Posted on 06/07/2014 5:17:07 AM PDT by bestintxas
The Highway Trust Fund is running on fumes, and this is sending certain congressmen and the administration into a tizzy. The administration insists that America’s roads are crumbling, the bridges tumbling, and Congress must raise taxes, or else.
“If they don’t act by the end of the summer,” President Obama says, “federal funding for transportation projects will run out — will run out. There will be no money. The cupboard will be bare.”
This is a classic Washington crisis by the numbers. Congress sets up a “trust fund” — in this case, the Highway Trust Fund — and depletes it by spending the cash on projects that have nothing to do with highways. When there’s no money left, taxes must be raised.
The Obama administration sells this fanciful tale with claims that America’s cars and trucks have been made magically more fuel-efficient by government fiat, and since everybody is paying less than ever in taxes on gasoline, raising the tax on gasoline won’t actually hurt. It might sound plausible, but that’s not the story the numbers tell. In 2009, gross receipts for the gasoline tax were $24.6 billion. Every year since, they’ve gone up, to the most recent accounting of $25.5 billion. Separate taxes imposed on diesel fuel for the big rigs brings the total sum to $41.3 billion.
That’s a lot of money, and it’s keeping America’s roads and bridges in the best condition in decades. According to a Cato Institute review of
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
So the answer here is that government ownership outright is better than crony “capitalism” aka de-facto government ownership?
And these guys run PSAs, ‘Feed the Pig,’ urging the public to conserve money and maintain savings funds for future needs. My response: “ You start doing it FIRST, A-holes!!”
Thanks for that. All the pro-highway types, no matter what they self-identify as, never point out that the money goes into and comes out of the general fund before even seeing the “trust fund” so-called. This 58-year-old Ponzi scheme is nearing self-destruction.
Those cameras aren’t there for safety. I rang the bells on them years ago after doing research and connecting the dots with politicians, the red light / speeding camera manufacturers and their donations, lobbyists, and the PR firms which distributed propaganda with skewed facts that were funded by the those same companies. I found so many instances where the same politicians (on both local and state levels) that pushed hard for the cameras were receiving rather large donations from those companies via PACs that were tied to them. One of the tactics I observed is that the PR firms would oversensationalize any accidents they could find where a red light runner struck a vehicle carrying children that was reported on a website like yahoo.com or MSN.com then post comments about how a red light cam would have prevented. Of course the leftist lemmings oukd always jump on board (which I bet they loved) and then they would run polls showing that the public wanted red light cams. This stuff worked great on mush headed city council members hich then set the stage for red light / speeding camera manufacturers / administrators to approach a city and give their spiel (after stuffing their pockets first with “donations” of course.
We all know those cams aren’t there to protect us so yank’em down.
My data showed that the red light cams actually caused more accidents from people slamming on their brakes and getting rear ended trying to keep from running them especially hen they shortened the yellow lights but a lot of them got busted for that so they had to correct it. Of ourselves their revenue went down pretty drastically after that
No, my point is that Federal regulation of the railroad industry is so broad and intrusive that it makes no sense to use the railroad industry as an example of a successful application of private ownership of transportation assets.
Good example there. That seems like a perfect case thqat demonstrates the need for anti-trust regulations.
The taxation and regulation came long after the establishment of said private railroads. It was not concurrent with their appearance.
This post is complete baloney from start to finish. Federal regulation of the railroads was tied to three indisputable facts that have nothing to do with "destroying the railroads ultimately":
1. When railroads first extended beyond state borders, they became subject to legitimate Federal oversight under the U.S. Constitution as an industry involved in interstate commerce. This may seem outlandish today, but for the first few decades of the country's existence there was no such thing as a corporation that was formed under Federal law. Every corporation was a state corporation, and a railroad could only operate within the borders of the state where it was incorporated. Railroads literally had to trans-load their freight from one train to another at a state border and hand it off to another railroad company for the next stage of its trip. With the advent of multi-state corporations, the Federal government became the regulatory body for the railroad industry by default because state laws could not address legal disputes between shippers and railroad companies for business that was conducted across state lines.
2. The Federal regulation of the railroad industry reached a point that would be considered excessive in almost any other industry because a private company with an enormous fixed transportation infrastructure that serves other businesses effectively functions as a monopoly for many of its customers. The Federal regulation -- for better or for worse -- is an implicit recognition that this monopoly arrangement for the railroad industry is unavoidable in this type of industry. As a point of fact, this is the same rationale for the heavy government regulation of public utilities with fixed transmission assets and no real competition.
3. Despite the monopoly/regulation arrangement I described in #2, the railroad industry in the U.S. still presented major risks to the economic well-being of the country. In the early years of the Dow Jones Industrial Index, almost every company in the index was either a railroad or a major railroad customer. In the latter decades of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century there were a number of cases of financial/economic disasters in the country that were caused by a disruption by a single railroad (a strike or other labor action, for example). Quite simply, it was recognized by people in positions of authority all over the country that the railroad industry had become too powerful, and represented a threat to the economic stability of the nation. The establishment of the first Federal highway system around the time of the first World War was specifically intended to provide a measure of competition to the railroad industry by promoting the growth of a trucking industry that was more flexible and had much lower barriers to entry than the railroads.
Understood. See my last point for an expansion on my point.
That makes no sense at all. Canal companies were not so subject to “oversight”, nor were interstate shipping companies (that used the canals and other waterways whether by barge or other vessel) or stagecoach companies.
Furthermore, with hundreds of interstate railroad companies, there were no monopolies. Monopolization only manifested when the federal government imposed it—the main examples being USRA, Amtrak and Conrail. The Pennsylvania Railroad had major competitors for passenger traffic between New York and Chicago (very big during railroads’ heyday), those being the Baltimore & Ohio, the New York Central and the Erie, and many more competitors for localized destinations.
The notion that railroad companies in the USA ever became “too powerful” is propaganda advanced by pro-government types. Why? Because it was a threat to the notion of government centralization. Funny how the “solution” was to overregulate the railroads and overtax them so that they could not be “competitive” with the federal- and state-funded road network, is it not? (Don’t ever say “generally agreed” when it is not.)
You've completely overlooked a huge element of the railroad business, too. While railroads may have competed for passenger traffic between cities, any one railroad customer located along a railroad could only do business with the railroad that served the customer directly. The Pennsylvania Railroad couldn't haul coal from mines that were served by the Baltimore & Ohio, for example. This is a monopoly arrangement by definition, and Federal regulation of the railroad industry was implemented as a measure of relief and oversight for railroad customers who had no alternative means of transporting their products.
Conrail and Amtrak were not "imposed" on the industry. The Federal government assumed ownership of the assets of six major Northeastern railroads that had tumbled into bankruptcy and were about to be dissolved. For better or worse, the Federal government (correctly) believed that a disposition of the assets of these companies would result in the sale of their rights-of-way. In addition to the threat this presented to the industrial customers of these railroads, there was no way these rights-of-way could ever be re-established once the properties were sold off.
I don't know where you get this idea that these railroads ever existed as truly private entities at all. The entire industry owes its existence to massive government intervention almost since its inception -- from land grants, low-interest loans, and special preferential treatment by governments all over the country (exemption from property taxation, for example).
That explains the recent barrage of commercials here on SF radio stations by commie rat / former comedian Will Durst exhorting us to demand more taxes to the Highway Fund — i.e. for union jobs and campaign money laundering. He uses some of the same phrases (”run out by the end of the summer”) as Obama, so you know it’s a coordinated DNC / union effort.
http://rebuildca.org/will-durst-weighs-fix-truck-horn-roads/
Multiple railroads could serve a customer even with one railroad line of one company serving it directly; this was under track-sharing agreements.
Also, with government-financed roads, regulatory preference was given to trucking companies going way back to the teens and twenties—truckers could set their own rates whereas not even an interurban electric railroad could, and electric interurbans were intrastate for the most part.
The canals were like the railroads, a mix of private affairs and government builds. The Morris Canal in New Jersey was a major private canal that linked the Hudson River and New York Harbor with the Delaware River.
Yes, Conrail and Amtrak were impositions. Instead of removing taxation and regulations to allow the private companies to compete better, there was a federal takeover, which resulted in a far smaller railroad network that is today overburdened. Conrail could not be re-privatized without such legislation as the Staggers Act, which deregulated the railroads partially. Increase of regulation continued on the passenger rail side, which is why trains like the Acela Express ended up twice as heavy as high-speed trains of overseas (or US-built ones of the past).
Completely false presumption that all US railroads resulted from land grants. The Great Northern is an example of a railroad that came to be with no government intervention whatsoever.
Go back and read the history of Conrail and Amtrak. The nationalization of the Eastern railroads didn't unfold quite the way you've presented it here. The push for government control of the railroads began in the aftermath of the Penn Central bankruptcy of 1970, but Conrail didn't come into existence until 1973 when the Penn Central owners threatened to liquidate the company's assets unless the Federal government bailed them out when the company was losing $1 million every day it stayed in business. Does this sound familiar? LOL.
Conrail became a profitable railroad as result of the deregulation of the Staggers Act, but also because as a government railroad it was able to do things that private railroads would have found difficult or impossible to accomplish -- like changing labor agreements with its unions and by selling off redundant and lightly-used rail lines. Today's network isn't "overburdened" because of anything related to government intervention. It's "overburdened" because the industry operates on the smallest possible network and therefore prioritizes its most profitable loads (often at the expense of others).
You seem to want to believe government sources too much.
When Amtrak first started (on May Day of 1971, take note), intercity passenger rail service was cut clean in half with no explanation. Aside from the government-owned Northeast Corridor, it was in conflict with all of the private railroads that had formerly owned those services. Average speeds fell to levels not seen since the beginning of passenger rail in the US—except on the NEC, which connected the liberals’ three favorite cities on the east coast.
Between the end of WWII and the end of Amtrak, government regulations had forced private railroads to operate trains at uncompetitive speeds, no faster than 79 mph for passenger trains for the most part; those same regulations combined with taxation forced many railroads to defer maintenance also, and a number of very ill-timed strikes ended up breaking many railroads financially (most notably a strike by the Transport Workers Union against the Pennsylvania RR in 1960, the first that company had ever experienced); and there were other factors such as being forced into agreements to pay firemen for no work when railroads converted from steam power to diesel. Many states ended up subsidizing passenger services, giving them undue control over the railroad companies; and a lot of passenger service was operated under government mandate. (See the pattern of increasing control?)
Conrail cut its way to “profitability”. Once a company finds a way to profit, it ought to stand on its own feet, correct? Instead, this margin of “profit” after balkanizing the railroad network of the eastern seaboard and midwest was a setup for takeover by now-crony-capitalist railroad companies. And it is funny that not only Conrail but other railroad companies rebounded with profit once taxes were repealed and service deregulated.
Claiming that customers had no control over railroads except through federal regulation is garbage. Multiple railroads served just about all towns and competed for customers everywhere in the USA, without regulation; once regulation came to be, those numbers dwindled, creating de-facto monopolies and inviting the induced need for (what?) so-called regulation, and matters such as trackage rights, haulage agreements and “bridge line” railroads had existed long before regulation anyhow. Large trucking companies these days hold monopoly over many sectors of where they serve, and the drivers of trucks are not held to the same legal standards as a locomotive engineer—otherwise we’d lose about 90 percent of them due to being disqualified for driving licenses over speeding (an engineer who overspeeds by 1 mph consistently loses his certification and his job, per government regulations).
What is needed is a license plate for adult street bike riders, wheel tax and all to pay for those special lanes they want. If a motorcycle has to have one, so should a regular bike. They have come in an narrowed lanes to make a bike lane, it makes those of us who must drive less room in our lanes. And they do NOT stick to their lane, they meander into car lanes all the time. It makes it difficult when a lane is down for repair to get around them. I am constantly having to MOVE over to avoid hitting one of the IDIOTS who can’t maintain his/her bike lane. Nor do they wear white clothes at sunset or nightfall so it is easy not see them. Kids ride on side walks.
All I’ve seen them do is get you fined, or cause a rear end collision. And If I’m the one hit, it is going to cost a lot in medical bills, much more than my car would cost. I have severe OP/OA, back, neck from Hades. Very well documented. And don’t think for a moment that Medicare and TRICARE LIFE won’t go after your ins. They will and do for reimbursement.
You still seem to miss the point about railroads serving industrial customers. A city may be served by five different Class I railroads, but that doesn't mean all of them can access every industrial customer in the city. For example, the major Honda auto plant in Marysville, Ohio is served by CSX Railways. Period. That's it. The railroads invest a ton of money in building the infrastructure to serve large customers like this, and it's not in their best interests to invest in fixed assets like this if they have to deal with competing railroads directly accessing the same customer.
P.S. — I see this issue mainly from the perspective of the railroad customer, not the government.
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