Did the auto industry bailout work? New numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest it did, with unemployment rates dropping faster than the national average, due in part to jobs created by the auto industry. This could be the push President Obama needs to stay on top until November, but as the rest of the country continues to struggle, it might not be time to raise the victory flag quite yet.

The Senate is set to vote on a new part of President Obama's $447 billion jobs bill which includes funding for programs to help build roads, bridges and other public works programs. The bill is likely to fail, but that has not stopped the president from continuing to campaign for its passage. Andrea Bernstein, director of the Transportation Nation project and senior correspondent for WNYC, looks at why President Obama continues to push for infrastructure despite it looking like a losing cause.

As memorial day approaches, Americans are topping off their gas tanks and getting ready for a long weekend away from home. But with gas prices creeping up across the country, American travel patterns are beginning to shift accordingly. For just over a week now, The Takeaway has been asking listeners to text us the price at their local pump. We’ve collated the information on an interactive map. In this conversation we discuss some of our findings with Andrea Bernstein, Director of the Transportation Nation project and senior correspondent for our flagship station WNYC.

Joe Guyon of Rock Hill, South Carolina says he's bundling his errands and eating locally. A listener in Augusta, GA says he "cuts off his car when I idle." Joe Manrique of North Palm Beach, Florida, says "since my daily commute is approximately 170 miles round trip, I try to walk as much as possible from my office to appointments." A contributor from Flushing New York says "I do my errands on the way home, no matter how tired I am."

Others have started carpooling, gone from being a two-car family to a one-car family, changed over from gasoline to waste vegetable oil fuel, or made sure they bundled errands, rather than driving on multiple shopping trips.

Or they are biking, working from home, going out less, or taking public transit.

Those are some of the findings of our survey (see map, just below) of gas prices and how they affect behavior. And these results are bolstered by a number of  broader gauges of consumer behavior.

Average gas prices around the nation have soared to around $4 a gallon. Last time prices were this high was three years ago in May 2008, right during the worst of the recession. Then Americans began to drive less, buy more fuel efficient cars, and take public transportation more often. But according to new projections from AAA, 34.9 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more next week for the Memorial Day weekend.

One of President Obama's signature policy initiatives has been to connect 80 percent of Americans to high speed rail within 25 years. However, the 2011 budget allocates no further funding to high speed rail projects. Furthermore, in states like Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin, Republican governors have returned money for high speed rail projects, which was given to them as part of the stimulus. Is high speed rail dead? 

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has said thanks — but no thanks — to $2 billion in federal funds that were meant to create a high speed line between Orlando and Tampa. Joining us to talk about the implications of this setback for the Obama administration's rail plan is Andrea Bernstein, Director of Transportation Nation, a public radio project produced by our flagship station WNYC Radio says this was the marquee project for the Obama administration's plans for high speed rail.

Many pinpoint the start of the Civil Rights movement in the United States to Rosa Parks, refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, back in 1955. Over half-a-century later, African-American and Latino communities are still struggling with unequal transit systems.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's expected announcement of billions of dollars in federal grants for high speed rail today is beginning on a sour note. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced yesterday that he is stopping construction of an $8.4 billion Hudson River rail tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York. Citing billions of dollars of expected cost overruns, Christie says his "decision is final." This comes after LaHood made a personal appeal to Christie, and negotiations between the Obama and Christie administrations.

With Republicans running against President Obama's stimulus, an issue that's resonated with voters, LaHood's announcement comes at a questionable time. There will be events in Iowa, Michigan, California. There's also money for Connecticut and Florida. These are all states with close races. How is this going to affect the midterm elections?

Voters in Florida have been party to two unusual races this election season. The Senate race has the incumbent Republican Governor Charlie Crist is in a three-way race as an independent against Tea Party-supported Marco Rubio and Democratic Congressman Kendrick Meek.

Vying for the governor's office are Republican candidate Rick Scott, running head to head against the state's chief financial officer, Alex Sink, the only Democrat to come this close to the office in decades, in a race that has the candidates accusing one another of fraud.

This against a backdrop of a state in dire straits. Florida's unemployment is fourth highest in the country at 11.9 percent, the foreclosure rate is second highest in the country. More than 20 percent of the state's residents are uninsured.

With two weeks to go until the mid-term elections, we continue our coverage of tight congressional and gubernatorial races from around the country with a look at races in Michigan. 

We have just a few weeks left until voters head to the polls for the midterms. Takeaway political correspondent Andrea Bernstein has been searching out districts across the country that are hotly contested. She is just back from Stark County, Ohio, where the 16th Congressional district is turning into a political battleground. In 2008, the district went for Sen. John McCain, but elected Democrat John Boccieri to its Congressional seat.

(Canton, Ohio) Alice Prestier has lived in these parts all her life, raising her children and grandchildren here. For 30 years, she worked for Hoover's vacuum company. “If they would have told me that Hoover's was going to go out of business I would have never believed it.  Not a company that big. You got too many big companies that just left Canton, Ohio. And this was a nice booming town.”

She ticks off the employers that have left Canton in recent years. “Ford Company. Bliss Company.  Hercules. Canton Stamping. Canton Provisions. There was a lot of companies around here. We lost them all. Everything’s gone.” (READ MORE)

President Obama meets today with governors and mayors from around the nation to talk about “investing in America’s infrastructure.”

Here, where the prairie begins, Democratic hopes are wilting.  This is the land of big trucks, cattle farms, natural gas drills – and a few universities. It’s also where an increasingly educated population is settling, coming for the tech industry and access to the Rocky Mountains. This was supposed to change the entire political landscape. Back in 2008, an excellent New Yorker article described what it called Colorado’s “political transformation,” – from red-state Republican to libertarian Democrat. The state had voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, and Bob Dole in 1996.

But in 2008 then-Senator Barack Obama gave his speech accepting the Democratic nomination from the mile-high stadium, the late-summer sun glowing late into the evening over the Rockies. With the help of all those young, professional independents, Democrats from Denver, and an energized Latino population, he won the state 51 to 47. In the fourth CD, Betsy Markey, an appealing businesswoman, trounced her Republican opponent by a 12-point margin, 56 to 44.

Takeaway Correspondent Andrea Bernstein is traveling the country, checking in with voters. Today, she's in Colorado, a key swing state in this mid-term election season. Up for grabs is a governor's race, a Senate race and key Congressional races. There are also two ballot propositions getting a lot of attention: one regarding abortion rights, the other attempting to block enactment of federal health care reform. Key issues for constituents are health care, abortion and immigration.

Bernstein has spoken with voters in Weld County and Jefferson County and found that voters from both parties are still unsure how they will cast their ballots this November.

President Obama is in Pennsylvania today, campaigning for Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak.  

Two years ago, WNYC's Andrea Bernstein visited Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to find out what was on the mind of voters leading up to the presidential election. Now Bernstein returns to Wilkes-Barre to see what voters want heading into the November midterms.

Depressed. That certainly describes Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, a former coal-area that now, as one local once explained it to me, “scratches to get by. Where I’ll sell you pizza, if you buy my tires.” But it also describes the mood of the voters, who, less than two years after “Yes, We Can” swept the nation, pretty much believe, “No, We Can’t.”

I first saw Arlen Specter in September, 1990.  Working for then-New York City Comptroller Liz Holtzman, I travelled down to Washington with her, where she was testifying in the confirmation hearings of Justice David Souter.  Like Specter, Holtzman had been a D.A., and the then-curly haired former Philadelphia prosecutor parried sharply with the ex-Brooklyn D.A. on whether Souter had appropriately applied the rape shield law in a New Hampshire case.  Holtzman argued that Souter had not been sufficiently attentive to the victim’s privacy rights, Specter disagreed.  Strongly.