We need more trains because the Wee Wee likes to play Choo Choo
Posted on 02/28/2011 12:56:01 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
...Remarkably widespread derision has greeted the Obama administration’s damn-the-arithmetic-full-speed-ahead proposal to spend $53 billion more (after the $8 billion in stimulus money and $2.4 billion in enticements to 23 states) in the next six years pursuant to the president’s loopy goal of giving “80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail.” “Access” and “high-speed” to be defined later.
...[Florida's] Rick Scott, has joined Ohio’s (...Kasich) and Wisconsin’s (...Walker) in rejecting federal incentives—more than $2 billion in Florida’s case—to begin a high-speed rail project....
The three governors want to spare their states from paying the much larger sums likely to be required for construction-cost overruns and operating subsidies when ridership projections prove to be delusional...Washington, disdaining the decisions of Ohio and Wisconsin voters, replied that it will find states that will waste the money.
California will. Although prostrate from its own profligacy, it will sink tens of billions of its own taxpayers’ money in the 616-mile San Francisco–to–San Diego line. Supposedly 39 million people will eagerly pay much more than an airfare in order to travel slower...
Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute notes that high-speed rail connects big-city downtowns, where only 7 percent of Americans work and 1 percent live.
[snip]
To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.
Time was, the progressive cry was “Workers of the world unite!” or “Power to the people!” Now it is less resonant: “All aboard!”
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
as an extra bonus...
who builds the rail? unions
you would work for the rail? unions
it’s really that simple. the unions put gobs of money into dems to get them elected, now they want ROI
We need more trains because the Wee Wee likes to play Choo Choo
I'd become accustomed to thinking of Will as part of our NWO/RiNO/Bilderberger problem.
“Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables.”
They love trains because they’re a centralized mean of transportation, easy to turn off in a whim. Turn a switch, and suddenly large amounts of people are confined to their borough. Instant social engineering.
High-speed trains are about getting rid of automobiles.
The "progressives" want us all living in high-rise apartments, crowded into the city centers -- where we are "controllable".
And the suburbs and the countryside can be left to revert to their "pristine" state.
An automobile, a home of your own...these things spell independence. Which is anathema to progressives...
And they are also convinced everyone else's car is destroying the planet. Remember Algore calling the interneal combustion engine a bigger threat to our survival than nuclear weapons?
Of course the magic-bullet trains, unlike say, an oil pipeline, in no way affect wildlife while whizzing through their habitat at a couple hundred miles per hour, powered by generators run on methane made from unicorn droppings.
There are interesting China and Warren Buffett connections (among many) described in the video.
If you don't want to play along their psychiatrists will send you off for adjustment. If that doesn't work there is always euthanasia, for your own good, of course. You can't possibly be happy if you're out of step!
2009 - $10.2 million in revenues, with 4.2 million riders?
It only cost about $2.50 to ride the train?
What did I miss?
The Chinese build ‘ghost towns’; Obama wants ‘ghost trains’. . .
The rest of the video.
Click on her T-shirt: "One Nation working together -- American Federation of Teachers"
Yes(!) Centralized planning(control) along with PC - politically centralized/controlled thought really; and bingo - the frog is cooked - and they have it all,folks. These people are an ideological/political version of the 'body snatchers'. . .
An ignorance here; never interrupted by Good; whereby, no low, is too debased for these people who want what is not 'theirs to take' but who imagine otherwise and in the worst way.
The only high speed rails I’m interested in are roller coasters.
But back to cars, yes it is the freedom of them they hate.
Even more so?
General Aviation, i.e. Small Aircraft. Don't even get me started on how they have mucked that one up...
Indeed; and we have only to hear Obama speak; whereby he replaces the language of authentic 'leadership' - as he did most recently and typically per ME crisis - with sprinklings of we must speak in "ONE voice"; we must act "in concert"; be it 'one world or 'one nation'. . .
The irony, of course, the 'smoke and mirrors'; the deception of their language. It is not 'one' voice they want to speak in; nor those 'in concert'; they want to hear; it is only their own voice, collectively speaking and with accompanying self and group narcissism, that matters.
Interesting, how Obama - as mega narcissist - relishes his identity as 'the ONE'. . .and in his mind, the 'only' as well.
The problem with high speed rail is that sounds too good be true.
It makes promises that can’t be fulfilled and the price tag is so high that it reminds one of ponzi scams.
People who fall for it are suckers born every minute.
LOL and 'good makings' for a bumper sticker. . .
High speed rail gets the cattle cars to the re-education camps quicker.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.