SOURCES SAY RUBIO LOSES FOX
New York Magazine Online

DAILY INTELLIGENCERNETWORK EFFECTSMarch 2, 20165:01 p.m.

More Bad News for Marco Rubio: He Just Lost the Support of Fox News

Gabriel Sherman

“In his role as the donor class's darling, Marco Rubio has enjoyed support from the Republicans' media arm, Fox News. Throughout the primary, Fox provided Rubio with friendly interviews and key bookings, including the first prime-time response to Barack Obama's Oval Office address on ISIS. Many of the network's top pundits, including Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer, have been enthusiastic boosters. Bill Sammon, Fox's Washington managing editor, is the father of Rubio's communications director, Brooke Sammon. 
“But this alliance now seems to be over. According to three Fox sources, Fox chief Roger Ailes has told people he's lost confidence in Rubio's ability to win. ‘We're finished with Rubio,’ Ailes recently told a Fox host. ‘We can't do the Rubio thing anymore.’ 
“Ailes was already concerned about Rubio's lackluster performance in GOP primaries and caucuses, winning only one contest among the 15 that have been held. But the more proximate cause for the flip was an embarrassing New York Times article revealing that Rubio and Ailes had a secret dinner meeting in 2013 during which the Florida senator successfully lobbied the Fox News chief to throw his support behind the ‘Gang of 8’ comprehensive immigration-reform bill. ‘Roger hates seeing his name in print’a longtime Ailes associate told me. ‘He was appalled the dinner was reported,’ the source said.”

NO HIGH-SPEED RAIL

“ . . . the United States hasn’t a single system that meets all the criteria of high-speed rail. President Obama has proposed a system of high-speed railroads, which has gone nowhere in Congress.”

Drew, Elizabeth, “A Country Breaking Down,” pp: 30-32, in The New York Review, February 25, 2016.

HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION     “Congress’s approval last December [2015] of a five-year bill to spend $305 billion to improve the nation's highway system occasioned much self-congratulation that I the lawmakers actually got something done. But with an increase in the gasoline tax politically off-limits, the means for paying for it are dubious and uncertain. This was the longest-term highway bill passed since 1998 and thirty-fifth extension of an authorization- of highway construction since 2005. Some of the extensions of the program approved by Congress lasted for only three months. The previous extension was for just over three weeks. Such practices don't allow planning of the construction or repair of highways and bridges and mass-transit systems.” Drew, Elizabeth, “A Country Breaking Down,” pp: 30-32, in The New York Review, February 25, 2016.

ACTUAL PHYSICAL DANGER “Our political myopia has put us in actual physical danger as we go about the mundane business of getting about. We let essential structures and facilities deteriorate or go unbuilt. A politician is more likely get in trouble with constituents for spending federal money than for not spending federal money. Moreover, as a rule Washington politicians, whether in office for two or four or six years, aren't keen on spending for something that doesn't have a near- term payoff-perhaps a structure that they can dedicate and even get their names inscribed on.” Drew, Elizabeth, “A Country Breaking Down,” pp: 30-32, in The New York Review, February 25, 2016.

INFRASTRUCTURE REPLACEMENT

“The ASCE [American Society of Civil Engineers] says that the estimated
need of support for America's infrastructure by 2020 is $3.6 trillion. Total
spending at current levels is estimated by the ASCE to be $253 billion
annually and estimated spending between 2013 and 2020, before passage of the
highway bill, is estimated at $2 trillion, leaving us $1.6 trillion short.”

Drew, Elizabeth, “A Country Breaking Down,” pp: 30-32, in The New York Review, February 25, 2016.

INFRASTRUCTURE CRISIS

“The near-total failure of our political institutions to invest for the future,
eschewing what doesn't yield the quick payoff, political and physical, has left
us with hopelessly clogged traffic, at risk of being on a bridge that collapses,
or on a train that flies off defective rails, or with rusted pipes carrying our drinking water.
Broadband is our new interstate highway system, but not everyone has access to it
-a division largely based on class. Depending on the measurement used, the United
States ranks from fourteenth to thirtieth among all nations in its investments in infrastructure.
The wealthiest nation on earth is nowhere near the top.”

Drew, Elizabeth, “A Country Breaking Down,” pp: 30-32, in The New York Review, February 25, 2016.

US GETS LOW GRADES ON ITS INFRASTRUCTURE

“Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) conducts
a study of where the United States stands in providing needed infrastructure in
various sectors. Though the organization obviously has an interest in
the creation of more construction jobs, its analyses, based as they are on
information from other studies, are taken seriously by nonpartisan experts
in the field. In the ASCE’s most recent report card, issued in 2013, the combined
sectors received an overall grade of D+. In the various sectors, the grades were:
aviation, D; bridges, C+; inland waterways, D-; ports, C; rail, C+; roads, D;
mass transit, D; schools, D; hazardous waste, D; drinking water, D. No sector
received an A. That none of the infrastructure categories received an F is hardly grounds for celebration.”

Drew, Elizabeth, “A Country Breaking Down,” pp: 30-32, in The New York Review, February 25, 2016.