"There Is No Such Thing As Raw, Analloyed, Agendaless Kindness" - David Foster Wallace

We all know that our country's infrastructure is in need of upgrade and our economy in need of stimulus, hence an infrastructure based stimulus plan. One question: in order to administer such a massive infrastructure stimulus program don't we need to have a functioning system in place that results in evenhanded, fair and sound judgements about who gets to use the money and where it is spent? Put another way, without a solid evaluative "infrastructure" in place to assess the merit of individual projects and eliminate the "politics" of awarding grant proposals, isn't the likely result going to be waste and inefficiency equivalent to a bridge collapse during rush hour?

A few years from now people may be saying, good idea in theory - disastrous execution (i.e. no change from the last 8 years of divided country). One possible answer - if we want Change and want to prevent the money from going to the projects of the merely well connected rather than the most deserving (maybe mutually exclusive, maybe not (see title of this post), don't let politicians, investment bankers or lobbyists have any say in where the money gets spent.