Posted on 02/13/2014 7:04:32 PM PST by rightwingerpatriot
There are few things in life that progressive liberals love more than spending other people's money. When ensconced in government, they spend money for freely than a sailor in port who's been at sea for six months. Even when they're not in government, they look for ways to spend our hard-earned tax dollars by pushing ballot initiatives. One type of project in particular seems to excite liberals into a frenzy: high-speed rail. On the surface, you would think that progressive liberals and high-speed rail are an odd mix. You have to use fuel to run a train. You have to hurt Gaia by digging trenches in her flesh and building bridges over her arties in order to build a rail line. Yet, there is a reason why liberals love high-speed rail.
The answer to this question can be summed up in one word: control. Liberals love mass transit as that the power of movement is taken away from the common man. If you're forced to rely upon the government to get you from point A to point B, then you're under their thumb. One of the greatest inventions in modern history is the automobile that freed man from the tyranny of being stuck in a geographic location. Yes, in the past you could use other means of transport, such as horses or ships, to move around, but such modes of transportation lack the immediacy and speed of which you can pick up and go. Sick of the high taxes and insane government where you live? Then pack up your car and drive to another city or state.
The ability to move freely and quickly is something that we shouldn't take lightly. The last act of defiance (before that of open rebellion) is to vote with our feet. That is why liberals hate automobiles and the freedom of the open road. At every turn, they seek to make it more onerous to own a personal car (usually by increasing costs of gas, insurance, and registration) while pushing mass transit as the answer to every problem. Bring up issues facing normal people in most state and local debates, and you'll immediately get progressive liberals bleating about the sad state of mass transit in the area.
Of course, mass transit such as high-speed rail isn't cheap. California's proposed high-speed rail has estimates of $91 billion, which is far more than originally thought. That means that every single person in California will owe $2394 in taxes before the first train even runs. And surprise, surprise, it seems that the high-speed rail won't run as fast as originally proposed. I'm sure costs won't continue to climb in the future.
There is one other aspect of high-speed rail and mass transit besides control that liberals love. They can use such projects to line the pockets of their union allies. I can safely say that every company that gets a contract will have to be unionized. You can't have non-workers getting in the way of the gravy train with their work ethic and keeping within a budget. You've got to feed taxpayer money to unions, which then give money and support to progressive liberal politicians. It's a win-win all around except for freedom.
With high speed train routes, as did the Interstesw before them. come the Eminent Domain - buy your house at fair market value or we’ll just condemn it and take it from you altogether.
As the project moves along like a slug, it shuts off truck routes and the business routes through towns, effectively strangling small businesses along the way.
Mayor I. Emma Geschtunk beats her chest proudly about the modernization brought by the new rail system, while dismissing the alarming amount of crossing fatalities.
Congresswoman Shirley Q. Likker stands up, in her first-freed-slave attitude, and stresses how the lower income folks must have adequate access to this modern rail system, denoting that the usual commuter rail access pricing index is too high for her constichients.
Senator-elect Irina Yackov, born of Slobovian work-visa-parents, stands up, looks over the crowd, and in her most solemn visage, evokes, “Ah-mehr-ee-kah! Vaht a kohn-tree!”
The crowd goes wild.
The idea of spending gobs of money to benefit a few hundred or a few thousand riders is crazy
If they love it so much, they should build the John Galt line.
So are automobiles.
Railroads have an early and long history of involvement with Federal authority because they do cost a lot, as do roads in general. There is no other method of transportation (yet) that can move as much material overland. I don’t see high-speed rail as a strictly “liberal” concept. It has great potential as a means of safe, reliable, efficient transit, especially if nuclear, magnetic, and nanotechnologies are brought to bear on it.
Yes, rail travel involves giving up the steering wheel and a certain amount of independence, but there are ways, if done right, that the off-putting nature of this can be offset with innovations. This is an area where private and public interests, if unfettered by stupidity (a long shot, to be sure), may actually redound to good. I know this: We would be a lot weaker as a country if we did not have the railroads we do, and those had to be authorized and funded by a government that took all states into consideration. And yet, even this did not happen without significant belly-aching and power plays.
Arghh!! I would much rather consider a means to move WATER from one side of the country to the other!! What’s the hold up?!?!
They love trains that head east.
How about a high speed aquaduct from someplace with cheap fresh water
You are basically right, but the RR was not developed by governments but many independent roads. Some involvement of course, but don’t give the impression RRs always require govt. They do not, and did not. In the 1800s there was no income tax, and people could much more afford to embark on these investments. Etc. situations were different. Also few regulations.
Sad fact is Lincoln and his pals were those largely responsible for much collusion between gov and RR. Which led to more gov collusion, etc. Lincoln was no hero.
Thank you. It goes both ways.
“Funny that high-speed rail was bad from the liberal POV when the private railroads in the USA were trying to develop it in the 50s and 60s, and the feds regulated/taxed it out of existence while making public works projects out of interstate highways and airports.”
American RRs had extensive 100 mph+ passenger train service from the beginning of the 20th century right up through WWII. I don’t think there were any private plans for high-speed rail in the 50s and 60s. The RRs had been getting out of the passenger business since the end of WWII, it is very expensive to maintain high-speed roadbed.
The Interstate Highway system was a project of Dwight Eisenhower. He had participated in a cross country Army convoy that explored the use of motorized vehicles around 1919. There were very few paved roads in existence and fewer maps. This impressed Capt Eisenhower with the need for a road system that would permit military vehicles to move across the USA if they were needed for defending the country. So thirty two years later when he became President the Interstate Highway System was high on his list of defense projects.
Early railroad involvement with government was to enable private corporations to secure long stretches of right-of-way and other large pieces of real estate. The inevitable result was corruption on a massive scale, seldom matched even now.
There were several US high-speed trials (some interrupted by WWII), but they never made it past the planning stages thanks to the taxation levied on the railroads (some people think that the feds never taxed the railroads, but they actually had a 10 percent tax on passenger rail tickets of all kinds), the immense regulations (still no better under the Federal Railroad Administration than under the Interstate Commerce Commission; the reason why high-speed roadbed is expensive to maintain is because FRA regulations won’t allow trains light enough to travel on the general railway network), and of course the competition out of the government (private railroads own their own rights of way, but until recently had to pay all sorts of taxes on them; in New York state, they even had to pay extra per number of tracks on roadbed).
Examples of US high-speed experiments (aside from the New York Central’s jet-powered M497) include several Talgo trials (not just the New York Central and New Haven, but also the Lackawanna, C&O, Boston & Maine and others), the UAC Turbotrain (actually in use during the late 60s to mid-70s; tested at a top speed of 170 mph), the Pullman Train-X (used on the New Haven RR’s “Dan’l Webster” and New York Central’s “Xplorer”), the Goodyear-Zeppelin “Comet” (New Haven RR); quite a few others.
I find the “defense” explanation for the largest public works project in the history of the country to be quite lacking and somewhat implausible. Germany’s Reichsautobahn system did not serve them very well when the Allied forces finally came upon German soil; FWIU, those motorways made it easier for the Allies to transport their own troops and weaponry further into the country. It’s possible for that to happen to the USA too.
I've never rode it but I'm sure paying for it.
“I find the “defense” explanation for the largest public works project in the history of the country to be quite lacking and somewhat implausible. “
The explanation is real and you can find a brief history of it on Wiki; some biographies of Ike also include it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Motor_Transport_Corps_convoy
“In addition to transporting New York’s Medal of Joan of Arc[28] for San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts,[29] the convoy had 4 objectives; and Ordnance Department[5] and Tank Corps observers[1] completed their reports in October. The objectives were:
a) Encourage “construction of through-route and transcontinental highways”. The Ordnance Department notes “great interest in the Good Roads Movement was aroused by the passage of the Convoy”.
b) Procure “recruits for … the Motor Transport Corps”: enlistment through the convoy was sparse[citation needed]
c) Exhibit “to the public … the motor vehicle for military purposes”: In the course of the journey, the convoy “passed through 350 communities, and it was estimated that more than 3,000,000 people witnessed it along the route.”[30]
d) Study & observe “the terrain and standard army vehicles”: . The Tank Corps noted that “the light truck is so far superior to the heavy [which] should be confined to ... hard surfaced roads; and ... short hauls.”
“
Good points, and true. The automobile was the dearth of passenger rail, and rightly so as we cherish the privacy and independence it offers. Now with license fees, fuel costs, maintenance, drunk driving laws that are draconian, government snooping under the hood . . . maybe its time to think about private passenger rail travel that is, to state it too strongly, light years ahead of the 1800’s. The only way we are going to avoid cronyism, massive fraud, and the like, is for repentance and faith to be worked in the hearts of men in accord with the revealed laws of God against murder, theft, adultery, slander, and covetousness. It’s never too late for that.
Government sold bonds to fund the early railroads. Private investors came aboard hoping to profit, as it should be. Out of the mishmash came railroads which not only made possible massive bulk transportation, but a network across the whole country that afforded telegraph communication, mail delivery, and a small town market reach theretofore unheard of.
I am not inclined to pooh-pooh high-speed rail straight out of the gate, but would hope the same combination of assistance and ingenuity might produce a generational advancement exponentially more beneficial than the status quo.
What high-speed rail would do for the country has already been done.
By the airlines and the interstate highway system....
Just because the explanation exists in some sort of official-sounding form does not make it plausible. Especially on Wikipedia, no matter the sources they use.
There was no reason nor excuse to build interstate highways as a public works project versus have the private sector own, build and operate it. We certainly won WWII without it.
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