You’ll learn in the first half of the video, for instance, how high-speed rail is like raising baby chicks (you’ll have to watch to understand).

Around the 25-minute mark, you’ll hear about how the Obama Administration wants to divert revenues from the gas tax to all sorts of schemes (such as mass transit) that violate the user-pays principle.

The video doesn’t address the fundamental issue of whether there should be any federal role in transportation, but it’s a great primer about current issues in transportation policy.

General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars, and he's confident the government will soon shed its remaining 26 percent stake in the once-bankrupt automaker.

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110607/...#ixzz1OcYRawaR

People will start buying more Cruzes and they will start buying less Suburbans Fords.

Government Motors has become yet another mouthpiece for the Obama administration. General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson told the Detroit News Saturday that he wants a $1 per gallon hike in the gas tax. Consumers already facing nearly $4 a gallon prices at the pump aren’t going to be pleased to see that figure jump overnight to $5, but the left and its crony capitalist allies don’t care what the public thinks.

Mr. Akerson wants to use the power of government to make buying a Chevy Volt, GM’s entry into the electric car market, more economically attractive. Such marketplace intervention is apparently needed because a mere 481 Volts were purchased last month, despite government subsidies and incentives worth thousands of dollars. By comparison, Ford sold 42,399 unsubsidized F-series pickup trucks over the same period. That’s almost one big gas-guzzler every minute.

The bureaucratic class at the state and federal level wants you to think the opposite is the case. They perpetuate the myth that gas-tax revenues are dangerously low because everyone is driving a Prius or some kind of electric car. “In the past, the Highway Trust Fund has been largely user-supported through fuel-tax revenue,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s blog explained last year. “However, technology and behavior have changed enough that this approach is no longer sufficient.” That’s the line government transportation officials have been peddling to justify proposals for per-mile taxes, converting the nation’s freeways into permanent toll roads and raising gas taxes.

The claim doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Gas-tax revenues did fall during the Great Recession, but they’re back and on the rise. Even at their worst, motor fuel excise taxes were often more stable than levies on property, sales and income. Consider the numbers from Virginia. Gas-tax revenue declined 2.7 percent in fiscal year 2009 - the largest such decline in the last 20 years. During the same period, individual income-tax collections fell 6.3 percent. The Old Dominion’s drivers are getting back on the road. The latest available figures show gas tax receipts jumped 7.3 percent in April and are up 3 percent for the year. At the federal level, receipts were up 5.3 percent for April and a similar amount for the fiscal year through April.

The excuses cooked up to justify new ways to soak motorists are bogus. Mr. Akerson’s efforts to impoverish his own customers serves as an important reminder of the danger of allowing government and Big Labor to take over a private company.

Nov. 23, New York Times: In his new book, "Overhaul," Mr. Rattner, who faces legal troubles unrelated to his work on the auto task force, writes that the Volt, which is priced at $41,000, is costing around $40,000 apiece to build. "At least in the early years, each Volt would cost around $40,000 to manufacture (development costs not included)," he writes.

In an interview a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Rattner said he had learned of the Volt’s costs in the course of due diligence during the G.M. bankruptcy process. "I don’t know the precise number," he said. G.M. was nonetheless “right to do it,” he added, even in the absence of profit, because the program helped quiet critics “who’ve said for many years that the company was behind the curve."

...Mr. Rattner agrees that the Volt program will be valuable for G.M., but he's convinced that electric vehicles will not be a profit center for automakers anytime soon. “E.V.’s are everybody’s latest fantasy," he said. "No doubt they are important and they are real, but they won’t have an impact on profitability and sales for the foreseeable future."

A good example of this is the North Shore Connector, a 1.2-mile extension of the light-rail line in Pittsburgh, which is currently under construction. Senators John McCain and Tom Coburn recently criticized this project as one of the three most offensive uses of federal stimulus funds. If it had not been for $62.5 million of economic stimulus funds, construction of the Connector would likely have been halted due to cost overruns. Not only has the cost increased from an original estimate of $363 million to $528.8 million, but, as noted by the Allegheny Institute, the project was scaled back in size after the federal government agreed to provide most of the funds.

Consumers will not be willing to pay even close to the cost (more than six dollars per ride) that would be required to cover just the annual interest on the money invested in the North Shore Connector. The money spent on this project could be used to buy a brand new $40,000 SUV for each of the 11,500 riders per day that are expected to use this 1.2-mile section of light rail.

The federal government would get much more for its transportation dollars if it used all of them for maintaining and expanding highways and bridges and left transit funding to local governments. If the federal fuel tax were eliminated and each state raised its fuel tax by the same amount, more money would be available for roads and highways. The Pennsylvania Constitution prohibits using state fuel-tax revenue for purposes other than funding roads and highways. Using the money paid in fuel taxes exclusively for roads, highways, and bridges would eliminate some of the funding gap faced by Pennsylvania and other states. In addition, a variety of innovative approaches to highway construction and maintenance, including public-private partnerships, could help reduce costs. To make up the remaining shortfall, citizens might be more willing to pay higher fuel taxes if they could be confident that the money was being spent for highways and bridges with spending priorities better reflecting drivers' priorities.

President Obama didn’t ramp up his taxpayer-coin choke hold on General Motors to save it – he did it to make it easier for him to exert his ideological will upon it.

He did it to be able to eviscerate bankruptcy law – throwing bond holders over the side to the benefit and illegal betterment of his union allies.

He did it to be able to close down Republican-backing car dealership owners.

He did it to be able to handpick the CEO – again, the eternally malleable, like-Left-minded Akerson – to help him execute his Government Motors Picasso-esque warped worldview.

Thus is Government Motors both a cause and an effect of President Obama’s push to mutate America into a Socialist dystopia.

Serving not only to move forward the Leftist agenda, but also as a visual aide for how Obama thinks a private company should operate.

The private sector not being one of Obama’s favorite places – quite possibly because he has repeatedly demonstrated complete bewilderment at the concept.

Having described his brief time spent there as being like “working behind enemy lines.”

Having repeatedly excoriated the profits necessary to make it possible to expand, hire more people – and send all those tax dollars to Washington to which he then has wasteful and punitive access.

So GM is to serve as Obama’s business model for his fundamentally transformed America.

Broke and broken, unprofitable and unpopular.

But engaging in all of the radical Leftist pet projects Obama wants – so none of that other stuff really matters.

Behold Government Motors – quickly becoming the quintessential embodiment of the Obama Vision for America.

“Let me say this as plainly as I can. If you buy a car from Chrysler or General Motors, you will be able to get your car serviced and repaired just like always.

Your warranty will be safe. In fact, it will be safer than it has ever been. Because starting today, the United States will stand behind your warranty.”