Well, I'm from liberal about-to-legalize-gay-marriage (wo0t!) New York and I think it's a ridiculous waste of money too. 2 Billion dollars for a 500 megawatt generating plant? Please. This is some kind of sick joke.
The 500 MW is obviously peak power output, meaning that average power is going to be 200 MW, TOPS. 2 BILLION dollars for a 150 MW generating station. That's beyond pathetic. A natural gas fired station that provided that kind of power output could be built for 5% of that kind of money. The argument for this being a good investment into the technology is even more absurd. It's just a solar thermal plant using hot oil /molten salt. We've been doing this stone-age level crap since the early 70's.
Do I really need to explain what kind of advancements the nuclear fusion community could do with 2 billion dollars? We're right on the edge (like, this year) of demonstrating fusion ignition in the laboratory at the National Ignition Facility, a lab that houses the most powerful laser in the world and the largest, most complicated optical system ever constructed, at a cost barely more than 50% of this useless, make-work, feelgood project. $2 billion could go a long way toward building a gigawatt level power plant demonstration reactor after NIF achieves ignition, instead of wasting it on this nonsense that produces laughably insignificant amounts of energy.