Dissecting Obama’s ‘new New Deal”

First, per Politico, what’s up with the massive school infrastructure?

The president-elect also said for the first time that he will “launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen.”

Not that it’s a bad idea, but this could result in levels of governmental entanglement.

Will Obama throw around blanket money, or will it come with various strings attached, such as design standards? Teacher-student ratios? How much will local school boards and superintendents lose power?

Other stuff, I like. But, there’s devils in the details.

Who’s going to pay for expanding broadband Internet to rural America?

Will electronic medical records be mandated as part of Obama’s healthcare plan? It should be, as part of striking while the iron’s hot, but will it be?

Energy efficiency? Will Obama mandate LEED or other standards for green building on federal pass—through dollars, for schools or many other things?

Second, per the New York Times, will the GOP consider this to be:

In part a government-directed industrial policy, with lawmakers and administration officials picking winners and losers among private projects and raining large amounts of taxpayer money on them

And therefore worth of Senate filibustering?

Will Obama even try to bolster the Department of Commerce into an equivalent of Japan’s famous Ministry of International Trade and Industry? Japan could be seen as the poster child for neoliberal government industrial policy, even though MITI is, and was, nowhere all it is, or was, cracked up to be.