Wait a minute, THE Eliot Spitzer?

Yes... THE Eliot Spitzer, is a columnist for Slate. While it is mildly surprising that he is employed by Slate, it should come as no surprise that his pieces are insightful and lucid. In his recent piece, he makes a plea to Obama to use his planned "infrastructure/stimulus package" to build the American infrastructure of the future, not patch up the infrastructure of the past.

Spitzer focuses on the following items, but refuses to declare that the list is complete or static: smart meters (adjusting pricing per peak demand), alternative energy infrastructure (hydrogen, natural gas for transportation), electronic medical records (increased efficiency + accuracy), Internet services upgrades, robotics teams for every high school (and competitions that are funded to near equivalency of sports teams).

The robotics teams sounds enjoyable, but not feasible. Electronic medical records have been on the table for years, and is probably the most realistic (money + time invested). The first two seem to be the most intriguing to me, if only because the U.S. energy policy seems to be the one area that most people are willing to change.