The Bush White House is threatening to veto legislation that would fund Amtrak to the tune or $14 billion over the next five years. As usual, the administration's reasoning is specious.
Bush objects to any subsidies for Amtrak, ignoring the fact that every form of transportation in this country is subsidized. Think not? When was the last time General Motors built a freeway? When was the last time an airline built an airport?
Bush's neo-feudal economic policies continue to astonish. He objects to the fact that the legislation “provides scant opportunity for competition on existing Amtrak routes." Competition from whom? The French? The Japanese? They're busy building rail systems in their own countries that work. From American railroads? They hate passenger rail. Bush is busy protecting the interests of his friends in Big Auto and Big Oil, and continuing our dependence on imported petroleum.
Bush's latest assault on Amtrak comes as ridership on the trains is soaring, in no small part because of the burdensome increases in gasoline prices. But then, the man has always had a keen sense of timing. ("Mission Accomplished!")
Dead on target! The idealogues will never, EVER get it.
7 more months....just 7 more months. I hope this country is still functioning in 7 more months so, if we all vote right...um, I mean correctly, we can begin to look to the future. Just by ending the BILLIons of dollars a month spent in Iraq we can accomplish so much at home. Yes even mass transit, bullet trains, and economical hybrid vehicles.
I can only imagine what Bush's "to-do" list for his last year in office must look like. Perhaps something like:
1. Raise oil prices (checked off)
2. Invade Iran
3. Kill Amtrak
4. Squeeze in 6 months vacation time
...
The Soviet Union had a Five Year Plan, Nazi Germany a Four Year Plan;
planning whatever.
But America's nameless and faceless wheelers and dealers planned and plan for decades. Their transportation/fuel plan has come to fruitition.
Though the American "man on the street" has the power to derail it (politically), he lacks cognisance due to a naive faith that his government is solely representing him. And that is where the Colonials held an edge, they did not trust their English rulers.
The Declaration of Independence could not have spelled it out any plainer:
"...governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it...To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world."
This is followed by a list of 27 grievances.
It would be most enlightening if the producers of BLOGS would put them out there for discussion.