Biden alert! Biden alert! The Vice President, the man who sits a mere heartbeat away from the Presidency, is very worried that your children will end up being seized by some heretofore unknown ring of international child slave traders.
In support of President Obama’s bid to “win the future,” America’s most famous Amtrak rider, Vice President Joe Biden, issued a stern warning about U.S. competitiveness in the high-speed rail game: “If we don’t get a grip, folks, they’ll not only be teaching us, they’re gonna own our kids.”
The “they” Biden is talking about are all the other countries in the world who are developing or expanding high-speed rail systems, including China, Japan, Spain and France.
Joe’s point is that he wants us to spend $53 billion on bullet trains that we can’t afford. Since the government will be taking all our money to pay for these hairbrained utopian schemes, the foreigners might as well take our kids. We certainly won’t be able to afford them any longer.
Source: ABC News
This post was last modified on January 26, 2021
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We have a choo-choo in New Mexico that, according to the idiots running the thing, is helping hundreds of citizens every day! $500,000,000 dollars, that's ONE HALF OF A BILLION DOLLARS for those of you that don't understand what all the zeros are for, taxpayers money spent on a train that .02% of the population uses. It cost us over $20 million last year alone to keep the thing running and the costs are going up.
Rail transportation works fine in the high population areas we have on our coasts. L.A. to San Francisco or San Diego. Washington to Boston. Even from Houston to Dallas. But, unless the train is packed full every day, every trip, then it is useless and a waste of taxpayers money.
Why do you think a private company has not considered building a railroad and offered the service between the population centers? It's a no win situation so why do it? Only the gooberment thinks it is a good idea.
There is very little economic demand for the train service except in populated areas and some indutrial areas on the edges of towns, so it should be closed down. If it cannot run at a profit, close it down. If a company wants to come in and spend 58 billion on a new train network, good for them, it will last about a week. Its mostly used by homeless bums anyway.
I wonder if he's referring to the one that was being run out of the White House in the 80's? Oh, sorry, that was a child pedophile ring. (basically the same thing, I guess): http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/PhotographerTied.htm or http://www.rense.com/general74/mother.htm or http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2005/161105abughraib.htm I mean, it's really no secret, except for those who are, were, and/or wish to remain sleeping.
And you're buying this story, celeb? I wouldn't even believe this if they were saying it about Clinton. Maybe Barney.
I didn’t think there was an illegal immigration problem. I've been on China's high speed train. Trust me; it’s not that high speed and low drag that Joey here is all gooey over.
When the last hair plug was inserted, it might just have penetrated the skull into the gray matter of his brain. He might have an in grown hair causing a brain infection.
“If we don’t get a grip, folks, they’ll not only be teaching us, they’re gonna own our kids.”
Uh, sorry to break the bad news to ya Joey, but you and Captain Zero already 'own' our kids and grandkids and their kids! Thanks for putting an oppressive, crushing debt on our heirs that won't or can't be re-paid for generations, if ever.
The last thing we need to worry about is a high-speed to train to take us to what...jobs? Vacations that we can't afford?
CORRECTION:
"...America’s only Amtrak rider,..."
From the headline, I thought it was going to be about the human trafficking in Arizona done by illegal alien drug gangs. But I guess why would Biden care about something like that.
I used to take Amtrak from San Luis Obispo to Orange County. That's about a 4-hour drive and, theoretically at least, was supposed to be a 7-hour train trip. I justified the additional time by telling myself I could do the crossword puzzle, work on my computer, take a nap.
It was great for a while. Then the service slowly began deteriorating with each trip. I finally asked a conductor why travel time was increasing with each trip and he told me that the tracks in Central California have deteriorated to such an extent that freight traffic is now detoured out to the coast. To make it even worse, he said freight traffic has the right of way over passenger traffic, so my passenger train was forced to pull over at sidings and wait every time a freight train came the other direction.
The final straw was when my 7-hour trip took 13 hours. That's when I said, "I'd rather drive."
Anyone have any input they can add to what the conductor told me?
The problem is that with passenger rail, you want to have the trains leave on time all the time every time. With freight rail, you want to move as much as humanly possible as fast as possible.
The two different scheduling systems don't mix well at all when they are on the same track. Passenger rail has the priority above almost all other traffic, but that does you no good when you have no siding for 50 miles, and you missed the window where the freight train can wait.
Since freight is what pays the bills (dramatically so -- it's like 99 to 1), and a surefire generator of complaints way out of proportion to their track usage, the railroads would rather avoid it when possible. In the 70's, they went looking for a sucker to foist their loser off on, and the US government stuck their hand up. The federal government being such a hot manager, they have a lot of legs on cross country ran over bus lines. Yes, to take the rail, you ride a bus.
It doesn't help that everything is tightly scheduled. I took Amtrak back from SFO to OMA, and a 5 minute delay starting out meant that as we continued to miss windows, the delays built upon each other until we showed up some 11 hours late.
My thoughts are that if we want passenger rail, and it is to be profitable, it has to be set-up in profitable corridors, on dedicated tracks, with a schedule that never varies. If it is to replace highway congestion, people have to be able to load/unload cars easily, and be cheap enough. If a real entrepreneur ran it, they'd want to emphasize the rest and relaxation part of being slower travel, and offer cruise-ship style amenities on some trains. Right now, it is like riding in a cheap RV. They even have RV-style toilets. Not impressive at all, given the premium in price you pay for a cabin when riding long distance rail.
Just my $.02 worth.
In case you're wondering how a passenger train can have priority and still wait on a siding as a freight train passes -- imagine you're a passenger train contemplating entering a section of track, and the siding so you can meet the other train is at your end of the section. You can't really make the freight back up until they find a siding. It'd take *longer*. You also can't expect to halt every train on every section of track everywhere so the passenger train can go through. So you wait. The freight railroads do their best to give passenger rail the highest priority, but they're going to stop somewhere short of giving them head.
It all boils down to the Bad, Bad, Bad things that can happen once a passenger train misses it's start time. Kudos to the dispatcher types that keep the trains from ever meeting in a bad way and cope with delays like this all the time. Talk about your high stress job!
If the railroads double track the entire US, this sort of stuff would be reduced -- but when you announce this sort of plan to Congress, most of the time, they just hear about how you have all this cash for the project, and being Congress, think of all sorts of schemes for how to get your hands on it. Most railroads would like to do these things as close to under the radar as possible. Hard to do -- Congress can smell a nickel in a five-year-old's pocket a thousand miles off, and have their greasy, greedy hands deeply into the railroad's business.
A few years ago, my daughter's 8 hour train ride from San Luis Obispo to San Diego ended up taking 19 hours.
But Editor, have you forgotten, we will soon have high speed rail running in California. Remember in 2008, the dumbshit voters in our state passed Prop 1A, figuring our finances were in such tremendous shape that we should spends tens of billions of dollars on a super-duper fast train that runs down the center of California (missing all the population on the coast)?
Because the gooberment doesn't throw money at trains like they do with roads.
I once rode Amtrak from Cleveland to Boston. It was $180 for a round trip, 2 weeks before departure. The cheapest airline ticket I could find was $500 round trip. After that trip, I doubt that I will ever fly again. All the harrasment of flying just doesn't exist on the train. You can take a BUTTLOAD of luggage with you at no extra charge (5 checked plus 2 carry on), you get more legroom than first class flying, you can get up and walk around and stretch, you can lay the seats WAY back.....pretty much everything you pay for in first class flying, you get with coach on the train.
Granted, the only downside to the train is it takes much longer to travel, but it's a fun trip, and much more relaxing than flying.
Such concern "for the children," isn't he part of the same party that sent a child at gunpoint back to a life of communist slavery in Cuba?
Yes he is.