Senior Senate Democrats are growing frustrated by what they see as President Obama’s passivity on the economy, and are beginning to discuss a large infrastructure package funded by tax increases.
Some Democrats, such as Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who serves as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, think such a package could lower the unemployment rate by as much as two percentage points.
[…]“I am concerned about the Obama administration’s approach on this,” Harkin said. “It always has been about jobs. I think the administration kind of got snookered talking about the deficit and the debt after the last election.
“The last election was about jobs and the economy, and now we’re in a position where we really do need some economic pump-priming by the federal government,” he said.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, endorsed Harkin’s argument for more infrastructure spending, and said it is gaining support in the broader caucus.
“There’s very broad support,” Rockefeller said. “There’s no other way to get at this problem.”
Rockefeller said a spending package was discussed at several meetings Wednesday and that there’s a recognition Democrats need to be tougher in negotiations with Republicans.
“We have to be much more aggressive about all this, because as soon as they say ‘We’re not going to do that,’ as they’ve been saying for so long about so many things, you just kind of say ‘oh.’ We’ve got to stop saying ‘oh,’ ” he said, referring to the hard line Republicans have taken for Medicare cuts and against tax increases.
Even centrists like Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) say a major infrastructure package funded by tax revenue-generating measures is what’s needed to strengthen the economy.
Here’s how well the stimulus spending has been working so far to create jobs:
The V-22 is a tiltrotor aircraft, taking off and landing like a helicopter, but, once airborne, its engine nacelles can be rotated to convert the aircraft to a turboprop airplane capable of high-speed, high-altitude flight.
It can carry 24 combat troops, or up to 20,000 pounds of internal or external cargo, at twice the speed of a helicopter. It includes cross-coupled transmissions so either engine can power the rotors if one engine fails.
The rotors can fold and the wing rotate so the aircraft can be stored aboard an aircraft carrier.
[…]The Osprey has two, large, three-bladed rotors that rotate in opposite directions and produce lift. Because the rotors turn in opposite directions, there is no need for a tail rotor to provide stability as in a helicopter. The wing tilts the rotors between airplane and helicopter modes and generates lift in the airplane mode. The Osprey can convert smoothly from helicopter mode to airplane mode in as few as 12 seconds.
The major advantages of the Osprey over a helicopter are:
Longer range – The Osprey can fly from 270 to 580 miles (453 to 933 km).
Higher speed – The Osprey’s top speed is 315 mph (507 kph), which is twice as fast as a helicopter’s top speed.
Increased cargo capacity – The Osprey can carry 20,000 pounds (4,536 kg) of cargo or 24 troops.
The advantage of the Osprey over an airplane is that it can take off, hover and land like a helicopter. This makes is more versatile than an airplane for such missions as moving troops to remote areas, especially those without landing strips, or conducting long-range rescue operations at sea.
Military and industry officials rave about the V-22 tiltrotor’s performance in Afghanistan but know they need to show the aircraft is worth its high price tag.
The Marine Corps are flying V-22 Ospreys in theater and “it’s more effective than we expected,” Maj. Gen. Jon Davis, Second Marine Corps Air Wing commander, told reporters here recently. “We have only scratched the surface with this aircraft. … “We’re doing things with the V-22 we did not plan to do.”
The V-22 takes off vertically but can fly like a plane, allowing it to travel faster than traditional helicopters. The military is using the craft to haul teams of Marines, special operators, combat rescue personnel and cargo.
But there are questions in defense circles about whether — after years of technical delays and cost spikes —such glowing reviews will be enough to avoid future cuts as White House, Pentagon and congressional officials look for ways to trim the annual Defense budget.
Despite rave reviews from war fighters, the program is among the most expensive at the Pentagon.
Each Osprey has a flyaway cost of $65 million. The Pentagon already has spent over $30 billion on the V-22 program, according to the Congressional Research Service.
But some people would rather cut the V-22 than cut Obamacare:
Liberal lawmakers often come after the Osprey initiative when looking for places to trim Pentagon spending.
Last month, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) offered an amendment to a Pentagon policy bill that would have directed the department to spend no monies on the program in 2012.
Woolsey dubbed the program a “boondoggle” for the “military-industrial complex.” Terminating the program would save more than $12 billion over 10 years, and $2.5 billion in 2012 alone, she claimed.
The House overwhelmingly defeated her amendment, but not before Woolsey said the aircraft has gotten “mediocre marks” from independent auditors and “underperformed across the board.” There are reports the V-22 has struggled in “high-threat environments,” she said.
She also said it has failed to “prove its worth” operationally and has had a number of major crashes. But Davis says it has proven its value, citing the fleet’s strong record in a rugged war theater.
Program officials and advocates are ready to fight back as Washington continues talking about an era of federal spending cuts.
Their embryonic message, as Davis put it: “Why would we terminate something that works?”
Marine Corps and Bell-Boeing officials also say to avoid budget cuts or a reduced buy, they will have to show critics like Woolsey that the fleet is reliable.
Right now, the Osprey’s closely monitored reliability rate in Afghanistan is around 73 percent, according to program officials.
Davis wants to push that figure to 80 percent, saying that would make the V-22 among the military’s most reliable aircraft.
I love the V-22 Osprey. It is a force multiplier, in my opinion. And can you imagine that some people wanted to cancel it just because of some difficulties they had early on in testing?
The saddest thing about the whole sordid, societally humiliating Weiner affair, is that it highlights once again the morally-schizoid nature of the modern liberal woman. I’ve known many of these women — a great many — and it never ceases to confound me how smart women can be such ridiculous fools when it comes to choosing men.
On the one hand, liberal women believe wholeheartedly in the idiotic social construct they call, “sexual liberation.”They pride themselves on losing their virginity, as though that “accomplishment” had ever been above the challenge-scale of an alley cat in heat.
These liberal women I’ve known, having given away their female V-card over and over and over again, all the while scour their host of intimate “trial runs” searching for that mythical, Hollywood-construct, Mr. Right. This Mr. Right guy, for whom they are searching, is known to them up front as even more sexually-liberated than they, but this little factoid seems not to register in their liberated little heads as they frantically search for the equally mythical family home with the white picket fence, which somehow never gets hit by any of life’s roving tornadoes. One can almost hear them say in unison, “And they all lived happily ever after.”
[…]Evidently, the liberal woman is capable of the most severe form of psychological denial known to humankind. Certain that one of the men with whom she has copulated without strings will suddenly morph into a faithfully monogamous creature the minute she can convince one of them to say “I do” in front of a few witnesses, the liberal woman marches blindly down the aisle towards near-certain, adulterous doom. Yet, no amount of honest reason can dissuade liberal women from this self-destructive, moral myopia.
What other term but “morally schizoid” could possibly describe this blatantly contradictory tendency among liberal women?
Having spent their youth casually throwing their own sexual morality to the winds of fairytale “liberation,” these liberal women still steadfastly cling to the faithfully monogamous ideal for that sometime-later moment when they actually do desire all the traditional things — the husband, the kids, the white picket fence — those pesky female-nature embedded longings, which coincidentally ensure the continuation of the human race.
But these liberal women somehow — in perfect schizoid manner — convince themselves that once married, they will be the gratuitous beneficiaries of the monogamous respect they still desire, but have never once demanded or deserved. Intuitively, women know that strict monogamy provides the only real security for themselves and their own offspring. Yet, they continue themselves to spurn the demands of monogamy until the very last minute, believing that fidelity springs forth naturally in miraculous profusion among all “married” humans. Such pure poppycock can only be explained as a mental disorder.
[…]Any woman, who still believes that males are naturally monogamous and that a wedding ring is anything more than a little band of gold, needs to take a long, hard look at the sham of a marriage on display between Congressman Weiner and his wife of less than one full year. Afterwards, if said woman still does not see the lifelong value in chastity before marriage and a pair of shredder scissors in the kitchen drawer afterwards, she needs to take a very large bucket of ice cold water and dump it upon her own head.
