Think Progress has the article The Stunning Collapse Of Infrastructure Spending In One Chart.

“It’s also likely that much of the investment that has been forgone in the name of fiscal consolidation will have to be made eventually anyways — only it will be made when rates are higher, exacerbating the long-term fiscal outlook rather than improving it,”

Here is the chart:

This echoes a point I have been making for a long time.

If there is infrastructure spending that must be done at some time or another, why would we choose not to do it when the costs are at rock bottom? Why would we choose to do them later when the costs will be elevated?

If Republicans are really worried about government project crowding out private corporate spending, why wouldn’t we do the projects now when corporations are sitting on trillions of uninvested dollars? Why would we wait until the corporations have all of their cash fully invested?

Of course it really isn’t about the money in the crowding out case, it is about competing for resources. When the productive resources of the country are being fully used by the private sector, we don’t need government to compete and cause inflation. When resources are not being fully used, then the government won’t cause inflation by putting them to work. Such a government effort will put unemployed people to work and thus raise tax revenues without raising tax rates.

Why is this so hard to understand?

Also note my previous posts The Weak Economy and Deficit Reduction: Deniers and Terrorists and What So Proudly We Hail.  These previous posts discuss President Obama’s bragging of the deficit reduction he has achieved, when he really ought to be ashamed of allowing a reduction during a recession and very slow growth.  The Republicans will just claim that they caused the deficit reduction, no matter what Obama says.  Moreover, he ought to let them take the credit for reducing the deficit and the blame for keeping the county’s economic performance way below what it should be.

After putting up my previous post What So Proudly We Hail, I found The Weak Economy and Deficit Reduction: Deniers and Terrorists.

The folks making economic policy in Washington are getting ever more resistant to evidence. As we approach the sixth anniversary of the downturn with no end in sight, the nation has been treated to the perverse spectacle of our Treasury Secretary celebrating the sharp drop in the deficit.

This is a bit like celebrating a sunny day in a region suffering from drought. In an economy that is suffering from lack of demand, as is the case in the United States today, smaller deficits are bad news. They mean less demand, slower growth, and fewer jobs.

Actually I thought that not voting for Mitt Romney would some how stop Mitt Romney policies from being touted by our President.  Even the fact that President Obama does not have to run for office anymore is not helping him do the right thing instead of doing the profitable thing.  Maybe he has big dreams for  his income after he leaves the Presidency.  We know that when the rich have many factors of 10 more wealth than even a President, that the amounts offered in bribery can be very powerful.

The White House is promoting the message about Cutting our deficit in half.

A new report has some big economic news you probably missed: Since 2009, we’ve cut our deficit in half — and it’s falling at its fastest rate since World War II.

Here is the graphic that they have come up with:

And now you know why the economy is in the crapper. What a misbegotten feat that Obama is hailing so proudly.

We should be keeping the deficit high until the economy recovers. What a missed opportunity to invest in building and maintaining infrastructure on the cheap while also boosting the economy and cutting the rolls of the unemployed and suffering.

The Daily Kos has the article Ooops, 60 Minute’s Benghazi Source Is A Liar. The Daily Kos bases its report mainly on a Washington Post article, but it also adds comments from another source, too.

The Washington post article is ‘60 Minutes’ broadcast helps propel new round of back-and-forth on Benghazi.

In an explosive report on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday, the British supervisor of local security guards protecting the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, provided a harrowing account of the extremist attack that killed four Americans.

The man whom CBS called Morgan Jones, a pseudonym, described racing to the Benghazi compound while the attack was underway, scaling a 12-foot wall and downing an extremist with the butt end of a rifle as he tried in vain to rescue the besieged Americans.
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But in a written account that Jones, whose real name was confirmed as Dylan Davies by several officials who worked with him in Benghazi, provided to his employer three days after the attack, he told a different story of his experiences that night.

In Davies’s 2 ½-page incident report to Blue Mountain, the Britain-based contractor hired by the State Department to handle perimeter security at the compound, he wrote that he spent most of that night at his Benghazi beach-side villa. Although he attempted to get to the compound, he wrote in the report, “we could not get anywhere near . . . as roadblocks had been set up.”

Apparently even Faux Noise had the good sense to disassociate itself from this guy.  Perhaps I should say that especially Faux Noise had good sense, because as Sharon said, “When it  comes to liars, it takes one to know one.”  Does that mean that CBS news is so honest they cannot tell when they are being lied to?  Being honest is not the only requirement for being a good news medium.  One also has to know how to separate fact from fiction.

Jason Thigpen has the article Hate has no home in Representation – Congressional candidate for NC3 parts company with the GOP to run on the Democratic ticket By Christopher Dean on his campaign web site.

“Enough is enough,” says Jason R. Thigpen – formerly a Republican candidate seeking election to the U.S. House in North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District. “After discussing it with my wife and family, I’ve decided to run as a Democrat rather than a Republican. I simply cannot stand with a Party where its most extreme element promote hate and division amongst people. Nothing about my platform has, nor will it change. The government shutdown was simply the straw that broke the camels back. I guess being an American just isn’t good enough anymore and I refuse to be part of an extremist movement in the GOP that only appears to thrive on fear and hate mongering of anyone and everyone who doesn’t walk their line.

There seems to be little choice for a moderate who is in the Republican Party, but to switch to a Party that has room for all.