Very nice of you to include the article on the TVA dam and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. While as a conservative I have some trepidation about large-scale government civilian programs, overall I have to score the TVA a success. The lakes contributed to flood control in an area where economic development was impossible due to recurring floods. The electricity generated brought power to previously impoverished rural areas, and also provided electricity for the growth of the aluminum smelting industry, which was needed to make the thousands of American airplanes that won WW2. The surplus electricity was also quite helpful in establishing another industry needed in war; that of separating various isotopes of Uranium from each other.
The dams are still there, with the lakes supporting the recreational industry, they control flooding and are still generating electricity.
I know that 0bama is trying to some extent to emulate the TVA in his “stimulus bill” but his goals and accomplishments are way off what the TVA did. In fact, for 0bama’s “stimulus” we have very little to show for it, and really nothing that will provide the long-lasting benefits of the TVA. The other thing is that there is no way we would replicate the TVA today because of the environmental whackos. It was the little snail darter that more or less killed the TVA back in the 1970s and 1980s.
So today, we just waste money.
The TVA program was built on at least one lie by the New Dealers. When Fontana Dam was built, they promised to build a road to a hillside cemetery which would end up on the ‘wrong’ side of the lake. To this day, family members are waiting for the promised road. The feds take them across by boat a few times a year to visit family gravesites.
Hardly "wasted" if it buys enough votes to reelect the Dems who passed it.
But just suppose it doesn't?
Might then even some Dems begin to see the foolishness of their spend-spend-and-more-spend ways? ;-)