Map Of Potential High-Speed Rail Built By The Stimulus:

[QansaGabeyle]

Awesome. Can't wait for that to come to Columbus.

[Padishah]

what if Somalia had a nat'l high speed rail? that would instantly created jobs and spur economic growth

What a brilliant idea! Let's put billions of dollars worth of resources into building a High Speed Rail Network! It which will create hundred's of jobs to service all those expected passengers! You know, those passengers who will willingly go without food for a week in order to get from Gaalkacyo to Muqdisho for no particular reason!

Government waste is inevitable.

Good a reason as any to prevent any government from its current por;-barrel spending madness.

But what is different this time around is the money is actually going to the right sectors of the country.

Wow. What an assertion! By what objective measure do you know this to be true? What characterises the right sectors, as compared to the wrong sectors?

With Bush you had $450-$1200 rebate checks for most tax payers with the intention that they will go out there & spend to revive the economy.

Bush was under the idiotic assumption that credit based spending is the engine of prosperity, which it isn't! Private individuals did something sensible with their cheques; they paid down the toxic debt that is killing their personal economics. But let's just assume this spending fantasy is true; a one off payment will not encourage spending nearly as well as prolonged reductions in income taxation. If the individual is sure that they will have more of their pay-cheque available after tax, the more money they can allocate to spending.

All it did was add another $700 billion debt to the country's deficit.

You've gotten to the crux of another problem. The government spends entirely too much. It should cease spending so much! It should cut spending, and then do away with payroll tax (hurts jobs), cut income an corporate taxes, eliminate the Federal Reserve System and generally stop being such a burden on the economy in general.

Rather than trying the same old tired fiscal bail-outs & tax breaks

Tax-breaks are useless if their is not a commensurate reduction in spending by the government. Of course, if the economy was girded by sound money, instead of the legal counterfeiting scheme at the Federal Reserve, the government couldn't be that reckless.`

Obama's administration is actually planning on spending on states & government agencies to create jobs which is what is needed the most.

What you want is the creation of productive, wealth creating jobs. Government spending on states and government agencies produces jobs that drain wealth from the productive economy by way of taxation. Jobs for the sake of jobs never encouraged economic prosperity, otherwise the Full Employment model of the Soviet Union would have produced results.

Most ecomonists laughed at it & told Bush's advisors that it would serve as a temporary fix, and would only mask the real issue.

Everything government does is a temporary fix, would only serve to mask the issue, and would create more problems down the road. If more of these 'economists' told their government sugar daddies that, America would be in much better shape today.

Jobs is the underlying factor here & that's all that matters.

Er, no. Productive, wealth creating jobs are the underlying factor, something governments are all but incapable of.

[gurey25]

It seems that i was right about obama..

guess who he looks upto? Lincoln

and lincoln was not just about freeing slaves and the Union.
Loncoln fought for the spread of the railroads and industrilization, and the state universities are a legacy of his land grants and spending.

without lincoln you would have had a small number of elite universities...

[Twisted_Logic]

what if Somalia had a nat'l high speed rail?

that would instantly created jobs and spur economic growth

i know some folks that are in the process of putting together a similar plan as we speak. stay tuned. i will keep you posted.

[Padishah]

Indeed, Lincoln was just not about freeing the slaves, and trying to deport them, or turning a Union of States into a State of Union through a pointless, destructive war. Oh no, Lincoln fought for pork-barrel projects for his Illinois Railroad buddies as a I-scratch-your-back thing. Obama obviously took note from Lincoln in that regard. Did I mention that Lincoln would positively hurl if you told him a Black man was in the White House?

[AbdiWahab252]

Padishah My fiscal conservative brother

[Amethyst]

Funny thing is both of Georgia's republican serving senators voted against the bill, but Georgia will get over $2.4 billion as a result of the stimulus bill to spend on its infrastructure & in the process probably create over 50,000 new jobs. Whose interests are the GOP serving again?

The funnier thing is that even as their states face crushing budget deficits and soaring unemployment, GOP Governors are considering turning down some of the stimulus package money. So far its the Republican governors of Louisiana, South Carolina, Mississippi and Texas that are outspoken. Better check GA, tho. A GOP Govnr as well? lol. Might just end up screwed after all.


Honestly? This whole thing looks good on paper, but I doubt it'll be as Yglesias has predicted. 8 Billion can only get us so far!. We're prolly gonna have to choose either one of those routes, or end up with a severely modified version in the end. Both are def. unlikely to happen, even with Amtrak Joe as V.P! Speaking of...Biggest issues currently with the train system in the states is that the damn Amtrak is sharing the rails of corporate freight rail--and must bow to the will of corporate freight schedules, locations, and dangers. If one just sees how bad it is where I live, you'd all know what a sh!t load of money it'd take just to lay, let alone across the country. Ground is nearly impossible, lest one drives! & You know, Greyhound don't float on no water. But one things for certain, it sure will create some jobs! And Jobs are always a good thing for the Econ. California would receive the biggest boost from the stimulus bill with 396,000 jobs created or saved, followed by Texas (269,000), New York (215,000), Florida (206,000) and Illinois (148,000).The projected 66,000 jobs in Minnesota tied with Maryland for 19th most among the 50 states and Washington, D.C.


Any ideas on who'd be getting these state contracts, tho? How the states would be distributing them? Who can bid for a contract? Any regulations over ANYthing? AT All? FOcking Dems- Always a Give and take with them.

[Padishah]

Will people get over this hogwash that make-work, tax financed jobs are good for the economy. They are not.

[1_londoner]

London has the best transport system in the world.

[snoop12]

Sweden

they got more trains then busses

[1_londoner]

^^
Y u lying for....? All they do is ride bikes in Scandanavia

[gurey25]

Will people get over this hogwash that make-work, tax financed jobs are good for the economy. They are not.

they are good for the real economy the physical economy, and it leaves tangible assets..
what do u prefer the ? for the casino culture to continue as it is?

[Voltage]

Padishah, I have told you time and time again. Ka dhex bax sheekadan! You are a young kid, you have been indoctrined by an ultra liberal free market economist teacher and you are now the walking talking robot.

Out of all the Western world, only the Canadian banks are standing tall. Why? Because the Canadians never accepted the laisez faire attitude adopted by the Americans and made into a religion by the Europeans. Now look at the Canadians, riding tall and proud over the economic problems.

Free markets are always going to be the economic solution but government regulation is key and if this was not already proven the Canadians proved it!

[Kramer]

In a last-minute change, the total quantity of funds available was increased. But there's no special plan for Las Vegas. The money will be spread all across the country. As it happens, I think an LA-Vegas HSR line is a perfectly reasonable project. But in practice the areas that will get a leg up should be the Federal Railroad Administration's officially designated high-speed rail corridors. As it happens, LA-Vegas doesn't make the cut. But guess who does have such a corridor? Ohio!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/1 ... 67804.html

The suprising thing is that, the map covers only Democratic states or states where Obama was voted, The East Cost, the West cost and some Mid West, nothing in the central conservative red neck states!

[Voltage]

^Covers Texas, Luisiana, Georgia, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahama, Arkansas, South Carolina, West Virginia, etc. All states that went for McCain.

I think what you mean is the trains don't go rural states like Oklahama.