Follow the money...

The blogworld is up in arms over the non-future oriented aspects of the "Stimulus Plan," including Senator-initiated changes to give much more money to highway building at the expense of transit. See "Urgent Action: Oppose Highway Robbery in Senate Stim Bill" from Streetsblog, although there are many other similar entries across the blogosphere and in the print media as well as this roundup piece from the Streetsblog Network discusses, "Senate Stimulus Action Leaves the Network Cold."

I can't remember where I read it, but a newspaper piece suggested that the Obama Administration should break this bill into two portions, one focused on recession-depression fighting measures, and the other focused on rebuilding and repositioning the economy for the future, where green and sustainable policies, focused on the reduction of energy use, and other pro-investment policies. The New York Times Magazine piece, "The Big Fix - Can Barack Obama Really Transform the U.S. Economy," is pretty good on the issue and the conundrums we face.

As long as it is politics as usual, most monies are going to be wasted. Steve Pearlstein in today's Post has a great column in the business section about this, the sense and culture of entitlement and how long it could take for real change to occur, "Stumbling on Their Sense of Entitlement."


The process to achieve change and transformation is just now beginning. It did not end with the election or inauguration of Barack Obama.

I could well be wrong, but I believe we are entering a period of great adjustment, both in response to the end of relatively cheap oil as the primary economic driver as well as the creation of a globally connected economy where U.S. industries are no longer oligopolistically dominant.

In order to maintain a decent quality of life, residents of the U.S. are going to have to adopt "new" patterns of settlement and sustainability.