inaugural art photo-blogging

I'm in D.C. and, while it is indeed cold, there's definitely a buzz in the air. Almost every shop and restaurant has some sort of Obama related media/art/signage on display, and it seems like every passerby is talking about Obama and the upcoming inauguration.

Today my friend Nico and I went to the Manifest Hope exhibition of Obama related/inpired art... and here are a bunch of pics!


























Me and Nico:



the official exhibit poster:

and a few pics from the street:

miscellany

Max Blumenthal meets "pro-Israel" demonstrators:

Le Monde unearths 1996 interview with the Obamas.

Something to keep an eye on:

If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times, robots are not your friends.

Obama the food critic:

Speaking of which, there's a pretty cool blog that's about the intersection between food and Obama. Check it out.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

President Goofus and President Gallant - Peer Pressers

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Pundit School

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

William Zantzinger, who killed poor Hattie Carol, is dead.

Email Picture

The Baltimore Sun / Associated Press Laserphoto

William D. Zantzinger, at right, a prominent Maryland tobacco farmer then aged 24, is accompanied outside a Charles County, Md., police station by his wife, Jane, and his attorney before his 1963 manslaughter conviction for striking Hattie Carroll, a 51-year-old black barmaid, with a cane. Carroll died from a stroke later that night.

Gauging Panetta

One of the more interesting developments last week was the news of Obama's choice to head the CIA. First, a little background: As you know, the Bush Administration had the CIA disregard the Geneva Conventions so they could engage in "enhanced interrogation techniques" which are elsewhere generally referred to as "torture." As you also know, Obama has committed to ending these practices and restoring our country's good name.

Here's the problem: Given the nature of the chain of command, all the highest ranking officers in the CIA have been personally involved in some manner in implementing or at least passing on orders regarding Bush Administration interregation policies. So when it came time to choose the next CIA chief the Obama folks were left with three options: 1) Appoint an experienced CIA official who would might resist changes that implied their department, and indeed even him or herself, had committed wrongdoing, 2) reach way down into the chain of command and find someone who, although inexperienced, had not been involved in these practices, or 3) get creative.

Well, Obama chose door number three and got creative, tapping Clinton's former Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. I'll admit that I don't remember Panetta from back in the day (it wasn't until the election of 2000 that I became really politically engaged), but the general consensus seems to be that he's a smart guy who generally tries to get along with everyone and not make waves, but who has also over the last eight years repeatedly criticized Bush's interregation policies and insisted we should never resort to torture. The idea seems to be that Panetta might be someone who could make big changes in the CIA while simultaneously keeping the department (relatively) happy (ie. not feeling persecuted). While Panetta is an experienced consumer of intelligence as Clinton's Chief of Staff, that's where his relevant experience ends.

Diane Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was initially nonplussed, remarking, "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time." Sen. Rockefeller expressed similar concerns. Some have speculated the real source of concern for these Senators is that they would be held accountable for their own complicity in approving the use of torture. Fortunately, after personal calls from Obama and Biden, as well as speaking to Panetta himself, Feinstein at least seems to have warmed to the idea a bit.

I found the range of opinions regarding this pick very interesting. Here's a sampling...

The Mercury News:

Panetta's appointment may be Obama's most surprising and most thoughtful. The former Congressional leader from Monterey and chief of staff to Bill Clinton has been focused on nonpartisan, good-government reform in California for the past decade. He has no direct intelligence experience. But he has the ability and, more important, the wisdom to do this job — which must include bringing about a culture change in the CIA while strengthening its ability to gather information. With Panetta at the helm, facts will not be filtered through ideology to justify anybody's political aim.

The word statesman is rarely applied these days, but Leon Panetta embodies it. California's loss will be the nation's gain.

Amy Zegart, UCLA professor:

“It’s a puzzling choice and a high-risk choice,” said Amy Zegart, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has written extensively on intelligence matters.

“The best way to change intelligence policies from the Bush administration responsibly is to pick someone intimately familiar with them,” Ms. Zegart said. “This is intelligence, not tax or transportation policy. You can’t hit the ground running by reading briefing books and asking smart questions.”

SanFran Chronicle:

Under changes established after Sept. 11, the job of briefing the president each morning no longer falls to the CIA director. That job now belongs to the director of National Intelligence, who oversees the CIA and other clandestine services. President-elect Barack Obama has reportedly chosen retired Adm. Dennis Blair for that job.

Under that structure, Panetta's lack of experience in intelligence and service overseas might matter less than his managerial and political experience - and his bipartisan reputation for integrity, several analysts said Monday.

"Panetta's significance will be as a politically adroit manager, not an intelligence professional," said political scientist Richard Betts, a specialist on national security policy and military strategy at Columbia University.

"No one individual has experience in many of the essential aspects of intelligence, which is a sprawling empire of technological surveillance systems, espionage, analysis, covert action and so on," Betts said. "At the top, you need someone who can bring it all together. Experience in some of the intelligence business helps, to be sure, but it's not enough."

What does matter, several analysts said, is the ability to win and hold trust - of the president, of Congress and of the rank and file in the CIA, all of whom will expect, and in some cases fear, big changes in the years to come.

CQ Politics reports the CIA reaction to the pick is "overwhelmingly negative:"

Charles "Sam" Faddis, who led a CIA team into northern Iraq before the 2003 invasion, says he had "already heard from a large number of rank and file within CIA on this choice, and the reaction has been overwhelmingly negative."

Faddis added:

"These are people who are sweating blood everyday to make things happen and living for the day that somebody is going to come in, institute real reform and turn the CIA into the vital, effective organization it should be. To them this choice just says that no such changes are impending and that all they can look forward to is business as usual."

A number of field operatives have voiced similar sentiments to me since word spread Monday that Obama had chosen Panetta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton known for his budget expertise, to run the CIA. Panetta was also a Democratic congressman from the Monterey area of California from 1977 to 1993.

"His credentials do not warrant the appointment, especially in a wartime footing," said one CIA operative who has been pursuing al Qaeda in Afghanistan, in a typical remark.

But the Washington Independent reports that intelligence officials see potential in Ponetta:

“He has no intel background as far as I know,” said one recently retired intelligence official who requested anonymity, “and it’ll be a steep learning curve.” Within an hour, a retired senior official who also requested anonymity repeated the “steep learning curve” line unprompted. Yet both agreed that intelligence experience isn’t the only criterion for chairing the agency.

Some said that Panetta’s closeness with Obama would give the CIA a relevance with the White House that it chronically worries it will lose. When a small Cessna airplane crashed on the lawn of the Clinton White House in the 1990s, the joke around Langley was that the pilot was then-director Jim Woolsey trying to get an appointment with the president. This fear has been magnified in recent years, after Congress in 2004 stripped the CIA of its premier position within the community by creating an independent intelligence czar known as the director of national intelligence.

“There are probably many, like myself, who would rather see [a CIA veteran] in the job,” said the retired senior official. “But then you say, ‘If not, where do you turn?’ And here’s a guy who was White House chief of staff and obviously has a lot of political juice. Those who’d worry that the CIA will be relegated to a backseat position vis-a-vis the [Director of National Intelligence] can take heart.”

Steve Coll at the New Yorker:

The C.I.A. directorship is a diminished post, no longer in charge of the full intelligence community and subordinate to the Director of National Intelligence (who will apparently be Dennis Blair, a retired admiral.) Still, the C.I.A. director has four important jobs: manage the White House relationship; manage Congress, particularly to obtain budgetary favor; manage the agency’s workforce and daily operations; and manage liaisons with other spy chiefs, friendly and unfriendly. Panetta is thoroughly qualified for the first two functions but unqualified for the latter two. He seems to have been selected as a kind of political auditor and consensus builder. He will make sure the White House is protected from surprises or risks emanating from C.I.A. operations; he will ensure that interrogation and detention practices change, and that the Democratic Congress is satisfied by those changes; he will ensure that all of this occurs with a minimum of disruptive bloodletting. All good, but it is not enough. The essential problem is that Panetta is a man of Washington, not a man of the world. He’s seventy-years-old, spends his time on his California farm, and he’s been out of the deal flow, as they say on Wall Street, for about a decade; he knows California budget policy like the back of his hand, but what intuition or insight does he bring to the most dangerous territories in American foreign policy—Anbar Province, the Logar Valley, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas? Compared to his counterparts in Pakistan, Jordan, Israel, Britain, etc.—the critical relationships in national security that the C.I.A. Director alone can manage—he is a relative novice not only about intelligence operations but also about the foreign-policy contexts in which they occur. The country needs a better clandestine service. The C.I.A. has taken in an unusually talented pool of young case officers who volunteered after September 11th—probably as good a young talent pool as the government has had since the nineteen-sixties. But the agency they signed up for has been battered around and led by revolving door. Panetta may make the White House feel more secure about unfinished bureaucratic and operational reforms at Langley, but he is unqualified to forge the next-generation spy service that a country with as many enemies as this one has needs and deserves.

Robert Baer, former CIA official (portrayed by George Clooney in the film Syrianna):

Leon Panetta may not have an intelligence background, but his appointment as CIA director shows that Barack Obama understands the CIA's problems. As a former White House chief of staff, Clinton Administration budget director and eight-term California Congressman, Panetta knows his way around Washington better than most people, and that kind of knowledge is exactly what the CIA needs right now.

Panetta is experienced enough to understand that the CIA was the victim of political manipulation under the Bush Administration. It was the Bush White House that cherry-picked the intelligence on Iraq, not the CIA. Panetta will have the ear of the new President to walk him through all of this and to make the case that there is no point in throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Laura Rozen at Foreign Policy mag's blog catalogs various reactions:

A former senior CIA manager said the message of the Panetta appointment was clear: "The message is, 'I don't want to hear anything out of the CIA. Make it go away. No scandals. Keep it quiet,'" the former officer told me. "They put over there a guy who is a political loyalist, who will keep everything nice and quiet, but who won't know a good piece of intelligence from a shitty piece of intelligence, and wouldn't know a good intelligence officer" from a bad one.

But former intelligence analyst Greg Treverton, now with the Rand Corporation, said Panetta's experience as a former White House chief of staff might give him a unique understanding of the presidency and its needs for intelligence. "One of my experiences with people like Panetta who have been chief of staff is that they have a clear sense of what is helpful to the president that most senior officials don't," Treverton told me. "They get it. What he could do and couldn't do. And that's an interesting advantage Panetta brings. Knowledge of what the presidential stakes are like, how issues arise, and what they need to be protected from, for better or worse."

Retired CIA deputy director for the East Europe division Milt Bearden said Panetta is a "brilliant" choice. "It is not problematic that Panetta lacks experience in intelligence," Bearden e-mailed. "Intel experience is overrated. Good judgement, common sense, and an understanding of Washington is a far better mix to take to Langley than the presumption of experience in intelligence matters. Having a civilian in the intelligence community mix is, likewise, a useful balance. Why not DNI?"

The Panetta choice also makes sense to him, said Philip Zelikow, a former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (and Foreign Policy writer). "The issues of presidential trust and clean hands are, at this moment in history, most important," Zelikow said by e-mail. "And even an 'intelligence professional' would have to rely on others in many ways. ... So Obama and his team have made a certain kind of tradeoff."

Fred Kaplan of Slate:

This has been Obama's persistent dilemma on the matter of picking a CIA chief (and the reason it has taken him so long to do so): finding someone who is a) up on the issues and the workings of the intelligence bureaucracy but b) not tainted by the Bush administration's record of renditions, torture, or extralegal surveillance.

Panetta's pick suggests that no such person exists—and that, if forced to make priorities, Obama values b) over a). Panetta has written articles denouncing the use of torture under any circumstances. In that respect, he is clean.

It is worth emphasizing, however, that Panetta is not as green to the spook world as some of his appointment's critics have maintained. In the 1990s, as President Bill Clinton's budget director and White House chief of staff, he was not just passively exposed to intelligence issues.

Richard Clarke, who was the White House counterterrorism director under Clinton (and, briefly, under Bush before resigning and then emerging as a celebrated critic), wrote in an e-mail today:

Leon was in all of the important national security meetings for years, both as [Office of Management and Budget] director and as chief of staff. He made substantive contributions well outside of his job description. And as OMB director, he was one of a very few people who knew about all of the covert and special-access programs.

Clarke's first point is crucial—Panetta knows, from experience, what a president wants and needs from intelligence reports, so he could represent the agency's views more cogently than many insiders might.

But the final point is important, too. These "special-access programs"—satellites, sensors, and other intelligence-gathering devices whose very existence is known only to those with compartmentalized security clearances—form a welter of costly, overlapping, ill-coordinated, and largely unsupervised projects that are run by private contractors to a greater extent than most people might imagine.

One former CIA official who is familiar with these programs (and who asked not to be identified) speculates that Panetta's main task might be to clean up not only the agency's high-profile mess—the "black ops" that have tarnished America's reputation around the world—but this budgetary-bureaucratic mess as well. Certainly, he knows where the line items are buried to a degree that few insiders can match.

Scott Horton, writing at Harper's:

I suspect that Panetta was chosen principally for his managerial skills, but secondarily because Obama wanted someone who would have a more powerful voice in Washington generally, and in Congressional circles in particular, than either Rockefeller or Feinstein.

Panetta’s task will be to put the agency back on firm ground in terms of policy; he will not want to micro-manage. He needs to put an end to the abuse of the agency at the hands of political hacks and ensure that its operatives go about their jobs as professionals, calling the facts as they see them and not telling the White House what it wants to hear. For eight years, while Rockefeller and Feinstein stood by, the agency was pressured by the Cheney shogunate to validate its fairy tales. This did not serve the nation’s security interest. Sober analysis that does not fear political meddling needs to be restored.

And Panetta has one other key trait. When he tells the nation and the world that the torture and mistreatment of prisoners and the program of torture by proxy has ended, people will believe him.

Richard Reeves:

"Washington's gain is California's loss," said Tracy Westen, director of the Center for Governmental Studies, a California think tank, when he heard that Obama intended to name Panetta director of the Central Intelligence Agency. You would think Washington might appreciate its gain. But, in fact, the intelligence establishment is already out to get Panetta. He is not one of them.

The CIA and some very good friends believe they work for themselves, not for the country. They prefer directors like George "Slam Dunk" Tenet, who came up through the ranks. The attack they will make is that appointing someone like Panetta would "politicize" the collection and interpretation of intelligence. I'm not sure what that means, since one of the problems of the last eight years has been the agency's -- or its directors' -- inclination to tell politicians whatever they wanted to hear.

Leon Panetta is as good as it gets. I do not know whether he can get control over the nasty internal politics of the CIA, but I do know he will tell the truth to the president, and that CIA analysts and spies work not for nameless bosses but for the people of the United States. If that is politicization, I am all for it.

once in a lifetime

I've been slow getting back into the swing of this as you may have noticed, but let's get back to it! Here's an economic themed post:

Obama's weekly address:

He references an internal report (just publicly released), which includes this graph:

Tim Fernholz, at Tapped, writes:

In his radio address, Obama talks about how the jobs plan will reinforce his stated goals; many of the jobs will be in the clean energy sector, for instance, and others will come out of his plans to computerize medical records and, of course, rebuild roads, bridges and schools (still no direct mention of mass transit, unfortunately).

We still have to ask, is this enough? I'm not sure Paul Krugman will be pleased, if that's the benchmark. But one thing I do expect is for Democratic members of congress to look at that graph above, consider their reelection prospects, and wonder if maybe they ought to make the bill just a bit bigger so that unemployment line will drop just a bit lower as voters head to the polls; nothing like seeing self-interest and good public policy go hand-in-hand.

And, indeed, Krugman: not pleased.

This is the most dangerous economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it could all too easily turn into a prolonged slump.

But Mr. Obama’s prescription doesn’t live up to his diagnosis. The economic plan he’s offering isn’t as strong as his language about the economic threat. In fact, it falls well short of what’s needed.

Bear in mind just how big the U.S. economy is. Given sufficient demand for its output, America would produce more than $30 trillion worth of goods and services over the next two years. But with both consumer spending and business investment plunging, a huge gap is opening up between what the American economy can produce and what it’s able to sell.

And the Obama plan is nowhere near big enough to fill this “output gap.”

To close a gap of more than $2 trillion — possibly a lot more, if the budget office projections turn out to be too optimistic — Mr. Obama offers a $775 billion plan. And that’s not enough.

Now, fiscal stimulus can sometimes have a “multiplier” effect: In addition to the direct effects of, say, investment in infrastructure on demand, there can be a further indirect effect as higher incomes lead to higher consumer spending. Standard estimates suggest that a dollar of public spending raises G.D.P. by around $1.50.

But only about 60 percent of the Obama plan consists of public spending. The rest consists of tax cuts — and many economists are skeptical about how much these tax cuts, especially the tax breaks for business, will actually do to boost spending. (A number of Senate Democrats apparently share these doubts.) Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center summed it up in the title of a recent blog posting: “lots of buck, not much bang.”

The bottom line is that the Obama plan is unlikely to close more than half of the looming output gap, and could easily end up doing less than a third of the job.

To be sure, a third of a loaf is better than none. But right now we seem to be facing two major economic gaps: the gap between the economy’s potential and its likely performance, and the gap between Mr. Obama’s stern economic rhetoric and his somewhat disappointing economic plan.

Obama responds:

Josh Marshall is worried that Obama is ceding the initiative to Congress:

Over almost two years, I've learned not to underestimate Barack Obama or assume reflexively that if he's not following my idea of the best way to proceed that he hasn't thought up a much better one I hadn't considered. But it does look to me like he's ceding the initiative to Congress, which is odd since he's immensely popular and Congress is wildly unpopular.

Let's review the stakes. If Obama can pass a big, well-thought-out and clean stimulus bill in the first weeks of his administration, he will have already placed a deep imprint on the course of American politics for years and even decades into the future. If he doesn't, if it starts dragging out, not only will that not happen, which is bad in itself. But he'll also signal to a lot of people that he can be stymied even at the height of his power.

Presidents have key windows of opportunity. And this is one of them, perhaps a defining one. So I'm surprised to see so relatively little effort to take the initiative more forcefully with Congress, let alone the greatly diminished political opposition, since left to itself the legislative branch will naturally revert to standard operating procedures I'm not sure we can really afford at the moment.

John Dickerson, on the other hand, says Obama is right not to rush:

The legislation is going to pass. It's how it passes that will determine whether Obama increases or diminishes the political capital he needs for his next set of tasks, which include addressing the country's health care problems and rewiring the nation's energy policy. Legislation of the stimulus bill's size and complexity would be difficult under any circumstances. And Obama is trying to do more than just get his first program passed—he's trying to create a whole new way of doing business. It's going to take time.

Steve Benen is worried Obama is trying too hard to please Republicans

It occurs to me, reading over the reports of Obama's time on the Hill, that the president-elect not only places a strong emphasis on creating proposals with bipartisan support, but seems to genuinely believe he can negotiate with the congressional minority in good faith.

Obama may very well be right, but I'm not sure where this confidence comes from. He's moving forward under the assumption that Republicans want to work with him, are willing to compromise, and stand ready to put national interests in the midst of a crisis ahead of partisan concerns. When Obama talked during the campaign about a "new" kind of politics, premised on the notion that people can be brought together with a sense of common purpose, he apparently meant it.

But the approach is not only a leap of faith -- trusting the character of angry far-right Republicans who see merit in Hoover's economic policies -- it also comes with considerable risk. For the last 15 years or so, Democratic efforts to work with Republicans in good faith have been routinely punished.

Obama's instincts have a strong track record, but any discussion premised on the notion that congressional Republicans are credible negotiators who take policy seriously is inherently suspect. Indeed, even yesterday, Obama's efforts notwithstanding, GOP leaders, despite having very little leverage, complained the incoming administration wants to spend too much and cut taxes too little.

I hope Obama knows what he's doing. It's only the global economy on the line.

On his blog, Krugman writes that trying to please Republicans is pointless:

Look, Republicans are not going to come on board. Make 40% of the package tax cuts, they’ll demand 100%. Then they’ll start the thing about how you can’t cut taxes on people who don’t pay taxes (with only income taxes counting, of course) and demand that the plan focus on the affluent. Then they’ll demand cuts in corporate taxes. And Mitch McConnell is already saying that state and local governments should get loans, not aid — which would undermine that part of the plan, too.

OK, maybe this is just a head fake from the Obama people — they think they can win the PR battle by making bipartisan noises, then accusing the GOP of being obstructionist. But I’m really worried that they’re sending off signals of weakness right from the beginning, and that they’re just going to embolden the opposition.

(and for those lacking Krugman's cynicism, this pretty much sums up where the Republicans are on this)

Obama suggests that he's (somewhat counter-intuitively) proposing a low number, and expecting it to go up:

The NYT:

David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, said the president-elect’s team was not concerned by the emerging pockets of criticism of his plan.

“Obviously, it’s a big answer to a big problem and there are a lot of component parts to it,” Mr. Axelrod said in an interview after meeting with balky Senate Democrats. “These folks are not potted plants. They’re elected officials, and they’re doing their jobs.”

He added, “It’s a collective process, and we’re willing to listen to people’s ideas.”

Asked if they were willing to adopt people’s ideas, Mr. Axelrod said: “We’ll see. It depends on the idea.”

Mr. Axelrod’s comments came after a spirited meeting at the Capitol where he and two other Obama aides, Lawrence H. Summers, the incoming national economic adviser, and Philip Schiliro, tapped to be the chief White House lobbyist, heard lots of frustration from Democratic senators.

“There is only one thing we have got to do in the stimulus, and that is how can we create jobs,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, as he left the meeting. “I am a little concerned by the way that Mr. Summers and others are going at this in that, to me, it still looks like a little more of this trickle-down, if we just put it in at the top, it’s going to trickle down. A number of people in there said, ‘Look, we have got to have programs that actually create jobs and put people to work.’ ”

Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, said lawmakers and the incoming administration had differences over how to focus the huge federal spending in a recovery bill. “Investment, investment, investment has got to be the central focus: energy, roads, bridges, waterways, housing,” he said. “Job creation is Job One.”

Mr. Conrad, who described the meeting as extremely positive, said Mr. Summers ended it by telling the senators, “Message received, loud and clear.”

Given all the above, Nate Silver's case that Obama has adopted a "price is right" strategy is very convincing indeed. First placate the Repubs, then negotiate up with the Dems, so they can then commiserate with the Republicans about those awful liberals.

Digby, remarking on Kerry's objections, makes a similar point:

It seems very unlikely to me that Kerry is acting out of school, but is rather playing the role of the liberal stimulus spending obsessive who will (hopefully) balance out the tax cut fetishists in the senate negotiations, giving Obama some space to compromise at least somewhere to the left of The Club For Growth. (Unfortunately, that still leaves us with the Blue Dog deficit hawks, but maybe Rahm has pictures or something.)

It's all just a guess, of course, but I simply don't believe that Kerry and Conrad are out there running at Obama from the left on their own. They just don't have it in them. They are staking out this position for negotiating purposes on his behalf. Obviously, we don't know how far any of them will go to fight for it, but at least the liberal economic argument looks like it will be made.

John Judis, over at TNR, says we need to declare "the fiscal equivalent of war," raising the issue of high speed rail:

It would consist not merely of updating or repairing the nation's infrastructure, but in undertaking massive new investments that would expand the scope of American industry, and address other urgent problems in the process: global warming, over-reliance on petroleum, and the need to revive America's domestic manufacturing capabilities--not just to provide jobs, but also to provide tradeable goods that can reduce the country's current account deficit.

One area that is ripe for such investment--and that is not, from what I have seen, a declared priority of the Obama administration--is high-speedrail. Amtrak's Acela trains--the closest thing we have to one--average less than 100 mph between Washington D.C. and Boston, whereas trains in Western Europe and Japan go more than twice as fast. Many of them also run on electricity. They would be the most energy-efficient and quickest means of getting between places like Boston and New York, or Los Angeles and San Francisco. But they would require a massive investment. For instance, installing high-speed rail in the Northeast corridor could cost about $32 billion, while California's high-speed rail system would require up to $40 billion. A system that would address the other areas of the country could easily raise the cost to the hundreds of billions. The House transportation and infrastructure committee has currently proposed $5 billion in stimulus funds for intercity rail--not even a down payment on what it would cost to convert the U.S. to high-speed rail.

Investing in high-speed rails would be very expensive, but unlike tax cuts--the benefits of which can be siphoned off in the purchase of imported goods--the money spent would go directly to reviving American industry and improving the country's trade balance. That doesn't just mean jobs creating dedicated tracks or new rail stations: Though the U.S. abandoned train manufacturing decades ago to the French, Germans, Canadians, and Japanese, this kind of production could be undertaken by our ailing auto companies or aircraft companies--if the federal and state governments were to place orders. And building trains that would run on electricity would be a paradigmatic example of the "green jobs" that Obama often touts.

Yglesias points out the trouble with using high speed rail construction as stimulus:

The trouble is this—how much high-speed rail could you really build on a 24 month month time frame? When you think about the permitting, environmental review, NIMBY lawsuits, etc. it’s plausible to imagine it taking 24 months to just finish all the lawsuits much less build anything.

I don’t think it’s some kind of inexplicable scandal that comprehensive high-speed rail construction isn’t the centerpiece of the Obama stimulus agenda. But I do think it’s very distressing that I’m not seeing any effort to think this issue through at all. Sure as I am that it’s not feasible to undertake $100 billion in new HSR construction over the next two years, I’m also absolutely certain that it’s possible to undertake more than $0.00 in such new construction. And these really are infrastructure investments that are worth doing for reasons totally independent of the need for stimulus.

Nate Silver on the politics of "green" projects in general:

The public seems to tolerate the spending on bridges and highways -- but they also see it, perhaps not wholly improperly, as makework. The long-run benefits of the alternative energy programs, on the other hand, are far more intuitively appealing. If the central critique of the stimulus is that the debt we're creating will be burdensome to future generations, that concern could be mitigated if the spending in question is portrayed as a down payment made on behalf of those future generations toward cleaning up the environment and mitigating dependence on fossil fuels. It also provides for some sense of purpose to the stimulus: we'll come out of this, Obama can say, with the greenest, most energy-independent major industrial economy in the world, etc. etc.

If you've been exposed to the notion that the New Deal "didn't work," or, more outrageously, "actually made things worse," then you might want to watch this:

And, finally, Bush wonders, "how did we get here?"

(same as it ever was....)

24-14