On The Socialist Railroad Engineer

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

The battle for sanity has many fronts. President Obama is paying back political favors and buying political capital with $8billion tax payer dollars being funneled into his high speed rail scheme.  Rail has its place, no doubt about it, but in order for HSR to have a remote chance of serving a majority of taxpayers we would spend hundreds of billions . . . or maybe a trillion or so since that's the new "billion." Is that a worthwhile investment?

The scheme claims potential for tens of thousands of job created. Isn't it reasonable to think that the same amount of capital might create as many, or even more, jobs when used in other enterprises?

Should taxpayers be saddled with funding of transportation that the overwhelming majority will never use?

Is "Europe and Japan have HSR and so should we. . ." a good enough reason to spend more money that we don't have?

Is there even a glimmer of hope that subsidized (socialist) travel will ever earn a profit on its investment (buying votes and political favors does not count as a profit).

One of the stated benefits of socialized travel is to push more of our population into major cities. It seems to me that the bigger the city, the more problems it brings so why would we want that?

Ultimately, all we're getting is more social engineering stemming from the "successful" (sic) track record of the "War On Poverty," "The War On Drugs," federal education system and more. Instead of being the engineer on a socialist train, our president should help our country get back on track by getting off the tracks.

Here's a pro rail article found on Huffington Post.

For balance, here's a counterpoint found on the Washington Post.