Marc J. Dunkelman

Yeah, well, I think it's a terrific point and a terrific distinction.

The point I wanna make here is that when we are creating programs, when we are thinking about the reforms that we wanna do next time we're in office.

If that ever happens, and that's something we just do hope will happen, yep, continue.

Yes, well, I'm gonna presume that, until proven not, I'm gonna presume that it will happen.

Great.

We should be thinking not only about the things that we hope to do, but we should be thinking about how we plan to design those programs in a way so that we can actually deliver.

so that we are building the sorts of programs which we used to build, which gave a fair amount of discretion and power to bureaucrats who made decisions and were able to get things done expeditiously.

So let me give you an example.

So at the beginning of the new deal, there was a region of the country that was fly over country before we had the term, it was the upper South, the area around the Tennessee valley.

It was an area, um, that the local utility had chosen not to wire up because the farmers were so poor that they didn't believe that they'd get any return on the investment of building poles and wires to these poor farmers who were both black and white.

And so Franklin Roosevelt hired a lawyer from Wisconsin, essentially, to build the Tennessee Valley Authority, which by itself had the power to build dams, build wires, reforest whole countrysides, and through just pure public power, hire both black and white workers who, let's be honest, were put up in different positions

encampments, like it was a Southern institution, it was segregated.

But they miraculously in almost no time built a huge power infrastructure that wired up these farms and really brought enormous benefits to people who were living at 19th century standards when the rest of the country was well into the 20th century.

Incredibly fast,

incredible power with Lilienthal making these decisions.

No real concern about local objections, no real input, no environmental impact statements, no sort of considerations like this.

The better part of a century later,

President Biden, in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, includes $7.5 billion to put electric vehicle chargers in the places along the network where it does not make economic sense to place EV chargers.

He realizes that the reason that people aren't buying

electric vehicles is because they are worried that if they want to drive far, they're going to be places on the interstates where there is no place to recharge their car.