So now Chris Matthews is doing some girlie wailing about why we don't have high speed rail, like the French and the Germans.
Over at Newsbusters:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: It's so awful. They are so awful. Look I'm gonna say this. They are so awful and the Democrats are just as bad. Because look if they hadn't built the railroads this country wouldn't be, there wouldn't have been a Manifest Destiny without the rails. If Ike hadn't built, with a Democratic Congress, a highway there wouldn't be a 95 going to Florida. They're wouldn't be a 70 and 80 crossing the country. You wouldn't be able to see the America and the U.S.A. – you wouldn't be able – in your Chevrolet. It wouldn't happen. We would be riding around in county roads trying to figure out how to get from here to there in some crappy little road somewhere. And today we have superhighways. Eisenhower did that. I just wonder why we don't have what the French have, fast railroads. We don't have anything like that, the Italians have them. Not knocking the Italians but they are so far ahead of us, I was just over there. The Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, all have fast rail, they all have infrastructure and we're diddling around here [John] Heilemann. Is this president really gonna shove that, that throttle, forward tomorrow night and say "Let's join the world in getting around?" Are we gonna catch up?
Robert Samuelson had an article on fast rail service awhile back. He writes that there are only two lines in the world that make enough money to cover the construction and the operating costs. All the rest are subsidized. Just what we need is another money losing venture. While the intercontinental railroad was indeed subsidized but James J. Hill built the Great Northern without a cent of government money. Remember Hill? He was called a robber baron in our history books. During a finanancial panic-I think it was in 1887- almost all of the railroads needed a bailout except the Great Northern.
ReplyDeleteI'll get on that tonight. There's been talk in Ohio about this too.
ReplyDeleteThere's never any money made from these rail systems. In addition, it's apparent (as the Midnight Trucking guys say) that what they're doing is pushing the cost of driving a car up as high as it is in Europe so that people will be forced to seek out cheaper transportation.
The money, to these people, isn't an issue. The issue is controlling the population through income redistribution and individual freedoms.