5 Great Progressive Moves by Obama That You Might Have Missed
Here are five significant under-the-radar things to be grateful for in the post-Bush era.
It’s been a full month since the inauguration of Barack Obama. With debates raging over the financial system and the larger economic crisis, Obama has quietly succeeded in pushing through some great progressive initiatives and picked an encouraging candidate for his drug czar.
Here are five significant under-the-radar things to be grateful for in the post-Bush era:
$10 Billion for High-Speed Rail
If one day in the next decade you find yourself rolling silently through the cornfields of Wisconsin at over 200 mph, on your way from Chicago to Minneapolis, you might spare a thought for Rahm Emanuel, who last week at the president’s behest,instructed Democrats to insert $9.3 billion into the stimulus bill for the long-delayed development of high-speed rail in America.
Of all the examples of this country’s outdated and crumbling infrastructure, none have been as glaring, persistent or shameful as the neglect of rail transport. While the Europeans and Japanese developed affordable bullet trains that allowed easy travel between regional hubs while producing five times less pollution as planes and cars, the United States remained stuck in the ’40s — the 1840s. The one exception is the successful (if expensive) high-speed Acela train running on the Boston-Washington corridor.
