Obama to Tea Partiers: Drop Dead
posted at 10:28 am on April 16, 2009 by Kid from Brooklyn
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The Greatest Political Mind of our time has responded to yesterday’s Tea Parties in characteristic fashion: by announcing a brand new, outrageously expensive public works boondoggle. $8Bn of Porkulus money has already been flushed down the tubes as a “down payment”, with much, much more to follow. You know how someone says “no disrespect intended” right before disrespecting you? If Hopenchange is going to lay out with, “This is not some fanciful pie-in-the-sky vision of the future”, then I’ve pretty much heard everything I need to hear. Wrapped in flowery words and hopeychangey tones, President Obama asks us to imagine a world in which you can board your train and not take your shoes off while whisking off to work and not destroying the planet…or something like that (I’ll update with a link to the transcript once I find it). Seriously? Thanks, but no thanks. Spain’s already been there, done that. Leave it to The One to find a way to both spend a lot of our grandkids’ money, and make us less safe.
The only guarantees inherent with this proposed program are that it will come in way over budget, and it will not be profitable. I shudder for joy at the possibility of more government control of our transportation system. What could possibly go wrong?
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But the unions will love it. And that’s all that matters – right?
OldEnglish on April 16, 2009 at 10:41 AM
If some Americans love the European answers to problems so much… like the train systems… can’t they just move to Spain already?
petunia on April 16, 2009 at 10:44 AM
Some of us americans, (like us NYCers), have been using a subway system older and larger than most if not all others in the world. We could use an upgrade.
that said, high speed rail for places that aren’t under NYC is silly. i could understand if bullet train countries were all wiping the floor with us in terms of economic competitiveness but they’re not.
ernesto on April 16, 2009 at 11:00 AM
Just part of the liberal Utopia – a pleasant land where everyone earns a modest income in a fulfilling job that helps others, gets to work on a non-polluting, non-crowded train for a small subsidized fare, and belongs to a union that takes care of them from cradle to grave.
rockmom on April 16, 2009 at 11:08 AM
Several of my neighbors this morning were unusually silent about the Tea Parties. All this past week they went out of their way to make sure I knew of their disgust with this FoxNews “stunt” and that the Tea Parties would be a bust…since conservatives don’t go in for this sort of thing.
I wonder if they are eagerly awaiting receipt of approved talking points and responses, given the magnitude of the Tea Party protests across the Nation yesterday.
coldwarrior on April 16, 2009 at 11:10 AM
I agree. In NY, spending some money to upgrade and automate switching now would kill a bunch of legacy expense later.
Kid from Brooklyn on April 16, 2009 at 11:22 AM
Meh. Illinois has been trying to figure out how to build a high speed rail network since before Obama was born.
If Southwest Airlines can make a buck charging people $50 to get from Chicago to St. Louis, how are rail lines going to compete? Charging $30?
Thing is, rail *could* compete – but they’d have to specifically target a group that Obama can’t – business travelers. Offer comfier seats than airlines, offer free wifi, offer better food than airlines… but that’s not populist.
Mew
acat on April 16, 2009 at 11:34 AM
exactly. nothing too out there, just some modern mechanisms that cut costs.
ernesto on April 16, 2009 at 12:30 PM
All day long they have been talking bullet trains and high speed rail for Florida. Apparently we are “in the running”. They have yet to explain how this helps the population.
Cindy Munford on April 16, 2009 at 9:35 PM