We have to ask, "Does this support the national good?"

Exactly who asks and who answers that question for the 300 million of us? What if something is deemed good for 160 million, but not 140 million? Does it get funded by those 140 million?

To believe this is good for the nation is ludicrous. What is good for everyone is to get government out of their lives, stop subsidies, stop tariffs, stop bailouts, stop regulations, stop all protectionism. Let people decide for themselves where they want to spend their property (hard-earned money is their property btw). This makes those companies have to pay strict attention to what the market is demanding. The ones who don't go out of business, the ones who do thrive and so do the consumers because free market exchanges are always win-win situations, otherwise the trade would never occur in the first place.

Not sexy or interesting, but very much needed.

We can't plow under the suburban sprawl and say "oops, bad idea, let's do it over." Good or bad, we're stuck with the suburbs. And there are a lot of them.

We need strategically placed parking garages so that suburbanites can more easily ride transit. They need to be in existing suburban centers like strip malls, next to libraries, in the suburban regional shopping/commercial areas. Put retail on the ground floor. Make it architecturally interesting and walkable (not just a big ugly cement block). So that people can drive there from their homes, and easily catch the bus or train, and do their grocery shopping before going home.

Then of course, fund the transit systems to take advantage of them. Add express buses and re-routed transit to take advantage of these park-and-ride lots.

More people would take transit if it were easier to get to, and didn't double commute time.

The author has a really good point about the need to be smart about who benefits from each project and to consider the long-term consequences. Would we have allowed our mass-transit infrastructure to have been removed if we had known about the effects of dumping poisons into our air? Would we have pursued a fossil-fool based economy for so long if we had stopped to consider the long-term consequences?

In my city, shovel-ready means it will enrich the same ten families who own most of the local government. Down in CA the Ahnold is pushing to undo state environmental regulations in order to have several very damaging projects shovel-ready for the inevitable bailout money. All of these projects involve roads, by the way.

Also, I couldn't disagree more with the first letter writer. I, for one, really want the government to stop allowing people to make money by poisoning the commons, particularly the air and water. These people are stealing from all of us.

What froggy is talking about is called many things: nodal developmant, smart growth, mixed use centers, new urbanism. Unfortunately, what it ends up producing is areas of dense automobile usage. No one voluntarily walks in exhaust fumes, so forget about seeing hordes of pedestrians who have forsaken their cars.

It has the added problem that it creates areas that are so dangerous for cyclists that you very quickly end up with no way out of the sprawl except by car. I watched this happen during the '80s in a city where 90% of all trips were previously done by bike. After a decade of this type of development, there were almost no cyclists left. The net effect of building infrastructure for cars will always be increased car usage (until the oil runs out). We need to be smarter.

Where have you been, apparently not in north county st louis

where the white people are the poor ones that have no help of any kind, you would be lucky to get any state aid, All the state jobs are given to the most prejudiced blacks we have. What about all the other races who don't cry all the time, Id be willing to bet most black people wish the media would shut up on there behalf and stop making them look like there helpless idiots. Lets just get this country going again and keep race out of it.

So then we can return to being a rich enough country to stick our nose in the rest of the worlds business until they all get feed up and put an embargo on us, by the way is what we need because then we would have to get our manufacturing base back that no one seems to think should be included in the stimulus package. Thank you for your valuable time

@humanpower sez:

"In my city, shovel-ready means it will enrich the same ten families who own most of the local government. ... All of these projects involve roads, by the way."

You just have to look at it differently, humanpower. All of those millions of illegals in California need jobs. The "ten [richest] families" brought them to California to work as scut labor for sub-minimum wage building over-priced McMansions for y'all to buy.

What they (i.e. we) need are jobs building roads, and we are the pachucos with the king cab Dodge Rams that are going to drive on them.

What with the relatives we are going to bring to California and the babies we are going to have once Obama legalizes us, we are going to need even MORE urban sprawl jobs building roads, houses, and freeways everywhere.

And anyway, you white liberals are dying out. Who gives a rat's @ss what you want? In 25 years you will be gone, replaced by us, a healthier people that do not fear children and hate life. Face it. Your women would rather abort your babies than bear them. Our Mestizo women are making babies and our babies are the New Americans that will shortly replace you dried up sterile gringos. 50 years ago there were only 500,000 Hispanics in America. Now there are 45 million! (And thank you Teddy Kennedy!)

We are the New America and you are the Old, Dried-Up Extinct America. Read my lips: No. One. Cares. What. You. Think.