Give 'em Hell Rendell. GOP is the party of SOB’s.
“Senator Shelby said, ‘Well governor, you’re asking us to subsidize Amtrak.’ I said, ‘Senator, there isn’t a rail system in the world that isn’t subsidized,’” Rendell said. “What are these guys smoking?”
If it’s Ted Cruz, Rand Paul or Marco Rubio, it’s something they enjoy but are blocking DC from legalizing…
Don’t think so.
My father worked for what became the BNSF for 30 years from the late 1950s. By the time the government agreed to take over passenger rail service in the early-70s, it was, of course, a losing proposition with no hope of even becoming a break-even proposition without massive amounts of money to modernize the system, which was pretty much a relic of the late 19th Century at a time when Japan’s Shinkansen was decade old. Despite some token improvements in shared rail bed (for the benefit primarily of slower moving freight trains), Amtrak’s infrastructure is still late 19th Century. Not even the East Coast corridor can be considered modern rail. So I don’t really think that “big business” of any stripe is all that interested in owning any of Amtrak and the pension fund is federal, so it wouldn’t be part of the bargain because it covers rail freight employees as well as a decreasing number of Amtrak employees.
Why subsidize roads when you can sign them away to private (mostly foreign) companies to toll them?
Southerners used to make fun of Yankees’ toll roads. They still do, while driving down turnpikes in Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Pay to play’s coming to Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee, too.
Are you sure about that? I know several Democratic pols have made a point of using Amtrak (especially Joe Biden), but I’ve never heard the same about any Republican. Do you have any names?
Dynamic tension.
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Heavens to Betsy, I can already hear the din from the clutched pearls…
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The Republicans will yell and scream that we don’t know whether our decaying infrastructure had anything to do with this tragedy, and that Rendell is playing politics. These are, of course, the same Republicans who, if God forbid, there was another horrible terrorist attack on our soil, would immediately blame Obama.
Read: “Self Enslavers”
Like most of those on the Right.
There is a reason that people say “the 0.01%”. If the 0.01% are shafting the rest of us, it would stand to reason that an overwhelming number/percentage of “the rest of us” are Common People, about half of whom are duped into Tribally voting Republican.
Why someone in a trailer park or behind the counter of a convenience store cash register or watching FOX in the luxury of a McDonald’s booth gets a boost from voting Republican is perfectly sensible, if the concept of (homogeneous) Tribe is inserted.
Conflict Theory…Lewis Coser
Here is the deal with the Republicans. They want to destroy everything so they can say…“see, the govt can’t do what the private sector can”. They will tell us the private sector can do a better job and do it for less. They will then sell all public works to private enterprises who will then use it to charge outrageous prices while NOT improving anything.
The GOP is not there to govern they are there to dismantle and sell it to their masters for pennies on the dollar and throwing the citizens to the wolves as an income stream to their masters.
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I just wrote the same thing.
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Who needs trains? Let them ride corporate jets!
There were 3 people killed in Benghazi…and republican outrage filled the airwaves…THREE DEAD AMERICANS!
There are 8 dead and many more injured…and what happens? They cut Amtrak funding. Americans are a bunch of morons that they allow this to continue
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Hey the GOP wants you to continue to be dependent on automobiles and fossil fuels so they defund alternative or competing transportation modes.
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Republicans are heartless soulless creatures that use tragedy as a way of pushing their agenda.
Public roads and highways are “subsidized” by gasoline taxes everyone with a vehicle pays at the pump.
Ouch…pretty harsh…but I’m afraid that might be the sting of truth.
‘SEE HOW THEY ARE’…another reminder of REPUBLICAN INCOMPETENCE. You can’t measure the COST of lost lives. Feeing the effects of INCOMPETENCE, victims of Benghazi, 9/11, Iraq War and numerous mass murders which killed innocent children. SOB’s.
“This country used to have the world’s best infrastructure”
Now, it doesn’t, thanks to Republicans.
for the transportation of commerce and goods movement