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Like most people politicians tend to remember the most recent events.  They are more likely to remember the results of the last election than the results of elections over the last decade.  And they are most likely to reward their recent supporters irrespective of whether they have been long time devotees or recent converts. According to the summary published by the White House, the awards totaled $7.924 billion.  California, Oregon and Washington went for Obama in 2008.  They got 37.1 per cent of the monies.  Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin along with Indiana went into the President's win column.  They got 32.8 per cent of the monies.  In the southeast region voters in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida turned their states blue, at least for the presidential election, or kept it that way.  They got 23.6 per cent of the monies.  The northeast region, which has received significant federal support for its existing passenger rail lines, including a large investment through Amtrak for the Northeast Corridor, got 6.1 per cent of the federal high speed rail largesse.  Vermont, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Maine, New York, Washington D.C., Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, which make up the Northeast and part of the Middle Atlantic states,  were in the President's win column.  Thus, 99.6 per cent of the award monies went to states that Obama carried in 2008.  Undoubtedly, many factors drove the awards.  But to suggest that politics did not or does not play a large role in determining who gets federal handouts does not square with my experience.  If the driving factors were economical, i.e. potential passenger loads, highway congestion, etc., it is hard to understand why Texas did not get at least some monies for planning purposes.  It and Oklahoma have been supporting the Heartland Flyer.  The I-35 corridor between DFW and San Antonio is one of the largest urban concentrations in the U.S.  It makes the Charlotte to Richmond corridor look like an under populated rural strip.  I have not read the proposals, but if prior financing of rail projects, along with regulatory paperwork gymnastics, is the key criteria to determine government largesse, it is a poor way to go.  If the Republicans had won the last election, I suspect the outcome would have been different, assuming that they thought high speed rail is the way to go, which I suspect they don't.    I don't recall mentioning Railway Man in my assessment of comparative travel times between Chicago and St. Louis let alone refer to him as a dumb business person.
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