Reply #14: Overland Freight Rate versus Today's Repuds [View All]

At least the Republicans of a century or so ago at least knew how to get a better deal for the government than today's Repuds do. In exchange for federal land-grant largesse, the benefiting railroads were required to charge the government one third LESS in freight rates than they did their other customers whenever government freight went by rail. This was called the Overland Freight Rate and stayed in effect until AFTER World War II.

I'd say that American citizen-taxpayers got a fair, if not outstanding, return for raw land that was more often than not either very remote or even inaccessible by 1860's standards.

Could you imagine CONTEMPORARY Repuds doing something like that? I can't. When the US government acquired Conrail after six major Northeastern US railroads went broke and the federal government poured over SIX billion dollars of subsidies into it, Republicans, led by Ronald Reagan and former Texas US Senator Phil Gramm, couldn't wait to sell it off to the private sector for a bit over TWO billion US dollars.

Who got screwed over? US TAXPAYERS, that's who! It was like the Repuds were ideologically opposed to allowing the government (That means us taxpayers) to get a good return for its money.

Today's Republicans CAN'T be trusted to get American taxpayers a good deal.

:mad: