HoustonWade.com

We need infrastructure improvements more than we need tax cuts. There are ten thousand bridges and overpasses in America that need replacing and refitting. Think about that. What if in the next twenty years even one percent of those bridges fail like the I-35 bridge in Minnesota? That would mean hundreds, if not thousands dead, billions of dollars in goods and services lost. how about, instead, we put millions back to work replacing and refitting these aging structures and reap the benefits of a more efficient transportation infrastructure?

We need to open domestic air service to foreign-owned carriers. Force them to meet FAA standards and not allow them to use subsidies to operate here. Along with that we need to open up small airports to national carriers. Here, in the Seattle area, Bremerton National and Payne Field in Everett should be picking up some of the slack and offer a cheaper alternative for discount carriers.

We need more colleges and universities that are not in the South and not in the middle. Students want to go to school where there are jobs and people. Washington State alone needs several more universities that offer Masters and PhD programs that aren’t located in the desert where no one wants to live. The University of Washington is bursting at the seams and yet is squashing any attempt to ease their burden by enlarging current satellite campuses and opening new institutions. When the economy is down and people are out of work they return to school to update their training. Let’s put some stimulus money into a new round of landgrant institutions.

Stimulate me

Chrysler and Gm want us to give them more money to straighten out thier finances. OK, it’s theirs, under one condition: They give us all the rail and trolly lines they bought up in the 40s and 50s. in return we give them tons of cash to renovate and reopen these integral rail systems.

Los Angeles had a huge subway system that rivaled New York in the first half of the 20th century, then GM and Firestone bought it up and tore it up. Let’s give them billions to put it back to work. Much of the concrete infratstructure is there and the easements are all owned by these few companies, we need rail desperately, and they need cash desperately. Let’s do this.

While we are at it: We need to create at least seven high-speed rail/maglev train lines in this country. Four North/South and at least two that are East/West.

The first North/South Line from Vancouver, BC to Cabo San Lucas, Baja that connects Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, LA and San Diego together.

The Second that starts in Winnepeg, Manitoba that goes to St. Louis through Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Des Moines. There should be a fork on this line that starts in Milwaukee and travels through Chicago on its way to St. Louis. From there it is on to Memphis and then it skirts Southwest and travels through Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, on its way to Mexico where it connects with Jaurez and terminates in Mexico City.

The third North/South Line Begins in Timmins, Ontario and terminates in Mobile, AL connecting Toronto, Detroit, Toledo, Columbus, Cincinatti/Louisville, Nashville and Birmingham.

The forth, largest, most important, and final North/South line would begin in Montreal, Quebec and terminate in Miami, FL while connecting Boston, New York, Philedelphia, Baltimore, DC, Raliegh, Charlotte, Columbia, and Jacksonville.

The first East/West line would begin San Francisco and terminate in DC Connecting Reno/Tahoe, Salt Lake City, Denver, Witchita, Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinatti/Louisville, and Lexington along the way.

The second of the East/West lines would begin in LA and terminate in Jacsonville, FL connecting Pheonix, Albuquerque, Dallas, New Orleans and Mobile on its way.

The argument can be made for a third line starting in Vancouver, Seattle or Portland and terminating in either Boston or NY as well.

The construction of these high speed rail lines would put millions to work and imporve the economy in ways never imagined in this nationa and North America as a whole.

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I have said it before and I will say it again; Harvard Business School is ruining our country. The people that go to, and graduate from, this “hallowed” institution have got to be the dumbest of the dumb. Stocks surged to their second largest one-day gains in history on the news that consumer confidence is at an all-time low and that home prices are 80% of what they were a year ago. Tomorrow I guarantee that the market will be down hundreds yet again, erasing all jovial gains made today, because we have a bunch or scitzos running things.

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The over inflated home prices of the last 20 years are cumbling faster than any investment in recent memory. I heard on NPR not too long ago that Orange County, FL had twice as many homes as there are families (TWICE!!!).

On the Westcoast Stockton is where the housing bubble is most popped. Who would have thought that building tens of thousands of homes in the least desirable part of the country would have been such a bad idea? Stockton is a shithole. Why would anyone pay $400k to live there is beyond me. Then the banks foreclose and are stuck with a POS house in a POS part of the country and guess who now owns that big ol’s POS? We the people! We just paid $850 billion dollars to buy bad ideas in shitholes all across America that are just like Stockton.

The last time I was in Southern California to visit my brother and his family was in April 2007. The Orange County Register (one of the most right wing rags I know of) was congradulating everyone for reaching a median home price of $700,000. “Yay, OC, you did it!”

The problem with this was that the average Orange County resident made around $60,000 per year. that’s $5k per month. The average mortgage was $8k per month. That is bad economics. Period.