Capital Investment

That's one thing about infrastructure. Sometimes the projects are big and costly, and you have to take out loans to pay for them.

While I understand the knee-jerk reaction to big ticket items, this is a mistake, and a big one. This isn't about total cost, it is about return on investment.

The worst thing this says about our nation isn't that we're spending too much money, but that we're incapable of getting Big Things done on time and on budget. Christie could have focused on implementation, and pushed through a major project. Instead, he just wants to cancel it. I can understand his reasoning, even as I disagree with it. His "solution" solves nothing.

Though I also have a problem with the way it is reported. Cancelling the project "cost" 6,000 jobs a year for a finite number of years. It "cost" a projected 45,000 jobs long-term.

Not one item, however, about the cost-effectiveness of tax dollars funding the creation and maintenance of those jobs. Not one item about how this process could be sped up or costs could be brought under control. Not one item about who the planners are or why this is taking so long or why there are expected cost overruns. Not a thing on the contractors and planners who have already collected $600 million with nothing to show for it.

(But I'd bet they all talk shit about Louisiana....)

And that's a problem. We don't have the will or budget to make major infrastructure improvements in this country because our infrastructure projects are used, politically, as temporary employment programs. There is no political incentive to get the jobs done efficiently and actually improve infrastructure even though doing so rewards you with more jobs and economic development in the long term.

Yet the GOP sees this guy as a rising star. Which tells me where they're at in this process: addressing problems uncreatively with lazy solutions that solve nothing. The problems this project was designed to solve will remain undone, the money will remain spent, and development will continue to be slowed by an unresponsive government.

Infuriating.

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