Obama plans high-speed money shredder, made in China.

[Generator]

We get it, there are black people in the cities. By the time you minute men finally stop fleeing the cities and settle in to get your fucking gun on...the cities you once fled will be that corny ass Reagan shit of some "shining city on the hill".

I know you right wingers have no ideas, but it really as simple as building anything to create jobs. HSR is especially ambitious and worthy of pursuing. We get it, you guys gave up America and things will never get you out of your stupor until another fluffier like Reagan comes along. In the meantime go shoots some guns, bitch, and grow your junkyard car garden in the woods. This is happening with or without ya.

 

[bfdd]

We get it, there are black people in the cities. By the time you minute men finally stop fleeing the cities and settle in to get your fucking gun on...the cities you once fled will be that corny ass Reagan shit of some "shining city on the hill".

I know you right wingers have no ideas, but it really as simple as building anything to create jobs. HSR is especially ambitious and worthy of pursuing. We get it, you guys gave up America and things will never get you out of your stupor until another fluffier like Reagan comes along. In the meantime go shoots some guns, bitch, and grow your junkyard car garden in the woods. This is happening with or without ya.

who is this even directed at?

 

[theeedude]

You forgetting? I already proved quite handily that you were a Republican.

Acceptance is the last step in grieving... you'll get there

Are you going to be like that other idiot who follows me with the cheap groceries mumbo-jumbo?

 

[theeedude]

Huh? I've seen a lot of Republicans wanting workfare, the shit you're talking about, but I've never seen you condone it.

Do you consider all people who are employed or contracted by the government on workfare? I guess it's news to me that Republicans want to expand government employment, but if that's the case, I do condone it.

 

[Throckmorton]

Because California has a larger population and a lot of that population commutes for work. HSR wouldn't necessarily help me as I live within 20 miles of my job and it's a relatively easy drive and there are cheap easy alternatives if I didn't want to drive. But there are plenty of people who travel 100+ miles round trip for work every day. HSR would also help lower cost of living in California as populations would be able to spread out with easier access to the productive working areas.

Is it just me or is there some kind of reversal happening on this forum? First her209 doesn't want the government expanding broadband access in rural areas, now you support high speed rail.

 

[bfdd]

Throckmorton, I have supported HSR for awhile. I believe I was in the LA to Vegas thread supporting it. Whether we can afford it or not is a different matter. I'm not going to say just throw it on the credit card like a lot of others would.

 

[xj0hnx]

who is this even directed at?

Ignore generator, he's one of those delusional retards that thinks that everyone right of Chairman Mao is a racist.

 

[bfdd]

Do you consider all people who are employed or contracted by the government on workfare? I guess it's news to me that Republicans want to expand government employment, but if that's the case, I do condone it.

No they are not on workfare, they are employees of the government. Workfare != employment. Workfare = 20 hrs a week doing something productive for society, then spending another 10-20 a week looking for a job. I don't care what exactly it is people on welfare do, they just need to do something productive for society in order to earn that check. The only people I give a pass to are those completely incapable of working, IE the disabled and children(of which I consider anyone under the age of 16).

 

[ShawnD1]

My city has a train system that is roughly 10 miles long and it's very heavily used. It's the best thing ever and I think every city should have its own train system.
You guys are talking about trains going from one city to another??? Who would actually use such a thing?
'round these parts most people take buses between cities if they don't have a car or don't want to fuck around with air travel.

Earlier in this thread someone mentioned something about living 100 miles away from where you work? wtf? Nobody else in the entire world has that problem. Most of us live in the same city we work in. If you get a job in Chicago, that means you move your shit to Chicago. If you get a job in Dallas, you move to Dallas. It's really not that complicated.

 

[theeedude]

No they are not on workfare, they are employees of the government. Workfare != employment. Workfare = 20 hrs a week doing something productive for society, then spending another 10-20 a week looking for a job. I don't care what exactly it is people on welfare do, they just need to do something productive for society in order to earn that check. The only people I give a pass to are those completely incapable of working, IE the disabled and children(of which I consider anyone under the age of 16).

So it's not "the shit I am talking about" and no, I don't condone it. I don't want random welfare recipients building sophisticated high speed rail part time. Why do Republicans want that? Are they nuts? Do they want random welfare recipients building our bridges too?

 

[ShawnD1]

So it's not "the shit I am talking about" and no, I don't condone it. I don't want random welfare recipients building sophisticated high speed rail part time. Why do Republicans want that? Are they nuts? Do they want random welfare recipients building our bridges too?

Actually a lot of bridges are built by random people. A few of my teachers said they did construction in the off season to supplement their income. I don't know shit about roads but I did road construction for a summer. My brother did it two summers. Every once in a while I get emails from the city about job openings for tunnel construction because I subscribed to their jobs newsletter back before I had a good job.

 

[Slew Foot]

Loliberals

 

[theeedude]

Actually a lot of bridges are built by random people. A few of my teachers said they did construction in the off season to supplement their income. I don't know shit about roads but I did road construction for a summer. My brother did it two summers. Every once in a while I get emails from the city about job openings for tunnel construction because I subscribed to their jobs newsletter back before I had a good job.

That is a job, where people are selected and paid for it, which is what I am advocating. What bfdd is advocating is getting some random welfare recipients and telling them, hey, if you want to get your $200 welfare check, you better be working on high speed rail 20 hours a week. So effectively you'd have people who just want to get a check mark for their social officer's paperwork engineering, supervising, and building high speed rail, part time. Insane.

 

[Fear No Evil]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nrsMj4MWQ4

WHOO WHOO!

 

[ShawnD1]

So effectively you'd have people who just want to get a check mark for their social officer's paperwork engineering, supervising, and building high speed rail, part time. Insane.

Grunts are never given engineering or supervisor jobs. You need education to be part of the design team (by law) and you need lots of experience to be the supervisor (or you can just be a family member). Everything else is fair game since most aspects of construction have no official requirements. I think you might need a special license to drive a grader or a crane, but you don't need any kind of training to use a shovel or a hammer or carry things.

 

[theeedude]

Grunts are never given engineering or supervisor jobs. You need education to be part of the design team (by law) and you need lots of experience to be the supervisor (or you can just be a family member). Everything else is fair game since most aspects of construction have no official requirements. I think you might need a special license to drive a grader or a crane, but you don't need any kind of training to use a shovel or a hammer or carry things.

Welfare-to-work people can apply for the government construction job if they want to, just like anyone else. They may or may not get hired based on job requirements and their qualifications. Most likely if they've been on welfare for 2 years, they are probably not qualified to do the type of high precision construction required. But ultimately it's just another government job being created, not some workfare specific job. When republicans advocate workfare, they advocate requiring welfare recipients to find a job, not the actual creation of such job. It's completely orthogonal to this discussion.

 

[chucky2]

I'd advocate they wash an already washed window that was already washed previously. Why? So they get the idea that they need to be working for the money they're getting, not sitting at home watching TV/reading a book/smoking weed/whatever (and that whatever is very likely not bettering themselves and/or looking for a job the 40 hours a week they should be doing it).

I know way too many people, from just about every social demographic, that are getting long term Unenployment, who just aren't looking/bettering themselves. Now, I realize, there are about zero jobs out there in Reality (when 3000 people apply for a handful of positions, that's No Jobs), however, these people should be doing something for the pay they're getting. Getting paid to do nothing is not a good mental attitude to be instilling in mass quantities of people...

Chuck

 

[ShawnD1]

I know way too many people, from just about every social demographic, that are getting long term Unenployment, who just aren't looking/bettering themselves. Now, I realize, there are about zero jobs out there in Reality (when 3000 people apply for a handful of positions, that's No Jobs), however, these people should be doing something for the pay they're getting. Getting paid to do nothing is not a good mental attitude to be instilling in mass quantities of people...

That's definitely true. When I had no job, I found that I had less interesting in finding a job as the days went on. It's hard to explain the feeling. When there's no reason to get up in the morning, I just don't. Go to bed at 2am, wake up at noon or 1pm, stay in bed for a couple hours, get up at 4pm then maybe start filling out online applications.

Once I got a minimum wage job things really started to take off. My schedule was a lot more consistent, my job was a grunt work job where being tired is the worst thing ever so I found myself planning my sleep schedule a lot better. Because I worked at night and would have interviews for engineering companies during standard business hours, I had to plan out when I was going to sleep. It really was good mental training.

 

[Fenixgoon]

If you've ever been to japan, you can literally go from one side of tokyo to the next (which is about 4 times the size of NYC) in less than an hour. or how about tokyo to kyoto in about 2 hours.



trains are great, they should have their place alongside cars and airplanes, but it's a shame that the right demonizes them simply because they perceive the left as obsessed with them.

japan has 4x the population of CA in roughly the same area. go figure trains work when your population density is through the roof.

 

[gdansk]

I know you right wingers have no ideas, but it really as simple as building anything to create jobs.

Holy shit, if this were the case then I'd imagine every* economic theory is entirely flawed. And you don't have to be a tree hugger to realize producing unnecessary products is "A Bad Idea" (TM).

I think high speed rail networks could work in densely populated areas. At the same time I'm really noticing how much of a role GE plays in anything that gets federal funding. If there is federal money involved, GE is there. This is unquestionably good business practice, as it is nearly guaranteed income. This money will be squandered in an Amtrak-esque fashion. I think we could chose much more intelligent applications of large sums of money, such as: not spending it to reduce our interest payments.

 

[Painman]

What's wrong with this picture? I just compared Amtrak to Air (via Expedia) for a hypothetical 2-day round trip to Washington, DC from Boston. It's $.60 more expensive to take the train, while taking more than 15 hours overall in transit time. The Acela train would save me 3-4 hours off of that, but I'd have to eat a mandatory bump up to business class and pay more money, while I'd only have to suffer the "cheap seat" on the plane for a maximum of 3-4 hours *in total*.

When you consider how much petrofuel it takes to even get a large passenger jet off of a runway, compared to how much it takes a locomotive to pull a passenger train from Beantown to DC, you do have to wonder WTF makes the train so expensive.

Airlines have an advantage in that no one owns the air, but someone owns the railroad tracks. Amtrak does not own a single inch of rail; it has to pay usage fees to every private RR co. whose tracks its trains run upon. That adds up.

This is also why the Acela can only run at its top speeds through certain sections of its route. The entire route is privately owned track. Improving the track for the sake of Acela isn't on the minds of business investors. Acela *has* to run over those pieces of track, whether they suck or not.

The trains sure do look sleek and purty when they're sitting in South Station waiting for their half dozen passengers, though.

 

[Brainonska511]

Airlines have an advantage in that no one owns the air, but someone owns the railroad tracks. Amtrak does not own a single inch of rail; it has to pay usage fees to every private RR co. whose tracks its trains run upon. That adds up.

That is patently false. Amtrak owns almost the entire NE corridor.

This is also why the Acela can only run at its top speeds through certain sections of its route. The entire route is privately owned track. Improving the track for the sake of Acela isn't on the minds of business investors. Acela *has* to run over those pieces of track, whether they suck or not.

That is also the wrong reason why Acela cannot run at its maximum. The real reasons are the track isn't straight enough and the overhead wires are old and need replacing, some areas are in need of repair, and others are just plain congested because Amtrak is sharing some of its lines with regional rail operators. That's a big reason why any proposal to bring HSR to the NE is extremely expensive - high costs in acquiring new property to put straighter track down.

--
Airlines are starting to face a big disadvantage in that some metro-area airports are extremely crowded and need expanding. A way to alleviate some of this is to add additional transportation that doesn't rely on the airport and could remove some of the short-haul flights. Just because no one owns the air doesn't mean that air corridors aren't crowded and busy.

 

[dawp]

My city has a train system that is roughly 10 miles long and it's very heavily used. It's the best thing ever and I think every city should have its own train system.
You guys are talking about trains going from one city to another??? Who would actually use such a thing?
'round these parts most people take buses between cities if they don't have a car or don't want to fuck around with air travel.

Earlier in this thread someone mentioned something about living 100 miles away from where you work? wtf? Nobody else in the entire world has that problem. Most of us live in the same city we work in. If you get a job in Chicago, that means you move your shit to Chicago. If you get a job in Dallas, you move to Dallas. It's really not that complicated.

What if you live in, say, White Settlement and then get a job in Mesquite?

 

[Fingolfin269]

If you've ever been to japan, you can literally go from one side of tokyo to the next (which is about 4 times the size of NYC) in less than an hour. or how about tokyo to kyoto in about 2 hours.

You also don't feel like you might get shanked by the person sitting/standing next to you when riding a train in Tokyo...

 

[Steeplerot]

You also don't feel like you might get shanked by the person sitting/standing next to you when riding a train in Tokyo...

You dont get out much do you?