Even before taking office, Republican Govs.-elect John Kasich (OH) and Scott Walker (WI) swiftly delivered on their “promises to kill America’s future” by rebuking a total of $1.2 billion in stimulus funding for high-speed rail projects in their states. Shunning the $810 million for the long-planned Wisconsin rail project, Walker promised to kill the Milwaukee-Madison link if President Obama tried “to force this down the throats of the taxpayers.”

But campaign rhetoric has very real consequences. Last Thursday — on the same day the World Congress for High Speed Rail announced the next HSR Congress will be held in America for the first time — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood pulled the funding from Ohio and Wisconsin, offering it instead to states more eager to spur economic development. What’s more, because of Walker’s narrow-minded politics, the Spanish train manufacturing company Talgo, which moved into Wisconsin for this project, is closing its Milwaukee plant and taking the much-needed jobs with it:

Talgo Inc., the Spanish manufacturer of high-speed train cars, will abandon its plant in Milwaukee in 2012, according to Nora Friend, a spokeswoman for the company.[...]

“We can’t stay and manufacture in Milwaukee without the high-speed rail to Madison,” Friend said. “This is terrible news.”

Friend said the state’s decision to back away from the high-speed rail project sends a terrible message to businesses considering locating in the state.

“We were encouraged by the business community,” Friend said. “We are really discouraged by what has happened.”

State residents should also be discouraged, she said. Talgo and the construction of the rail line would have created jobs badly needed in the construction industry.

“For anybody to think that there is another $800 million to invest in another project is foolish,” she said. “There is no other pool of money.”

Talgo currently employs 40 people in Milwaukee, WI and “was hoping to grow their staff to as many as 125 to fulfill the orders” that current Gov. Jim Doyle (D) and his administration had made in preparation for the project. Those orders would’ve spurred some 13,000 badly-needed jobs in a state facing a 7.8 percent unemployment rate. (Ohio will lose 16,000 jobs.) Instead, Talgo plans to take that business to three of the states that will share in the federal money taken away from Wisconsin and Ohio, most notably Florida.

Florida’s Gov.-elect Rick Scott (R) also sounded off against high-speed rail during his campaign but, unlike Walker and Kasich, has waffled on whether he’d actually kill the project. With over $2 billion in stimulus money and the prospect of new business flocking to the state, Scott isn’t as willing to shun such potential economic development as his Tea Party brethren.

But Wisconsinites should not be fooled by the flight of business. As he said on election night, Walker’s victory means “Wisconsin is open again for business” — regardless of what actually happens.

Some Republicans, like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, look back at the 1995 government shutdown debacle as a cautionary tale of the practical and political costs of shutting down the federal government. Others view it as a how-to guide for the 112th Congress.

Rep.-elect Steve Womack (R-AR) has opted to draw the latter lesson. According to The Hill, Womack said he would be “open” to a government shutdown over the issue of federal spending after he takes office in January. Womack joins six other members of the Shutdown Caucus, which advocates shutting down the federal government unless their demands are met. Those members of Congress calling for a shutdown now include:

- Rep.-elect Steve Womack (R-AR)
- Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)
- Rep. Steve King (R-IA)
- Rep.-elect Tim Walberg (R-MI)
- Rep.-elect Alan Nunnellee (R-MS)
- Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)
- Sen.-elect Mike Lee (R-UT)

Another eleven current or incoming members of Congress have also came out in opposition to raising the debt ceiling when it comes up for a vote early next year. Though these members have not explicitly called for a government shutdown, if Congress were to shoot down an increase in the debt ceiling, one consequence would likely be a shutdown of government operations.

Indeed, at issue during the 1995 shutdown was the Republican-controlled Congress’ refusal to raise the debt ceiling. The effects of this shutdown were felt far and wide, and “cost the American taxpayer over $800 million and rattl[ing] the confidence of international investors in U.S. government bonds,” as a Center for American Progress report entitled “The Big Freeze” found.

If you have heard any other members of Congress expressly call for a government shutdown, email ThinkProgress and let us know.

The paranoid environment created by the 9/11 attacks has allowed for a myriad of civil rights infringements under the guise of national security. Airport security especially ratcheted up racial profiling, marking any Middle Eastern sign or symbol a suspicious target, particularly the turban. Even turbaned individuals with no affiliation with Islam or the Middle East, such as Sikh men, have become “a superficial and accessible proxy for the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks” and a “target of discriminatory conduct,” including employment discrimimation, harrassment, and violence.

But now, this long-permitted prejudice is creating diplomatic tension between the U.S. and India. Today, the Indian press reported on an incident last month in which Houston, Texas airport security officials detained Indian’s UN envoy Hardeep Puri in a holding room for 30 minutes because he was wearing a turban. As a Sikh, Puri is obliged to keep all hair intact and his head covered in public at all times. The turban symbolizes self-respect and piety — “touching of the head dress in public is not allowed” and can only be removed “in the most intimate of circumstances.”

However, as officials present during the incident told Turtle Bay, airport security officials ignored Puri’s religious requirements and long-standing protocol exempting dignitaries from such treatment and demanded to physically check his Turban themselves until Puri informed them that TSA regulations allow him to check himself:

Airport security agents in Austin pulled Singh aside into an enclosed glass holding room for questioning after he refused a request to remove his turban or allow inspectors to touch it, an Indian official who witnessed the incident told Turtle Bay. “He said no, you cannot check my turban,” according to the Indian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I won’t allow you to touch my turban.”

The Indian official said Singh offered to touch the turban himself and to allow the security agents to run a check of his hands for traces of explosives, but he said that one security official refused. Singh insisted that the security official had no right to check his turban, citing TSA regulations for searches of foreign diplomats. “Obviously you don’t know your own rules. Please check your rules,” he told the security agent, according to the Indian official. “The person insisted that he had to do it. He said, ‘Don’t tell me the rules.’”

The Indian official said that the security officials finally checked the security regulations and issued an apology to the Indian ambassador. He said he was unaware of whether his government had filed an official complaint with the United States over the issue.

This is the second incident in which a U.S. airport security gaffe has insulted the Indian government this month. Earlier, Mississippi airport officials created another diplomatic row when Indian ambassador Meera Shankar was picked out of a security line at an international airport in Mississippi and subjected to a pat-down simply because she was wearing a Sari. After the Indian government’s strong rebuke, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Mississippi’s Gov. Haley Barbour (R) both issued statements assuring Shankar that they will make sure such treatment does not happen in the future.

As for the Puri incident, the Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna said today that they have “taken it up with the U.S authorities and the matter is at that stage.” Former Indian diplomats, however, have “reacted aggressively” to the incident, saying that “if Washington does not change its policy on searches, diplomats from the U.S. should also be ready to face such security in India.”