Obama: 8 Billion For High-Speed Rail, 0 for NASA & JSC

I discussed this with my girlfriend recently as her dad is basically Papa Shovel Face. He inundates her inbox with right-wing, conspiracy theory crap all day long. She made the mistake of spending her time researching the wacky claims the emails made and ultimately disproving them, providing evidence of that and responding to him. All she got back from him was "that's a liberal website you quoted" or "that poll is biased" and when he couldn't pin the liberal tag on something he just ignored her response and sent her ten more emails.

She finally realized that the right-wing nutjobs know they are not factually accurate and don't care. They know damn well that you will try to be accurate and honest when responding to their claims and we all know it takes less time to fling poop than it does to put together an honest, factual argument against something.

 

Do you? Tell me. Quick.

 

I think you just made your thread jump the shark.

 

well, i'm a huge proponent of high-speed rail, but i wonder where this money was a year ago? in any case, $8B is nice, but a drop in the bucket if we're to build a true high-speed rail system in this country, or even in the various proposed corridors.

most of the money is likely to be spent on "feasibility studies" and right-of-way purchases, not on any activities that actually produce jobs. i suppose those expenditures are necessary, but it's a mistake to expect these dollars are going to produce any meaningful jobs, at least not in anything like the near term.

in the northeast, the most heavily trafficked passenger rail corridor, the Acela limps along a speeds significantly lower than it's japanese, german, and french counterparts. the reason? they can't lay new tracks, due to NIMBY concerns along the route, so they have to make do with existing track beds.

the proposed cali route doesn't even go to SF, as i recall (it's been a while since i looked at it), you have to get off in Oakland. what happened to the texas triangle TGV proposal?

 

There was an IMAX about the Titanic.

Also wasn't there an IMAX about the Chunnel?

 

High speed rail would be cool but im skepitical on much it would work in the US given how spread out people live in places like Houston.

 

What do you mean by "meaningful jobs"? Are you saying that the engineers and planners who undertake those studies aren't meaningful jobs?

And thus the need for those studies. To determine possible new routes, how to address the NIMBY concerns, or how to upgrade the existing track.

SF has never been a major railroad stop, it hasn't even been a major port in the last hundred years, because its on the peninsula but there are plenty of options to get from Oakland to SF.

 

Don't think of it as a streetcar or even commuter rail like PATH in NYC. Think of it more as Southwest Airlines, a shuttle service between relatively close metro areas.

 

Of many good points, I would like to reinforce this one. I use rail, and the Oakland airport, and I live in SF. It would be geographically insane to run rail to SF, and it would be wasteful since now we're one of the smaller cities in northern california, by population.

 

This. QFT.

I've, unfortunately, had the same experience(s). Your description could not ring more true.

 

same here. except i usually ignore the emails from my papa shovel. anytime i dare to email back, i get a rambling, 30-minute phone call about how democrats want to eat babies.

 

I hate those calls... of course, when I get them, I usually have a baby in the oven, and it gets a little crispy around the edges.

 

Holler at me if you need any recipes. I have a great one for baby stew.

 

govt. money to create infrasctructure we don't already have= good.

govt. money to blowup and replace infrastructure(of whatever else) we already have (like cash for clunkers) = bad.

 

This sounds like a good idea to me, too. Space exploration can wait a bit until the economy rebounds fully, but the rail system sounds like a great idea, especially if it really does create jobs.


Now that I've commented on topic, let me make a quick comment about something off topic...

I disagree with the bold part. I think they (and certain liberals have this behavior, too) believe strongly that they are right and are extremely frustrated that "we" aren't listening to them. They might have a vague realization that perhaps not all the facts they believe are 100% accurate, but they are so sure of the basis of their beliefs that it doesn't really register. I believe psychology studies have shown people who are convinced of something cannot be dissuaded even by obvious and direct evidence to the contrary. I believe this is rampant in politics, and I believe asserting that the behavior is willful and malicious only exacerbates the problem.

 

Space exploration should be privatized. It's not like there's no precedence of private exploration -- ever heard of the East India Company? I have no qualms with government investment in the industry, but I don't think it needs to be a "Socialist" system. That leads to obsolete 20 year anchors like the Space Shuttle program.

 

(an extension of the philosophy thread)

Don't forget that truth is only defined by the conclusions of the individual.

Ask Papa Shovelface if he thinks he did a good job of raising you. If he says yes, then tell him you thinks so too because you are able to think and come to your own conclusions. If he says no, because you are a liberal pinko, then tell him, hey, that's on him, you guess he's a failure.

I'm all for continuing a reasonable rate of investment in NASA, it produces a lot of useful results. But, there's no big hurry to advance space travel outside of Earth's orbit. I highly suspect that the future of space travel will be with artificial intelligence anyway. It just makes a lot more logistic sense than trying to send fragile humans. The most immediate need for NASA is:

1. climate monitoring
2. pollution monitoring and
3. asteroid/collision avoidance.

Going to Mars? for what, who cares? That was just goofball GWB trying to be JFK.

 

It was in the original stimulus. A year ago.

 

great posts uoji and Dan B. Could not agree more on both accounts. And the shuttle was definitely a 20 year anchor. A slow painful jumping of the shark for a once exemplary and innovative agency.