Culture of corruption: Who’s policing Amtrak Joe Biden’s $53 billion rail boondoggles?
Photoshop: Doug Powers
Yesterday, we had a little fun with Amtrak Joe Biden’s “seize the future” moment during his rail boondoggle event in Philly. Today, I take a serious look at the continued politicization and cronyism in the federal rail bureaucracy. You’ll remember my reports on the railroading of former Amtrak Inspector General Fred Weiderhold. Investigations into how the Amtrak Law Department — populated by Biden cronies — meddled with the independent investigations of transportation stimulus money are ongoing.
With GE Transportation salivating at the prospect of billions in new taxpayer subsidies, we should all be concerned about Team Obama’s future seizures and redistributions of our wealth to their friends.
Talk about taking us for a ride.
Related: David Harsanyi on GE, corporate welfare & statist public-private partnerships – “Cronyism isn’t capitalism.”
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Who’s policing Amtrak Joe Biden’s $53 billion rail boondoggles?
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011
At Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station on Tuesday, lifelong government rail promoter Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a $53 billion high-speed train initiative and half-joked: “I’m like the ombudsman for Amtrak.” As with most gaffetastic Biden-isms, the remark should prompt more heartburn than hilarity. Just who exactly is looking out for taxpayers when it comes to federal rail spending?
Vigorous independent oversight of public infrastructure binges is especially critical given the nation’s long history of mass transit slush funds, cost overruns and union-monopolized construction projects to nowhere. Among the new projects championed by the Obama administration: a $10 billion New Jersey-to-New York commuter rail tunnel pushed by Senate Democrats that state officials won’t pay for but believe everyone else in the nation should be forced to subsidize. When Biden talks about “seizing the future,” he’s talking about seizing your wallets for his party’s electoral security.
Alas, the White House hostility toward vigilant taxpayer watchdogs rivals Michael Vick’s. And the Obama administration’s political abuse of the Amtrak inspector general’s office, still under congressional investigation, is a recipe for yet more porkulus-style waste.
In June 2009, longtime veteran Amtrak inspector general Fred Weiderhold was abruptly “retired” — just as the government-subsidized rail service faced mounting complaints about its meddling in financial audits and probes. He had blown the whistle on overzealous intrusion by the agency’s Law Department into his investigations of $1.3 billion in rail stimulus money and exposed how Amtrak’s legal counsel had usurped the watchdog’s $5 million portion of federal stimulus dollars to hamstring his probes. Even more threatening to the Democratic attorneys’ cabal, Weiderhold discovered that the federal rail bureaucracy was retaining outside law firms beyond the independent watchdog’s reach and obstructing subpoenas issued to an outside financial adviser.
In September 2010, GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa released a report concluding that the Amtrak board removed the agency inspector general without required prior notice to Congress and despite the inspector general’s effective track record of “exposing waste, fraud and abuse at the highest levels within Amtrak.”
The Transportation Department’s inspector general is now conducting its own independent probe of Weiderhold’s removal. And two weeks ago, Issa revealed that the new Amtrak IG, Ted Alves, is risking his own neck by probing into whether Amtrak bureaucrats on a fishing expedition misused the e-mail system by searching for communiques between his office and Congress regarding the Weiderhold scandal.
Grassley is right: “Independence is the most important element for making the inspector general system work. If independence is compromised, either by an inspector general or by agency leaders, then taxpayers are left without a watchdog and a major opportunity for accountability in government is lost. When the system gets compromised, there need to be consequences in order to try to prevent it from happening again.”
Amtrak’s notorious book-cooking, however, has gone unabated. The agency was reprimanded during the Bush administration for misleading Congress about its solvency. But former employees faced no criminal charges for fudging the agency’s profit-and-loss statements.
Compounding matters now, cronyism runs rampant in the federal rail bureaucracy. >Biden’s lobbyist son, Hunter, sits on the Amtrak board of directors. Amtrak Vice President Eleanor Acheson is a close pal of — you guessed it — Joe Biden. She oversees the very Law Department accused of interfering repeatedly with the taxpayer advocates in the inspector general’s office. Acheson hired Biden’s former Senate staffer Jonathan Meyer as her deputy general counsel. Meyer called it a “happy coincidence.”
In another such fortuitous coincidence, one of the top beneficiaries of the new White House rail bailout is GE Transportation — the leading manufacturer of diesel-electric locomotives. President Obama recently named GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head the new White House jobs council.
With Team Obama’s social engineers and legal fixers steering the federal gravy train, the light at the end of the spending tunnel seems grimly dim.
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So WTF Win the future is now STFU Seize the future? Allrighty then.
So I asks meself, How does a guy who couldn’t find his own arze with both hands if it had a bell on it sieze anything?
Along with ObamaCare, this latest boondoggle needs to be defunded immediately. This creates no long term benefit for the country whatsoever. No government “investment” ever does. It’s simply another Democrat cash sinkhole.
Since Neil Kinnock Biden is involved, perhaps “Seizure Future” would be more apropos. That said, “Seize Your Future” seems best of all.
Another $53B of it here. It’s a PR stunt, Michelle! Rob ours and our children’s futures today to save their sorry butts from political extinction tomorrow. What else is new?
How many MW of nuclear power generation can you build for 53B$?
Just wondering.
Crony capitalism.
The Democratic Socialists are very intentionally “Deconstructing Capitalism”.
They are destroying small businesses, destroying industries, and nationalizing big corporations. What we will end up with is all businesses being big businesses that are either run by the government, or run by cronies of the government.
These Alinksyites are all about “building coalitions of power by which you bring about redistributive change”.
If you are a white male, you are already discriminated against by government policies that favor minorities and women. As the government take-over of business continues, those policies will also begin to permeate the formerly private sector.
Make no mistake about it. If you are a white, straight, Bible-believing male, you are their worst enemy, and they are out to defeat you:
In New Mexico we have our own version of a state run Amtrak. Like the federal one it to loses money. We got our train from the now ex governor “Dollar Bill Richardson” it runs about 100 miles and loses $20 million a year and the original cost was $500 million. You can bet your butt there is a enough graft and corruption here to keep his campaign contributors in beer and beans for a life time. And this is small potatoes compared to the federal trains.
“Dollar Bill Richardson” also admitted, in Spanish to a Latino audience:
The Santa Fe to Albuquerque corridor is the only place where a train is remotely feasible in NM and it’s a money pit. Trains were a great idea when they were the best and fastest way across the country. When something better came along, we moved to that. Look at the West; the distances are too great and it will never again be a place for passenger trains. They don’t work even on the East coast where the population density is far greater.
I have moved from NM but I stayed long enough to vote for Susana Martinez. She’s looking like an excellent choice for my former home state.
Tru dat!
Funny how when your are bankrupt, building trains shows up as the “big fix”.
maybe if anyone rode the train with slo Joe we would find out what is going on with “big train”.
No indeed it is not but this Railroad/GE give away is just one more symptom of the problem-government gone wild, becoming too big and over reaching.
We run from outbreak to outbreak treating symptoms when what we need to do it gut the monster killing us-an extra constitutional government grown all out of proportions. Starve the beast, cut it back dramatically or it crushes us all.
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Bring your federal agencies and programs here:
three chopping blocks, no waiting
They need to utilize the median of the highway/freeway system. Go vertical with maglev high speed rail.
Use platforms that move cars from exit to exit so you don’t need extra parking or extra infrastructure from and to the mass transit station.
That solves the problem of needing new land rights, solves the safety problem because everyone would be in their cars with seat-belt and airbags, better for fuel mileage and time because cars don’t burn up gas on the freeway/highway.
No, it hasn’t been invented yet and I have never seen anything like it anywhere. But I am certain the technology exists. It’s just a matter of attaching wheels to a motor to get the job done.
Who is policing the Constitutional ineligibility of the Marxist Usurper?
No one……
Please follow the link and watch the video. Especially if you are between the ages of 16 – 26.
On February 9th, 2011 at 10:50 am, Virginia Patriot said:
I still have unanswered Questions for Speaker Boehner.
Virginia Patriot,
I also left a reply for you on an earlier thread here.
Good one!
And have you noticed that the word “seize” is a lot more like what they are actually doing?
On February 9th, 2011 at 11:08 am, happyscrapper said:
STW … Seize The Wealth
According to the Cato Institute, during the 2000s, Amtrak’s annual losses exceeded 1 billion per year. I can’t even…
The most corrupt Administration of my lifetime.
The public is interested in the Big Picture – will Snookie go topless? Meanwhile, the Land of the Free becomes a third-world Obamunist feifdom.
Not enough trains, not enough track, not enough family members on the board…
I wonder what percentage of that 1 billion/year is pension and medical-for-life for Amtrack retirees?
Errah, STHP, Seize The Hair Plugs!
Joe doesn’t pay for his amtrak rides. Sometimes he uses campaign money and sometimes the good ole US of A finds a way to pay for Joe/Neil. No wonder the guy loves amtrak.
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Amtrak loses 1 BILLION! a year. And these clueless clowns want to saddle us with additional billions of taxes to reward their unholy union / GE alliance.
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A billion here, a billion there. After a while–you’re starting to talk real money (lost down a rathole).
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Defund this obscene plan. And defund Amtrak also.
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John Bibb
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Living off other people is an art form to the Dems.
One would think, logically, that if high-speed rail was such a great idea, one wanted by the American traveller, that some enterprising entreprenuers would put together the money to make it happen. But here’s the problem; rail travel has been shown to be unattractive to most travellers, is expensive to maintain and run, and it is a big polluter. So…
Why does the government want to get involved?
The easy answer is that when government gets involved in financing public programs, massive fraud happens, money disappears, labor unions get priority over open-house businesses, the project fails and the public gets to foot the bill. Government, especially one that is rife with progressives in positions of authority, cannot operate within a budget, nor direct these big projects without massive corruption, and payola.
I would rather see money spent on drilling for our own oil, especially since the “reserve estimates” in Saudi Arabia are 40% lower than previously thought. ( And, our government knew this, according to Wikileak documents. Heads need to roll….)
Wouldn’t drilling for our own oil, building refineries, and gas pipeline infrastructure bring the needed jobs to the U.S. that Obama is carping about, AND give our economy a giant boost?
Yeah, but that’s too simple a resolution.
None. You see, Hanoi Jane’s movie The China Syndrome is hard science.
More than an art form…its their whole life’s work. Blood sucking leaches.
How about: Besiege the future?
We are up to our proverbial asses in alligators, and this MORONIC ADMINISTRATION wants to ad more water to the swamp!!! The other night, watching an old movie on TCM, a streetcar zips past, both my wife and I blurt out “LIGHT RAIL”… Which is what we in PHOENIX call our streetcars… Over 1 billion so far for 22 mph people mover, that will always have to be subsidized by taxpayers… Likewise, we need “HIGH SPEED TRAINS” like we need more “LIGHT RAIL” (which we will be receiving) in PHOENIX… The GOP had better get their collective heads out of their BUTTS and put the brakes on this one quick…
These public works projects are just paybacks for unions.
They want to put in a $4~5 Billion rail project here in Honolulu that they admit won’t help the traffic situation. But think of all the union jobs it will create.
Democrats running the country is akin to Norman Bates “taking care” of his mother. A horror story.
And all of you good people get to help pay for it – they want at least $1 billion from the feds (you).
Jim Webb NOT running!
It’s way past time Virginia had a decent Senator.
Could be worse I guess. If Obama had appointed the CEO of Wells Fargo to head the jobs council, we’d be spending $53 billion on high-speed stage coaches.
I want to ram a finger down my throat everytime I see a GE commercial with a “patriotic” theme. They had a couple during the Super Bowl did made me gag.
Is every comment today in italics, or am I having a stroke?
So, in this “we have to make GREEN jobs so that we can spread the wealth, save the planet and create jobs” environment, dear Joe wants a bullet train. Has he investigated the carbon foot print? Checked into the environmental impact? Researched how many solar panels it would take to create that speed? Or maybe wind power would work. How about gigantic batteries which could be plugged in at night?
Hah! By 2012 BHO won’t even need a senate, or congress, or elections, at all with what he’s doing. In fact, he’ll just proclaim himself president for life and save the nation the bother and financial cost of an election.
Nope, its all for the unions anyway. It won’t matter if the project is complete, the plan is having it in perpetual construction for the next 200+ years to make sure union employees remain on the payroll.
Is every comment today in italics, or am I having a stroke?
Check your meds…
That’s not funny.
Wasn’t meant to be…its a dire warning.
That’s why we should have never allowed AN INELIGIBLE MARXIST INTO OFFICE.
What, Amtrak wasn’t losing money fast enough?
You’re fine, well, you know what I mean.
You’d think with this current Administration, everything should be in a bold Comic Sans font.
Big Jake McCandles: Not hardly.
The Dems love throwing taxpayer money at the most unprofitable enterprises, and that will never stop as long as they have a say in the matter.
Big Jake McCandles: Not hardly.
The Dems love throwing taxpayer money at the most unprofitable enterprises, and that will never stop as long as they have a say in the matter.
GE gets a sweet deal from the Feds in paying corporate taxes….
They have been in bed with the Obammunists for a while.
GE, the IG Farben of Der Annointed One’s regime…
Somebody slap Hawkeye, the needle’s stuck in the groove again.
Argh! I hate it when that happens!!!!
In other news, the union boss of AFGE (American Federation of Government Employees)employing a more genteel tone in rhetoric as suggested by BHO, says anyone who believes there should be government spending cuts is retarded.
My sister took Amtrak across her state at Christmas but her luggage didn’t arrive at the destination with her. Probably fell off the train on one of three stops.
Only on this thread, all comments were in italics on my computer, until about 1-2 hours ago.
The same people who tout that capitalism doesn’t work are more than happy to take all the money that capitalism provides. Then, when the treasury is empty, they cry that we need another system. Well, we sure do. A system which allows capitalism to work the way it is supposed to. No system of government works well when there is no money left. Spending like there is no tomorrow will result in there being no tomorrow. Spending money on high speed rail when there is little demand to pay for it would be worse than burning the money in the street.
Whew! Saves me a trip to Tripler Hospital.
High speed rail? Only if Dagny Taggart is running the operation.
Who’s John Galt??!!
John Galt is a fictional character in an allegorical and, frankly, poorly written book by the atheist Ayn Rand.
Another example of Progressives tackling non-existent problems as a means of avoiding having to work on real problems they have no idea how to solve.
Just watched Michelle on Hannity hammering away at this bullet train, GE and government “investments”. If it helps Michelle, I have noticed that the Bernanke himself when testifying before Congress and asked to comment on government “investments” always responds referring to “government expenditures”, not “investments”. Only the socialists refuse to acknowledge the difference.
Hey Joe! Seize some brains rather than our future! You need them badly!
Exactly what I have been saying since the half fast “stimulus” for light rail here in Wisconsin was taken away.
It doesn’t matter were it gets spent. We pay for the initial “stimulus”, we pay for the cost overruns, and we continue to pay for subsidizing its operation because it loses money constantly.
Whoever came up with the idea of attaching strings to federal transportation taxes years ago should be horsewhipped. There is no need for my transportation taxes to go to Washington so buffoons like Biden can give them away to some liberal crony.
Congress should sequester all funding for a department if an IG is removed, pending a review by the House and Senate. If the removal is not justified, the funding stays frozen until the IG is reinstated.
Ok Michelle..this is a very important subject, but every time I come over to the article to read and post, I can’t get past VP Bite Me going Wo! Wo! out the window of the little engine that couldn’t.
The picture of Biden as conductor of the high speed rail train is wrong. The picture shows that the train has riders.
Oops!
Maybe it was one of these.
Gee, duh. No one who posts here knows who John Galt is and so, our resident liberal lawyer has to tell us…I call B.S. And, your personal opinion of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, means nothing to me – not that you care.