Posted on 08/02/2012 1:35:12 PM PDT by TigerClaws
Taxpayers lost $833 million over the last decade on the food and beverages supplied by Amtrak, which managed to spend $1.70 for every dollar that received in revenue.
Over the last ten years, these losses have amounted to a staggering $833.8 million, said Rep.John Mica, R-Fla., in a statement previewing a House hearing today. It costs passengers $9.50 to buy a cheeseburger on Amtrak, but the cost to taxpayers is $16.15. Riders pay $2.00 for a Pepsi, but each of these sodas costs the U.S. Treasury $3.40.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
I’ll bet that one of Fomney’s kids could run Amtrak & get it into the black!!!
Willie needs to eat more cheeseburgers!
Just to see what it was like, I took Amtrak from Oakland, Ca to Los Angeles a couple of months back. Really no complaints other than it takes ELEVEN HOURS to get there! The cheeseburgers are in plastic bags and the clerk microwaves them for you. If Amtrak is claiming these turds in a bag cost them more than $16 apiece, someone is taking a huge payoff. You can buy a box of eight of them at Costco for less than $10! Amtrak, USPS, all the same deal. Cradle to grave workforce that’s overpaid and underworked.
Only Amtrak could lose money selling food on a train.
And Chevy Volt costs what? somethign like $140,000 and sells for $40K
And Welfare spends $100,000 to give away $30,000 in ‘benefits’ (or the equivalent of one full-time government worker making $70K for every family on welfare getting $30K)
now THAT’s good government!
Thanks for posting this article.
“...$9.50 to buy a cheeseburger on Amtrak, but the cost to taxpayers is $16.15. Riders pay $2.00 for a Pepsi, but each of these sodas costs the U.S. Treasury $3.40. “
I see the problem. And solution.
AMTRAK meet CHICK-FIL-A. Their food is better and much cheaper.
If you know the author MM is million (thousand thousand). He needs to change the headline.
Anything the US Gov't touches turns to crap. (They're actively hollowing-out and destroying the US Military, now.)
Maybe they should subcontract to Chick-fil-A...
Amtrak probably gets them for a buck a piece.
The other $15 goes to Union dues and salary and bribes and kickbacks and political donations.
The Moochelle and Bloomey should be happy!..........
Amtrak's new Logo
“somewhere it seems, there is some overhead.”
Ronald Reagan in “the Speech” - “A Time for Choosing” about welfare circa 1964.
Oh heck! The entire context....
“We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they’re going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answerand they’ve had almost 30 years of itshouldn’t we expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn’t they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?
But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we’re told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a year. Welfare spending [is] 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We’re spending 45 billion dollars on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you’ll find that if we divided the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9 million poor families, we’d be able to give each family 4,600 dollars a year. And this added to their present income should eliminate poverty. Direct aid to the poor, however, is only running only about 600 dollars per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.”
Ronald Reagan
I've got to wonder based on what you said if the ObaMao administration has stocked Amtrak with friendly donors and/or vendors who launder money for his campaign.
I've been in the vending business in a previous life and know that you can get brand name soda cans delivered and serviced in a cold vending machine for no more than about 2x what you can buy them on sale for in a Costco or Sam's Club type environment.
The same pricing formula would probably apply to a trackside delivery at Amtrak. Every town of 50,000 people or more is capable of supporting a vending service company fully capable of servicing these type of needs AND turning a profit. Every private transportation mode (even a cut-rate carrier like Jet Blue) is fully capable of turning a decent profit with food rates even less than what Amtrak charges.
“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”- Milton Friedman
By the 1960s, the communal, automatic soda fountain was a ubiquitous presence in Soviet grocery stores and eateries. The machines dispensed carbonated tap water: one kopeck for a glass of plain, three if you took it with a shot of syrup, all served in communal glasses. Getting free soda out of the machines became a national sport. There were many ways to do it: coin on a fishing line, the fake-coin maneuver, and the most primitive and surprisingly effective method of allsimply hitting it hard in the right spot . All in all, it was an ethical as well as an hygienic disaster. from Made in Russia
http://fuckyeahsovietrussia.tumblr.com/post/21186942801/ibeching-by-the-1960s-the-communal-automatic
A lot of airlines stumbled upon that solution ages ago, to the point where the food companies are named in the airlines’ advertising.
Romney's kids, hell. One of his older grandkids could do it. Does he have one older than 12?
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