Good morning.
- Flee (E)Utopia.
- Man and identity.
- Meta-linking, that is to say, Brandon offers links.
- Considering pagans down under.
- Pascal and poison.
- An interesting conundrum for the left, Obama (apparently) wants to spend many billions on infra-structure, i.e., building things. But the left has put up lots of regulation making construction difficult. Hmm, how will that be resolved?
- Offensive?
- Quashing epiphany?
- Upcoming march.
- Did you know that?
- Reckless language and the “slurs of Andrew Sullivan.”
- Theology and Mr Eastwood.
- Clauswitz.
- Two names not normally linked.
- Whence hope?
- Answers for the Afro-phile.
Reckless language and the “slurs of Andrew Sullivan.”
I’m not sure what ’slur’ was Sullivan allegedly made nor do I see how this post refuted any such slur?
An interesting conundrum for the left, Obama (apparently) wants to spend many billions on infra-structure, i.e., building things. But the left has put up lots of regulation making construction difficult. Hmm, how will that be resolved?
Well right now they are requiring all infrastructure projects to be ’shovel ready’. There’s probably a lot of areas where spending could be done quickly and without a lot of regulatory approval. Major bridges need to be regularly painted and inspected, roads require resurfacing and so on. Since this stuff has to be done anyway doing it now has the benefit of creating a stimulus effect and in the long run giving us a usable asset. Likewise there are probably other projects that are already underway that can be accelerated (it isn’t unusual for a construction contract to include a bonus for early completition as well as a penalty for lateness, you could simply add to the bonus in some cases).
Many of the green projects, I think, are more decentralized. You asked last week how a few hundred people could intelligently spend billions of dollars. I pointed out that the actual spending will happen by a lot more people. A big incentive for solar panels, for example, will be spent on the very local level as individual property owners evaluate whether it makes sense to take advantage of the incentive. This could end up resulting in a lot of construction activity but little in the way of regulatory drag since there will be few massive projects like multi-acre solar farms.
One area that may take time but I think is worth doing is upgrading the electrical grid. I’m no expert on it but from what I understand each state or region is built like an island unto itself with little interest in being able to easily export surplus power. There are some cases where huge windfarms sometimes cause local rates to go negative because there’s literally nowhere else to use the power. A more rational grid would make it easier for that power to be sold to more distant users. I have no idea, though, what that would entail and how long it would take to do it.