by thenewgreen

On Tuesday the president trekked to a middle school in suburban Maryland to unveil $750 million worth of corporate grants for wiring schools across the country. In keeping with his general theme of the last few weeks--“year of action,” “a pen and a phone,” basically all the White House rhetoric signaling it will no longer wait for Congress to help with the economy—Obama was at pains to point out that this particular effort "won't require a single piece of legislation from Congress. It won't add a single dime to the deficit." It wasn’t exactly Rooseveltian jawboning, but the message was nonetheless clear. What wasn’t at all clear was the thinking that produced it.