OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 7:35 PM PT – Friday, August 6, 2021
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) blasted the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, warning of the massive amount of inflation it would create. The Texas lawmaker spoke about the bill on Thursday, saying Democrats are looking to give billions of dollars to unelected bureaucrats to spend how they please.

He warned the bill would raise prices for everyday consumers and adversely affect manufacturing states like Texas. Cruz added the fact of the matter is the bill spends too much money and it’s not paid for.

“The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill today is roughly 12 times the new spending on roads and bridges,” said Cruz. “So, they’re selling the roads and bridges, but the bill’s 12 times bigger.”

Cruz pointed out the spending in the proposal is greater than what the U.S. spent to win World War II and claimed it is causing inflation across the country. He said Republicans should play their part and say enough is enough.

 

And here's a tasty morsel about what's actually in that pig bill;

Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill Includes $175 Million Toward Far-Flung Alaskan Projects (yahoo.com)
Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill Includes $175 Million Toward Far-Flung Alaskan Projects
Tucked away in the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill are provisions of up to $175 million for the Denali Commission, a federal body tasked with promoting rural infrastructure development in Alaska. The funding is part of a bundle of infrastructure giveaways for the state, whose senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, served as one of the lead Republican negotiators on the legislation.

The allotments in the bipartisan bill will infuse new life into the Denali Commission, which has survived a rather tumultuous history and will now presumably be able to fund new projects in some of the remotest corners of the United States. The bill grants $75 million directly to the Denali Commission, and authorizes Congress to appropriate $20 million for each fiscal year from 2022 through 2026 — $100 million total — toward the Denali Access System Program, a part of the commission that oversees surface-transportation projects.

The Denali Commission is among several federal commissions charged with initiating infrastructure projects across the country.

Among the transportation projects completed in the past few years was a $1.3 million all-terrain vehicle road between Tununak and Toksook Bay, villages on the Bering Sea so isolated that each has its own airstrip.

Toksook Bay had a population of about 660 at the start of the 2020 census, and residents rely on subsistence fishing and hunting for various sources of food. Tununak is even smaller, with a population under 400.

Now, Shooter is pretty sure even anon can do the math on this one. Taxpayer funds totaling at least $1.3 MILLION built an "all terrain vehicle road" (read, unimproved dirt road) between the two villages, which works out to $1,300 per resident. To build a 6.4 mile "road".
Really. 6.4 miles. That's $203,125 a mile.​

 

And that is an issue for you?
California has 53 representatives in the House.
Alaska has 1.

But lets get back to the point of Shooters post (nice attempt at deflection by the way, bron)
We don't know how much pork is tucked away in that TRILLION dollar pig bill, (we'll have to pass it to know what's in it apparently) but if this is any indication, we can be confident most, if not all of it, is neither necessary or proper. What it really is, is payback to despicable political cronies.
Bones are tossed to deplorable representatives, you know, to keep them quiet and on board.

The bottom line is, these robbers are not taking care of our business.
They're taking care of their business.
And that's OK with the likes of bron.

 

Now you get it. The Alaska projects are a reward for Senator Murkowski. The same system which permitted Donald Trump to escape impeachment twice, also gives a road to some people in Alaska. Strange how that works.

You'll have to take the good with the bad, but you are free to whine about all you like.

 

Well, first, trump was impeached twice, but everyone knew from the beginning it was bogus and wouldn't fly except, apparently the deranged nancy Antoinette and the power rangers.

And second, no, unlike you, Shooter doesn't have to settle for payoffs and corruption and pig bills.

Shooter can "whine" about it and point it out when he finds it, and vote.

You can lay down for it, apparently being a despicable means you never expect your elected representatives to take care of your business.

 

I'm sure your access to Devine knowledge is how you know it was bogus, since the Senate never heard any testimony on the affair.

If you don't intend to settle, what do you intend to do?

 

Your reading comprehension has suffered. Read the post.

Or are you just being obtuse?

 

Knowing what I know about Road Construction...which is more than the average bear.

I can not speculate the actual costs of anything in Alaska not knowing the terrain or the conditions of the climate or the working conditions.

Now here, $203,125 a mile would likely include asphalt/concrete, perhaps some sidewalks, street lighting a couple traffic lights for a 2 lane highway.

There will probably not be any need for purchasing of any easements, most likely wont be any major cost for engineering, or any surveying costs for layout.

Most certainly will be a high cost for mobilization, a prevailing wage contract of course due to the federal money that is involved

Perhaps there will likely be a few drainage swales that will need some form of piping/conduits a few trees cut down, while implementing an aggregate base that will require a maintenance program for the life of the new and improved all-terrain path/road, just as I am confident that there will be an environmental impact study that will most likely take half the funds right off the fucking top.

So yeah, I can account for the costs of improvements...but...is it really necessary is the real question.

 

And Shooter went looking for photos or whatever on that road, and didn't find anything.
But he knows about cutting roads through "wilderness".
In the early 70's we pioneered running several sections of different rivers that required cutting access to the river.
One was the upper Colorado.
Had to cut access to the river, a 3 mile jaunt down a hill.
We did that by simply driving a loaded truck and trailer down and then up the hill several times, and driving round and round at the river to make a lot of sorts.
Total cost; $5 in gas, one case of beer, and a flat repair on the trailer.

Today, by the way, thanks to gummit intervention, the road we cut is paved, there are about 150 camp sites, including full hook up sites, rest rooms including showers, 4 ramps, a doggie park and a pay station for parking. $5 a day. Oh, and now there are 3 roads in and out of there.

 

Obtuse is your modus operandi. Trump was impeached twice, in trials which had no testimony presented. In spite of that, you declare them "bogus". As you previously were able to declare some people guilty of illegal acts before they had been tried in court, this must be another example of your access to Divine knowledge. Do you hear voices which share this information, or is it some kind of sign you have to interpret?

 

Attaboy

 

Ted Cruz bashes vax mandates -- and totally ignores his own governor's desperate pleas for help





Screengrab.

https://www.rawstory.com/ted-cruz-delta-variant/


Texas Gov. Abbott begs for out-of-state medical staff -- and asks hospitals to postpone elective surgeries

https://www.rawstory.com/greg-abbott-2654606305/

 

"There should be no mandates — zero — concerning COVID," Cruz said. "That means no mask mandates, regardless of your vaccination status, that means no vaccine mandates, that means no vaccine passports."

Fuck off with the Government mandates..sure as fuck sounds like pure unadulterated Communism to me.

Gov. Abbott says Biden administration is releasing undocumented immigrants with COVID into Texas communities
When asked about it on Thursday, the White House dismissed the claim as "not factual."
https://www.khou.com/article/news/h...ties/285-efbe0dbd-26cf-42ee-ae7b-7693f31d1e19

As Abbott hits Biden for releasing migrants with COVID, White House asks why Texas rejects funds to test them
The feud continues after the president accused the governor of “Neanderthal thinking” on masks.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/pol...house-asks-why-texas-rejects-funds-for-tests/

Texas Gov. Abbott blames Covid spread on immigrants, criticizes Biden’s ‘Neanderthal’ comment
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/04/tex...s-criticizes-bidens-neanderthal-comment-.html

 

How the pandemic laid bare Ted Cruz and other Republicans' hypocrisy on their key policies

Meaghan Ellis, AlterNet
August 15, 2021



Senator Ted Cruz speaking with attendees at the 2021 Young Latino Leadership Summit. (Gage Skidmore)

Republicans' contradictions have been magnified with the resurgence of COVID-19, a new op-ed explains.

As new variants of the coronavirus threaten the progress made toward combating the virus, the same Republicans who claim to be "fierce pro-life advocates and "champions against government interfering with businesses" have "belied their adherence to those signature policies for political gain," according to PoliticusUSA.

The publication accuses Republican lawmakers of having a "flagrant disregard for living, breathing American citizens and attempts to control private businesses for political gain is a direct result of the pandemic."

One example centers on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). During an interview with CNBC, the Republican lawmaker insisted he believes in "individual freedom."

"I believe in individual freedom. I believe in individual responsibility," Cruz said. "So I don't think anyone should make you take the vaccine. I don't think the government should, and I don't think your employer should. I think you ought to have the choice to make your own medical decisions with your doctor."

Cruz's remarks during that interview were the prime example of a double standard. As PoliticusUSA notes, Cruz is making "the precise argument in support of a woman's right to choose her own reproductive health; an argument the religious Republicans claim is a non-starter regarding women's reproductive rights because religion."

However, back in 2016, Cruz argued, "I am unequivocally pro-life, I believe that every life is a precious gift from God that needs to be protected from the moment of conception until the moment of natural death."

Like Cruz, Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott (R) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) have have been widely criticized for their hypocritical policies where COVID is concerned.

Read the full op-ed here.

https://www.rawstory.com/ted-cruz-2654673150/

 

Same old same old from the left leaning pundits and talking heads.

 

More trouble for Ted!



Thinskin

 

So typical of treasonous conservative/Republicans that are cowards to the core but think they can attack others. We see the same thing around here all the time.


CNN Tears Into ‘Cancun’ Ted Cruz for Mocking Reporter in Kabul
‘THAT’S CALLED BRAVERY’

Justin Baragona
Contributing Editor

Published Aug. 16, 2021 3:39PM ET

REUTERS


CNN’s public relations team fired back at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Monday after he mocked chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward for comments she made while reporting on the scene in Kabul. Sharing a deceptively edited clip from Pizzagate-promoting provocateur Jack Posobiec, Cruz wrote on Twitter: “Is there an enemy of America for whom @cnn WON’T cheerlead? (In mandatory burkas, no less.)”

CNN PR didn’t mince words while defending Ward, who has spent years reporting from the frontline of Afghanistan and other extremely dangerous spots in the world—and referenced Cruz notoriously fleeing a Texas winter storm in the process. “Rather than running off to Cancun in tough times, @clarissaward is risking her life to tell the world what’s happening,” the official CNN Communications Twitter account posted. “That’s called bravery. Instead of RTing a conspiracy theorist’s misleading soundbite, perhaps your time would be better spent helping Americans in harm’s way.”

Conservatives and right-wing media have ridiculed Ward for noting in her report from Kabul on Monday that Taliban fighters are trying to portray themselves to Afghan citizens as non-threatening. “They’re just chanting ‘Death to America,’ but they seem friendly at the same time. It’s utterly bizarre,” she noted, emphasizing the contradictory nature of their behavior. At the same time, Ward—now wearing a burka to stay in line with Taliban rules for women—pointed out the “bitter fear that is consuming so many Afghans in this new, bizarre world” and there are “far fewer” women on the streets now.


https://www.thedailybeast.com/cnn-t...z-for-mocking-reporter-clarissa-ward?ref=home

 

Ted Cruz has never recouped $500,000 he loaned his first campaign -- and now he’s working to overturn the law that’s blocked him

Texas Tribune
December 08, 2021



Senator Ted Cruz speaking with attendees at the 2021 Young Latino Leadership Summit. (Gage Skidmore)

Locked in an expensive Republican primary for U.S. senator against a wealthy, better-known opponent, Ted Cruz loaned his campaign over $1 million in 2012.

The cash helped him defeat Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in a runoff that essentially secured Cruz a seat in the Senate. But it came at a personal financial cost: Cruz has never been able to recoup $545,000 of that loan, according to a Federal Election Commission report.

A 2002 law bans victorious federal candidates from using more than $250,000 raised after an election to pay back loans they gave their own campaigns prior to Election Day. Congress passed it to help prevent the appearance of quid pro quo corruption. The idea behind the limit is that money collected after an election is no longer helping a candidate win office. Instead, the funds go to the electee’s pocket.

Cruz recouped a good chunk of that 2012 loan from money received before Election Day. But when Cruz’s campaign determined that the loans could not be fully repaid due to the regulations, it began exploring ways to challenge the law, according to a May 2020 deposition of Cabell Hobbs, Ted Cruz Victory Committee treasurer.



Next month, his campaign’s lawsuit against the FEC will reach the Supreme Court. Cruz’s campaign lawyers are expected to argue the limit is unconstitutional, arbitrarily limits political speech and deters candidates from loaning money to their campaigns.

“The federal government’s restrictions on a candidate’s ability to loan his own money to his own campaign violate the First Amendment,” a Cruz spokesperson told The Texas Tribune in an email. “Senator Cruz seeks to vindicate his rights under the First Amendment and the rights of all those who would seek election to federal office.”

It’s unclear whether Cruz will ever get his money back, even if he wins his case. In 2015, after his campaign was audited by the FEC, Cruz’s campaign converted the existing unpaid loans into a contribution, as required by law. But he still lists the loans as an asset in his most recent Senate financial disclosure, which could be a sign he hopes to eventually get the money back. Cruz’s office did not respond to questions about his plans for the loan.

The lawsuit now pending before the Supreme Court is actually about a separate loan. One day before he won reelection in 2018, Cruz loaned his campaign $260,000 — intentionally establishing the groundwork to sue to overturn the rule and raise money to recover the $10,000 that goes over the cap of $250,000.



“The money they contribute is literally going into Ted Cruz’s bank account,” said Seth Nesin, the FEC’s former lead attorney on this case who left the agency in August after 13 years. “That’s what really makes it seem, to at least me and some other people, quite sketchy.”

Cruz’s legal fight is a new front in a longtime effort by conservatives to peel back federal campaign finance rules they argue are antithetical to free speech. If the Supreme Court affirms lower courts’ rulings in Cruz’s favor, the case would mark another blow to federal campaign finance laws under Chief Justice John Roberts.

In 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court effectively allowed unions and corporations to spend as much as they like on independent political broadcasts in candidate elections. Campaign spending by outside groups more than doubled in the decision’s wake, according to a 2015 analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice. In 2014’s McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that the government can’t cap the amount of money people donate to federal candidates in the aggregate every two years.

But this case goes a step further, according to some critics of Cruz’s lawsuit, because the money raised after the election would replenish politicians’ personal funds — not their campaigns.



If the Supreme Court struck down the limit, Tara Malloy, senior director for appellate litigation and strategy at the Campaign Legal Center, said the effect would be bad but “fairly narrow.”

“It’s just common sense that when an election is over, a contributor is not giving money to fund election speech anymore. At most, they are trying to associate themselves to the candidate,” said Malloy, whose group filed an amicus curiae brief supporting the FEC in the Supreme Court case. “That money that’s being raised will directly enrich the candidate in a way that almost no other campaign contribution will.”

In a motion filed in July, the FEC pointed to a recent study of U.S. congressional campaigns from 1983-2018 by two finance professors at universities in France and Switzerland. The study found that nearly half of all political campaigns rely on debt in some form. Officeholders in debt are more likely to change their votes to benefit PACs making post-election campaign contributions, according to the study.

But conservatives have long argued in court that campaign contributions amount to political speech, which shouldn’t be restricted.

In an amicus curiae brief filed in August, the nonprofit Institute for Free Speech argued that the limit hinders political speech by disincentivizing candidates from loaning money to their campaigns.

“Contributions to a political campaign promote more expenditures by that campaign, which results in more political speech,” wrote Donald A. Daugherty for the Institute for Free Speech.

FEC lawyers also argue that striking down the limit would allow candidates to engage further in “debt stacking,” a loophole where donors avoid contribution limits by giving money to previous campaigns with existing debts.

“If there were no Loan Repayment Limit now, a contributor that had not previously given to Senator Cruz could donate $16,000 today: the maximum $5,000 to his 2012 primary and general campaigns… an additional $5,400 to his 2018 campaigns… and another $5,600 to his 2024 campaigns. And Senator Cruz would be able to make yet another loan to his 2024 campaign to keep the cycle going,” the FEC wrote.

But Judge Neomi Rao — appointed by former President Donald Trump to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — wrote in June that because the government did not sufficiently prove how the law prevents corruption, the limit “runs afoul of the First Amendment.”

Lawyers representing Ted Cruz for Senate have until Dec. 15 to file their brief in the case. Oral arguments are Jan. 19. If the limit is considered unconstitutional, future candidates could theoretically repay loans of infinite amounts with post-election contributions.

Nesin fears that the “very hostile court to campaign finance laws” may strike down the limit.

“I think it’s very unlikely that the Supreme Court will find the FEC on the merits of the case,” Nesin said. “Just because of who is on the Supreme Court, the FEC doesn’t win anything.”


https://www.rawstory.com/ted-cruz-2655942961/?cx_testId=22&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=1

Where's a great revolutionary when you really need one? Oh wait I know. Only attacking Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. Because treasonous conservative/Republican corruption is just fine.

 

Ted should have taken a lesson from Hillary on campaign finance.

 

And your proof of the election being rigged? Trump had many chances to present evidence, and yet almost all cases are thrown out due to lack of evidence.