Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

High-Speed Rail

…is dead:

Advocates have excoriated opponents to high speed rail, but have shown themselves largely utterly unserious about the enterprise as they have put no focus on overcoming major institutional barriers such as the steam road era thinking of the Federal Railroad Administration which is stuck in the 90s – the 1890s – or the mismanagement at Amtrak. Getting to an HSR system that works is going to involve major reform (or replacement) of those agencies since all proven, international HSR systems are illegal in the US under current rules. Witness here also the histrionics about a Republican proposal to privatize the Northeast Corridor rail operations rather than engage with it as a starting point. Even in Europe and Japan, many HSR operations are private, so there’s no reason they can’t be in the US too.

To be clear, though I myself have been ambivalent about the high speed rail enterprise, I do not consider myself anti-rail in the slightest. I agree that HSR could bring potentially significant benefits, particularly in the Northeast, although it’s a somewhat more speculative enterprise in most parts of the country. This is one on which reasonable people can disagree. But however one feels, getting to the benefits will require a properly designed and operated true high speed system, something few of the current proposals would provide.

It’s time to take a major gut check on high speed rail in America and rethink the direction. Clearly, with the budgetary and political situation, significant future HSR investments are unlikely. Even if some billions materialize, the experience of the stimulus suggests that they will be frittered away as salami slices sent hither and fro.

A better approach might be to take some time to think more clearly about what we want high speed rail to look like in America. It starts with learning from best – and worst – practices abroad, while noting the important differences versus the US. We need to put a proper regulatory regime in place and reform the FRA; to set up a framework for a successful privatization of any system, probably with operations contracted to an international operator with high speed experience; and to jettison any thought of Amtrak as the ultimate HSR system operator.

But all of that would defeat the true purpose of the system. And unfortunately, many of these programs will zombie on, especially in those states that can least afford them (like California) until the real economic tsunami hits. But I think I can already start to see the waters starting to recede…

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Let Them Eat Birthday Cake

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I guess the tax cheat at the Treasury forgot to check his boss’s schedule when he came up with his arbitrary debt-limit deadline:

President Obama returns to Chicago on Aug. 3 to mark his 50th birthday with fund-raisers at the Aragon Ballroom, with tickets ranging from $50 a person to $35,800 per couple, which includes VIP seating at a “Birthday Concert” where celebs will be performing and a dinner with the president.

The fundraiser at the Aragon, the historic ballroom in Uptown, will be one of the biggest third quarter events, expected to draw in national supporters. Obama’s 50th birthday is Aug. 4….

That won’t look good if a meltdown over debt has occurred, and the president is really putting the lie to the decades-old notion about a “Social Security Trust Fund” by not sending out checks. But this administration has never been noted for its political astuteness, except in the minds of its sycophants in the press.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

I Do Not Think That Word Means

3 Comments

…what you think it means:

Hoyer echoed Pelosi in saying Obama had tried to be flexible, but said there was “great difficulty” in trying to find a compromise.

“We had a pretty fulsome discussion on the specifics that the White House was prepared to agree to, or at least that they thought were options that were viable,” Hoyer said in an interview shortly after the meeting at the White House.

Emphasis mine.

From the dictionary:

ful·some
   [fool-suhm, fuhl-]
–adjective
1. offensive to good taste, especially as being excessive; overdone or gross: fulsome praise that embarrassed her deeply; fulsome décor.
2. disgusting; sickening; repulsive: a table heaped with fulsome mounds of greasy foods.
3. excessively or insincerely lavish: fulsome admiration

I can imagine either definitions (1) or (2) applying, but I don’t think that’s what he meant. I’m not sure if this is a Kinsleyan gaffe, because while he was telling the truth, he probably didn’t realize it.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Allowing Murder, To Disarm Us

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It’s been pretty obvious that the primary purpose of “Fast and Furious” was to bolster the administration’s agenda for gun control, but Town Hall has the smoking email that proves it:

Once again, liberals and the Obama Administration are focused on guns rather than criminals and federal government incompetence. Operation Fast and Furious is looking more and more like a set up from the beginning to push Obama and Holder’s radical anti-Second Amendment agenda as they used law abiding gun shop owners to enable government officals to break the law, then turned around and blamed the very same gun shops for illegal gun trafficking, despite those shops being forced by ATF to help ATF agents carry out Operation Fast and Furious, and now, those shops are being punished through new Justice Department gun control measures. Obama and Holder both have long records of being outspoken opponents of gunrights and both support the reinstatement of the “assault” rifle ban, better described as a ban on semi-automatic rifles.

They’re not “liberals.” They’re criminals.

[Update a few minutes later]

Patrick Richardson has more.

[Mid-morning update]

Say it ain’t so: witness tampering at the Justice Department? This isn’t just worse than Iran-Contra — I suspect that it’s got the potential for another Watergate.

Except for the fact that the media don’t want it to be, of course.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Raise Taxes

56 Comments

…or Granny gets it:

…he drew plaudits from what used to be called the mainstream media. “Obama Grasping Centrist Banner in Debt Impasse” read the New York Times headline. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza dubbed him “Dad-in-Chief,” explaining: “Boil Obama’s message down and you get this: Adults sometimes have to do things that they don’t want to do. This is one of those times. So, let’s get it done.”

The kids are acting up, so he threatens to starve Granny to death. That’s just how a strong father behaves.

It looks to us as if Obama may once again be overestimating his persuasive powers by relying for feedback on journalists who, for a combination of ideological, partisan and personal reasons, are predisposed to take his side. NewsBusters.org has a useful compilation of what it calls the “softballs” reporters lobbed at yesterday’s press conference. Some of them were actually a bit adversarial, but only from the left.

I hope he continues to live in his leftist media cocoon. It will only reduce his chances of reelection.

His advice to the American people seems to be that if one has a problem with taxes, one should get better tax software and stop asking so many questions, or find the severed head of a horse in your bed.

If I were a Republican candidate, I’d make a statement that, if I were president, I wouldn’t use the elderly as human shields to compel people meet my unreasonable demands.

[Update a few minutes later]

Speaking of press sycophancy, is Obamageddon coming to a city near you?

The election of the first African-American president was widely hailed as a giant step forward for American racial politics. The future, however, may remember this administration as a giant step back for Black America during a period of deepening alienation, anger and despair in America’s inner cities.

Not since the 1960s, when scores of American cities were shaken by one race riot after another, have African-Americans faced such deadly conditions: high expectations and hopes running up against a reality of vanishing jobs, shrinking government budgets and a fractured and fragmented leadership. Barring an unlikely change in economic fortunes we could soon face a new period of explosive anger and even violence; alternatively, the urban poor could fall prey to a new kind of passive despair and anomie as hope dies on one inner city street after another.

Either way, the mainstream press’s slowly fading intoxication with the Obama administration has led it to miss the dimensions of the new urban crisis now stalking the United States. The liberal Reagan, they swooned back in the good old days. No — the new FDR! No, wait! The new Lincoln!

But as the rosy glow surrounding the administration and all its works slowly dies away, many Americans will be taken aback at the urban crisis that quietly and unostentatiously took shape while the fatuously exhilarated press choirs sang about the hope and the change that was coming our way.

It is ironic that he may be the worst president for blacks, ever.

[Update a while later]

The president needs to stop scaring seniors. Apparently he disagrees.