relevant area of future research.
"Getting things done in politics typically depends on competing viewpoints finding common ground," Smith said. "Our research is suggesting that's a lot tougher than it sounds, because the same piece of ground can look very different depending on which ideological hill you view it from."
The study, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, is in a forthcoming edition of the journal Attention, Perception & Psychophysics and is authored by UNL's Dodd, Smith and John R. Hibbing.
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