So today (February 16) the current governor of the state in which I reside (there is no ef’fing way I’m going to lay any claim of ownership to this person and call him my governor) decided that he would follow in the footsteps of his fellow first term Republican governors of Ohio, Wisconsin, and New Jersey and reject federal rail funds for Florida.

Just as we learned that cutting taxes does not raise revenues and magically balance budgets, so we will learn (I know, many of us already know this) that cutting jobs and killing programs will not create more jobs.

Thanks to those very same conservatives, this entire country now resembles nothing so much as their stereotype of a loser writ large.

Paul Krugman rightly gives Chris Christie hell for dropping out of the Hudson River rail tunnel project, the largest infrastructure project in the country. He explains that this is probably the worst possible time to cancel infrastructure projects, with unemployment in crisis and job growth stagnant. From not only a jobs standpoint but an economic development standpoint, this was a pathetically bad decision.

Chris Christie just put thousands of construction workers out of work for the next several years, in addition to lowering economic productivity permanently, by stopping funding for a rail tunnel project in New Jersey. This is a miserable idea even apart from job creation and the killing of 6,000 jobs.

A million more jobs down the drain, and no one in the Senate wants to do anything.

As the recession drags on, and as anti-tax Republicans continue to hold sway over the lower levels of government, more and more states and municipalities are discovering that Norquist’s dream is more like a nightmare.

“Not news” falling in our streets is news when we can’t get out of our driveways.

So I took a tour of a steel plant today. There was a lot of hot, molten steel, but also high-tech computerized systems running the show, making sure just enough steel is poured into a mold at just the right temperature and speed, among many other functions. The tour was sponsored by the Alliance for American Manufacturing and the Campaign for America’s Future as part of the Netroots Nation conference here in Pittsburgh.

Capital Metro Transit in Austin, Texas is putting mobile WiFi hotspots on its buses. Habitat for Humanity is increasing its involvement with renewable energy. Is this all cool or what?

Last week, FOX pulled out all the teabags for their newest victim, a notorious water district in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Meet their victim of the month, Westside Water District: half the size of Connecticut, laden with farmers who get triple Federal subsidies (crop, water, electricity), and in hock to us all for $480 million.