Semi-relatedly, one of my greatest criticisms of all that stimulus spending of the last several years was how incredibly unimaginatively it was allocated. I've seen figures which indicate gigabit fiber could be rolled out nationally to 95%+ of homes and businesses for $400 billion if gov't paid it all, or $100 billion if done in a private/public partnership. Another figure I've read is that if the U.S. heavy duty truck fleet were converted to run on CNG, we could reduce our oil usage by 20%.

Those would both have been transformational accomplishments, and the $950B or so spent in total could have probably done it all thrice over. Bitterly disappointing.