A few months ago, the city of New York announced it would funnel 20 million Stimulus dollars into the construction of a shopping mall in downtown Brooklyn. It was curious timing given that the city is overrun with empty storefronts available for rent at fire-sale-style prices. It was also curious given the proposed mall's proximity to another... 
A year ago, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the "stimulus bill." The bill was designed to prevent our economy from melting down by giving America hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts and infrastructure investments. Now a debate is raging over whether it worked at all.
The Wall... 
When you look at the unemployment numbers like this, it makes the Obama team look pretty bad. But when you look at them like this:
...it's actually pretty impressive. What you're seeing in the chart above is a turnaround in the rate at which jobs are being lost each month that coincides almost exactly with Obama taking office. That said,... 
Exciting news: We now know where Obama's $8 billion for high-speed rail is going. Florida is getting $1.25 billion (not the $2.6 billion they had asked for), and Illinois is getting $1.133 billion, but California is the big winner. From The Transport Politic:
California voters committed $10 billion in taxes to a high-speed line between San... 
Remember back when everyone was talking about the stimulus bill, and how it included $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, and we all had fun speculating about where our fast new trains might go? Well, it looks like we have a winner. From Streetsblog:
President Obama is headed for Florida on Thursday, and the state is all but certain that... 
Well this is interesting: The President and Arne Duncan are celebrating Obama's first anniversary in office by pushing states to come up with bold ways to reform education. Until recently, it seemed to me that education had fallen off the administration's priority list entirely. Then Obama delivered his intense and hated-by-conservatives... 
As you may remember, there was $8 billion in the stimulus package for high-speed rail projects. Today, Tranportation for America provides us with an update: the Federal Railroad Administration has already received 278 pre-applications for that money, totaling $102 billion in aggregate. So suffice it to say there will be some disappointed... 
