Obama Admin Demands High Speed Rail Cash Be Given Back…

 

….to the states who do not wish to have the rail system in their area.

   This is aimed directly at you jackasses here in the state of Florida who voted for that piece of shit Rick Scott to be your next governor, and for you fools in Hillsborough County (Tampa) who are to stupid to know a good idea when one is presented to you. You voters cost the local area some work that would have helped get the economy going a little better than it is going now,not to mention a lot of jobs that could have been had. There’s also the letup on your local traffic congestion that the rail system might have helped with. But nooooooooo!! A 1 cent sales tax increase increase was just out of the question.

   Instead of rail. Mr. Scott and the rest of the Republican shitheads want to keep the federal funds for more highways and road improvements. WTF?  You dumb $@*%(, we do not need more highways in this area. In case you haven’t noticed it, all of that road building has not kept up with the traffic, and it never will.

   Obama wants your tax money to go back to the feds if it isn’t being used for the rail systems as it is supposed to be, and it should. But the voter will get fucked once again because I hear that not only does the original amount go back, but so does interest that will be attached to it. KISS your nearby Republican next time you see it.

 

DailyKos

A destination for that high-speed rail money

by Meteor Blades   Wed Nov 10, 2010

    Governor-elect Scott Walker of Wisconsin doesn't want to build the high-speed rail line from Madison to Milwaukee that the federal government has granted his state $810 million for.  Governor-elect John Kasich of Ohio doesn't want to spend the $400 million in federal grants his state is slated for a high-speed line connecting Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland. Governor-elect Rick Scott of Florida doesn't want to spend the $2.05 billion the feds have granted his state for high-speed rail between Tampa and Orlando. Add in the $3 billion in federal dollars for the Hudson River Tunnel that Gov. Chris Christie rejected and you've got a substantial pile of dough.

Not that these Republicans want to send the money back to Washington like the frugal deficit-choppers they'd like people to believe they are. They just want to spend it on "traditional" transportation projects, mostly highways. The U.S. Department of Transportation has told them no go, as greendem notes in the diary Obama Admin: Rail Money is for Rail, Use it or lose it.

So why not give that $6.2 billion to California and Illinois, states with Democratic governors who actually favor the idea of high-speed rail?

Chicago is set to be the hub of the nine-state Midwest Regional Rail Initiative. Illinois has already received $1.2 billion in federal funds for high-speed rail, and Illinois Transportation Secretary Gary Hannig has already said his state would be willing to take Wisconsin's rail money and put it to work doing what it's meant to be spent on.

Had Meg Whitman been elected, yet another Republican governor would be demanding to spend federal high-speed rail money on highway expansion. Instead, the state is set to start building the first phase of its 800-mile, high-speed rail system within two years. The federal government has granted California $3.1 billion so far for the project. California voters showed their approval for the project in 2008 by setting aside nearly $10 billion of their own money for high-speed rail that will eventually connect San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento and Los Angeles.

This is truly a no-brainer. Transfer the high-speed rail money those four (and any other) Republican governors want to use for new pavement to California and Illinois. The proposed systems will not only be ready to carry their first passengers sooner, but voters in Florida, New Jersey, Wisconsin and Ohio will get another lesson in how picking reactionary know-nothings wreaks havoc on their future.

Technorati Tags: Rick Scott,Florida,Tampa,High Speed Rail,Chris Christie,Federal Government,Barack Obama,Party of No

The Tea Party;An Outsiders View

 

Watching America

El Comercio, Ecuador
The Tea Party and
Laissez-faire

By Juan Esteban Guarderas
Translated By Norma L. Colyer
5 November 2010

Edited by Julia Uyttewaal

Ecuador - El Comercio - Original Article (Spanish)
The new U.S. movement was not incited by the defeat of Obama; it has been promulgating its rage for months. Obama’s active and progressive stance, contrasted with the lukewarm moderation to which politicians had us accustomed, has awoken a new beast.
The tea party movement, which has been largely responsible for the blow just suffered by the Democrats, is a monster with many limbs. Not having an official affiliation and being managed by multiple groups, it does not have a clearly defined ideology.
Throughout the profuse demonstrations, countless colorful ideals have been expounded, which, although not related, are all weighed down by a strong, stale smell. So many racist as well as anti-immigrant causes have crept in, along with other ideas as disparate as skepticism regarding climate change and the ecological crisis.
But faced with the advance of the Obama government and its corresponding interventionism, the whole movement is consistent with the idea of classical liberalism and public sector downsizing.
Flaunting an astonishing lack of historical memory, a proto-nineteenth-century spirit has been recaptured. Basically, the libertarian revolution ideology itself was revived, calling for the abolition of taxes, the elimination of all fees and slashing public spending. In that sense, it is necessary to refresh one’s memory and remember what happened to the nineteenth-century liberal state. It played out that the private power turned out to be much more cruel and merciless than the public institutions. Without labor laws, a low wage competition that decimated the well-being of workers was put into effect. Workers volunteered to work for less and less, to the point of accepting salaries and conditions that did not meet their basic needs.
The existence of Marx was a historical product of that context; his was the voice that had to occur because the situation of the working classes inevitably had to be denounced.
But their Alzheimer’s forgot not only the long term but the short term as well.
The financial crisis of 2008 was caused by the private sector which, without controls, fanned risk until it contaminated the entire system.
And it was, as a matter of fact, highly interventionist actions like the mammoth rescue following the financial crisis that saved the world from a new 1929.
It would be possible to continue endlessly enumerating arguments, starting with the economic policies of Keynes.
There are reasons why the death of the old liberalism was celebrated by veritable rivers of ink, because if successful, the U.S. will be on a real roller coaster.

CLICK HERE FOR ORIGINAL VERSION

© 2010 Watching America and WatchingAmerica.com. All Rights Reserved

 

Technorati Tags: Tea Party,Liberals,Conservatives,Libertarian Revolution Ideology,Marx