Posted on 04/21/2009 6:28:38 AM PDT by Captain Kirk
The headline reads “Obama’s Rail Plan Speeds Ahead,” and the article explains that President Obama has “unveiled his plan to develop a high-speed passenger rail (HSR) system in the United States.” These “specifics” are evidently not actually very specific, however, because reporter Bruce Watson tells us only that the plan is three-fold: “initially, it will pour investment into infrastructure upgrades that have been approved but not yet funded. Later, it will fund high-speed rail planning and, subsequently, construction. In the process, it will also seek to improve rail service along existing lines, increasing the quality of current rail service and laying the track (as it were) for faster, more efficient rail in the future.”
Watson spends the rest of his article rhapsodizing about the glorious possibility that the Obama administration will succeed in “changing American patterns of behavior,” not simply by improving rail transportation, but also, along the same lines, by establishing “a strong moral counterbalance to the ‘greed is good’ ethos that has ruled much of the last 28 years.” You would have trouble making up this stuff.
What are progressives thinking? If I prefer automobile transportation to taking a train, they condemn me for my greed. Their preference for taxing people and pouring the money into economically wasteful expenditures for rail facilities, however, they laud as the very heart and soul of public-spiritedness.
(Excerpt) Read more at hnn.us ...
It's a form of reparations.
It's also why they are all cesspools of corruption and inefficiency.
I cracked up when he was extolling the virtues of the train system talking about getting from St. Louis to Chicago in 4 hours! Right now it takes about that on Amtrak!! So we are going to blow a fortune to shave 1/2 hour off of a trip??? And if Amtrak can’t make any money doing it why would he think another system could??
IDIOTS!!!!
Atlas is shrugging.
For the same reason they loved them in Berlin in the late 30s and early 40s......
Because they hate planes.
Progressives hate cars because cars represent freedom and individuality. Trains, on the other hand, represent mass conformity.
Good question. There is a romance with the train and the hobos of the thirties. I am thinking a nostalgia for the Woody Guthrie songs. Unfortunately, it also conjures up thoughts of German trains loaded with concentration camp victims or the purges of Russia that sent millions to Siberia over the years. Russia still loves its trains.
Because Mussolini made them run on time..................
And you will still need to rent a car when you get to the end of the train ride.
Trains force people to live in collectives. Hard to commute from 20-60 miles out in the country via bicycle.
DING DING DING
7 posts to the right answer.
Well, progressives did invent the "gay train."
The funny thing is that most local mass transit agencies are subsidized by revenues generated from the gas tax.
Title: City Of New Orleans
Artist: Arlo Guthrie
Ridin’ on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central, Monday mornin’ rail
15 cars & 15 restless riders
Three conductors, 25 sacks of mail
All along the southbound odyssey the train pulls out of Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms & fields
Passin’ graves that have no name, freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of rusted automobiles
Good mornin’ America, how are you?
Don’t you know me? I’m your native son!
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done
Dealin’ cards with the old men in the club car
Penny a point, ain’t no one keepin’ score
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
And feel the wheels rumblin’ neath the floor
And the sons of Pullman porters & the sons of engineers
Ride their fathers’ magic carpets made of steel
Mothers with their babes asleep, rockin’ to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel
Good mornin’ America, how are you?
Say don’t you know me? I’m your native son!
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans.
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.
Night time on the City of New Orleans
Changin’ cars in Memphis, Tennessee
Halfway home, we’ll be there by mornin’
Thru the Mississippi darkness rollin’ down to the sea
But all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still ain’t heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again
“The passengers will please refrain:
This train got the disappea rin’ railroad blues
Good night America, how are you?
Say don’t you know me? I’m your native son!
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans.
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.
Can you imagine someone going to LA on a train when their appt. is in Chino....talk about an expensive cab ride! NO ONE...not a single person would take the train in cases like this!!
Correct. It is much easier to CONTROL people if they all must depend on government trains for their movement.
Nice.
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