caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

So, we are two weeks into the Trump administration, and we see a runaway rush to promote economic suicide through pandering to oil and coal companies. Because, it would seem, the slogan was really "Make America Great At Propping Up Dead End Industries Again", but #MAGAPUDEIA" had to be edited down, both for length and because too few of Trump's core base supporters were confident they could pronounce it.

One implication is that much work for sustainable transport and Living Energy Independence has to shift down to the state and local level, which was the focus of last week's Sunday Train and the Sunday Train two weeks ago.

We still do not have a firm outline of the promised "$1T infrastructure" policy, but early indications are that it will be (1) a package of tax breaks for private investment in infrastructure, (2) wide open to grabbing tax breaks to spending that would have been done anyway, and (3) at a level too small to back $1T in total spending, even setting aside the tax breaks going to infrastructure spending that would have happened anyway.

It is a $1T infrastructure plan in the same sense that putting a fiberglass body that emulates a Ferrari on a go kart would make me a Ferrari owner. And still, if the Republicans push it through Congress, there is still an opportunity to use such a system to make progress toward sustainable long distance intercity transport ... through the Steel Interstate proposal being advocated by Solutionary Rail.

How and why, below the fold.

Some Albums really stood out for one reason or another, but never seemed to get the recognition they deserved. There are others that I just like to play every once in a while. This is one. Sometimes it is too hard to pick between two albums by the same artist, so here are two: