Category: Budget

Unsustainable, Dangerous, and a Threat to the American Way of Life

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I am referring, of course to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, whose price is twice what we are being told:

The massive government and industry lobbying and PR efforts behind the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are starting to pay off for JSF-maker Lockheed Martin and the military users of the radar-evading jet.

In recent weeks several news outlets have repeated the pro-JSF camp’s assertion that the F-35—planned to be the main warplane for the Air Force and Marines and half the Navy’s future fighter fleet—will soon cost just $85 million a copy or less in near-future dollars, thanks to an increasingly efficient production line.

The “good news” helps bolster the $400-billion weapons program, the most expensive ever.

But it’s not true. Not by a long shot. The much-maligned, single-engine F-35—which suffers from a complex design and a lack of maneuverability—currently costs twice what its proponents are projecting. And don’t buy the argument that the jet’s sticker price will substantially drop in coming years. Lockheed’s been making that claim for a long time now, and it hasn’t happened yet.

………

To put the F-35-boosters’ claims in context, Winslow Wheeler, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C., has calculated the true current cost of an F-35. It’s way more than anyone in official circles likes to admit.

Sticker shock

Forget the $85-million or $60-million figure being bandied about in the press. Each of the 29 F-35s the Pentagon is purchasing from Lockheed in 2014 costs between $182 million and $299 million. And that’s leaving out research and development spending since the late 1990s, which could soon exceed $50 billion and add $16 million to true long-term acquisition cost of each F-35.

No, Wheeler calculated only the per-plane production cost, which includes advance funding for long-lead parts, the main funding in the year of authorization plus modification funds to fix design flaws on the planes shortly after they roll out of the factory.

By that measure, one Air Force F-35A—the simplest of the three JSF models—currently costs $182 million. A vertical-landing Marine F-35B sets taxpayers back $252 million. The Navy’s carrier-compatible F-35C, still mired in serious development problems, comes in at a whopping $299 million per plane.

Bear in mind that in 2010, Lockheed predicted an F-35 would soon cost just $60 million. “Actual F-35 unit costs are today multiples of what Lockheed says they will be,” Wheeler points out.

This is insane.

We are living the Arthur C. Clarke story Superiority, (story here, read it, it is a hoot) which depicts a war lost by a superior power because of its superior scientific achievements, and its continual grasping for a technological leap forward.

I Agree With the Shrill One

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Krugman’s latest OP/ED calls for raising the minimum wage.

It’s well thought out, but the limited space of the Times OP/ED page has him leaving out an important point to make, that a low minimum wage is actually a taxpayer funded subsidy for bad employers, because many of these employees qualify for food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, or the EITC.

Walmart and McDonalds actually have a policy to help their employees register for the public dole, because it is cheaper (for them) to dump it all off on the taxpayers.

Raising the minimum wage would tend to be stimulative, because poorer people spend a greater proportion of their income more quickly, and it would lower the deficit, by increasing tax revenues, and decreasing safety net programs.

Of course, the so-called “Deficit Hawks” don’t care, because they don’t really care about the deficit.  They just want to punish the poors.

Ratf%$#s.

What? You Mean that Taxpayer Funded Stadiums Don’t Create Growth?

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Hoocoodanode:

Boosters of Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards, built at taxpayer cost of $210 million, promised the baseball stadium would lead an urban renaissance, revitalizing blighted neighborhoods and bringing jobs and tax revenue to the city’s struggling downtown.

More than two decades later, the pledge stands unfulfilled. Baltimore is burdened with 16,000 vacant properties and some of the highest taxes in Maryland. The neighborhoods around Camden Yards have fewer businesses than they did in 1998. And the ballpark and a National Football League stadium nearby will require state and local debt service of about $24 million in 2014.

Baltimore’s lesson is one that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has taken to heart. He said Nov. 11 that Georgia’s capital city wouldn’t pay to build a new stadium for the Atlanta Braves — regardless of the team’s promises to bring thousands of jobs and pump tens of millions of dollars into the local economy. So the franchise said it would relocate to suburban Cobb County, which agreed to pay $300 million of the facility’s $672 million cost.

“It’s wrong to take money from taxpayers and hand it to millionaires and billionaires,” said Arthur Rolnick, a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota who has studied the public cost of professional sports stadiums. “If you try to justify it on economic development, the arguments dissolve pretty fast. The public would be much better off if they invested in things that would improve the quality of life, like roads and bridges, education and lowering crime.”

It ain’t just stadiums. It’s all the corporate welfare out there.

It is a losing proposition for governments.

Just wait until Cobb County gets hit with the real bill for the Braves’ ballpark.

What, You Mean that Gazillionaires Won’t Leave New York City for Orlando, Florida for Lower Taxes

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So not surprised.

Studies show that the idle rich do not relocate over their tax levels:

It is not news that New York’s political and media elites worship the extremely rich. You can see this when in a tough economy the New York Times publishes a “Wealth” section fronted by a how-to piece on buying Irish castles. You can see it when you hear the city’s billionaire mayor insisting that critics of wealth inequality should be quiet because they interfere with his dream to “get all the Russian billionaires to move here.” And you can see it when you behold Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., slamming a modest initiative to slightly increase taxes on the Big Apple’s millionaires.

Again, none of this unto itself is all that newsy because it isn’t all that new. New York’s “let them eat cake” culture has been around for a long time in a city where almost half of all residents live below or near the poverty line. However, what is news is the extent to which this wealth-obsessed environment helps strengthen the mythologies that distort economic reality.

Cuomo’s attack, in particular, perfectly illustrates this trend. Fresh off raising millions from wealthy donors for his political front group, the governor slammed Democratic mayoral nominee Bill de Blasio’s tax hike proposal, claiming it will drive Cuomo’s beloved millionaires out of the state.

“What they fear is that they’re in a place where the taxes will continually go up and there will be a ceiling and they’ll say, ‘I’m going to Florida,’” Cuomo said of the rich. “I believe that.”

Before you join Cuomo in weeping for the Manhattan fat cats supposedly forced to flee from economic persecution, remember that his story is a fantastical fact-free fable — one that conveniently serves the political interests of the aristocracy, but has nothing to do with reality.

Rich people leaving New Jersey and California actually fell after taxes rose, and the decrease in millionaires in New York happened because their wages fell after the financial crisis.

We Might All Be in Hell

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NPR just finished a series where it talked to prominent theologians about the nature of the afterlife.

One of the segments was immediately followed (it might have been preceeded) by a story about the government shutdown and potential debt default.

Then it hit me:  No one that they had talked to even mentioned the possibility that we might already be in hell.

Of course, Gnosticism, the religion that most closely hews to this philosophy, no longer exists as an organized religion, but it does seem to me that this is a reasonable conclusion.

As a Jew, I find the discussion of the afterlife largely irrelevant.   The afterlife is simply not a significant of Jewish theology.

The consensus on the afterlife in Judaism is, “Yes,” with some people going with a conventional heaven and hell, and some people, particularly Kabbalists, believe in reincarnation, and a whole range in between.

In Judaism, the important thing is that to whatever degree our world resembles hell, it is our job to fix it.

This concept is called Tikkun olam (תיקון עולם).

This reminds me of an old joke:

A Shmuel dies and is sent to hell, and he boards an elevator going down.

The elevator operators calls out, “Hell, level 1, all Atheists and Agnostics out.”

Shmuel looks out, and sees a bleak landscape, black sands, and a merciless sun beating down, and the air smells like.

The elevator moves further downward, and comes to a stop.

“Hell, level 2, all Muslims out.”

Shmuel smells brimstone, hears screams, and sees rivers of flowing lava under a black sky.

Shmuel is now rather concerned.

The doors close with a sepulchral finality, and the elevator drops.

“Hell, all Christians out.”

The door opens, and Shmuel can see nothing but flames in front of the door. He can feel his skin blisters from the heat even as he pushes himself against the back of the elevator.

As the doors close, Shmuel is now terrified.

“Hell, all Jews out.

The doors open, Shmuel feels a cool breeze on his face. He sees lush, green rolling hills. He smells citrus in the air.

Shmuel is stunned. To no one in particular, he says, “But ……… I thought it would be worse!”

The elevator operator looks up, and says, “It was. You cannot believe what they can do with irrigation.

Perhaps we should all spend some more time irrigating.

Why You Should Not Listen to the United States Air Force, Part 29

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Because, once again, they are trying to kill the A-10 again. (Paid Subscription Requited)

The USAF has been trying to kill the A-10 since they first entered service, since “real pilots” don’t fly dedicated close air support platforms.

Thankfully, a bunch of people who have not drunk too much of the Wild Blue Yonder juice are pushing back:

Now that the Air Force has placed the A-10 Thunderbolt II under consideration for cuts in a worst-case budget scenario, a grassroots movement is building to keep the aircraft, flying since 1977, around longer.

The A-10 is not one of those programs, like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or the KC-46A tanker, that the service wants to protect. In fact, a chart from Air Combat Command shows the entire fleet of close-air support aircraft may be divested by 2015.

The A-10, affectionately known as the Warthog, does have a following. The lumbering aircraft was designed to loiter over the battlefield until it unleashes firepower that can shred through tanks. Originally made by Fairchild Republic, it carries a 30 mm Gatling gun that can fire up to 3,900 rounds per minute. The service’s A-10s can carry all kinds of bombs, including laser-guided ones, joint direct attack munitions, and the AIM-9 Sidewinder. Ground troops love it.

They are not alone. From a Save-the-A-10 Facebook page with 2,722 likes, to the back room of a military base bar and even on Capitol Hill, the proposal to scrap the aircraft is meeting resistance.

………

Coram himself recently published a column on the Project on Government Oversight’s website articulating the case: “No $160 million F-35 is going to get down in the weeds where a single bullet can take it out. A host of small arms fire hitting an A-10 can be fixed with what amounts to duct tape,” Coram writes. “No F-35 can maneuver under an 800-foot ceiling with two-mile visibility as can an A-10. No F-35 has more than three combat trigger pulls before running out of ammo. The A-10 has twenty. No F-35 has the battlefield survivability of the A-10.”

Whether the efforts will make a difference within the Pentagon remains to be seen as high-level budget politics on Capitol Hill and in the Obama administration are sorted out.

But lawmakers have been working to maintain the A-10 fleet, at least in the short term.

Last year the Air Force recommended carving out nearly a third of the A-10 fleet, much of it from the Air National Guard. Congress slowed that suggestion by creating the National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force.

Yet more evidence that the independent Air Force does not serve our defense needs.

Air power is essential in modern warfare, but I do not think that the pilots are up to running their own branch of the service.

Captain Obvious Strikes

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It appears that his secret identy is Nancy Pelosi:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sought Friday to lay the blame for a possible government shutdown on congressional Republicans, saying that they refused to negotiate on the issue.

Pelosi pointed to the GOP’s inability to reconcile their competing factions as the reason that the federal government is a few days away from shutting down.

“It’s impossible for Democrats to negotiate with House Republicans when they can’t negotiate with themselves,” Pelosi told reporters. “We don’t know what we’re going to vote on from one minute to the next because I don’t think they know what they’re going to vote on.”

“I don’t know that they even know what they’re doing,” she added.

Well, duh!

You Cannot Make this Sh%$ Up

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Ted Cruz just engaged in a mammoth talk on the Senate floor, (it was not a filibuster) talking about the evils of Obamacare.

At one point, he read from the children’s classic Green Eggs and Ham, while talking about how awful the PPACA will be.

As Senator Claire McCaskill observed, Ted Cruz does not get the Dr. Seuss story, which is all about not prejudging things:

During Sen. Ted Cruz’ marathon talk-a-thon, he dramatically read one of his children’s favorite books, Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, saying it was a good-night story for his children.

How ironic, Sen. Claire McCaskill, remarked on Morning Joe, that the Texas Republican used that book in a marathon speech opposing a healthcare reform bill he has never tried.

“I went the University of Missouri, I did not go to Harvard, but I’ll tell you that my daughter texted me this morning and said ‘Mom, does he not know the point of the story?’” the Missouri Democrat said.

In the classic Seuss novel, a grumpy character declares “I do not like them, Sam-I-am. I do not like green eggs and ham…I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere.”

Eventually, the character tries the green eggs and ham to appease his persistent friend and finds that he quite likes them: “I like green eggs and ham! I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!”

“It’s that you can’t knock things till you try it,” McCaskill said with a smile. “It’s ironic that he used that in the filibuster because I think when people realize how the these exchanges are going to work…It’s all private insurance companies on these exchanges.”

Not only reading Seuss on the Senate floor, but getting it wrong.

Theodore Seuss Geisel must be spinning in his grave.

A Low Cost Low Complexity Solution, So the US Air Force Will Hate It

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Click for full size


Note Widely Spaced Engines for Damage Tolerance


Performance specs indicate that it could also serve as a trainer


Structures appear to be rather low tech by aerospace standards

Textron is offering an unsolicited proposal for a simpler close support aircraft: (paid subscription required, there is also a CNN story with a bit less detail)

It takes a gutsy move for a company to pitch a brand new, clean-sheet aircraft to the Pentagon for a set of requirements it has not even said it wants, and to present this idea while defense spending in the U.S. faces massive cuts.

 But, that is exactly what a newly formed joint venture between Textron and a young company—AirLand Enterprises, formed in 2011—is doing. Textron is best known for its Cessna business jets and turboprops, as well as Bell Helicopter’s long experience with rotorcraft. Its partner, AirLand, however, was formed by a small group of investors, including retired defense officials, to explore a new concept for light attack.

 It could actually be the scarce funding environment that validates the strategy behind the joint venture’s new aircraft—the two-seat, twin-engine Scorpion. The team is unveiling its self-funded project Sept. 16 at the annual Air Force Association Air & Space Conference outside Washington, and officials gave Aviation Week an exclusive sneak peak.

 The Scorpion demonstrator is intended to whet the U.S. Air Force’s appetite with the promise of a low procurement and operating cost. The pitch is for this aircraft, which is optimized for 5-hr. endurance with onboard intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) collectors and weapons, to handle the Air Force’s low-end missions such as U.S.-based interdiction, quick-reaction natural disaster support and air sovereignty patrols. The goal is to field an aircraft capable of operating for less than $3,000 per flying hour; the company declined to cite a target unit cost. By contrast, the Pentagon in June cited the cost per flying hour of the F-16, which currently performs many of these missions, as $24,899.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, F-15s, F-16s and A-10s have been used for patrols and close air support in completely uncontested airspace. This was overkill, according to some military officials. Built for high-speed, high-G maneuvers, these aircraft made little use of their strengths in these conflicts, but were needed to drop ordnance and provide armed overwatch for ground troops.

Aside from the obvious correction, that the A-10 was not built for high speed, high-G maneuvers, it is clear that the F-15 and F-15 are ill suited to this role: They are too expensive, and they prosecute these missions at speeds and altitudes that are too high, and with far less endurance over the battlefield, particularly at low altitude where CAS aircraft should do their business, than either this aircraft or the A-10.

The A-10 is designed to attack tanks trying to attack NATO through the Fulda Gap, so it is much larger and heavier than is necessary (It’s empty weight is more than max weight for the Scorpion) for a low intensity conflict like Iraq or Afghanistan.

It should be noted that the USAF has been trying to get rid of the A-10 almost since it entered service.

One of the things that I don’t get about this aircraft

Though designed as a tandem-seat aircraft, Scorpion can be flown by a single pilot. Textron is building it to include a highly simplified and reconfigurable bay that is capable of carrying 3,000 lb. of weapons or intelligence-collecting equipment; the aircraft also has six hard points total. The twin Honewell TF731 engines were selected to provide ample power and cooling for a variety of ISR payloads, Donnelly says. Though used for the demonstrator, these engines could be swapped out.

I’m not sure why you want to have an internal weapons bay on what is clearly a non-stealthy subsonic airframe.

I think that this might be a way to create a large avionics bay without having to spend years (decades) developing the custom systems that the Air Force would likely demand.

That being said, I think that this aircraft is dead on arrival.  Low cost and simplicity makes it more difficult for retired Generals to snag highly remunerative jobs with the other side of the military industrial complex.

It Has Been 12 Years, Stop Waving the Bloody Shirt

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It is not my intent to demean the feelings of people who suffered personal losses on September 11, 2001, but the rest of us have to attempt a modest return to sanity.

As I have noted before, we as a society have been driven to insanity by this, and it has convinced us  to commence destroying ourselves. (Read the book Wasp by Eric Frank Russell)

The deaths on 911 are less than:

As to the last item, think about how many of this children we could have saved by spending just one tenth of the roughly $4 Trillion spend on this.

It’s normal to freak out after something like 911, but we are still freaking out 12 years later.

We need to chill out, and deal with the reality we have, not the reality we want to have.

Burying the Lede

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In an article on Korean fighter purchase plans, there is a lot of discussion about their next fighter purchase:

Boeing’s F-15SE Silent Eagle has been selected as the only qualified bidder in South Korea’s F-X Phase 3 competition for 60 fighters—but the country’s air force is lobbying to overturn the decision in favor of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

 A win in South Korea would extend the F-15 production line into the next decade and launch an improved version that could compete for future fighter requirements in the 2020s. That outcome seems likely following the decision of the South Korean purchasing authority, the Defense Acquisition Program Agency (DAPA), to eliminate first the F-35 as too costly and then the Eurofighter Typhoon for a bidding irregularity—although EADS, representing the consortium in the South Korean deal, disputes DAPA’s decision.

(emphasis mine)

OK, let’s look at this.

The F-15SE has:

  • A larger weapons load.
  • Greater range.
  • Higher speed.
  • a 2nd crew member giving greater flexibility in deploying weapons.
  • A 2nd engine.
  • The ability to develop weapons and systems for the platform in Korea.
  • The ability to perform depot level maintenance in country.

The F-35 has:

  • Some degree of all aspect stealth.

And for giving up all of that, you have to pay more, a lot more for the F-35.

The F-35 simply costs too much.

    Worst………Speaker………Ever

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    The Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by John Boehner, decided to pass appropriations bills based on the Paul Ryan budget.

    The problem is that, unlike a budget, which is general, the appropriations bills have to contain specific spending levels, and the Republicans in the House are terrified of having to pass the actual cuts required by Ryan’s smoke and mirrors numbers:

    Republicans have dealt with some embarrassing moments on the House floor over the past year, but none so revealing or damning as today’s snafu, when they yanked a bill to fund the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. Even the recent farm bill fiasco wasn’t as significant an indictment of the GOP’s governing potential.

    It might look like a minor hiccup, or a symbolic error. But it spells doom for the party’s near-term budget strategy and underscores just how bogus the party’s broader agenda really is and has been for the last four years.

    In normal times, the House and Senate would each pass a budget, the differences between those budgets would be resolved, and appropriators in both chambers would have binding limits both on how much money to spend, and on which large executive agencies to spend it.

    But these aren’t normal times. Republicans have refused to negotiate away their budget differences with Democrats, and have instead instructed their appropriators to use the House GOP budget as a blueprint for funding the government beyond September.

    ………

    But many close Congress watchers — and indeed many Congressional Democrats — have long suspected that their votes for Ryan’s budgets were a form of cheap talk. That Republicans would chicken out if it ever came time to fill in the blanks. Particularly the calls for deep but unspecified domestic discretionary spending cuts.

    Today’s Transportation/HUD failure confirms that suspicion. Republicans don’t control government. But ahead of the deadline for funding it, their plan was to proceed as if the Ryan budget was binding, and pass spending bills to actualize it — to stake out a bargaining position with the Senate at the right-most end of the possible.

    But they can’t do it. It turns out that when you draft bills enumerating all the specific cuts required to comply with the budget’s parameters, they don’t come anywhere close to having enough political support to pass. Even in the GOP House. Slash community development block grants by 50 percent, and you don’t just lose the Democrats, you lose a lot of Republicans who care about their districts. Combine that with nihilist defectors who won’t vote for any appropriations unless they force the President to sign an Obamacare repeal bill at a bonfire ceremony on the House floor, and suddenly you’re nowhere near 218.

    John Boehner decided to follow the lead of Paul Ryan, a preening Ayn Rand inspired peacock with a limited grasp of what mathematics really mean in the real world, and now he is unable to make it work.

    Heh.

    Even in Bankruptcy, Detroit Must Pay for a Millionaire’s Toys

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    Bankruptcy, Schmankruptcy, billionaire Mike Ilitch’s new stadium must get its $450 million:

    When Detroit filed for what is the largest municipal bankruptcy in United States history, one of the items immediately placed on the potential chopping block was pensions for current retirees who had worked for the city. A pension shortfall accounts for $3.5 billion of the city’s $18 billion in debt, and the city’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, has called for “significant” pension cuts.

    But even with pensions possibly getting the axe – along with who knows what else in terms of services for the already downtrodden city, or even masterpieces at the Detroit Institute of Art – Detroit still seems ready to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars to help pay for a new arena for the National Hockey League’s Detroit Red Wings………

    This is not The Onion.

    Detroit is in bankruptcy (sort of, long story), but this billionaire has to get a shiny new stadium for his team.

    It buggers the mind.

    I Think that We May Have Identified Why College is So Expensive

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    And the truth from the most unlikely of sources, the New York Post:

    City College President Lisa Coico’s Upper West Side home is just four subway stops from the Manhattanville campus, but Coico is chauffeured the two miles to work and back every day in a state-issued Buick.

    Coico, whose salary is $300,000, is among nearly 70 SUNY and CUNY officials who enjoy the use of taxpayer-funded wheels and sometimes a driver. In Coico’s case the driver is a college public-safety officer.

    In 2009, after The Post exposed the number of commissioners chauffeured to their jobs, the state cracked down on the practice, as well as the personal use of vehicles by agency heads. But the university systems set their own policies.

    Both the SUNY and CUNY chancellors have cars and drivers. CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein valued the personal use of his car last year at $14,985, the highest in the state.

    College presidents are entitled to cars, as well.

    The Ivory Tower execs are joyriding while students are struggling to meet soaring tuition, after trustees in 2011 approved $300-per-student increases for five years for the state and city college systems. CUNY students now pay more than $5,000 per year.

    This is kind of a classic result of anti-competitive cartels.

    The top universities in the nation have been colluding on tuition, fees, and financial aid for decades, they started in the 1960s, when the alternative to college was the Vietnam war, and once they stopped competing on price, they bid for professors, they build gold plated housing, and they overpaid administrators.

    This is what happens with a cartel. They continue to compete, they just no longer compete on price, which leads to more spending on non core “bling”, which increases costs, which increases tuition.

    Rinse, lather, repeat.

    It doesn’t help that the US government is playing banker for all this, and refuses to institute meaningful cost controls.

    H/t Atrios.

    The Stoopid!!!! It Burns Us!!!!!

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    This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him.*

    In response to the collapse of I-5 bridge north of Seattle, Washington State Representative Ed Orcutt,(a Republican, of course) thought that the concerns were overblown, because, “11 of the 12 Sections of the Bridge Are Still Standing“:

    In the wake of the I-5 bridge collapse, the progressive activist group Fuse put together an online petition, urging state legislators to “Fix our crumbling roads and bridges!”

     ………

     Hard to read that as a controversial request, unless, of course, you are state Representative “Angry Ed” Orcutt (R-Kalama), the ranking Republican on the house transportation committee. Via email, Orcutt responds defensively to petitioners, objecting to any effort to “leverage more tax dollars” in response to the Skagit River bridge collapse:

    [I]t is clear that the reason for the collapse was due to a collision with the super structure of the bridge — not a lack of structural integrity of the bridge. The bridge would indeed be standing today had the truck’s load NOT rammed the super structure of the bridge. In fact, 11 of the 12 sections of the bridge are still standing.

    Dude, it’s not a bridge any more, it is a f%$#ing pier!!!!

    Or, to quote yet another movie:

    Garry: The generator’s gone.

     MacReady: Any way we can we fix it?

     Garry: It’s “gone”, MacReady.

    *What, you’ve never seen Ruthless People? Great movie.

    Full letter after the jump:

    From: “Orcutt, Rep. Ed”
    Date: May 28, 2013, 12:23:47 PM PDT
    To: XXXX
    Subject: RE: Fix our crumbling roads and bridges!

     XXXX,

     Many people have misunderstood terminology used in the aftermath of the I-5/Skagit River Bridge collapse.

     This bridge is deemed functionally obsolete — not structurally deficient. Functionally obsolete basically means that the width of the lanes do not meet current design widths. In other words, if it were to be built today, it would need to be wider.

     Since the incident, I have been on a conference call with the Governor (which included WSDOT and WSP officials); two briefing calls with National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials; and have met with NTSB officials on the deck of the bridge. From NTSB to WSDOT, it is clear that the reason for the collapse was due to a collision with the super structure of the bridge — not a lack of structural integrity of the bridge. The bridge would indeed be standing today had the truck’s load NOT rammed the super structure of the bridge. In fact, 11 of the 12 sections of the bridge are still standing.

     It is important to note also, that DOT has specifically stated that if a bridge were deemed unsafe, it would be taken out of service. So, when you approach a bridge and see that it is open, please know that DOT has deemed it safe enough for the traffic using it.

     I agree with you that we must maintain our infrastructure to assure it remains safe, but let’s not confuse this incident or try to use it to leverage more tax dollars when the cause of this collapse had nothing to do with the availability of tax dollars.

     Ed

     Representative Ed Orcutt
    20th Legislative District

     Olympia Office:
    408 John L. O’Brien Building
    PO Box 40600
    Olympia, WA 98504

     * ed.orcutt@leg.wa.gov
    ( 360.786.7990

    Why Would a Race Baiting Republican Go to the Wall Over Medicaid Expansion?

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    Yes, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is following through on her threat to veto all legislation until Medicaid expansion is passed:

    Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) has a message for her party: expand Medicaid — or else.

    The combative GOP governor is sticking by a threat she made to veto all legislation until lawmakers resolve the 2014 state budget and pass Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. On Thursday, Brewer proved that wasn’t just talk, vetoing five bills sent to her desk in quick succession.

    “I warned that I would not sign additional measures into law until we see resolution of the two most pressing issues facing us: adoption of a fiscal 2014 state budget and plan for Medicaid,” wrote Brewer in her veto message. “It is disappointing I must demonstrate the moratorium was not an idle threat.”

    Arizona officials only have five weeks before reaching the constitutional deadline for passing a budget. Last Thursday, six Republican state senators joined a unified Democratic caucus to pass a Medicaid expansion bill — but efforts have been gummed up in the state House since then.

    Brewer isn’t letting the issue slide. She has been touring the Grand Canyon State to shore up support for the expansion and put pressure on reticent lawmakers in her own party.

    Seriously, I do not know where this is coming from.

    This is the politician who continuously repeated false claims about beheaded bodies in the desert, and blamed “Mexicans,” and she is going to the mat for Obamacare?

    I really cannot figure out her angle on this. 

    From a budget and economic standpoint, it makes sense, it makes the state more attractive to employers, and the Feds cover almost all the costs for the next few years, but budgetary reality is not something that typically drives movement conservatives.

    Fed Stays Course

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    So their quantitative easing program continues unabated:

    The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that its economic stimulus campaign would press forward at the same pace it has maintained since December, putting to rest for now any suggestion that it was leaning toward doing less.

    The Fed emphasized that it was ready to increase or decrease its efforts to spur growth and reduce unemployment as necessary, a more balanced position than it took earlier in the year, reflecting the reality that a strong winter has once again yielded to a disappointing spring.

    It was the first time that the Fed had explicitly mentioned the possibility of doing more in a policy statement, although officials, including the Fed’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, have made the point repeatedly in public remarks.

    ………

    The Fed maintained a relatively sunny economic outlook in its statement, released after a two-day meeting of its policy-making committee. It said that the economy was expanding at a “moderate pace” and that the labor market had shown “some improvement.” It added, however, that federal spending cuts were “restraining economic growth,” an implicit critique of the rest of the government.

    That language was stronger than the Fed had used in previous assessments of the economic impact of fiscal policy. Fed officials have repeatedly expressed frustration that fiscal policy is working at cross-purposes with their own monetary policy. The statement also noted that the pace of inflation had slackened, a potential sign of economic weakness. Bringing the annual rate of inflation closer to its target of 2 percent has been a primary goal of the Fed’s four-year-old stimulus campaign, but the statement expressed little concern about the recent deceleration to a pace of only about half that level.

    Yeah, calling out the entire deficit fetish in DC is a good thing too.

    I still think that Bernanke’s mental exercise, dropping massive quantities of cash from helicopters, is the way to go.