Posted on 02/02/2014 5:10:10 AM PST by Alas Babylon!
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Listen at the link above WHILE you FReep!
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“The Sunday Morning Bray”, by Bray!
In those days it was not safe to travel about, for all the inhabitants of the lands were in great turmoil. 2 Chronicles 15:5
The Central Planners of Portland always seem to think they know more than anyone else and that goes double for anything having to do with transportation. Here in Tigard Oregon they have decided the way to solve 21st century transportation issues are with 19th century trains. Hopefully nobody tells them about High Speed Stagecoach or we are going to have dirt roads full of manure. These planners ignore all the obvious negatives with trains and tracks to simply push their preconceived beliefs which rarely prove accurate. They completely ignore the obvious and pursue their chicken little flavor of the day.
Electric trains have been the favorite of liberals due to the two bigger myths developed over the past twenty years. The Three Pillars of Propaganda (academia, media and the DNC) invented two major beliefs to promote trains and windmills, the first was the Peak Oil theory, and then the Global Warming fraud invented by that scientific guru Algore. Peak oil stated that we had found most of the oil in the world and would be exhausted somewhere around the year 2020. These agenda driven scientists could not have been any more wrong if they had tried which they did. Unlike the Statist’s world which is static, the capitalist world is always looking to solve issues efficiently through exploration and innovation like fracking and are now producing more oil than they ever have and expanding the reserves beyond anything the educated idjits ever dreamed.
The electric train requires gasoline costs to be in excess of $12 per gallon like they have in Europe and other state run countries. Even with our gummit doing everything within their power to keep gas artificially high, they cannot stop the development occurring on private ground outside their control. If they were to be neutral rather than actively trying to stop oil production we would be realistically looking at gas prices in the buck fifty range which completely destroys any argument to want to ride trains to your destination. Low cost gas would force these train buffs into accepting the car as a valid form of people moving.
To convince someone to take a terribly slow train like people did in the late 1800’s when it was cutting edge technology, you need to make the cost savings exceed the time lost riding snail rails. The central planners have to make the economic argument which doesn’t exist saying you can save $20 per trip or two hours of lost time for those who are targeted to ride. Everyone who makes more than $10 per hour will continue to drive their cars and absorb that additional cost. The problem for the train advocates is there are no economic arguments to ride that ancient technology so they have to use feel good emotional arguments to make people think they are saving the earth somehow by riding an outdated train while surfing the net on their phones. At least the central planners know to put Wifi on their horseless carriages.
The emotional argument the central planners have exploited is the Global Warming hoax since Peak Oil has been proven a farce. Once again political driven science has distorted a theory into a fact and convinced enough people there actually is something called man made climate change. Liberals are required to believe this unproven theory unflinchingly without any real questioning mindset you would normally expect in science. These temperature deniers will not dare to question anything that does not fit into their preconceived beliefs such as evolution or Global Warming. As long as the High Priests of science such as Al Gore declare a theory fact, it is good enough for the liberal masses. The climate has been changing since the sun has been in the sky as has been seen throughout the ages and temps are now going down forcing the deniers to declare Global Warming into Climate Change. For all those hoax deniers, the climate always changes and always will.
Marxists need these emotion driven fads to spend money on boondoggles like trains since the economics of transportation do not work. Nobody is going to consider using a train as serious transportation due to it being a linear form of transport. It goes from one place to another without the flexibility needed to vary its route. If your home and job happen to be along the rails and you have the additional time required to ride then it could work, however that is only a handful of people and those will likely move away from the noise and vibration of a train in short order and graduate into their car. It is completely impractical for running errands or shopping as once again it goes nowhere and nobody is going to bring armloads of groceries on a train to then hike a mile once the train drops you at the station, let alone if you have children.
The real reason they want a massive boondoggle like the train infrastructure is to launder some tax dollars for their corporate friends and paybacks to the unions. They will use these excuses to convince their political allies in the unions who will be bribed with a few years of shovel leaning, but the real winners are the train building corporations who get massive contracts with generous profits guaranteed. These are simply giant works projects from the 30’s to make sure their campaigns are contributed by the various beneficiaries of the political bosses. This scratchy scratchy system leaves the people with an inferior transportation network with more congestion thanks to not maintaining or expanding the roads necessary to provide enough lanes to efficiently move traffic. Perhaps after they build enough trains to keep the central planners happy they can look into High Capacity Stage Coach and complete their grand design. Better not give them any ideas or Metro will build another floor full of $150K planners to begin their action plans.
Pray America is Waking
Note: The above opinion is not necessarily my own, but FReeper Bray’s. If you wish to discuss this, please ping Bray.
Good Morning, Blessed Sunday, Happy Ground Hog’s Day and Super Bowl Sunday!
I am going to TIVO FNS and leave it at that!
Good Morning Dear Lady.
Go Seahawks! It’s Bronco breaking time!
That's why it works in Japan--when you have three times the population of California packed into less land mass than that state--the population density makes such trains viable. That's why between Tokyo and Osaka, the fastest Nozomi Shinkansen trains (it takes about 2.5 hours two travel between the two cities) have around 40 trains per day per direction. Unfortunately, outside of the Northeast Corridor between Washington, DC and Boston, there are very few places where high-speed rail is financially viable in the USA.
Uhm here Larri.
Excellent essay, bray!
That's a huge part of it. Another part is they hate the personal freedom automobiles bring to individual lives.
"Public transportation" keeps people bottled up in urban warrens around transportation nodes. That makes it easier to watch, control, and exploit them as well as "plan" the society the elites want. Just look at China. It also allows the elites to have huge playgrounds in the pristine hinterlands, unspoiled by lumpen proletariat and assorted gun-totting flag wavers and Bible thumpers who somehow imagine their personal freedoms and liberties are more "important" than exquisitely planned "social progress".
Massive "public transportation" is the perfect scheme for machine politicians, Liberals, academics, unions, and control freaks (but, I repeat myself). Best of all, they get the kulaks and bourgeoisie to pay for it!
Curious lineup today. I guess all the news staff for every network is somehow in NY/NJ this morning and are phoning in their Sunday shows.
I will have to watch Tim Scott’s trial by MTP, and also see what Bobby Jindal has to say.
Thanks for thread A.B. Happy Groundhog day
I think it’s due to the Superbowl. They know peoples’ television minds are elsewhere... Not politics.
Or maybe it’s groundhog day. I heard if Fat Candy’s shadow is bigger than a groundhog’s, we’ll have six more weeks of Obama media adulation!
Which is exactly why it doesn’t work here. Even in the NE corridor there are too many variables to do that does not fit a train. The car is a far more efficient means of transportation to make it feasible to ride trains.
Stepinawfulpis just asked Paul Ryan: “If Obama is violating the Constitution, why don’t you impeach him?”
Ryan didn’t directly respond.
Ryan, we don’t trust the president to enforce the law.
Ryan says they want border security first...no amnesty.
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