Hey Spain, ever hear of tax cuts?

It seems Spain has decided to use this financial collapse (and boy is Spain collapsing) to advance some sort of radical forward thinking plan to green up and advance their public transit infrastructure. Seems most of Europe is also doing the same. I'm guessing Spain has already cut their capital gains taxes so much that this was all they had left to do. Among the many projects is an electric car and charging hub program to be installed in parking garages and streets across the country. Most of the articles and blogs talking about the nitty gritty of this are in Spanish and filled with words like "dos huevos" and "electro banditos", so I'll let the people at Treehugger explain.

The pretty southern Spanish town of Seville has been chosen along with the capital Madrid and the northern hub Barcelona to implement the Movele pilot electric car infrastructure project proposed by the Spanish Ministry of Industry. The cities' energy authority will this year begin putting in place the recharging stations for an eventual fleet of 500 cars expected to be purchased partially by private owners and partially by the state (subsidized in both cases up to by 30% state funds). What's incredible (in the sense of being a bit hard to believe) is that the infrastructure of 75 charging stations in Sevilla alone is expected to be completed this year. Que será, será indeed!

Paris, Denmark, Portugal, and Israel are also doing similar plans. Furthermore the electric powering these stations in Denmark and Spain is largely going to be wind. What are we doing? If I read the stimulus bill correctly, we're investing in coal powered horses and developing a SUV that is powered by open pits of burning crude oil. That's about as green and public as our transportation gets. But don't worry our stimulus plan does call for the building of more highways and negotiating with idiots to take free money so all your teachers aren't fired.

I'm sure we won't come to regret that we didn't take this opportunity to massively expand our public transit infrastructure. Thankfully we have smart people in Congress who pushed for 40% of the stimulus to be tax cuts and always have a France/Europe joke ready when 'green' or 'public transport' is mentioned.