Tonight, I’m in the Bronx. I drove down from outside Canandaigua New York, to Carlisle Pennsylvania, and from there to the Bronx. Total five hundred and seventy some odd miles. A productive day.
The truck is working fine, the weather is nice for driving, and all is well. I gather the fleet has some newer vehicles coming in pretty quick, and I’ll be interested in seeing one of them. But I doubt much that I’m going to be willing to give up the truck that I have. Yes, it’s that good.
The Blue Angels are coming to my hometown of Rochester this coming weekend, and I’m looking forward to that. With any degree of luck, I should be able to get several shots and post a few of them here. I’ve gotten some real good ones the past few air shows.
Welcome to my world.
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Traffic around New York is marginally later today, and one as soon as that at least part of the reason is because that Amtrak is once again moving passengers through the Northeast Corridor, north of Philadelphia where the accident of the other day occurred.
We argument over the causes of the accident started occurring before the dust settled. The usual suspects telling us the reason that the accident occurred is because we didn’t let government grow enough, we are not taxed enough, we’re not spending enough. Mouse course, the context of that statement can be found in lesser quantities on any stable floor, mostly due to the make-up and history of Amtrak itself.
For any serious conversation about Amtrak, one first has to consider the history of the passenger railroad industry in this country. I believe that that is emblematic of what happens when any government, and particularly the progressives get ahold of anything and start legislating around it.
In the case of the passenger railroad industry, we started with private companies running things and competing with each other. There were some initial safety concerns, but as the technology improved over the years, those problems disappeared. This was not due to governmental action, but rather action by the individual companies wanting to hang on to their ridership. It’s a little difficult to sell the passenger rail industry when people are getting killed on it, for example.
The Liberals and government, particularly after the Wilson administration, started latching onto passenger railroads and basically regulating it to death. Unionizing it, and insisting that for profit companies run routes which were not profitable. All in the interest of “public service” you understand.
When the predictable happend, the government in the form of a California liberal by the name of Richard Nixon, stepped in and formed Amtrak…. Though by then, the die been cast for more than 30 years.
When the government stepped in and took over the roles of the for profit companies it had destroyed, they found out that things were not always so rosy, even when they have full control over the thing.
Amtrak has not made I’m one since day one, with the exception of the Northeast Corridor and that is costly enough to be prohibitive for most Americans. It is by far cheaper and faster to drive down traffic clogged I 95 for the most part then it is to take the train.
In the last 20 years we’ve poured 233 billion dollars into that system. This for a rail system that most Americans cannot even consider using. Not only is that totally inefficient, it’s also totally unfair. But it does give liberals something to politicize.
Now as to the specifics of this Baltimore case, the dust hadn’t even settled from the accident yet, and the Democrats were already screaming that the accident was caused by a lack of funding. They pointed to a device which would automatically control the speed of the train.
The problem is that device was already installed. It just have been turned on yet, having been hung up and governmental red tape something that liberals are famous for.
When that argument fell apart, the reaction from the Democrats sounded exactly like a reprise of the old hit, “fake but accurate”.
The fact of the matter is funding didn’t even enter into this equation. The highly overpaid highly unionized highly liberalized.. driver of that train is directly responsible for the accident.
Before you start tuning up about infrastructure would have solved the problem, In the words of friend Martin McKellips, tell you, the next time I’m doing a hundred miles an hour in a 50 mile in our zone I’ll tell the state trooper that it’s because the funding for the highway was insufficient.
Look….At what point do liberals actually pin the blame where it belongs? At the end of the day I don’t care what the conditions are, I don’t care what funding was available, I don’t care about any of that the only thing that matters is the hand on the throttle. And of course the person whose hand is on the throttle.
As for the political positions of the engineer, before you get started I’d like you to consider something. Can you imagine the reaction of the usual suspects of word leaked out that the engineer was in fact a tea party supporter? There wouldn’t be enough diapers in Washington to handle the amount of leakage.
Union advocates such as the engineer, have been very vocal and social media these last few years, telling us about how union employees are the only real professionals. Well, then let him stand up like a real professional and take the blame for what he has cause he alone. And let’s not hear any more nonsense about how funding is the issue.
In case you haven’t noticed the pattern every time something like this comes up, the usual suspects first complaint is that the problem happens because government is being restricted from doing what it could. We need to tax and spend more, girl government more, is the forever cry. That government isn’t getting enough money. The government isn’t being given enough power.
It doesn’t even have to be the real cause of the problem, but you know that you’re going to hear the argument. As in this case. It says John Hinderaker said the other day, most Americans see a tragedy in this. Democrats see political opportunity. Rahm Emanuel’s edict about never letting a crisis go to waste comes to mind.
An opportunity for what you ask? An opportunity for expanded governmental power. The centralization of power, and the diminishment of the individual. That is always the cause, always the goal, always on the tip of every socialist tongue. That’s why the reaction was so swift after this accident. Even though it didn’t make any sense whatsoever to the facts as they were eventually revealed.
So the question becomes then, why is it that we are giving such arguments any credence whatsoever? Mostly, it’s because too many Americans have lost the ability for critical thinking. And certainly they’ve lost their focus on freedom. We’ll get into this further as time progresses. But for now, understand the argument that we weren’t spending enough on Amtrak is not even close to the cause of what we saw in Baltimore the other day. By their fruits you shall know them.
And down the road I go. I’ll see you tomorrow.