Podcast interview re trains w/ James McCommons
george...@gmail.com
passenger rail with James McCommons, author of the recently published
Waiting on a Train.
You'd be surprised at how difficult it is to find someone to talk
about passenger rail, probably because people who know about trains --
even advocates of passenger rail -- don't want to acknowledge that
passenger rail isn't ever, anywhere, a profitable enterprise. Instead,
it's a clearly socialized form of transportation.
Other countries are OK with that but here in the U.S. it's like
saying passenger rail has got cooties. How sad, and too bad for us...
James McCommons evidently doesn't know that he's not supposed to talk
candidly about the economics or politics of the railroad industry. His
explanations for things are reasonable, easily understood, interesting
and extremely helpful.
If you enjoy this podcast please feel free to forward the link!
http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2009/12/passenger_rail.html
Richard Steinfeld
> Posted this morning at Electric Politics, a podcast interview about
> passenger rail with James McCommons, author of the recently published
> Waiting on a Train.
>
> You'd be surprised at how difficult it is to find someone to talk
> about passenger rail, probably because people who know about trains --
> even advocates of passenger rail -- don't want to acknowledge that
> passenger rail isn't ever, anywhere, a profitable enterprise. Instead,
> it's a clearly socialized form of transportation.
I'm completely fine about socialized passenger trains. Lots and
lots of them.
We're already socialist: we're spending trillions in socialized
invading and bombing of people who haven't done anything to us.
So, we have socialized military funding. We use socialism to
support the munitions industry. We used socialism to spend
billions to bail out the sleazy banking industry. We've socially
supported government handouts to the drug industry via Medicare
Part D.
We have socialized roads and highways. We socially support our
police. We socially subsidize commuter trains that typically
carry Republicans into our cities.
One thing that's not socialized is the money that's donated by
corporations and lobbyists to corrupt politicians (such as Max
Baucus) to do their bidding, often (as the case with Baucus) for
their "corporate constituents" and directly against us.
I submit that we adopt socialized medical care and remind all the
people who scream "socialism" about it that we already employ
socialism for services that they believe in and use.
And while we're emerging from the middle ages about health care,
why not make up a large, effective, integrated passenger train
network the same way that we fund the Navy. And especially, the
way that we support Boeing, United Technologies, GE, and other
huge military suppliers.
I'm an older guy. I've lived almost my entire life in a nation
that's either been at war or preparing for war. Is any other
country this crazy or has squandered its resources so massively
instead of seeing to the needs of its people? How many passenger
cars could be built for the cost of one bomber?
How does a bomber help your daily life? How much would a rail
passenger car?
Richard