THE ERIE CANAL WAS OBSOLETE WITHIN FIVE YEARS. Hot Air (via Insta Pundit) presents video of Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) being dealt with rather rudely by some constituents.

The gentleman with the obviously-expensive cap gets the zinger of the day by challenging Hoyer on how Congress could try to force the takeover of the American health-care industry in roughly a fifth of the time it took Barack Obama to pick out a dog for his kids. Instead of answering, Hoyer goes into a long dissertation about the Erie Canal, and how naysayers probably existed back then as well.

In Representative Hoyer's world, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you" isn't a scary phrase.

The Erie Canal? That’s the best Hoyer can do? The canal was built in 1825. Maybe Hoyer remembers it personally, but for voters everywhere and especially the ones arrayed in front of him in this clip, it’s about as relevant as the Bering ice bridge. Sticking with that, though, the Erie Canal project was just that — a project with a start, a middle, and an end. The federal government didn’t have anything to do with the Erie Canal, either; it was built by the state of New York after President Thomas Jefferson rejected the idea as “little short of madness”. It initially cost $7 million, and paid off well — for the state of New York.

It does make good use of the state's geography: the New York Central Railroad and the New York Thruway share the Mohawk Valley with the canal's route. In 1825, something called a railway was hauling coals in England. Come Independence Day, 1827, a groundbreaking ceremony for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, also a public infrastructure project (called in those days an internal improvement) and a cornerstone laying ceremony for the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road both occurred in Maryland. The proponents of government-provided health insurance have not yet met the burden of proof for some advantage in picking winners.