Hoax, you again show that you have no idea what a socialist is and throw the scare word around dutifully as your masters would have you do. Call it what you will, but with Obama standing in deficient bridges and talking infrastructure, these austerity candidates are being backed into an impossible corner. Investing in infrastructure that puts folks back to work and paves the road for tomorrow's industry is not socialism, it's smart. Congress should pass the jobs bill now before Obama confines the populace that it needs to be even bigger.
I have little doubt that I understand what "Socialist leaning" means better than you. I have posted the definition of Socialism in the past so everyone would understand what it means and I have read your posts in the past so I understand that you have blinders on when it comes to understanding the steps that Obama and the Democratic party have taken to push the United States towards a "Western European Socialist Democracy" (look that up).
I understand that neither Europe (anymore) nor the US are headed towards a form of government that conforms exactly to the definition of a Socialist State.
I also have little doubt that if Obama had his way, he would take the US beyond the point that the European governments went (BTW, these European governments called themselves Socialist States and the people that headed those governments declared themselves Socialists - you can go argue with them what Socialism means).
Obama's political belief is that the European governments did not go far enough and that is why they failed as Socialist states.
As to infrastructure investment, I agree with that but the problem is really all about creating jobs. The Obama administration's decision to invest in infrastructure creates relatively few jobs due to the mechanized and technological way that infrastructure is created in this age. Simply taking the idea that the New Deal way of the 1930's of creating jobs in building infrastructure and applying it in this age has created very few jobs for the capital investment. A mile of road created now takes only 7% of the workforce that was used to create that mile in the 1930's.
I just made a road trip from Georgia to Wyoming to Arizona back to Georgia and what I saw was a lot of road construction going on (of which at least half seemed unnecessary) and a lot of heavy equipment and relatively few actual people (jobs) working on these roads. Even the equipment did not seem new ... most of it looked 10 to 30 years old so there did not seem to be that very many jobs were created to manufacture the equipment being used and if they were, they were probably created in Mexico or Canada.
Too late, Obama has caught on that the investment needs to be made in industries and companies that have payroll as 60% or more of their operating costs. This is how you create jobs. I did see quite a few windmill blades being transported so hopefully that created some jobs for Americans.
Not saying that the Republicans would not have made the same mistakes if they had made these decisions but I do think they would have involved actual business people in making these decision rather than Ivory Tower intellectuals that have very little or no experience in the real world of business and consequent job creation.
Peace,
Hoaxster