One thing that wasn't pointed out in the Politico article, which made it sound like this money was merely the product of Rahm Emanuel's backroom dealing and Obama's desire for a "signature issue" project, is that HSR was one of the highest rated policy proposals on Change.gov's Citizens Briefing Book, one of the few that actually elicited a response from the transition team.

So Obama has merely done the people's bidding here.

$8 billion is really a drop in the bucket, but this does show a strong pro-HSR consensus in Washington DC. And that is long overdue.

(Thanks for the link to my CA HSR blog, btw!)

And the world will live as one