….News & Record columnist Susan Ladd says in today’s paper “it’s time for the grown-ups to craft a rational immigration policy. We all know whom Ms. Ladd thinks the grown-ups are, and it ain’t Republicans or President Trump.

I’ll leave aside the immigration issue to point out this interesting paragraph:

This nation cannot afford to invest billions (estimates range from $8 billion to $65 billion) to build an unnecessary wall while its vital infrastructure continues to deteriorate. The American Society of Civil Engineers 2017 report gave the nation’s infrastructure, including roads, bridges, railroads, levees, water, sewer and solid waste disposal systems, a D+, denoting substandard systems that carry a strong risk of failure.

Help me out here, but didn’t (wonderful) President Obama sign into place an $832 billion stimulus package that was supposed upgrade out country’s “vital “infrastructure?” He sure did, and New York Times rushed to its defense when everyone looked around and didn’t really see anything happening:

The stimulus could have done more good had it been bigger and more carefully constructed. But put simply, it prevented a second recession that could have turned into a depression. It created or saved an average of 1.6 million jobs a year for four years. (There are the jobs, Mr. Boehner.) It raised the nation’s economic output by 2 to 3 percent from 2009 to 2011. It prevented a significant increase in poverty — without it, 5.3 million additional people would have become poor in 2010.

….This may be the singular tragedy of the Obama administration. Five years later, it is clear to all fair-minded economists that the stimulus did work, and that it did enormous good for the economy and for tens of millions of people. But because it fell short of its goals, and was roundly ridiculed by Republicans and inadequately defended by Democrats, who should have trumpeted its success, the president’s stimulus plan is now widely considered a stumble.

So either President Obama’s stimulus bill did or didn’t help save our vital infrastructure and and create millions of jobs. Ask a liberal that question and the answer will more than likely depend on what day of the week it is.