They Just Don't Understand It

After my post last week exposing a CNN report as a factually-challenged hit piece on infrastructure investment, fed by the conservative National Taxpayers Union, Pete Sepp from the NTU posted an angry yet illuminating rant/comment on our blog.

One of the main points of my original post was: "CNN claims the mayors' request includes $376.5 million of "pork." But the entire request totals $73.2 billion. That means one-half of one percent of the proposal is pork."

Here is Sepp's response:

...while you describe the “pork” in the document as minuscule, the numbers show otherwise. Do the more than 750 projects referring to sidewalks, trails, and bike paths sound just peachy-keen to me, a certified outdoor-lover? Why yes! (Let’s set aside the question of whether it’s moral to make struggling urban families pay for my walking trail out in the suburbs.)

Will they in fact “help the small businesses of Main Street America, and produce lasting economic and environmental benefits for the nation”? Not unless we build bike paths to every office building in America, and start transporting durable goods on the backs of bicycles. I suppose some business owners would love to have freshly-poured sidewalks for their customers, but I thought you guys hated conspicuous consumption.

Sepp does not refute the 6th-grade math from my original post. He still doesn't claim to have found more than one-half of one percent of pork in the mayors' $73.2 billion request consisting of 11,391 projects.

Instead, Sepp goes on a strawman rampage.

Sidewalks and trails are worthless (still refusing to acknowledge he's only talking about less than one-half of one percent of the mayors proposal.)

Bike paths have no benefit unless they connect to "every office building in America" (an argument that makes as much sense as highways are worthless because they don't directly connect to every office building in America) and bicyclists "start transporting usable goods." (My city of Northampton, MA contracts bicyclists to haul downtown trash and recyclables to the local dump, so you lose Pete.)

The strawman attacks continue. Sepps lashes out and says, "oops, though, folks in your camp seem to hate cars, so I guess anything having to do with road-building in this plan would get a thumbs-down from you, right?" Oops, Sepp didn't read the Institute for America's Future infrastructure report which calls for as much as $52 billion to improve our roads.

My favorite strawman from Sepp is deftly combined with the classic "false choice" move: "this [US Conference of Mayors] document contains hundreds of transit projects that perpetuate the myths of light- and heavy-rail while not giving enough to buses." Besides the revelation that the NYC subway system, the Japanese bullet train and the Eurorail pass are fairy tales, Sepp ignores that the mayors' proposal includes a slew of bus projects. (I stopped counting at 100, right around Las Vegas.)

The mayors know what Sepp doesn't: you're allowed to invest in a multi-faceted transportation system that includes roads, buses, bike paths and rail.

Washington conservatives often engage in false choices to confuse the issue at hand. They were not interested in strengthening our infrastructure in the last eight years. And they are not interested in crafting an effective public investment package to strengthen our infrastructure now. Their professed concerns are insincere and irrelevant.

Most hilarious is Sepp's attempt to debunk the entire concept of job creation with public investment by citing one GAO report from 1986 about a 1983 jobs bill that was implemented too late to mitigate the 1982 recession (like most conservatives, FDR's New Deal either never happened or is another "myth") and one CBO report from 1998 claiming the "supply is limited" of infrastructure projects that would be worth public investment. Earth to Sepp: It's now 2008 and our infrastructure is in far sorrier shape.

Sepp is very proud that he cites actual reports, announcing:

Imagine that – Neanderthal conservative know how read real good, grunt grunt!

He leaves me no choice but to cite "A Fish Called Wanda:"

OTTO: Apes don't read philosophy.

WANDA: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future