When it comes to modernizing the public school system in this country I have not heard one mention about the vital need to air condition all public schools. Teachers and students are now forced to work under inhumane conditions even here in the northeast, during the months of May, June, and September. In NYC alone, one million schoolchildren are being asked to perform at high levels, under sweat shop conditions. This is is rarely addressed because all other working professionals cannot fathom the conditions created in many of our older brick-oven schools on dyas where the heat index exceeds 100.

Compared to Reagan,Bush the tolerable,Clinton, and Ragnarok Bush it may seem ambitious, but it's probably only going to slow the descent into the abyss. Once he's in, he's probably going to have to go really big instead of this weak tea.

I hear citigroup went and bought an infrstrucuture company in Spain, arch enemy of McCain, for $10 billion pieces of fiat.

I'm pretty sure that, right at this instant, someone's planning a hedge fund dealing in infrastructure derivatives to cream off some of the stimulus money.

I'm all for infrastructure upgrades but the enviros, your allies, will derail that quickly. It will take 10 years for any of his projects to get built unless he suspends ESA and a few other Luddite laws and I don't see him doing that.

We won't do it the old Washington way.

Does anybody believe that line anymore? He's got the old Washington Congress and the old Washington executives. He's got the old Washington lobbyists. The only thing new is Obama, and as head of the Chicago Annenburg challenge, ineffectually throwing money at the problem was the only thing that he did.

In order to stave off the Japanese recession, the Japanese government spent billions on new infrastructure. It didn't stave off the recession. Hoover and FDR both increased federal spending (and federal debt), and neither was successful. Clinton had a good run, but he inherited a growing economy and passed on an economy of rapidly diminishing growth, and eventual shrinkage. It's doubtful that Bush's deficit spending alleviated the recession that he inherited very much.

Obama will be inaugurated soon, and the economy will meander as now. He will take from the successful geese on the right and give to the unsuccessful geese on the left, but the output of golden eggs will not increase.

to use another metaphor, people will buy Obama's good words for a while, but he'll flood the market with them and they'll lose their value. At the rate he's talking, he won't have anything left to say on inauguration day.

The recession will end when entrepreneurs figure out what to do better, not when government tells it to end.

I think that the Change.org site is critical in that it invites citizens to provide specific evidence and ideas. For those of us who are disenfranchised, this may be the sole vehicle by which to at least provide input and to express our will.

To that end, I am taking the Obama transition team at its word and am crafting a white paper on healthcare reform which includes professional nursing and which provides the evidence and strategies to correct the nursing and nursing faculty shortages while simultaneously providing essential primary/preventive/public healthcare to all citizens.

Instead of slapdash comments, I think that the responsible and civic-minded thing to do is to craft thoughtful ideas and arguments based on available objective and scientific evidence, advance the idea through reason and logic and aim the idea at what will achieve the greatest good for the common benefit at the most reasonable cost and least intrusion into private life.

I'm all for infrastructure upgrades but the enviros, your allies, will derail that quickly.

Or you could actually try being right on the facts for once by spending five minutes googling a subject before posting blindly about it. Either way.

Sierra Club: Rail is Our Best Bet

Sierra Club: Build Sustainable Mass Transport in MA

Sierra Club: Replace Aging Water Infrastructure

NRDC: Provide Utilities Incentives to Modernize Nation's Energy Delivery Grid

NRDC: Smart Growth and LEED Communities to Save Infrastructure Dollars

NRDC: Invest in Aging Water Infrastructure

Rick:

I get mixed feeling about air conditioning... I deem it not so much necessary everywhere as you in the US think it is.

But insulating? good insulation, summer-winter is expensive for a citizen, but schools and other public buildings would be much bettert with it, and I guess it would pay better than a loan to Goldman sachs...

Launch a big insulation programm, with strong quality criteria. You have slack in the building industry, it could start very quick. And you do something for rebalancing the world economy, which will be needed soon...

Don't forget MASS TRANSIT

It works in two ways, giving commuters an alternative to driving and lowering the traffic on freeways and surface streets.

In San Francisco, we are poised to build a short subway to Chinatown. This should be funded, immediately (calling Nancy Pelosi)

Mass transit with an emphasis on light rail is the most effective means of transportation.

California has just passed an initiative to fund a 'Bullet Train'.
Hopefully, this will be funded too

We currently spend more money on WAR than the rest of the world COMBINDED
Time for some meat axe cuts, there

I like the idea of large public works program. I just hope he can figure out a way to do it without increasing the deficit or national debt. Anyone can come up with great idea. The problem is paying for them. If he increases the debt or deficit any further, then the economic consequences will be devastating, very seriously so. Make the Bush years seems like an oasis of prosperity.

If we are going to upgrade the InterNet, we also need to upgrade the H1-B visa program. Upgrade it by eliminating it would be the best.

In today's world, IT companies employ foreign scab wetbacks who come in here and destroy the wage scale for American IT workers. American IT talent built most of the WWW, most important programs that run most important applications. Yet one IT sweatshop manager after another says "We need foreign IT talent" That is SHIT of the most total amount.

Prior to 2000, there was not this huge emphasis on foreign "talent" which is mostly based on inflated credetials and fake certificates. Y2K allowed managers to bring in foreign IT to meet a critical need (at that time). The managers suddenly discovered that foreign IT, although less capable than American, was MUCH CHEAPER. Hence H1-Bs and the other ripoff programs.

What we need is jobs in America for Americans. If foreign workers want in, let them immigrate in like anyone else.

"I like the idea of large public works program. I just hope he can figure out a way to do it without increasing the deficit or national debt. Anyone can come up with great idea. The problem is paying for them. If he increases the debt or deficit any further, then the economic consequences will be devastating, very seriously so. Make the Bush years seems like an oasis of prosperity."

You appear to have been sleeping lately. Obama and all his staff are quite clear: There will be NO EMPHASIS on realistic payment options. There will be deficit spending. Probably deficits on the order of 1T-2T per year until the end of the recession. Keynesianism is the order of the day here. We are gonna spend, spend, spend.

We need to develop a consensus to cut the bloated, wasteful, idiotic expenses in the military. I would do the following on Day 1:

1) Eliminate Star Wars immediately. Use high explosives on all silos to prevent restart. Shred all documents. Destroy all weapons. This is a stupid stupid program, which costs billions and HAS NEVER WORKED in a FAIR test. All tests of Star Wars have been cooked.

2) Pass the "Military War Act" which would make ALL USE of contractors a FELONY with CITIZEN SUIT rights. If you use a contractor to fetch a bottle of water in a war, you could be sued for money damages by any citizen. The use of contractors is wasteful, stupid, is destroying the regular army, and allows cheating in the way wars are reported.

3) Immediately kill ALL developemental weapons programs. IMMEDIATELY. KILL.

If you give me five minutes, I can cut 300 billion out of the Pentagon budget.

The internet was not invented in this country. It was invented at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

Season of love.

Over a dreamland
there's the sound
of a delicate
sadness, and over
the way there's
a light that
invites you to
discover the sun.

Francesco Sinibaldi

Yo, Marketeer, your entrepreneurs got us into this mess. As opposed to knowing what to do, yeah, let's give them time to figure it all out..meanwhile...Me..I'll ride with an entrepreneurial government that has the money to get things done.

Oh, by the way, most of your comments about FDR spending are, of course, wrong. That's never an impediment for the True Religion, I understand that.

It deserves mention, of course, that not only was the internet invented here, but by, of course and as reported in Time, Al Gore, entrepreneur. But then, TV was invented here along with the computer and our entrepreneurs have largely fumbled away those industries due to inadequate entrepreneurship.

But certainly I'll trust them to solve the financial crisis. Unemployed guys have lots of time to think.

I was stimulated to repostish something from an earlier thread. A four-day work week would be good practice for society as a whole. It would spread the shrinking work demand around and save people money, they could spend on other things. It would be easier to afford taxes for other things like public works or infrastructure, as well as save wear and tear on the latter (and on mileage depreciation) due to reduced vehicle miles/year etc.

The 4DWW would save so very much gas, money, and transit time. Change the straight-time 40h week into a 72h fortnight to allow more creative cycles and to encourage 4 x 9h weeks, or with even more stiff encouragement.

tyrannogenius

California has just passed an initiative to fund a 'Bullet Train'.

Here's how it's funded:

"The ballot measure would raise construction money by authorizing the sale of $9.95 billion in bonds. The borrowing would be repaid over 30 years, at a cost of $647 million a year to state coffers.

Most of that money would help finance the $33-billion first phase of the high-speed rail line, linking the Bay Area to L.A. and Orange County. It would be financed roughly a third each by the state, federal government and private sector, with construction to begin in 2011 and trains rolling by 2020.

Subsequent phases -- paid off by what promoters predict will be at least $1 billion in annual ticket sales profits -- would reach San Diego, Sacramento and Oakland."

Pass the "Military War Act" which would make ALL USE of contractors a FELONY with CITIZEN SUIT rights. If you use a contractor to fetch a bottle of water in a war, you could be sued for money damages by any citizen. The use of contractors is wasteful, stupid, is destroying the regular army, and allows cheating in the way wars are reported.

gee, i never thought the people doing the laundry when i was in basic training 30-plus years ago, or the society for the blind, which ran the snack bar on base, were that nefarious. i mean putting sam the blind gentlemen who ran the place behind bars seems to be a bit severe to me, but who knows what he was doing behind the scenes?

nor did i think it was particularly evil when the air force began contracting food services, eliminating the need for lowly enlisted folk to do KP. in fact, as a lowly enlisted folk myself, i thought it was a pretty darn good idea. but maybe for the sake of national security, we should have been spending more 18 hour days scrubbing pots and cleaning tables as opposed to doing what we had been trained to do...

The use of mercenaries in combat has been one of the most destructive, moronic, and idiotic outrages that the Bushturds perpetrated. All use of contractors should be banned. War should be run by the military, from the kitchen to the battlefield, and not by a bunch of overpaid criminals like Custer-Battles and the other criminal mercenary corporations

And, yes, citizens should be able to sue to enforce the provisions. I want nervous public officials who are subject to the public. I don't want fascists, Mudwall. How 'bout you? Are you pro-fascist, like most of the military these days?

trex, I didn't have to Google anything. I've spent years on a transportation commission for a small city. How's your experience ?

Are you pro-fascist, like most of the military these days?

Priceless.

I would point out that at this point survey indicate that a majority of the population that doesn't have broad band is not interested in it. It won't matter if it's available, they have no interest in using it.

This might be a case of "don't know what you are missing" but it might not be as well.

Yo, Marketeer, your entrepreneurs got us into this mess.

that's true. entrepreneurs make mistakes all the time, and customers punish them (you have heard of creative destruction.) When there are an unusual number of mistakes altogether (like a batting slump) then we have a recession, just like now. This recession was aided by the government insistence on mortgage lending to people who couldn't pay back, and that government insistence is still in the Congress. So the entrepreneurs share the blame with government: Pelosi and Reid, Dodd and Frank. But the entrepreneurs are the key.

The fallacy is to believe that a bunch of Congressmen and Congresswomen can do better than the entrepreneurs in the market.

So the government is going to spend trillions of dollars, right? First they have to borrow that money, which takes trillions of dollars out of the economy. Nobody has trillions of dollars lying about in the form of $100 bills; in order to lend to the government, the lenders have to sell their assets in the stock exchanges, which will depress the stock markets, reducing the value of everyone's retirement fund. Then the government will fund projects that the private investors don't want to. Such a policy has never worked yet.

He is obviously missing THE big infrastructure investment. Instead of focusing, as he did, on roads and bridges, he should have stated: light rail, commuter rail, passenger rail. More rail, less cars. THAT is a proper long-term, far-thinking investment, not just more car car car nonsense.

Cover multiple important items with various types of rail: better infrastructure that robustly reduces pollution, global warming, and sprawl.

President-elect Obama's proposals for infrastructure improvement are expansive and welcome, but mass transit is not the biggest thing he is missing.

I have so far noticed ZERO comment noting that the economic recovery plan so far targets jobs for about half the unemployed. Infrastructure in the Obama framework is limited to the hard stuff - first roads and bridges, then expanded to technological upgrades of medical records and internet access for schools. The jobs to be created in the Obama plan are construction and IT jobs, which are mostly held by men.

If infrastructure is the stuff that supports social needs not met by individual enterprise, then why limit it to hard stuff? Health care, education and social work are also neglected and much-needed - but the most-neglected and most-needed jobs in those areas are the ones traditionally held by women.

It will be a comprehensive economic recovery plan when it includes the other half.

What about public saftey? We have seem to forgotten the millions of police officers and firefighters that continue to struggle and still put on the line daily. They are the ones that have to deal with the effects of a low economy, crime rises and they will be on the frontlines of that war. Not to mention dealing with the soilders that make it home who are dangerously mentaly unstable. We also need to think of thoose that protect us all through the bad and the good....

My wish is for more plentiful energy and fuel production capacity: factories for windmills, factories for PV cells and other solar, plants for cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels, nuclear power plants. More of everything would be good. Something has to power everything else, and it would be nice if investments in energy were to drive down the price. That would help American manufacturers of consumer goods get a competitive edge.

No seriously, moving away from a cellulose media to an electron media is ONLY COMPLETELY OBVIOUS. Seriously, putting money into projects managed by paper is retarded.

sorry folks, contractors are simply a matter of life in the age of a volunteer military. In a draft age, you could force people into kp jobs, but for all the reasons people join the military, I bet mopping latrines in some godforsaken part of the world or country isn't on that list. Hey, they did promise to teach you a skill!

The only problem with funding rail is that there are comparitively few rail projects on the board right now, and they take a long time from planning to the first spade being turned. We don't want to spend this money in five years, we want to spend it now. Oh, and can someone in the US start making rail cars? Washington Metro needs to order them four years in advance, from Spain.

Some ideas:

1: a comprehensive engineering analysis of every bridge in the country, every public road or rail bridge will be to code by the end of 2010.

2: every school district in the country has until June 15 to submit a list of every needed structural or engineering repair needed in every facility. Can't do it? Here's a grant to hire inspectors. Get to work. Say what you need to have every school building at code by the fall on 2010. Start this summer.

3: do the same thing with all government run buildings. All new construction must meet LEED certification. Retrofits must simply pass an energy audit to be more efficient that the previous structure.

4: single-payer. Single-payer. Single-payer.

It's a start.

Infrastructure was going to be the next great Republican boondoggle. It's been known for years as to the reason why Bush let it all crumble. Privatize the rebuilding and steal from taxpayers yet again.

"Here, in the country that invented the internet"

Switzerland?

Don't build any more roads. Just building more roads will negate much of the good done through conservation and alternative energy.

I didn't have to Google anything. I've spent years on a transportation commission for a small city.

Yes, the experiences of a kook on the transportation commission of a small city somehow trumps the fact that the largest and most influential environmental groups have been lobbying for infrastructure projects of every kind.

Your logic is impeccable. Keep it up.

You can put people to work on public works projects but doing what? You can also pay people to dig a hole and fill it back in again but does that create any value to society? If all these public works projects are so important why weren't we doing them when we had money? So now all of a sudden it makes sense to do them when we don't have any money. Excuse me but I fail to see the logic in that.

As a civil engineer I can tell you this; a well engineered project that serves a good purpose takes a lot of planning and review. To do it right, (meaning economically and on a budget) requires about 4 years of planning. By that time Obama may well be out of office. My guess is that we will just throw a lot of money at a bunch of wastefull projects which will in the end accomplish nothing.

The Internet was dreamed up, developed & implemented in the U.S.A. Ever heard of ARPA ? It is a part of the DoD & these days is known as DARPA. It was the driving force behind ARPANet which transformed over the years into what is today known as the Internet which uses TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/internet protocol.)

The World Wide Web (the http protocol that operates on the Internet delivering "web pages" etc) was designed and implemented at CERN by Tim Berners-Lee. It is only one of many services that run on the computer network we call the Internet.

Al Gore was instrumental in opening up use of the Internet for private citizens & businesses while he was in Congress.

Not that I actually think most of the commentors here are interested in understanding the history of the Internet as opposed to the common myths fostered on us by the likes of the FauxNoise channel & their fans.

"There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept." - Ansel Adams