Making it rain: The World According to Democrats
Have a problem? Throw money at it!
For Democrats the solution to every.single.problem is simple:
Infrastructure needs updating? Raise the gas tax. Some don’t have health insurance? Use someone else’s money to give it them. And why should women have to pay for birth control? Toss some taxpayer money at them too! The list goes on…
Most recently, Democrats decided the tragic Amtrak derailment was the perfect opportunity to shamelessly push for more funding.
People died? Well, this wouldn’t have happened if Amtrak had MORE FUNDING. Harumpf. Democrats, essentially.
Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Examiner explained:
Democratic appropriators Wednesday tried to amend the fiscal 2016 Transportation funding bill with a provision that would fund Amtrak at $2.45 billion, which is the level requested by President Obama in his 2016 spending plan.
That’s more than twice the $1.14 billion House Republicans propose for Amtrak. The GOP-led panel defeated the amendment, and Democrats immediately criticized the move.
“It is deeply troubling that my Republican colleagues defeated an amendment to fully fund Amtrak just hours after his tragic rail crash,” said Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, who is the top Democrat on the Appropriations panel.
The GOP bill cuts Amtrak funding by $200 million from fiscal 2015.
Rep. Lowey was joined by a chorus of other Democrats. Sen. Blumenthal, Sen. Baldwin, Rep. Horton, and Connecticut’s Sen. Murphy all condemned the mean, evil ol’ GOP for not dumping more money into the Amtrak money pit.
As details of the deadly derailment trickle out, it turns out the engine was a 2014 rig — not an old, dilapidated getup. It was also revealed that the train was speeding along at 106 miles an hour on a 50 mile an hour bend. Clearly, the infrastructure is responsible.
Who knew it was all so simple? All we have to do is dump more money into the national infrastructure and no one will never speed again!
I think what they mean is that if you put $1.2 billion in small bills on the track it would have slowed the train down to a safe speed.
— Daniel Foster (@DanFosterType) May 13, 2015
If only Democrats had shared their little monetary secret with us sooner, we could’ve saved the planet years ago. Alas…
The tasteless shark jumping of Democratic lawmakers aside, believing money cures all ills is about as disconnected, elitist, and inhumane a view of the world I can imagine.
[Featured image a screen grab from this video of a cat rolling around in money]
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Comments
Amtrak is one of the persistent fascist legacies we suffer from the Nixon Administration.
It isn’t a truly government outfit. It’s a quasi-private Frankenstein monster, exactly in the fascist model.
The absolute best thing that could be done with Amtrak is privatization. (See the period?)
Some level of Federal subsidization would not be inappropriate in light of the funding for competitive transportation systems. Until that, too, is phased out.
What do they want? Airbags for when the driver falls asleep?
My reason for saying “hell no” is simple: We **ALREADY** gave you money, and you co-mingled it with the general fund, and didn’t fix the damn roads and bridges.
We’re dealing with a (money) junkie mentality. “just a little bit more” is what they always need. Meanwhile they tell us that, every time, and don’t fix the problem with the money we gave them.
Fix the spending, then come and ask us for money.
A long time ago I worked for a major high tech equipment manufacturer. The company was awash in cash it seemed. For every problem, there was always a high dollar solution to pursue. Some of these worked, many did not. At other companies I had learned how to achieve strong solutions to problems with minimal budget plus creative thinking. Unfortunately, this approach is never in the mindset of governments nor in quasi-government entities like Amtrak and the USPS.
I really wish the Republicans would get aggressive and start playing this stupid game with the Dims. Possible retorts:
1) The obvious: we’ve already poured $45 Billion into the Amtrak money pit and it’s been mismanaged by government. Time to make it truly private, no more government backstop. Let the progressive elites in the Northeast who love it so much pay what it actually costs to ride it. Joe Biden can step up and be the first to buy a market-priced ticket.
2) This crash had nothing to do with infrastructure spending or lack thereof; it was caused by a Union Engineer going twice the speed limit. The Union screwed up, ergo the Union should be smashed and disbanded and made illegal.
3) This crash had nothing to do with infrastructure spending or lack thereof; it was caused by an engineer who was educated in government-run schools who was too stupid to follow a simple speed limit sign, ergo the government monopoly on schools should be eliminated and all parents should have vouchers and choices where to send their kids to school. And oh yeah, destroy the teacher’s union in the first place; they clearly don’t know how to educate our kids when engineers can’t even read a simple sign.
Stop pussyfooting around and letting the Dims control the narrative that influences the LIVs. Drive the narrative, beat them to the punch at their stupid Alinksy games.
The first statement is mostly true – but only because it would not have taken agreat deal of spending to take care of the problem on this curve.
The second statement is true, as far as it goes, but it is also possible to make the opertation of the train more idiot-proof.
Jimmy Fallon pointed out that it was common knowledge that Bill CLinton gets $500,000 per speaking engagement. What most people dont know – Bill asks to be paid in SINGLES!
PowerLine poses some salient questions…
The real question is, why is the federal government in the railroad business at all? Far more people are killed in automobile accidents than train crashes, but no one says the problem is that the federal government doesn’t pay enough money to car companies. If Amtrak can’t operate safely–reasonably safely, since nothing is absolutely safe–based on the revenue it gets from customers, it should go out of business, like any other company.
Here is another question: why should businessmen, journalists, lobbyists and politicians who commute between Washington and points north have their travel costs subsidized by taxpayers? Train travel costs what it costs. Those who ride the trains should pay those costs, just like those who fly in airplanes. It is absurd that the richest and most powerful companies in the United States have their employees’ travel costs subsidized by you and me. This is cronyism at its worst. Amtrak should be a wholly private enterprise. Having ridden that Northeastern line that goes to Washington a number of times, I think it has great advantages over air travel and could easily charge enough money to be profitable in competent hands.
It appears from the words of the engineer’s attorney that the derailing-at-speed-can’t-remember-a-thing engineer is no different than a Democrat senator.
Read “high speed”.
I’m sorry, not to be rude or anything, but you’re not really surprised are you?
So Obama proposed giving Amtrak $2.45 billion. The GOP gave them $1.14 billion, and the Democrats are screaming that the GOP are stingy bastards who don’t care about mass transit or rail jobs.
Let me ask the question no one else has asked yet: How much did Amtrak ask for?
I think that’s an important bit to know before we start slinging insults.
To be fair, whether it is the “green” economy or “green” energy, there is a whole world to redistribute debt and waste. And what is not redistributed can be obfuscated through press and union, and suppressed with offerings of secular opiates (e.g. abortion, insurance, cell phones).
Congress ordered a simple (but highly technological) fix that would make crashes like this impossible. The deadline for completing is is the end of this year. I don’t think they want to say where this stands.
Of course this stretch of tracks should have bene among the highest priorities for changing. There was a big accident on the same curve 71 years ago.
But they never do things that way.
actually taking care of the problem wold eliminate the incentive for Congress to appropriate more money.
We also might ask why should the train have been speeding. Is there anything in the incentives given to the train crea that would motivate them to do this.
Anyway, as one generation suceceeded another, manybe it got forgotten that that curve is not safe if the train is speeding. It’s OK at the speed limit and even maybe 60% faster.
News today that the train driver sped the train up prior to the curve.
Beginning to take on some of the odor of the German airline suicide/homicide.
Breaking news: Somebody was throwing “projectiles” (rocks) at trains. No clear connection to the crash. The conductor says he does not remember making the report.
Other train news:
AMTRAK put postive train control on the southbound tracks there, but not the northbound tracks.
Somebody apparently decided there was nor isk of a train speeding up there.
The installation throughout the country has been delayed, and now a Senate committee voted in March to give railroads more time.
There are much cheaper technologies as the conductor said online – and someone wrote a letter to the New York Times, you could have GPS and an app and trigger something when a train was going too fast.
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/transportation/20150515_Amtrak_failed_to_install_train-speed_control_at_dangerous_Frankford_curve.html
http://www.wsj.com/articles/amtrak-crash-might-have-been-avoided-by-tweak-to-signal-system-1431622980
Guess they were wrong.
This is really something to investigate.