If You Build It: President Trump is expected today to reveal a plan for re-building the nation’s infrastructure that puts much of the burden of paying for it on state and local governments. He would pay the federal share by taking the money away from other government programs.

The idea is to use federal money as leverage to spur $1.5 trillion in spending on roads, bridges, highways, and airports.

The plan calls for $200 billion in federal money over the next 10 years. Half of it would be used as an incentive for state and local governments to put up the other 80 percent for projects. This flips the customary way such things as highway projects are paid for now; 80 percent federal and 20 percent local. Major mass transit projects are usually funded 50-50.

This would certainly raise state and local taxes, and make it difficult for poorer rural areas to participate.

The plan includes streamlining the permit process for major projects.

The White House also wants to put $20 billion into what it calls “transformative” projects that “have a vision towards the future.” These would be “projects that can lift the American spirit, that are the next-century-type of infrastructure as opposed to just rebuilding what we have currently.”

Exactly what they’re talking about, they didn’t say. But this is an administration that thinks the future is coal.

Deep Thoughts: In response to nothing in particular, President Trump tweeted yesterday, “So many positive things going on for the U.S.A. and the Fake News Media just doesn’t want to go there. Same negative stories over and over again! No wonder the People no longer trust the media, whose approval ratings are correctly at their lowest levels in history!”

Darkness Again: An explosion and fire in a Puerto Rico power plant knocked out electricity for hundreds of thousands of people last night, including in parts San Juan. The power authority said they were trying to restore the system quickly. At least 400,000 residents of Puerto Rico are still without electricity five months after Hurricane Maria.

World: A Russian passenger jet crashed 50 miles southeast of Moscow yesterday, killing all 71 people on board. The plane was carrying 65 passengers and six crew. The Antonov AN-148, a smaller regional jet, was bound for Orsk, about 1,000 miles southeast of Moscow, when it went silent and disappeared from radar. No cause has yet been determined.

Five Ring Circus: In the team skating event, Mirai Nagasu become the first American in Olympic history to land a triple axel, a 3 ½ turn aerial spin. The US won bronze in the event. — American Chris Mazdzer of Saranac Lake, NY, won a surprise silver medal in the luge when the German favorite Felix Loch crashed into a wall. It’s America’s first medal in the men’s single luge. — Both the men’s downhill skiing and women’s giant slalom were postponed because of high winds.

NBC news has apologized for the remarks by one of the networks “analysts” who in a profile of South Korea said, “every Korean will tell you that Japan as a cultural and technological and economic example has been so important to their own transformation.”

Well, “every” Korean would not say that, and many Koreans have not gotten over Japan’s brutal occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945, or that Japan forced tens of thousands of Korean women into sex slavery during World War II.

Ramo co-directs a think tank founded by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger. Some critics say his essay about South Korea sounded like it had been cribbed out of Wikipedia.

Down, East: For want of an “Oxford” comma in a state labor law, a Maine dairy company has been ordered to pay its drivers $5 million in back overtime pay.

The Oxford comma is the last in a series as in, “milk, butter, and eggs.” As opposed to, “milk, butter and eggs.” It is named after the Oxford University press, in which it is standard usage. The NY Times does not use the Oxford comma, but The Rooney Report does on the insistence of a certain college student.

The dispute in Maine stemmed from a clause in state law that excluded workers from overtime pay for “The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:” followed by a list of food items that included “perishable foods.” That would encompass dairy foods.

The court ruled that because of the absence of a comma after “shipment,” it was unclear whether the law exempted the food items that followed, or whether it exempted packing for the shipment or distribution of them. The ambiguity handed the dairy drivers a victory and a lot of money.

The Maine State legislature has fixed the problem not by adding an Oxford comma, but by penciling in a string of semi-colons, making the law read, “Canning; processing; preserving” etc.

So, next time you go to the store in Maine, pick up some milk; butter; and eggs.

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