It's unbelievable. Money is no object when the banks are in trouble.
$85 billion for an insurance company loan.
We could make a loan to a private company for $85 billion to build and operate the best high speed rail network in the world and within five years, have trips like Chicago-New York City trip in under five hours all over the country. That's what Spain is doing now. We could do that too if we made an $85 billion commitment to it.
And the high speed rail operator would have as much chance of paying that loan back as the insurance company that just got the $85 billion loan. Which is to say, more than zero and less than 100 percent. That's good enough for the insurance company, so it ought to be good enough for high speed rail.
When they say the government doesn't have the money, they aren't telling the full story. They are saying the government doesn't have the money for your idea. The government always has the money for something that is deemed important enough for the sake of the country.
On that note, Congress just spent $8 billion from the general revenue fund on highway spending.
Eight billion dollars.
That's enough to build most of the Midwest high-speed rail network.
We should stop spending money on highways and start spending it on high speed rail and transit.
It's all about priorities. And it's time for us to make smarter spending (like high speed rail instead of insurance company and bank bailouts) a much higher priority with much bigger dollars on the good investments.
3 comments:
What really galls me is that the people who benefit from these government bailouts are the same ones that think we should have a flat tax. Or no taxes at all! Hypocrites.
Why do you think all these Wall Street types vote for Democrats? They certainly contribute a ton. They are not Republicans.
Why is Obama one of the biggest recipients of money from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae?
Why do you think that the Democrats rejected McCainb's proposed reforms in 2005?
One more question: Do you think Wall Street and the plutocrats are against a high speed rail line? Hell no. They all want sugar daddy to fork over. This kind of spending is like turds for flies.
The first layer of flies is usually the minority contractors licking of their piece backed up by some "fat-cats" that paid the Dems serious money for their right to scarf the rest of the turd down.
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