Wednesday, February 09, 2011

High Speed Rail in the US - $53 Billion? HA! More like 200 Billion

The US lead the rail revolution long before Europe - the first use of military trains was in the US Civil War - by the South.
Rails went EVERYWHERE because it was cheaper to get goods to people - even small towns - than by wagon.
The railway barons were consider "robber barons" that since they built the rails and locked down all the people to using just their system (especially out west, in the east there was LOTS of competition in the short hauls, but going any distance you had to use one of the top 15 rails and pay to move your goods. See the AH game "Rail Baron" to get a feel of how many railroads there REALLY were.) The government stepped in and started regulating it - and thus after 1900 pretty much all rail building ceased (except during WW II to airfields, plants and special needs)
Postwar, they started ripping out rails due to the highway system (Federal built and maintained still) plus airlines were pushed via the Government to move people. (All US aircraft manufacturers to this day are paid to design their planes to carry troops / cargo if the need arises).
So rails were built with private money (plus land grants by the Federal to put in 1000 miles of rail over land to get to the other side out west) but roads and airlines were subsided fully by the Federal Government (though taxes).
A person talked about going from London to the Med in less than a day - 620 miles - so that is like going from Maine and JUST getting to Washington DC - 709 miles - you are barely 1/2 the way to Miami which is  1709 miles (point to point distances).
Let's build a high speed rail link from NYC to LA its only 2,400 MILES. A HS rail from London to Moscow is ONLY 1589 miles or so.
People keep comparing the US to (Western) Europe and it a totally false comparison because of our size and geography.

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Commerce Clause Justification for "Obamacare" - Miss-used since 1942

Not EVERYONE is required to pay into Social Security - which is really an INSURANCE plan - Railroad workers, original Federal employees under the Civil Service Retirement Plan, original Unionized workers, were all exempt originally. As those people die off the people coming in after are automatically enrolled - except for some people who are STILL exempt - thus not EVERYONE is mandated to be part of Social Security.
 
Only those without a retirement plan. However, since the 1960s that has SLOWLY been stripped out one by one as the Government found a great way to tax more and more people to put  money into the "trust fund" then "borrow" the money out of it to pay for social programs which could not otherwise be paid for. The "trust fund" has a hugh paper balance in it - but actually no real dollars - all it has are IOUs from the US Government who borrowed ever cent of it - pieces of paper saying it will be replaced with actual dollars from the General Fund when necessary.
 
The Commerce clause has been abused since the Franklin Roosevelt administration to take away States rights (and individuals) in order to circumvent the Constitution limits on Federal Government. Roosevelt tried to stack the Supreme court (failed) and without that around 50% of all the things he pushed through congress got overturned by his own appointees  to the court - but they still allowed MANY erosions of citizens rights to be upheld.
 
Remember, if you grow a garden on your own land the GOVERNMENT can step in and FORCE YOU TO STOP growing flowers or even FOOD - see the ruling in 1942 which forced a farmer to stop growing wheat to feed his chickens - they used the Commerce clause saying that since he COULD possible sell wheat across state lines the Government had the right to stop him from planting and FORCE him to purchase wheat instead.
 
Not all rulings from the Supreme court are CORRECT. They are just the law until someone with enough money (and standing) can get back to it and prove them wrong. Precedents are NOT permanent - if they were we would still have slavery in the USA since there were a LOT of court precedents saying owning a slave was legal for thousands of years.
 
Miss-use of the commerce clause - and then having a court saying REGULATING something that does NOT cross state lines can be regulated and mandated onto all citizens of the USA - does not pass the laugh test.
 
If this stands then I could see the next item that the Federal Government tax all restaurants - and food items - since they could now state that this has "proven" to cause medial problems which is paid for by everyone (now) and since this crosses state lines (by delivering food) they could impose a 10% excise tax on all restaurants and food items sold that it has determined to cause possible FUTURE medial conditions - using this same argument.
 
The same with SMOG (tax GAS which causes the pollution) to force people from using gasoline cars - and with people think that past precedents are ALWAYS VALID - we could easily end up paying 80% of all income back to various governments in the USA in 15 to 20 years to support all these programs and people who want to exist within the social "safety net" system being enacted one agency rule at a time.
Scary.