OH, HELL, NO! The Republicans want to sell Amtrak's northeast corridor:

http://online.wsj.com/article/APa10cc9a3f209423c917ab48d3761cd2e.html

Step 1. Sell the section of Amtrak most likely to make a profit.

Step 2. Shut down remianing government owned sections of Amtrak onthe grounds they cost too much to run.

The worst part of this - it's being pushed by Utica Congressman Richard Hanna, who is fighting bringing high speed rail to Upstate New York!

"We Ahrimanic Family Values Republicon Cronies, Inc. have already found a way to make MegaBuck profits from people being sick, and from prisons, water, war, and weapons. Now we will get richer yet robbing the American public - Bwaa ha ha ha -- with our Nifty Train Track Scam.

Now its High Time for us Republicon Eeleetes to start strategerizing about how we can squeeze money out of you smelly American proles based on your need to sleep. Smirk. Sneer."

- RepubliCorps, Inc. (R)

Somalia here we come.

Stupid, idiotic Republicans. :banghead:

he must have a buyer in mind

This is how the GOP thinks things should work.

Besides killing the last remaining inter-city public transportation system in this country, they help the oil companies boost their profit with more cars on the road.

they want to take it over and create another agency or corporation.

Hanna is an idiot who has little time left as congressman. He's one of those that were swept in 2010 and will be swept out in 2012. A hint of a footnote in upstate. His district is pretty small population wise. He and Buerkle better practice their goodbye wave and concession speeches.

I feel like I've spent over twenty-five years shouting in deaf ears, but Republicans CANNOT be trusted with infrastructure. They'll either try to sell it or give it away to their crony-capitalist allies, or they'll starve it for maintenance and run it into the ground. This is a point I've been trying to make since the Raygunauts first proposed selling the Northeast Corridor back in the 1980's.

This is also a talking point that Democrats OUGHT to be making and using. It may not be quite as important as Medicare, healthcare reform, and employment, but it ought to be made. At the risk of sounding like a crank, saying that Republicans CANNOT be trusted with infrastructure is an idea that has been ignored or set well into the background by state and national Democratic party leaders. (And now the TEA Party reactionaries are running amok. Weren't we progressives clever? :sarcasm: )


There are reasons why certain operations ought to be government-owned or government-run. Some things, like water and sewer systems or public education, either generate too little income or are too high-risk for private companies to operate without subsidies (Those subsidies tend to be rather high). Heavy passenger rail is one such system.

Albany, Rochester, Syracuse & Buffalo airports! If you live in Upstate New York, most flights take you to NYC to transfer. Summer thunderstorms and winter snows can wreak havoc with connections. Nothing beats being held up hours at Newark because of a storm in Atlanta! High speed rail connecting the NYC airports to upstate would be a gift!

Back in the day, the New York Central operated reliable, fairly frequent passenger trains. They weren't high-speed by today's standards, but they arrived near (plus or minus) when a contemporary (2011) automobile would have, counting the highway improvements made since, say, 1935.

And snow and thunderstorms didn't stop them, either.

That passenger rail wasn't subsidized (unless you count the contracts for carrying the mail). The private railroads also paid taxes on their rights of way, structures, railroad cars, and locomotives.

Today's airlines and bus companies are heavily subsidized by contrast, a fact that TEA Partyin' Republicans don't want to talk about, any more than they'd want to talk about the "essential air service" subsidies that keeps commercial airlines operating at so many small-town and small-city airports in the Red States and elsewhere.

But talk about High Speed Rail on its own right-of-way and watch the TEA-baggers, Republicans, and wing-nuts wail about "big gummint" and "taxpayer giveaways."

But Brit Rail was in Europe, and TEA b@ggers have successfully bamboozled all too many American voters into ignoring the consequences when various European countries try TEAb@gger ideas over there.

:argh:

They know the high speed rail issue will put people to work and make Obama look good.

Pfft.

:shrug:

I seem to remember a big brew ha ha back in the Nixon days.

-Hoot

But watching as the prosperity ebbs for an entire generation -likely to be SEVERAL generations - is just frustrating as we see our infrastructure crumble to dust even as other countries push forward, FAR forward and we'll be playing catchup for the next decade while continuing to slip further and further behind.

I REALLY hope it doesn't take us another 10 years to realize the false prosperity of the right. We have so much to do RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW and instead we are just pissing money and man hours into deserts 1/2 way across the globe even as things rot around our ears.

Is anyone else a bit more than pissed off about this?

They have no ethics or sense of values, and they definitely don't understand economics. All they have is empty rhetoric.

yeah right.

connected by marriage to *the* mccormick family?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hanna

and *the * mccormick family with Illinois. A distant tie to Utica NY is possible but unlikely.