KCET –- With the one-year mark of President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan approaching last month, the White House selected 13 passenger rail corridors in 31 states to receive funding. High-speed rail projects in Florida, Illinois and California were the big winners.

KCET public television in Southern California — as a part of Blueprint America — reports on California’s plans to build a high speed rail system connecting major metropolitan areas in the Golden State. On one side, supporters say it will reduce gridlock (on the road and at the airport) and change travel in the state by moving commuters between Los Angeles and San Francisco in just 2 hours and 40 minutes. On the other side, detractors, increasingly worried about cost (to the state and riders), say the project is on track to build a very big and very fast white elephant.

KCET — No longer is the argument for investment in renewable energy just about climate change. As America’s economy is in rescission, renewable energy could create a boom in good paying jobs — ‘green jobs’. KCET public television in California — as a part of Blueprint America — reports how some untypical students at an East Los Angeles school and an economically hard hit community in the Antelope Valley are hoping to make it in a green economy.

The New York Times reports money spent on the program will probably include funds for “the weatherizing of hundreds of thousands of homes, the installation of ‘smart meters’ to monitor and reduce home energy use, and billions of dollars in grants to state and local governments for mass transit and infrastructure projects.”

The green aspect of the stimulus plan alone will cost at least $15 billion a year.

The green-jobs program will not, however, be financed with pollution credits bought by power generators and other carbon emitters as President-elect Obama had proposed while on the campaign trail. Instead, the cost of the program would be added to the ever-growing national budget deficit. Seemingly, the time it would take to legislate on a global warming bill, which could potentially fund such a green-jobs program, would take too long to have the immediate impact desired on the current economic rescission.

President-elect Obama’s green-jobs program is not unlike President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives in the 1930s, specifically the Works Progress Administration, which sent out of work Americans throughout the country to modernize cities by putting in place, among other things, paved roads and waste water systems.

But, the New Deal did not end the Depression. Simply, its programs – many of which were ineffective – helped to sustain Americans as many were out of work. The New Deal also greatly increased the national debt – just as President-elect Obama’s green-jobs program will do. And ultimately, it was war time manufacturing during World War Two and the subsequent emergence of the U.S. as the dominate world power that ended the Depression.

At the same time, as forty-three of 50 states are facing budget deficits, the National Governors Association (NGA) has called for an estimated $176 billion of President-elect Obama’s proposed $500 billion (sometimes noted as much as $700 billion) stimulus package to go to local infrastructure improvements and state Medicaid programs. Some $136 billion worth of infrastructure projects, the NGA estimates, have already won regulatory approval and just need federal dollars to get going.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has also estimated that 4,591 infrastructure projects, at a cost of $24.4 billion, are ready to go.

According to the Boston Globe, “Investing in infrastructure can boost a sagging economy, by adding an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 new jobs for every $1 billion invested. The projects are place-based, giving an advantage to local workers, and producing positive ripple effects in the local economy.”

The problem is that public works projects typically take years to get underway. Moreover, as President-elect Obama is hoping to create a new green industry – including infrastructure updates – that will create employment opportunities for out of work Americans, a massive training effort will need to be undertaken in order to effectively put people back to work. That, too, will take time. While there are certainly infrastructure needs, fulfilling them may not have the immediate economic impact that President-elect Obama wants.

The New York Times reports, “In the first nine months of this year, some 130,000 Michigan residents who had lost their jobs remained out of work so long that they ran out of regular unemployment benefits. By the middle of this month, 63,000 people (who had already run out of their ordinary maximum benefit — as many as 26 weeks, at as much as $362 a week) also ran out of an extension authorized by Congress.”

Michigan’s economic crisis, compared to other states, has only been made worse by the failure of the auto industry.

As Congress and President-elect Obama consider bailing out the failing auto industry, other proposed stimulus measures look to put the unemployed back to work.

In Michigan, many of the state’s unemployed are hoping for just that. As old-style manufacturing jobs have been downsized or lost to workers overseas, American workers want to go back to school to be trained for technical, medical, green and infrastructure jobs.

But some 1.7 million Michigan residents, according to The New York Times, “have ‘basic skill challenges,’ like poor English or no high school diploma. As far as higher education, the state ranks 35th, below the national average, in college graduates.”

There is a workforce ready to work, in Michigan and certainly throughout the rest America, however that workforce, in addition to needing more job opportunities with livable wages, will need extensive training to be able to work in these new fields.