Wheels roll and the whistle will blow

OnEarth, the magazine of the Natural Resources Defense Council, has an enthusiastic and informative article in its Spring 2009 issue regarding the development of high speed rail in the U.S. The article predates the final stimulus plan and the resulting nonsense about the right-wing branded and fictional Sin Express. It's an excellent, and valuable, read, and I've been planning to post about it for the last week or so.

AP, however, offers a more cynical view of high speed rail in the U.S. It could have offered a reasonable counterpoint to the NRDC's excessive, Bob the Builder can-do (Can we build it? Yes we can!) optimism. That is, it could have if only it weren't for the AP's decision to mimic Bobby Jindal and the FOX News imbalance, ridiculously leading the story with a reference to - catch your breath - Tomorrowland! (Look here, kids, a pretend train!) The point not being sufficiently obvious, AP then proceeds to give its examples of proposed bullet train lines in the U.S. You know, the trains to both Disney World and Disneyland (and those godless freaks in San Francisco and - since high-speed rail only really works in crazy places like Europe - France, to boot!). The AP then arrives at the station a day late and a Euro short to conclude that the stimulus dollars will go toward simple upgrade and maintenance of existing, slow-poke track.

That's not quite good enough for ABC, which has to do AP one better - or worse.

It's a huge investment that Daniel Mitchell, senior fellow at the libertarian think tank, the CATO Institute, called "just ludicrous," especially given the tanking economy.

This is McCainomics here, also known as neo-Hooeverism, the idea that in a poor economy suffering from low spending, the solution is to stop spending. That's ludicrous. Let's drop everything and refresh ourselves on the meaning and purpose of stimulus, my friends. Yet ABC chugs on.

"If California voters want to throw money down a rat hole for high-speed rail, then let them," Mitchell said. "At least that is not going to cost the tax payers of Minnesota and South Carolina any money."

"You might as well have the government invest in nuclear-powered bicycles," Mitchell added. "That's probably the only thing I could imagine that would be more of a waste of money than inter-city rail."

Are those cold-fusion-powered bikes? Because that would be cool, and hot. Like riding on sunshine. Wooah. And don't it feel good? Yeah! I feel the love, I feel the love, I feel the love, that's really real. I'm on sunshine, baby!

Sorry.

But back to the point, that's the CATO institute. They're libertarians. They must be objective, reasonable. As long as you recognize that libertarianism, and CATO policy, means extreme conservative economic policy opposing almost all government spending, and a rabid opposition to environmental policy including global warming denialism. In other words, predictably opposed to high speed rail as either stimulus or good long-term environmental policy. (In practice, identifying yourself as a libertarian generally means you're pretty much a Republican, but don't want to pretend that you don't smoke pot.  But that's another issue for another day.) That's not objectivity we can believe in.

At least ABC didn't mention Disney. Gotta have some respect for the corporate parent.

Sigh.

Through, through, through! He got the train through!