- Dec 13, 2013
- 13,990
- 180
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"An interesting thought occurred to me today—what if Tea Party politicians sat down with ordinary people like you and me and ironed out some real solutions to our transportation crisis?
With the election season over, maybe you’ve forgotten about transportation, but I certainly haven’t. It would be easy to forget that the problem even exists, when our headlines are constantly splashed with the violence in Turkey, the authoritarian crackdown in Malawi and the still-unstable democratic transition in France. But the transportation problem is growing, and politicians are more divided than ever. Democrats seem to think that transportation can just be ignored. Republican politicians like Rand Paul, on the other hand, seem to think that unscientific rhetoric will substitute for a solution.
But the Republican party of Rand Paul is not the Republican party of Ronald Reagan. Reagan wouldn’t refuse to budge, he'd compromise because he'd understand that the fate of the country, and his own political career, depended on a lasting solution to the problem of transportation.
The first rule of holes is that when you're in one, stop digging. When you're in three, bring a lot of shovels. If I had fifteen minutes to pitch my idea to politicians, I'd tell them two things about transportation. First, there's no way around the issue unless we're prepared to spend less: and not just spend less, but spend smarter by investing in the kind of green energy that makes countries succeed. That's going to require some tax cuts as well, but as they say, "Mo' money mo' problems."
Second, I'd tell them to look at Singapore, which all but solved its transportation crisis over the past decade. When I visited Singapore in 2001, Mbantu, the cabbie who drove me from the airport, couldn't stop telling me about how he had to take a second job because of the high cost of transportation. I caught up with Mbantu in Singapore last year. Thanks to Singapore's reformed approach toward transportation, Mbantu has enough money in his pocket to finally be able to afford winter coats for his kids.
That's all it takes. Don't expect to see any solutions as long as fringe bloggers insist on playing a high-stakes game of ping pong with one another. America has to become a first world country again."
http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/One+for+the+Country+2cb831
Since this entire post was copied from the linked site I have added the quotation marks.
admin allisolm
With the election season over, maybe you’ve forgotten about transportation, but I certainly haven’t. It would be easy to forget that the problem even exists, when our headlines are constantly splashed with the violence in Turkey, the authoritarian crackdown in Malawi and the still-unstable democratic transition in France. But the transportation problem is growing, and politicians are more divided than ever. Democrats seem to think that transportation can just be ignored. Republican politicians like Rand Paul, on the other hand, seem to think that unscientific rhetoric will substitute for a solution.
But the Republican party of Rand Paul is not the Republican party of Ronald Reagan. Reagan wouldn’t refuse to budge, he'd compromise because he'd understand that the fate of the country, and his own political career, depended on a lasting solution to the problem of transportation.
The first rule of holes is that when you're in one, stop digging. When you're in three, bring a lot of shovels. If I had fifteen minutes to pitch my idea to politicians, I'd tell them two things about transportation. First, there's no way around the issue unless we're prepared to spend less: and not just spend less, but spend smarter by investing in the kind of green energy that makes countries succeed. That's going to require some tax cuts as well, but as they say, "Mo' money mo' problems."
Second, I'd tell them to look at Singapore, which all but solved its transportation crisis over the past decade. When I visited Singapore in 2001, Mbantu, the cabbie who drove me from the airport, couldn't stop telling me about how he had to take a second job because of the high cost of transportation. I caught up with Mbantu in Singapore last year. Thanks to Singapore's reformed approach toward transportation, Mbantu has enough money in his pocket to finally be able to afford winter coats for his kids.
That's all it takes. Don't expect to see any solutions as long as fringe bloggers insist on playing a high-stakes game of ping pong with one another. America has to become a first world country again."
http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/One+for+the+Country+2cb831
Since this entire post was copied from the linked site I have added the quotation marks.
admin allisolm
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