The Conservative Cave
Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: GCBill on July 24, 2013, 01:32:23 PM
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023330099
Taverner (54,154 posts)
AMTRAK: Completely nationalize, rebuild and then give to the workers
Last edited Wed Jul 24, 2013, 01:06 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
Amtrak should be completely revamped with bullet trains, subsidized fares and extensive routes
The only way this could happen would be to take over Amtrak completely, rebuild it with bullet trains - - and then instead of selling it to the highest bidder, simply turn it over to those who already run it (the workers)
Make them all owners of the railway
Amtrak is technically considered a "for-profit" corporation, but it is running at a loss with government subsidies covering the shortfall from revenues, and the stock is owned by the Federal government. So it ALREADY IS nationalized!
So, if it is given to the employees so they become business owners, will they be working for a share in profits (which they don't have) instead of wages, like many other stock holders and business owners do?
A spoil sport points out the fly in the ointment:
Brickbat (14,730 posts)
6. People really don't have any idea when it comes to trackage, trackage rights, "bullet trains" and
other rail issues. It's just not that easy.
Taverner's solution? Unconstitutional theft by the government!
Taverner (54,154 posts)
8. We gave them the rails with the Homestead Act, we can take them back
Hey Taverner! Have you ever checked this out:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
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Anytime the answer you receive from someone is "Here's what Marx would do," you're asking questions to an idiot who needs to just shut up.
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"Bullet Trains"......where it's legal to shoot any DUmmie that gets on the train......hey, they do it in the subways.
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IIRc, Amtrak serves a $16 hamburger where they only lose $6 on each one. I assume that this is the closest to profit that any part of Amtrak's operations.
Choo-Choo!![/Joe Biden]
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Go to a heroin addict if you want to understand the details of the American rail system.
Things would be different if we were a little shithole European country, where you could take a golf cart from one border to the next, and where people were used to third-world standards like no personal transport.
The jug-eared Kenyan and his democrat allies are still light-years away from wrecking the American way of life.
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Go to a heroin addict if you want to understand the details of the American rail system.
Things would be different if we were a little shithole European country, where you could take a golf cart from one border to the next, and where people were used to third-world standards like no personal transport.
The jug-eared Kenyan and his democrat allies are still light-years away from wrecking the American way of life.
They have made amazing progress though. We have fallen from number 2 in economic freedom to number 18. For every part time job that 0bama all by himself has created two people have gone on food stamps. Still are 9.5 million fewer jobs in the USA under the economic genius of Barky and he has accomplished all this by borrowing almost 50% of the total economic output of the USA.
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ast edited Wed Jul 24, 2013, 01:06 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
Amtrak should be completely revamped with bullet trains, subsidized fares and extensive routes
That's one of the reasons they're in the trouble they're in now you moron. :whatever:
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An environmental whacko DUmmie expresses a concern, but Tavs is on it:
Response to NoOneMan (Reply #26)
Wed Jul 24, 2013, 02:36 PM
Taverner (54,160 posts)
27. Solar power most of it
Build the panels first, then the infrastructure
:rotf:
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An environmental whacko DUmmie expresses a concern, but Tavs is on it:
:rotf:
Solar...railroad.
Damn, that's brilliant.
:whatever: :whatever: :whatever:
Wait, what is the opposite of brilliant again?
:-) :-) :-)
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Taverner (54,154 posts)
AMTRAK: Completely nationalize, rebuild and then give to the workers
Amtrak should be completely revamped with bullet trains, subsidized fares and extensive routes
The only way this could happen would be to take over Amtrak completely, rebuild it with bullet trains - - and then instead of selling it to the highest bidder, simply turn it over to those who already run it (the workers)
Make them all owners of the railway
Sounds like someone nodded off during the newest 'Atlas Shrugs' movie.
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Solar...railroad.
Damn, that's brilliant.
:whatever: :whatever: :whatever:
Wait, what is the opposite of brilliant again?
:-) :-) :-)
DUmpmonkie
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Solar...railroad.
I just laughed Negra Medelo out my nose. The dark stuff really hurts.
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Maybe he needs a theme song for his funky idea...
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc_JcGuH5Z8[/youtube]
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IIRc, Amtrak serves a $16 hamburger where they only lose $6 on each one. I assume that this is the closest to profit that any part of Amtrak's operations.
Choo-Choo!![/Joe Biden]
As the line from Big Bang Theory goes, "Why, where else can we spend three times as much to get somewhere in five times as long?"
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Taverner may have been talking to Omaha Steve, who wanted to appropriate a private gas service in Bellevue and turn it over to "the people".
Steve would have been responsible for the starvation of Bellevue's poor children, and the forced conversion of its elderly to catfooditarians.
That whack in the head from the Good Idea Fairy guaranteed Steve's last-place finish in the city council race; even losing out to a cat who ran an effective write-in campaign, despite being deceased.
Taverner should learn the lesson of Omaha Steve.
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Few things illustrate the idiocy of the DUmp as much as their obsession and belief in a free and all inclusive high speed rail system does.
It is logistically impossible.
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Few things illustrate the idiocy of the DUmp as much as their obsession and belief in a free and all inclusive high speed rail system does.
It is logistically impossible.
I'm waiting for the UK to start taxing computers the same way they tax televisions. It's similar to the way they tax vehicles by horsepower -- depending on the size and type of TV you have in your home, you're billed a use tax to fund public broadcasting. Having a black-and-white television in your home is a $90 fee. It goes up from there.
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Taverner (54,154 posts)
AMTRAK: Completely nationalize, rebuild and then give to the workers
Last edited Wed Jul 24, 2013, 01:06 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
Amtrak should be completely revamped with bullet trains, subsidized fares and extensive routes
The only way this could happen would be to take over Amtrak completely, rebuild it with bullet trains - - and then instead of selling it to the highest bidder, simply turn it over to those who already run it (the workers)
Make them all owners of the railway
No real comment on the blithering stupidity and the disconnect from reality that this post-O-shit goes to.
What private entity has anything to do with AMWRECK?
I would really like to know.
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Few things illustrate the idiocy of the DUmp as much as their obsession and belief in a free and all inclusive high speed rail system does.
It is logistically impossible.
The only thing that equals it is their obsession and belief in light-rail systems.
Another bottomless money pit.
It's bad enough that we pay for countless thousands of empty buses to meander around towns all over the country.
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Few things illustrate the idiocy of the DUmp as much as their obsession and belief in a free and all inclusive high speed rail system does.
It is logistically impossible.
OHHHH!!!! No it's not.
(http://tshirtgroove.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/magic-unicorn-fart-tshirt1.jpg)
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Few things illustrate the idiocy of the DUmp as much as their obsession and belief in a free and all inclusive high speed rail system does.
It is logistically impossible.
Is High-Speed Rail a Good Public Investment?
By EDWARD L. GLAESER
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/is-high-speed-rail-a-good-public-investment/?_r=0
. . .
These ideas are so cheap that unless they are seriously quantified they have no place in the debate. Serious accounting, not clever debating points or soaring rhetoric, is the critical ingredient in good public decision-making.
I will spend the next three blog posts on the major costs and benefits of high-speed rail. The costs include up-front construction and operating costs. The benefits include direct benefits to riders, indirect benefits include reductions in carbon emissions and traffic congestion, and any indirect aid that rail gives to local economies and to national economic recovery.
The up-front costs of rail are primarily the cash outlays, and these are perhaps easiest to quantify. The Government Accountability Office’s summary of building costs in Europe range from $37 million to $53 million a mile. The Japanese lines cost from $82 million to $143 million a mile. (Higher costs in Japan reflect difficult earthquake-prone terrain and expensive land.) Cost estimates in the United States range from $22 million a mile, for a Victorville, Calif., to Las Vegas route, to $132 million a mile for connecting Baltimore and Washington.
These figures are all debatable, but anyone who thinks that the G.A.O. got it wrong needs to come up with alternative figures that are equally plausible. As such, the cost of a 240-mile line, like the one that could connect Dallas and Houston, would probably run about $12 billion, but it could be as cheap as $6 billion or as expensive as $24 billion, and these are the numbers that we have most confidence about.
. . .
Running the Numbers on High-Speed Trains
By EDWARD L. GLAESER
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/running-the-numbers-on-high-speed-trains/
. . .
Last week, I cited data from the Government Accountability Office suggesting that $50 million a mile was a reasonable construction cost figure. To make this one-time cost comparable to everything else, which is an annual flow, the fixed cost needs to be converted into an annual cost, which is done by multiplying by an interest rate, capturing the opportunity cost of capital. If that cost of capital is 5 percent (as I said, everything is debatable), then the up-front capital cost is $2.5 million a mile per year, or $600 million for a 240-mile line.
The other cost that is independent of the number of riders is track maintenance. One recent European estimate puts that cost at $140,000 a mile per year for a two-track system. A feasibility study of high-speed rail in Britain came up with the considerably higher figure of $493,000 a mile for surface trains. I’ll stay closer to the lower estimate and go with $200,000 a mile per year, which brings the fixed costs of the track up to $648 million per annum.
Other train costs — rolling stock purchase and maintenance, personnel — more or less scale up or down with the number of passenger miles. Unfortunately, there is plenty of range on these cost estimates. A 12-year-old classic in this field has a number of 10.5 cents a mile (in today’s dollars), but one recent European study comes out at 50 cents a passenger mile. Amtrak’s operating expenses run at about 45 cents a passenger mile. I’ll average between 10 and 50 and plug in 30 cents a passenger mile in operating costs, which comes to $72 for a 240-mile trip.
. . .
Now it’s just down to multiplying: 1.5 million trips times $68 a trip means $102 million for benefits minus operating costs. Annual capital costs came in $648 million, more than six times that amount. If you think that the right number is three million trips, then the benefits rise to $200 million, and the ratio between the per rider net benefits and costs drops to one-to-three. This is the cruel arithmetic faced by people, like myself, who would love to be pro-rail. One hint for train lovers who would like to make this comparison look better: make a compelling case that the interest rate should be much lower, as nothing else makes nearly as much difference. Also keep in mind that I haven’t brought in the environment or congestion. They’re up next week.
So in Taverner's (and many others) Marxist dream, either the tickets will cost six times as much as they do now, AND all the airlines would have to be prohibited from flying places covered by a high speed rail route, in order for it to be profitable to its owners, the workers of Amtrak.
OR
Amtrak charges whatever they can that gets riders, the workers take a fat salary of whatever they feel like paying themselves, regardless of actual revenue, and WE JUST HAVE THE GOVERNMENT MAKE UP HOWEVER MANY HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS those thousands of miles of barely ridden track cost.
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So according to Eddie, a 240 mile HS rail link between Houston and Dallas, hauling an average of 4,110 people per day at $70 per ticket, would only generate enough income to cover 1/6th the operational costs.
Sounds like the perfect job for government. :banghead:
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Wait, what is the opposite of brilliant again?
Taverner . . . O-)
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Big Dog, I didn't realize the cat was deceased. I would have written in something more appropriate. A live dog, maybe.
I'm still laughing today at Tav's solar powered high speed trains. It's just classic DUmp.
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I absolutely agree with tavernturd. The government should run high-speed rail.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2377113/Spain-train-crash-video-At-78-people-killed-140-injured-Santiago-Compostela-derailment.html
'What joy to set police speed guns off': Facebook boast of Spanish driver whose train derailed killing at least 80 people while travelling at 120mph in 50mph limit
Not a soul at the DUmp, brought this up. :-)
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Here ya go, Tav--nationalized transportation in action for ya, ****tard.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYCf9UJnBWs[/youtube]
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Here ya go, Tav--nationalized transportation in action for ya, ****tard.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYCf9UJnBWs[/youtube]
Not to derail the thread, but that image should be a smiley image for all threadjacking attempts.
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Someone finally noticed.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023344911
Fri Jul 26, 2013, 08:28 AM
cali (84,062 posts)
The now arrested driver of the Spanish train that derailed killing 78 was a speed freak
and I don't mean meth. He's now been detained by police.
>quotes article<
Only three comments.
The interesting one...
Response to cali (Reply #2)
Fri Jul 26, 2013, 08:45 AM
Star Member exboyfil (3,545 posts)
3. A bigger question
is why his employers let him operate the train given his past history. In the U.S. it would only be a question of the number of zeroes in the checks to the family. Software should have been able to detect his speed prior to this and corrective action should have been taken.
And that would be....?????
:bigbird: Tavernturd!!1!11! :lmao:
Quick edit for another. :-)
Response to exboyfil (Reply #3)
Fri Jul 26, 2013, 09:13 AM
Star Member City Lights (21,779 posts)
6. Yup. After reading about his past history,
I also wondered why his employers continued to let him operate trains.
Can we add unions to the mix? :-)
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Some more.
2002
Feb. 20, nr. Ayyat, Egypt: 361 killed in fire after gas cylinder used for cooking exploded aboard crowded passenger train. Egypt's worst train disaster.
May 25, Muamba, Mozambique: 192 died and dozens more injured when passenger cars rolled for several miles at top speed into freight cars from which they had been disconnected because of mechanical problems.
June 24, nr. Msagali, central Tanzania: runaway passenger train collided with freight train on same track, leaving 200 dead.
2004
Feb. 18, Neishabour, Iran: runaway rail cars, loaded with fertilizer, petrol, and sulfur products, rolled 31 mi down the rails, caught fire, and exploded, killing more than 320 and devastating 5 villages.
Mar, 11, Madrid, Spain: Spain's most horrific terrorist attack: 191 people were killed and 1,400 were injured in bombings at Madrid's railway station. A Moroccan affiliate of al-Qaeda claimed responsibility.
April 22, Ryongchon, North Korea: 2 trains carrying flammable liquids collided, causing a huge explosion near the Chinese border, killing at least 161 and injuring more than 1,300.
2005
April 25, Osaka, Japan: commuter train derailed and hit an apartment building near Osaka, killing at least 107 and injuring 460. It was the worst Japanese train accident since 1963. The accident was allegedly caused by the driver trying to get the train back on schedule.
July 13, Ghotki, Pakistan: 3 trains collided near Ghotki as the Karachi Express driver misread a signal and rammed the Quetta Express. Derailed carriages were then hit by a third train. At least 133 are killed.
2006
Jan. 23, Bioce, Montenegro: a train derailed and plunged into the Moraca canyon, killing 46 and injuring 19.
July 11, Mumbai, India: a series of bombs exploded on commuter trains in Mumbai during the evening rush hour, killing at least 200 people.
2007
Aug. 1, Benaleka, Congo: a passenger train running between Ilebo and Kananga derailed after the brakes failed, killing about 100 people.
Dec. 19, Mehrabpurp, Pakistan: a crowded passenger train derailed, killing at least 45 people and injuring over 100 more.
2008
April 28, China: a passenger train running from Beijing to Qingdao city derailed, killing 70 people and injuring more than 400 others.
Aug. 8, Czech Republic: a passenger train running from Krakow to Prague crashed into a collapsed bridge, killing six people and injuring about 100 others.
Sept. 12, California: a metrolink commuter train collided with a freight train northwest of Los Angeles, killing 25 passengers.
2009
June 22, Washington D.C.: nine people died and over 70 more were injured when a subway train crashed at rush hour.
June 30, Italy: a freight train that was traveling from La Spezia to Pisa derailed and crashed into a small Italian town, killing 12 people and injuring at least 50 more.
November 27, Russia: 26 people are killed when a bomb explodes on a luxury train that runs from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Chechen rebels claim responsibility for the attack..
2010
March 29, Russia: thirty-eight people are killed after two female suicide bombers enter the Moscow Metro.
May 28, India: a passenger train derails in West Bengal to avoid damage on the railway track, hits an oncoming train filled with goods and 148 people are killed.
2011
July 23, China: known as the Wenzhou train collision, due to a signal failure, a high-speed train rear-ends a stopped high-speed train. The collision happens near Whenzhou in the province of Zhejiang. Forty people are killed and 192 are injured.
2012
Nov. 17, Egypt: a train collides with a school bus near Manfalut and at least 50 children and the school bus driver are killed. More than a dozen people are injured.
2013
July 6, Lac-Mégantic, Quebec: an unattended runaway train carrying crude oil derails and explodes. Fifty people are missing and presumed dead. Thirty buildings were destroyed. The engineer had left the train to take a break, engaging the breaks before he left.
July 12, Bretigny-sur-Orge station, France: a passenger train from Paris travels south and slams into a station platform. At least six people are killed and a dozen more are seriously injured. The train provides regional service. The accident happens at the Bretigny-sur-Orge station, 16 miles south of Paris.
July 24, Santiago de Compostela, Spain: a passenger train derails and crashes in northwest Spain, just outside of Santiago de Compostela. At least 78 people are killed and dozens more are injured. Investigators are looking into the reason for the incident, although early reports have said that the train was traveling at an excessive speed, taking a curve at more than twice the speed limit just before it derailed.
Read more: Railroad Accidents: number of deaths, dates and locations of crashes | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001450.html#ixzz2aBJHvMvJ
Too bad none of those rail systems were run by their govenments, or they wouldn't have happened.
Right, tavernturd?