Wanna see the key to our future? Look into our past-- the Civil War era, when the historic transcontinental railroad initiative was signed into law.

A few weeks before his assassination in April 1865, Abraham Lincoln had told an old Illinois friend, who was returning to SanFrancisco: “I have long desired to see California; the production of her gold mines and her devotion to the Union has been a marvel to me’'. 

When Mr. Lincoln first ran for president in 1860, California originally had cast its votes at the Republican convention for rival William Seward. And California proved to be the weakest performance for Mr. Lincoln in any state he won in that election year. 

But after the Civil War was under way, Mr. Lincoln innately sensed the the gravest danger of all to the Union-- the loss of a primary source of wealth to finance the war.   

The urge to get the the transcontinental railroad built as rapidly as possible was motivated, in part, to bind California to the North during the war. Mr. Lincoln feared losing the state to secession, and the dreadful possibility of California falling under the Confederate flag of the southern states.

And how important was California during Lincoln’s first term? It's believed that the product of her mines and precious metals during the year 1864 alone reached, if not exceeded, one hundred million dollars in in value, which was so vital in the Union's military victory over the South.

Of course we all know  the rest of the story-- the tremendous effect the transcontinental railroad had in shaping our country. But more importantly, it was the premier example of the government  actually providing an economic stimulus that actually did just that-- stimulated the economy by creating a whole new industry that employed people in huge numbers.

Work is the basic stimulus of any economy; but a stimulus only fulfills its purpose when actual universal good is the result. Thus, you can’t make or create jobs unless there is actual underlying work needing to be done, and where everyone benefits.

So what could the government do to actually create REAL jobs? One of the timeless needs of America is better and faster transportation systems. Our history abounds with examples thereof:

The Erie canal was an artificial waterway  constructed across central New York from Albany to Buffalo. It eventually enabled New York City to become the metropolitan and cosmopolitan capital of the entire world in the first part of the 19th century.

The Panama canal enabled America to become a two-ocean navy, and helped America to consolidate itself as a world military power in the early 20th century

The Interstate Highway System enabled the U.S. to carry its post World War II boom forward into the end of the 20th Century.

The salient point here is that  all the above projects were (amazingly enough) built and funded by our government.

Of course, that was long before politics had permeated the vehemently partisan Congress of our present day.

And with the new 111th Congress, headed by Nancy Pelosi (House) and Harry Reid  (Senate), we’ve now entered into a new virulent type of political gridlock that’s imploded into a de facto partisan political civil war. We're no longer the United States.

This de facto politico-civil war in Washington is not the blue vs gray, but a conflict of a red vs blue congress-- resulting in the disunited states of America.

And while the economy continues to slide, this bitterly divided congress, reminiscent of the pre-civil war era, is engaging in the same type of finger pointing and bitterly partisan bickering that could precede another historic conflict.

Remember how Nero fiddled while Rome burned?

But looking back in retrospect; when the congress and the country were united in purpose, herculean projects were the result, such winning World War II.

During the 1940s, the New Deal Tennessee Valley Authority project generated more power in the eastern United States than in all of Nazi Germany

The atomic bomb Manhattan project shortened  the Pacific theater of the war by at least one year, and left the legacy of nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

And recall the origins of the internet. It was not because of the great patriotic efforts of Al Gore, but rather the government agency called DARPA, the Defense Advance Research Project Association,  which originally connected the pentagon's mainframe computers over telephone lines,  forming the basic infrastructure of the original internet.

But today, such beneficial infrastructure projects are all but impossible, because the only thing our lawmakers agree on is to be disagreeable.

Unlike the 1860's, there are no present statesmen to bridge the great political divide. We need someone with the political courage (and moxie) to come forward and pronounce, "The only effective government stimulus is something that would affect the lives of ALL in a beneficial way".

Once again the key to the future is looking back to the past-- better, faster transportation… cheaper cleaner power generation...the discovery of new sources of domestic energy. These are timeless needs that would generate the millions of jobs America needs.

We could construct 100 new nuclear reactors.

We could reopen of offshore deep water energy exploration.

And of course, we could spend a trillion dollars rebuilding our roads, sewers, bridges, and mass transit systems. And the crown-jewel idea of infrastructure spending-- we could construct a nationwide corridor of high speed railroad transportation systems:

San Francisco, to LA, to San Diego along the west coast. Chicago, to Detroit, to Cleveland, to Pittsburgh, and to Philadelphia in the midwest and east. Dallas to Houston in the southwest. And Richmond, Va. to Washington D.C., to New York, and to Boston on the East coast

High speed rail would fulfill the actual purpose of a stimulus ; an entire new industry that could eventually employ tens of millions of people throughout the entire 21st century.

But the present politics of today begs the question, “Will the trillion dollar stimulus package actually stimulate?" But if no actual needs are fulfilled (energy, communications, transportation, etc. ) no new actual jobs can be created.

But when it comes to actual economic stimuli, the Obama administration appears to only obfuscate and procrastinate.

In his internet message of the day, Obama proudly trumpeted on his website..."Last week, the House of Representatives passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which will jumpstart our economy and put more than 3 million people back to work".

Put 3 million people back to work? How so? How can you put people back to work unless there are actual needs to fulfill?

Does spending 27 billion on on extended unemployment compensation fulfill any permanent need? Does spending 30 billion for COBRA (medical benefits for the newly unemployed) fulfill a need? How does that help the entire nation? Does remodeling schools, and making federal buildings energy efficient, fulfill any ACTUAL permanent needs?

This democratic American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is merely the same old socialist scheme of wealth redistribution: penalizing work with taxation, and rewarding unemployment with subsidies. This craven  bill is only a clever cover for investing huge, unimaginable sums of taxpayer's money for the sake of a partisan political return.

In its current, obscenely pork-barreled form, it's a stimulus package that only rewards unions and other  democratic operatives for their support in Obama's political victory in 2008.

It boils down to this: spending a trillion on a package that’s less than 5% infrastructure will do nothing other than expand government permanently, and further consolidate the political power of Barack Obama for his second term; thus ordaining all this as the greatest vote- buying scheme ever devised in the 235 year history of our country!