Harry Reid’s stimulating rail to Vegas
President Obama lambasted businesses that use taxpayer money to visit Las Vegas.
It’s okay, however, to use porkulus money to build pie-in-the-sky rail lines from Los Angeles to Vegas for Harry Reid’s benefit.
A Hill staffer points out this morning that Reid and Obama are pushing for an $8 billion earmark in the conference report (shhh! there are no earmarks, remember?) to “construct high-speed rail lines, quadrupling the amount in the bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday. Reid’s office issued a statement noting that a proposed Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas rail might get a big chunk of the money.”
The Hill staffer notes that Reid earmarked $45 million last year for the public magnetic levitation train project — which is in competition with a completely privately funded rail project being built along a similar route.
No wonder they won’t let us see the bill before they rush to cram it down our throats.
***
Related: High-speed rail to nowhere
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- Gambling bad! High speed train for Los Angeles to Las Vegas in porulus is the change we need though! | Fire Andrea Mitchell!
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Categories: Harry Reid, fiscal stimulus
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The competition link doesn’t work.
Try taking out everything in the url before “www.usatoday…”
already fixed
how could our gov possibly control the private train? the story of the 3 ticket takers on the moscow rail line comes to mind. 1 takes the ticket from the passenger and hands it to the 2nd ticket taker. he punches it with his punch, and hands it to the 3rd ticket taker, who hands it back to the passenger. but there is full employment in the soviet socialist system.
Anyone now what exactly the route is for this train?
cheapseat: And you can’t fire any of the three.
Neeeeeeeevermind, saw it.
Government contracts
here in salt lake they wanted to put in commuter rail so they built a 50 mile rail line complete with new stops for the trains. It took 5 years. Its right alongside the existing line that has been there for 100 years and still works just fine. The reason for the new rail line instead of just using the existing one? scheduling conflicts with frieght trains.
It’s the taxpayers who are getting rail-roaded.
I think its a great idea to have this rail thingy tween LA and LV. I hope and pray all the illegal gang bangers use it for travel to Las Vegas to terrorize Harry’s home state.
After all, Arnie doesn’t want to tell the truth about why Kaliforia is broke. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
Harry Reid is doing what every socialist progressive liberal does. He is using our money to benefit himself. He is a criminal and he doesn’t care what you think.
Reid, Pelosi, Schumer, Obama and the rest are systematically destroying our country and using our money to do it. Change? Socialism is change I guess.
Words. Just words. ~Obama
My sister in law is getting an iou for her tax return from northern mexico, i mean california.
The power company doesn’t take iou’s.
You need to look ahead – with the green
initiativeenforcement andglobal warmingclimate changefundingpork secured, trains, bicycles and walking will be the new mode of future transportation…by 2019.The Democrats have a track record (no pun intended) in city rail development.
Some years ago in Seattle, they spent a FORTUNE building an under/and above ground light rail system that runs all over the city. Or under it. This involved buying LOTS of property and building tunnels all over the mountainous city.
When they finished, they realized they didn’t have enough money left to buy the trains and train cars to run on the tracks. Instead, they put electric buses on the line, and THEY run under/above the city on the track system. Not on the tracks themselves, they are still virginal. Trains have never been purchased.
You’ve got to build them before you can make them run on time.
America vs
TerrorCongress“This war is lost…”
This is strikingly similar to a plot in a good book I once read. Maybe you’ve heard of it?
Atlas Shrugged.
An earmark is a appropriation explicitly restricted to a specific project. The Bridge to Nowhere was a Palin sponsored earmark. Appropriating money for a general purpose such as high speed trains is not an earmark if the trains are not specified. The main train lines being discussed are the eastern seaboard and one up and down California.
On the other hand, a high speed train from LA to Vegas makes a lot of sense. It’s infrastructure people would use.
The only rail Harry Reid should get is the one they ride him out of town on, after they tar and feather him!
It makes alot of sense…to use the privately funded rail project.
This is nothing but kickbacks and back-scratching, mark my words.
BTW, it IS a ’specific project’ if the starting location and destination of the rail project are already pre-determined. An Earmark is an Earmark. Your ridiculous post is nothing but intellectual dishonesty. (which doesn’t surprise me)
It makes sense to someone who can’t do the math of government run projects.
GEEES!
Dingy Harry has been sinking in the polls in NV. Watch them now as he brings home the bacon.
Change we can pay for. Sheeeeesh. We’re railroaded. Again.
Sarah Palin is a governor, not a Congressman, therefore she cannot sponsor any earmarks.
Please go back to your sanctimonious moron lair.
BTW Palin opposed the bridge. I believe the quote was “If we need a bridge we’ll build it ourselves”
Think before you speak, but before you think, be informed please.
Train fares for those who loose money in Vegas will be subsidized by those who win. It’s the socialist way.
Wow…this could be an interesting scientific experiment, though. We will now be able to see if suckers ERRRRR the general public can burn through millions of dollars faster than Congress.
*out*
Hey Chap,
I notice you love to correct Michelle and defend lgm. I did not see you condemn Reid (again) and you had a perfect opportunity to set lgm straight.
All kidding aside, what gives?
Oh lighten up ya’ll. Don’t you understand how badly people without jobs and trying to feed families need a train ride to Vegas?
After all we need to do something with that extra $13 a week!
to paraphrase sonofdy: dee dee dee….
katablog; they need the train ride to get to Vegas (baby!!) so they can hand out the naked-bosom cards to people on the Strip for 40 bucks a day…
Are you serious? You think LV has any kind of real future? It will be a ghost town in a few years.
Oh, maybe you meant, all the idiots fleeing the desert “oasis” will use it to get to LA?
Not to worry, Inouye will suck off a big chunk of that for Oahu. Then Akaka and his Hawaiian Nation will sue the state for the next 200 years while a route is developed that satisfies evryone. The rail will never be built and the money will go to “reparations” (i.e., Asian-American lawyers)…
President Obama literally took $100k’s of dollars out of the pocket of Las Vegas by pressuring Wells Fargo to cancel the trip.
Wouldn’t that be taxpayer money passing directly into the economy???
I wonder how many hotel employees will have to be laid off because of similar cancelations?
Well one way anyway, so the losers can get back to LA after they sell their cars…
Sometimes you are about as sharp as a sack of wet mice.
If this was something the people would use, and if it even had the slightest chance of being profitable, private industry would have built it already!
On February 12th, 2009 at 12:25 pm,
He’s a lawyer – or at least, a lawyer wanna-be.
lgm: A rose by any other name would smell as sweet — and your BS still smells like, well, BS.
harbormaster: Not likely as the environmentalists and a host of others would block it. Let the gubmint do it and they will steamroll (using union drivers) to get the project done and hang the cost!
I’ve made that drive from LA to Vegas WAY too many times. IT SUCKS!!!!!
A rail line would take a lot of cars off the road. It would save a lot of gas. It would take a lot of drunk/drugged out/having sex in the car people off the road….
BUT they have already lined almost the entire road with concrete walls, so all those head-on-collisions (e.g. Sam Kinneson) just dont happen as often as they used to.
I dont know… if this were a California/Nevada ONLY project I would say “Knock yourself out”
But since its Federal… “Screw Off”
LGM: please. This is an earmark, or pork, or whatever you want to call it.
There is already a train line conecting Las vegas to LA. All you need to do is run passenger trains on it. This could be solved with creative scheduling and saved 8 billion dollars.
Why is this not a criminal offense? Conflict of interest? Forget it.
My bet is that (just like he did on highway projects) Harry Reid and his family has (or will) buy the property that the rail line and stations will sit on and then make a massive profit when the property values increase.
Follow the money!!!! Or rather see where the money will eventually flow…
Most ethical congress, evah….riiiight.
Bozos.
Yeh how is all that Federally subsidized money doing on that LA to Vegas Amtrak route???
(Ya know….If only someone would just get rid of Barstow. Just saying)
A map of existing rail lines that could be used. Instead of duplicating existing rail lines, why not work with what we already have? 8 billion MIGHT be enough to electrify the ENTIRE existing rail grid (hint green incentive) instead of producing a ultra-fast line from LA to las vegas who’s only long term use would be to make it more efficent for casinos to get richer.
A map of existing rail lines.
Instead of building an ultrafast way for gamblers and partiers to get to the whore houses and casino’s, perhaps that 8 billion could be used to electrify alot of if not all of the existing rail lines??? (hint, thats green)
http://wwwb.dot.ga.gov/dot/plan-prog/intermodal/rail/railmaps.shtml
instead of building an ultra fast way to get to the whores and casnios from LA, how about building an electrified rail grid???? (Come on reid, its green!!!)
What are you trying to say???
That I too can legally sleep with my sister on the train now?
This is piss-away money. They have been talking about a rail corrador from LA to Vegas for two decades and will never get anything done. What I find funny is it comes at the heels of the Vegas mayor’s rantings over BO statement the other day. No wonder the mayor has been quiet since his outburst.
Greasing the palms always shuts the “complainers” up…
Whatever spins your propeller.
You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you cant take the meth lab out of the girl.
If anyone here thinks you can build a high speed rail line from LA to LV for 8 billion they have to be smoking something. Phoenix metro area built a light rail low speed train to nowhere. It has almost twenty miles of track and cost over 5 Billion.
Eight billion for several hundred miles also crossing dense urban jungle? BOHICA
Meth labs in trailers really create a stink and a danger. It’s better to have a rental house out in the country & do it in the attic space.
I’m just sayin’.
Cook the meth in the middle of the floor of the house or the senate. Nobody will notice the difference.
dow down to 7730 on the news of this bailout. Heckofajob there obama.
LGM hasn’t a clue what Sarah Palin said about the”bridge to nowhere”! That was doofus Ted Stevens, you dork!! Gov. Palin did say she opposed it and that the State would build it’s own bridge if it felt necessary. LGM is ONCE AGAIN giving us the liberal Pelosi line as is his nature. What a putz….
Good point. 8 billion wont even cover the cost of the environmental studies, lawsuits and earthquake retro-fitting (you know they wont get it right the first time)
And dont forget the Volcano danger in downtown LA.
So how many of you have ridden that amazing LA subway? No really, thats not a joke, there really IS a subway in LA.
—————-
Wellllllll, if you have a meth lab, then you have plenty of time to hand dig a bore shaft with a spoon a few hundred feet down and vent the ether fumes into the soil.
Or so I’ve heard……
Flight 93 should have been allowed to hits its target.
Period.
swede said (#24):
BTW Palin opposed the bridge.
So she said, but the record shows otherwise.
nail49 said (#37):
Meaning matters. Obama promised not to do earmarks. MM says the proposed high speed rail violates that promise. It doesn’t, because it is not an earmark.
If you want to cut wasteful spending, start with the F-22. Terrorists are not coming at us with anything that needs an F-22.
The California part will never be built. The California Indian Gaming Tribes own the state legislature. $8 billion well be spent on legal fees and environmental studies without 1 inch of rail line ever being built.
I can see what Las Vegas would get out of this, but do not see what’s in it for CA.
Oh come on, F-22’s are COOL. If you want to cut wasteful spending, lets start with anything having to do with Green energy.
This demonstrates the short sightedness of liberals when it comes to the military. F-22’s are not for terrorists, they are for the next war against a conventional military. Without these advances american casualties would be much higher. We don’t want a fair fight. We want want our enemies to wake up on the first day of the next war and wonder which planet just landed on them and f$%^ed up thier world. We want thier biggest issue to be how to we surrender in the most effective way???
You’ll have to excuse lgm…he doesn’t know much about guy things like F-22s.
FYI: I cant fly an F-22 on Ethanol or Hybrid Electric/Squirrel engines
I swear, idiots like LGM want us to disarm to be equal with our enemies and only send as many troops as our enemies have. I am all for massive application of overwhelming fire power in completely disproportionate ways.
What argument are you making here? That the program should be replaced with the F-35?
Or are you suggesting that Congress should cut spending on something on which they actually have a constitutionally supported responsibility – military defense.
Please elaborate your point. I’m curious to hear how you would replace the grounded F-15C/Ds.
I’ll dumb it down for the libs. Big boom make bad man go away.
Airborne diplomats!!!
See? There you go again. We try to clean up and there you go with another meth lab joke.
-toke- -toke- -toke-
What???
No, but you might be on the right track here for the liberal mindset.
After all, the F-22 is much more efficient than the F-15E… That makes it the green choice.
Errah, I vote for a 8Bn rail project from Congress to anywhere so these aszhats could be run out of town on a rail; mag lev or greased.
And if you have ever seen one turn, that is flat out coolness. It is worth going to an air show just to see how an f-22 moves.
Thats speaks volumes, stop bogarting the stash… its puff-puff-pass
OMG, dont tell me Im a closet lib. Someone used to joke that I was a convervative, with liberal tendencies
Are you debating the meaning of the word “is”?
Obama is now a member of the executive branch. By definition, they cannot “do” earmarks. Only legislators can.
That’s under your own twisting of the definition. This is a specific project under an appropriations bill.
-or-
So, let’s consider the duck test:
Is this or is this not a pet-project for Harry Reid? Yes, yes it is.
Does this specify a specific project? Yes, unless you’re going to get squirrelly by claiming that the actual contractor is not named. That would be largely atypical and would essentially mean there is hardly ever such a thing as an earmark.
Was this process competitive? Hardly. It’s not as though the money is going to the transportation agencies to determine the best use for it. They are being told to build the railway.
I am sure you will continue to view this as anything but an earmark, but this happened in closed committee to appease one legislator without any debate or allowing for a full consideration of whether or not this was even the best solution. Is there even a business case?
Gregg Judd just withdrew himself as nominee for Commerce Secretary. Appears to be over the power grab over the WH seizing census oversight away from Commerce.
Bah! I’d rather see the money being spent to close down Las Vegas in an orderly fashion and pay for the residents’ relocation expenses to more productive parts of the country.
On the other hand, I might support leaving part of it behind as a bedroom community for Nellis AFB, but that would be it…
BTW liberals are not alone in their short sightedness on military gear. Bush canceled the crusader. Its a 155mm artilary peice that can fire a one gun, 8 round, TOT mission.
That means that all 8 rounds fired from one gun hits the target at the same time. Fire with dpicm or icm rounds and that is a hell of alot of damage. With a full battery of such guns, you could completely wipe out an enemy position in about 2 seconds worth of impacts.
Sorry, that should have read Judd Gregg.
Senator Gregg’s statement cited the census issue and serious policy issue differences, particularly porkulus. Sounds like Obama promised but reneged.
lgm: You are so clueless — reminds me of the old SNL line “
Janelgm, you ignorant slut!” If I call a pile of smoldering garbage a pony, it doesn’t mean you can saddle up on it and ride off into the sunset (although many of us wish you could and would do just that).Will we be safe from terrorists because we have a high-speed train from LA to Vegas? Do you seriously think our F-15s (average age 25+ years) don’t need to be replaced? Do you think the Chinese, Russkies, Iranians, NKoreans (insert your belligerent of choice) will play nice because we are using older systems?
BTW, how old is the car you drive — is it 25 years old? If it were, would you want to drive it in a race with a 15 or even a 5 year old car?
How nice do you think the above adversaries will be when we get rid of our nukes because Obama says we don’t need a missile defense system that actually has been proven to work — although he
insistslies that it doesn’t?where is the $950,000,000 fer leernen how to RAP??
oh stop it…. i havent gotten that kind of Chris Mathews feeling in my leg since 7th grade…
Squirrel you beat me to it.
I thought the left liked green energy. The F-22 can supercruise without afterbuners. For you on the left that means it can fly faster than sound without using additional pushing from a neat part of the jet engine.
As for the train. If we are going to build one I want it to go from Phoenix to San Diego. Of course the TSA will be overseeing it seeing how they do such a good job running the air traffic it should be a splendid trip everytime.
Before taking up residence in California’s Central Valley, I used to live in Barstow. For eleven years, no less. I was born and raised in Southern California, and although it gets hotter than the blazes in the summertime, I would MUCH rather live in Barstow than the overcrowded Southern California area.
While I lived there, I always got to witness the pilgrimmage of travelers going there (in fact, we called the name of the City “Lost Wages”) every Friday evening. Barstow is such a “popular” stopover that it had some of the highest output restaurants in the United States, such as the In ‘n Out and the Dennys at the Lenwood Rd. interchange, where the outlet malls are.
The drive from L.A. to Lost Wages is between 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Although a high speed rail might be able to reduce that travel time to a couple of hours, travelers would require additional time to find a place at the rail station to park, and if you were planning on staying over in Lost Wages, you’d have to tote your luggage around with you, and have to rely on either shuttle busses or cabs on the other end. I don’t think most visitors would be willing to put up with that inconvenience.
When it comes right down to it, I believe the overall time savings of a High Speed Rail train would be minimal. If there was a profit to be made with High Speed Rail, I’m sure the Las Vegas interests would have pooled funds together to build the high speed train long before now. The fact that government funds are needed is enough to convince me that it ain’t gonna make money.
LGM: A little reading for you and your fellow libs as to WHY things like the crusader and the f-22 are important.
Read up on task force smith.
Didn’t President Obama just say, you can’t go to Vegas?
Uh oh, someone forgot to tell Dingy Harry. He’s going to be sooo embarrassed!
nail49 said (#81):
My possible sluthood notwithstanding, your fragrant language is not a rebuttal. High speed trains may be a bad idea, but they are not an earmark.
sonofdy said (#87):
I will if you will — will you read Ezra Klein’s posts on why building transportation infrastructure is important? I don’t think so. It would never penetrate that clam shell you call an open mind. (Insults are fun, if pointless.)
Hmmmm, maybe thats because Obama has his gambling “interests” set on Laughlin!
——-
For those not in the know, Laughlin, Nevada is the non-Indian casino gambling mecca for when you cant afford to go to Vegas… yeh been there too many times also.
But you still gotta go through BARSTOW to get there. lol (barstow is just where you used to drop off the edge of the earth)