Republicans know that urban areas are diverse. Millions of Americans use public transportation. Cars have to be parked. Cars require gas stations. Cars, with the cost of gasoline, are, in my opinion, making a huge and lasting dent in household budgets which has enriched oil companies at the expense of everyone else.

Without public transit, Americans, will be captured by the oil companies forever.
Without public transit, American commerce will disappear. Public parks, public lands, public schools, public libraries, public health, and all aspects of the pubic good will end forever. The oil companies win. Our country becomes unrecognizable; one nation under Exxon.

This is no dream for America. It is legalized larceny.

-purpledot, boston. comment on nytimes article, 09.02.12.

The list of outrages coming out of the House is long, but the way the Republicans are trying to hijack the $260 billion transportation bill defies belief. This bill is so uniquely terrible that it might not command a majority when it comes to a floor vote, possibly next week, despite Speaker John Boehner’s imprimatur. But betting on rationality with this crew is always a long shot.

Here is a brief and by no means exhaustive list of the bill’s many defects:

• It would make financing for mass transit much less certain, and more vulnerable, by ending a 30-year agreement that guaranteed mass transit a one-fifth share of the fuel taxes and other user fees in the highway trust fund. Instead it would compete annually with other programs.
• It would open nearly all of America’s coastal waters to oil and gas drilling, including environmentally fragile areas that have long been off limits. The ostensible purpose is to raise revenue to help make up what has become an annual shortfall for transportation financing. But it is really just one more attempt to promote the Republicans’ drill-now-drill-everywhere agenda and the interests of their industry patrons.
• It would demolish significant environmental protections by imposing arbitrary deadlines on legally mandated environmental reviews of proposed road and highway projects, and by ceding to state highway agencies the authority to decide whether such reviews should occur.

read more: nytimes, 08.02.12.

House:  Say “NO” to H.R. 7

On the other side of Congress, the House is about to consider a transportation bill that reverses 20 years of progress in making streets safer for people. Despite the fact that walking and biking make up 12% of trips but receive only 1.5% of federal funding, the House bill eliminates dedicated funding for walking and biking. It’s time to defeat this bill.

send an email to your senators and representatives to oppose this bill!!!

climateadaptation:

To save “farmers”…

… to “prevent overly burdensome” school lunch regulations.

I totally remember eating public [elementary] school pizzas! They came in small rectangular aluminum trays, wrapped in plastic. Always two choices of cheese or peperoni. 

But anyway, this new declaration from our “leaders” is proof that America can sink lower.

If school lunch pizzas were like this, no one should mind!

(Source: think-progress)

…It’s a terrible thing when an individual loses his or her grip on reality. But it’s much worse when the same thing happens to a whole political party, one that already has the power to block anything the president proposes — and which may soon control the whole government.

krugman, nytimes, 13.10.11.

(Source: thesmithian, via climateadaptation)

Two Minnesota college campus have banned bottled water, and students are, like, totally flipping out. As one College Republican, who apparently is also enrolled in the Sarah Palin School of Political Oratory, put it:

 “A little bit goes along the line of free choice. For us, that’s a big principle, in College Republicans is that you can’t really delegate to students what they can and cannot do in their own free will,” said Caitlyn Spence, chair of the St. Benedict Republicans.

(What?)

In reality, these students need not worry about their important and Constitutional freedoms to drink out of planet-killing plastic bottles. They can drink out of an Ugg for all their schools care. The colleges just aren’t going to sell the stuff, i.e. help students shoot their own future in the foot by destroying the planet they’re going to have to live on after the old-fogey administration has kicked off.

grist.org, 16.09.11.

climateadaptation:

GOP are weirdo’s. 

bringtheruckuss:

In a move that could be called anything but conservative, Republican lawmakers are set to bring a bill to the House floor next week that will repeal state and municipal rights to set efficiency standards for light bulbs

Leading manufacturer: “The reality is, consumers will see no difference at all. The only difference they’ll see is lower energy bills because we’re creating more efficient incandescent bulbs.”