The Real Bailout America's Cities Need

"With the Wall Street mortgage meltdown so massive its costs could reach toward $1 trillion, where's the economic plan to rebuild America's cities and infrastructure, to retool our businesses and people for a risky century?"

"It seems totally missing in official Washington today. Yet it ought to be a central issue of the presidential campaign, asserts Phil Angelides, chairman of the Apollo Alliance and former California state treasurer."

"Today many Americans (and culture war conservatives) prefer flying their flags to admitting how deep our 21st century crises have become. Yet the facts are there. The national security is at risk because of our massive foreign oil addiction, rapidly rising energy costs, Katrina-scale storms and global warming, weakening manufacturing power and a slow, pernicious hollowing out of the middle class."

"That makes the Apollo Alliance's call for "a New Deal, Marshall Plan style commitment to clean energy and good jobs" a bit hard to dismiss as more "liberal" "tax and spend" politics. If we can afford seemingly endless hundreds of billions to bail out unwise investors, how can we not invest forward in our own people and economy?"