Federal Dollars

     The White House is going to propose a plan to help states that are headed toward financial default, and of course, the GOP critics are out with the long knives to do it in even before it is proposed.

     Shouldn't they feel the same way about virtually every local street paving, infrastructure project underway today? It's all being paid for with Federal stimulus dollars, after all.

     Meanwhile, The Times is examining the downside of the elimination of earmarks. Lots of very worthy projects are going unfunded.

     Used to be that one of the best investments Alabama could make was to send Federal taxes to Washington...we always got back a significantly larger sum than we sent (unlike investments in Wall Street). But I wonder how that always-steady return will be impacted by the end of the cash-stream our congressional delegation sent back home.