been screaming for this for years

[DiamondDave]

Ahhh.. the misconception of the military being socialist... I will have to tear this myth apart again later during a break, for about the 4000th time

Dave, this is rhetorical use of language and as such it is certainly socialist in terms of a home a bed, a job, healthcare, pension, facilities for everything. One could live on base fort or depot and never leave. Been there, done that.

No... it is not...

Benefits for service earned.. you are also still in ownership of what is yours... differences in earnings, responsibility, etc... there is not a status of to each according to their need and from each according to their ability

Many jobs offer housing or housing allowance.. food or food allowance... pensions.. healthcare coverage.. etc... but with these things, it does not make them a socialist organization

The military is an organization with a set mission that requires that it be self sufficient.. to feed, clothe, requisition, and supply for that mission.. it is an organization of earned rank structure that is not, however, in socialistic control of all assets and production for egalitarian or equal distribution... there is indeed differences in what each individual will derive from the military...

If the military is a socialist style organization, then so is a baseball team that owns the stadium, provides housing and food during service, distributes equipment for completion of the mission, etc... just because the military is run by the government and is supplied by the government for all of it's needs, does not make it socialist in nature

 

[manu1959]

california voted this in awhile back.....

taking private land to build public rail line will piss a bunch of people off....

not to mention amtrack is so successful....

 

[Indiana Oracle]

May have this wrong, but to my knowledge no passenger railroad in any country is profitable on its own revenues.

Having lived in western Europe for many years, I thought the rail system was the best thing going and used it all the time. But Europe and the US are not comparable geographically or demographically. Were we to undertake an equivalent facility, the cost would be staggering, not counting the cost of all the legal entanglements.

Targeting a segment of the east coast, as it is a specific space and densely populated, makes sense. Implementing it, funding it, and running it at breakeven will be the challenges. My guess is, like many of The Prophet's social concepts, his consituency will benefit and the rest of the country will pay for it but receive little in return.

 

[WorldAHope]

Ahhh.. the misconception of the military being socialist... I will have to tear this myth apart again later during a break, for about the 4000th time

Dave, this is rhetorical use of language and as such it is certainly socialist in terms of a home a bed, a job, healthcare, pension, facilities for everything. One could live on base fort or depot and never leave. Been there, done that.

No... it is not...

Benefits for service earned.. you are also still in ownership of what is yours... differences in earnings, responsibility, etc... there is not a status of to each according to their need and from each according to their ability

Many jobs offer housing or housing allowance.. food or food allowance... pensions.. healthcare coverage.. etc... but with these things, it does not make them a socialist organization

The military is an organization with a set mission that requires that it be self sufficient.. to feed, clothe, requisition, and supply for that mission.. it is an organization of earned rank structure that is not, however, in socialistic control of all assets and production for egalitarian or equal distribution... there is indeed differences in what each individual will derive from the military...

If the military is a socialist style organization, then so is a baseball team that owns the stadium, provides housing and food during service, distributes equipment for completion of the mission, etc... just because the military is run by the government and is supplied by the government for all of it's needs, does not make it socialist in nature

I think there are a couple definitions of "socialism" that are conflicting each other.

1) in saying military system is not socialism, you describe socialism in its most feudal system, where all are equal in servitude to the state, where no citizen has possesions or can improve their lot in life, get promoted or accumulate personal wealth. And all decisions are made, top down, by the state.
That is an extreme application of "socialism" practised only by totalitarian states that either failed or will fail or changed from that apporach: North Korea, China in the 40's - 70s, Albania in the 70s - 90s, Stalin-era Russia, Romania, East Germany, N.Vietnam before 1990, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, to some extent Castro's Cuba.

2) The "Socialism" being instituted by the Obama adminsitration's budgetary and stimulus bills, and other policies.
You yourself did not state in this thread that Obama's policies were an effort to make the USA 'socialist', but that is a very common assertion, that Obama is forcing or directing this nation towards "socialism".

Definition 1) does not apply to anything Obama has proposed. His stated goals and policies for America are not even remotely like that fictitious Orwellian prison society you described.

By your own definition of "socialism" you defeat every statement in the accusations that Obama is trying to make us a "socialist" nation.

Thank you.

I still say that the military is the closest thing we have created and maintained to being socialist.
It is not a PURE feudal collective of the dispiritted and downtrodden, as you have described your idea of "socialism" to be. But our military has in place all the structural pieces and working parts, with the added touches of good old American know how and just enough democracy to make our military function more effectively.

If Obama re-creates construction battalion civilian work corps, similar to what FDR's New Deal had going in the 1930s, the WPA, CCC, the NRA etc,
would that be establishing "socialism", even though such programs would be, like the Peace Corps and the New Deal programs,
modelled after the military ?

Imprecise definitions and labels can bring down an argument as surely as an unstable and unusable foundation of crumbly cinderblocks will fail to support a house.

 

[WorldAHope]

May have this wrong, but to my knowledge no passenger railroad in any country is profitable on its own revenues.

Having lived in western Europe for many years, I thought the rail system was the best thing going and used it all the time. But Europe and the US are not comparable geographically or demographically. Were we to undertake an equivalent facility, the cost would be staggering, not counting the cost of all the legal entanglements.

Targeting a segment of the east coast, as it is a specific space and densely populated, makes sense. Implementing it, funding it, and running it at breakeven will be the challenges. My guess is, like many of The Prophet's social concepts, his consituency will benefit and the rest of the country will pay for it but receive little in return.

I agree, to some extent. That is why such massive project proposals need to be designed to benefit the most. Europe's rails are government subsidized, and are very heavily used, are heavily relied upon.
America's cargo trains are good, and we can improve that system and gain from that effort as much if not more than a limitted expansion of high speed passenger trains.
The technology exists, thanks to Japan, Europe, China, to build such fast trains.
We are a nation addicted to and heavily invested in automobile and truck transportation, which are relatively very inefficient.
Gasoline will not become cheap, a sit was in the 50s adn 60s and 70s.
We need to develop future transportation, and do it wisely.
IF we can develop a widespread but slower passenger train system, using existing rail beds that have been abandoned, and can bring that service to more towns and cities, as was the case up to the 1950s, that would appeal to me more spending the same amount to install 200 MPH passenger trains that go between just a few locations.
We aren't made of money, and we don't seem to have a lot of future prospects for being a wealthy nation, as we once were.
Spending has to be carefully scrutinized.

 

[oreo]

The problem: While a great Idea--11 billion is only a smidgen of the money needed to build these projects.

It's so great to know that we're paying 1.9 million dollars for that clean-up of pig stink in Iowa--which would have helped build more high speed trains--along with the 640 million Harry Reid got for his train from Disneyland to Las Vegas.

It's just our incompetent government at work again!

 

[Indiana Oracle]

May have this wrong, but to my knowledge no passenger railroad in any country is profitable on its own revenues.

Having lived in western Europe for many years, I thought the rail system was the best thing going and used it all the time. But Europe and the US are not comparable geographically or demographically. Were we to undertake an equivalent facility, the cost would be staggering, not counting the cost of all the legal entanglements.

Targeting a segment of the east coast, as it is a specific space and densely populated, makes sense. Implementing it, funding it, and running it at breakeven will be the challenges. My guess is, like many of The Prophet's social concepts, his consituency will benefit and the rest of the country will pay for it but receive little in return.

I agree, to some extent. That is why such massive project proposals need to be designed to benefit the most. Europe's rails are government subsidized, and are very heavily used, are heavily relied upon.
America's cargo trains are good, and we can improve that system and gain from that effort as much if not more than a limitted expansion of high speed passenger trains.
The technology exists, thanks to Japan, Europe, China, to build such fast trains.
We are a nation addicted to and heavily invested in automobile and truck transportation, which are relatively very inefficient.
Gasoline will not become cheap, a sit was in the 50s adn 60s and 70s.
We need to develop future transportation, and do it wisely.
IF we can develop a widespread but slower passenger train system, using existing rail beds that have been abandoned, and can bring that service to more towns and cities, as was the case up to the 1950s, that would appeal to me more spending the same amount to install 200 MPH passenger trains that go between just a few locations.
We aren't made of money, and we don't seem to have a lot of future prospects for being a wealthy nation, as we once were.
Spending has to be carefully scrutinized.

Agree completely.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

What IS it about radical lefties and and their love for rail mass transit?

Rail mass transit was born in sin, the political sort. There was not one scintilla of factual data to support the concept in the early 1980s when the idea was floated by radical activists. The need was a lie. Back then the Triangle was hardly the Triangle at all. Even after hooking up Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill (and some tangential counties) the population didn't hit 500,000; and that was spread over acres of empty land. Rail mass transit requires population density at least five times higher than density in this area. Even more asinine was that what population density we had was spread out among three cities-four if you count Cary. The lie inside the enigma of rail transit is based on false propaganda from the environmental Left saying that the US is due to starve and die due to over-population, a theory famously purported by professor Paul Erlich in 1968 that has proved to be totally untrue. Yet it is believed: Actually 2209 of the 3141 counties in the US have a population of 50,000 or less. Not only is rail transit absurd today, it doesn't even work in the future. Populations in the West are declining, not increasing.
….
Here are the reasons we must act to stop this train:

1. No public entity in the region has voted to have rail transit. The money is coming from the federal government-that siphons off our gas tax money in Washington for mass transit before sending it back to the state for road-building-and the NC Legislature that granted funds after back channel lobbying by transit activists. Neither the Feds nor the State asked us in the Triangle if we wanted it.

2. Rail fanatics have worked to stop road projects in order to create gridlock to make their point that we must have rail transit. One example among many: Raleigh's mayor Charles Meeker, when first elected to the City Council in 1992, brazenly attempted to cut off funding for the second year allocation for the I-540 Outer Loop. Had he succeeded, the project would have ceased. He deliberately attempted to create traffic congestion to push the need for rail transit. Another example: a two-person environmental group in Durham held up the widening on I-40 at the Durham Expressway for 10 years. That work is now in progress but the traffic problems due to the purposeful delay was successful in convincing the uninformed that rail transit is necessary.

3. The cost of the rail transit debacle is monumental, yet the worst is still to come. Assuming the first line is completed from downtown Durham to Downtown Raleigh and the estimated $775 million now predicted to finish it out is funded, what happens when the system is complete? For one thing, the citizens in Raleigh and Durham will have to subsidize its operations, as ridership will, at best, cover maybe 30 percent of the cost. The taxpayer bill will strangle us, stopping road-building and causing the curtailment of other services.

4. This is connected to an appalling lack of will on the part of elected leaders in the region. I asked a Raleigh Councilman: Do we have a liaison committee communicating with TTA so we can confront the issues that will arise down the road? The answer was no, and accompanied by a retort: why do you care? It's free money. This so-called "free money" is going to cost us a bundle.

Folks, don't say I didn't warn you. The transit holocaust is here.
My Usual Charming Self | Bernie Reeves | The Horror Of Rail Mass Transit

Please Follow Copyright Guidelines

 

[KittenKoder]

You're guessing.

Of course so am I.

That said, I suspect that jet travel pollutes a lot worse (per passenger mile, at least) than mag lev rail.

No, I'm not guessing. I am using logic and knowledge of mechanics and electronic technology which I happen to excel at. Programming is just part of what I know about when dealing with technology. You are just swallowing hype.

Yeah, do the math then and get to me.

Until then? You're guessing.

Really .... tell me one part of my contention that is not based on fact, just one (besides the exaggerated 500 mph).

 

[KittenKoder]

What IS it about radical lefties and and their love for rail mass transit?

Rail mass transit was born in sin, the political sort. There was not one scintilla of factual data to support the concept in the early 1980s when the idea was floated by radical activists. The need was a lie. Back then the Triangle was hardly the Triangle at all. Even after hooking up Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill (and some tangential counties) the population didn't hit 500,000; and that was spread over acres of empty land. Rail mass transit requires population density at least five times higher than density in this area. Even more asinine was that what population density we had was spread out among three cities-four if you count Cary. The lie inside the enigma of rail transit is based on false propaganda from the environmental Left saying that the US is due to starve and die due to over-population, a theory famously purported by professor Paul Erlich in 1968 that has proved to be totally untrue. Yet it is believed: Actually 2209 of the 3141 counties in the US have a population of 50,000 or less. Not only is rail transit absurd today, it doesn't even work in the future. Populations in the West are declining, not increasing.
….
Here are the reasons we must act to stop this train:

1. No public entity in the region has voted to have rail transit. The money is coming from the federal government-that siphons off our gas tax money in Washington for mass transit before sending it back to the state for road-building-and the NC Legislature that granted funds after back channel lobbying by transit activists. Neither the Feds nor the State asked us in the Triangle if we wanted it.

2. Rail fanatics have worked to stop road projects in order to create gridlock to make their point that we must have rail transit. One example among many: Raleigh's mayor Charles Meeker, when first elected to the City Council in 1992, brazenly attempted to cut off funding for the second year allocation for the I-540 Outer Loop. Had he succeeded, the project would have ceased. He deliberately attempted to create traffic congestion to push the need for rail transit. Another example: a two-person environmental group in Durham held up the widening on I-40 at the Durham Expressway for 10 years. That work is now in progress but the traffic problems due to the purposeful delay was successful in convincing the uninformed that rail transit is necessary.

3. The cost of the rail transit debacle is monumental, yet the worst is still to come. Assuming the first line is completed from downtown Durham to Downtown Raleigh and the estimated $775 million now predicted to finish it out is funded, what happens when the system is complete? For one thing, the citizens in Raleigh and Durham will have to subsidize its operations, as ridership will, at best, cover maybe 30 percent of the cost. The taxpayer bill will strangle us, stopping road-building and causing the curtailment of other services.

4. This is connected to an appalling lack of will on the part of elected leaders in the region. I asked a Raleigh Councilman: Do we have a liaison committee communicating with TTA so we can confront the issues that will arise down the road? The answer was no, and accompanied by a retort: why do you care? It's free money. This so-called "free money" is going to cost us a bundle.

Folks, don't say I didn't warn you. The transit holocaust is here.
My Usual Charming Self | Bernie Reeves | The Horror Of Rail Mass Transit

The extremists are willing to swallow anything that makes them "feel good" without ever considering all the possibilities, sad as that is.

 

[Shadow]

I foresee ... another monorail fiasco ... only this time nation wide!

Exactly..our stupid roadrunner train in NM is a money sponge. It loses millions a year.

 

[FactFinder]

and now , yes - "My Boy" Obama is going to do it. I personally don't give a damn that this site is filled with so many Obama haters, I love that he's the Prez and something like this, even as small as it is, is exactly why I love him - forward thinking

Obama unveils high-speed passenger rail plan - CNN.com

High speed passenger rail.....hmmmmm what is so marvelous about that? Is it a matter of keeping up with the Jones' (er I mean Japanese) or what?

Would I still get to my destination if I took a slightly slower train? or perhaps walked or rode a bike or drove my SUV? What per se would have any magnificence connected with this? Is it just a matter of adding more to my grandkids debt level? Is the wonder "How high can we burden the poor souls?" "Can we entirely ruin the country before they come of age?" Thanks, but I see a slightly more moral set of goals.

 

[Xenophon]

Barak Obama:

19th century solutions for a 21st century world.

 

[DiveCon]

Barak Obama:

19th century solutions for a 21st century world.

actually, there are a lot of technologies from the 19th century that have been updated for the 21st century that we SHOULD be using, like the newer hydro turbines that dont even require the building of a dam to harness the energy in the water flowing down a river
clean coal tech
wind power

 

[editec]

if this was something that was financially viable, they wouldnt need a dime of tax payer money to get it started
the project would fund itself with private investment

That was NOT true for the transcontinental railroad.

That was NOT true for space exploration.

That is NOT true for many enormous projects which ultimately can serve the public interests.

Your understanding of the power of public and private interests to do grand projects that serve the private industries and the public good is fairly weak, and certainly NOT based on history.

The government subsidized transcontinental railroads were inefficient, politicized, and corrupt. James J. Hill's privately-financed Great Northern Railroad being the exception.

True...but without that government subsidizdd help they'd have not been built at all.

There really are projects so vast that government can play a role in their development and should play a role in their development, too.

Now unless you think that we should privatize the military, too, I really think your position about such things is inconsistent and less than reality based, too.

Government has valid role in national development.

You disagree, and I understand that.

What more can either of us say?

 

[InrXeyelArkvst]

...The military is an organization with a set mission that requires that it be self sufficient...

At billions in off-OMB $upplemental infusion, ledgerless streams from other allotments, and trillions never antisipated after action costs it can hardly be deemed self sufficient.

How many are actually aware that the resurgent SpanAm War inspired LD tax finally had what's hoped to be it's definitive sunset in '06?

What are the Plan-Bs for the loss of such unthoughtabout streams?

Opoid revenue from the Peshawar-Irkutsk Mule Train?

​

 

[garyd]

High speed rail works great in Europe where the population density is about 20 to 30 times what it is here and the distance are much shorter. The Baltimore to Atlanta corridor could and ought to have a highspeed rail system but trying to run the thing between the mountains from coast to coast is just insanity. The problem with highspeed rail over long distances is track maintenance. Track problems you don't notice at sixty or seventy miles and hour will kill people at 160. At 200 mph assuming a high speed express with no stops in between New York to LA is still going to be 15 hours. and you can fly it in five.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

Mass rail transit is nothing more than a tool for socialists. Socialists hate American individualism....which is the enemy of their collectivism. What could be more free and individual than you in your own car? That’s why socialists hate cars...cars represent indvidual freedom....for socialists the less cars the better. They would rather you lived in a dense population center where they can control you. Because you know….socialists are “smart”… and they know what is best for you…

ObamaDrama cracked a joke that by using rail transit one wouldn’t need to take his shoes off….what an idiot.....mass rail transit would become a prime target for terrorists….hey BO…remember the train and subway bombings in Europe?…..and who is going to pay for the additional high cost of protection on top of the high cost to build plus the high cost of upkeep?

And what working person on vacation is going to take a train across the country when he can fly in 1/10th the time? Even at 150 mph it will still take at least 20 hours to cross the country...that's a big waste of time when you'd rather be spending your week off at Disneyland....we are not like Europe....America is BIG....maybe that's why not too many use Amtrak...besides, travel in a car is very comfortable...you can stop at McDonald's any time you feel like it...

In fact, who is going to take the train anywhere when it's easier to drive where you need to go? When you need your car to do errands after work or you want to go someplace other than where the rail lines go? Unless you live in high population areas where it makes sense… forget it….but here we get back to the radicals goal….they want us to live in dense rabbit warrens….they hate suburbia and small town America….you know…where the rednecks live…they want to force us all into regulated “green” urban population centers…

Forcing rail transit on America is nothing more than another socialist commie step to control us and take away our liberties….and Maobama is leading the way...

 

[WorldAHope]

Mass rail transit is nothing more than a tool for socialists. Socialists hate American individualism....which is the enemy of their collectivism. What could be more free and individual than you in your own car? That’s why socialists hate cars...cars represent indvidual freedom....for socialists the less cars the better. They would rather you lived in a dense population center where they can control you. Because you know….socialists are “smart”… and they know what is best for you…

ObamaDrama cracked a joke that by using rail transit one wouldn’t need to take his shoes off….what an idiot.....mass rail transit would become a prime target for terrorists….hey BO…remember the train and subway bombings in Europe?…..and who is going to pay for the additional high cost of protection on top of the high cost to build plus the high cost of upkeep?

And what working person on vacation is going to take a train across the country when he can fly in 1/10th the time? Even at 150 mph it will still take at least 20 hours to cross the country...that's a big waste of time when you'd rather be spending your week off at Disneyland....we are not like Europe....America is BIG....maybe that's why not too many use Amtrak...besides, travel in a car is very comfortable...you can stop at McDonald's any time you feel like it...

In fact, who is going to take the train anywhere when it's easier to drive where you need to go? When you need your car to do errands after work or you want to go someplace other than where the rail lines go? Unless you live in high population areas where it makes sense… forget it….but here we get back to the radicals goal….they want us to live in dense rabbit warrens….they hate suburbia and small town America….you know…where the rednecks live…they want to force us all into regulated “green” urban population centers…

Forcing rail transit on America is nothing more than another socialist commie step to control us and take away our liberties….and Maobama is leading the way...

So....all those decades the US was fairly smothered in an extensive and reliable passenger rail transit network, up to the 1950s,
we were a nation of "Socialists" ? All those robber barons were actually closet commies ?

I don't think we should 'force' rail transit upon any city or region, but IF we can invest in such a way to reduce our dependence upon oil, make transportation better, that is good.
Trains are more safe and more efficient than cars and trucks and planes, you realize.

And are you aware that the budget for building and maintaing the highway system is enormous ?
Isn't that socialist, putting all that government attention and money into roads and highways ?
And levess and dams and bridges and all forms of govenment assisted transportation would be socialist as well.

What is NOT socialist to you ?

 

[Avatar4321]

Looking at the surface I see no reason to object to the project. I am all for speeding up travel as long as it's safe. And this seems to be a project that would be legitimately authorized by the Constitution in the governments job to govern interstate commerce.

Of course, I havent seen the hidden costs involved. Nor the specific benefits of it. But with a brief look at the matter, It may not be bad.