Republican governors have a very strange relationship with federal rail money:
Less than four months after losing nearly all of an $810 million grant, Wisconsin is again seeking federal high-speed rail money – this time to upgrade the existing Milwaukee-to-Chicago passenger line.
Gov. Scott Walker’s administration announced Tuesday that the state will seek at least $150 million to add equipment and facilities for Amtrak’s Hiawatha line.
[….]In a bizarre twist, some of the money that Walker now seeks originally was allocated for the Milwaukee-to-Madison route he previously turned down. That money is available because a fellow Republican governor rejected it as well.
I have one big problem with this: no group’s been helped more by government than American Indians, do we have to name train lines after them too? Call it the John Galt line, build it out of that perpetual motion metal, and force the unions to build it. Then all Americans will support it. This stuff’s not rocket science.
Bob L
Give a tax cut and John Galt will hand build the entire line HIMSELF because greed is the only virtue.
BGinCHI
Walker will probably also ask if he can use slave labor to save some money.
dmsilev
In a just world, that application would be sent back with a cover letter reading “You had your chance and you deliberately pissed it away. Actions have consequences.”
dms
cbear
Why screw around, let’s skip ahead a few steps; privatize it, award it in a no-bid contract to Halliburton or Bechtel, make it a gooper-only line, and name it Amtrak for Assholes.
Bulworth
Just wait until the Real Americans find out about the lavish estates these Indians live on at gubmit expense.
Actually, I wouldn’t doubt that, after killing off the public sector unions (they killed off the private ones years ago), and after canning most of the federal workforce, our wingnut leaders and media enablers turn their attention to the “scandal” of the presence of Reservations. Surely, all the John Galts could dig up some oil on them or something.
Don K
@dmsilev:
Exactly. Were I in charge of the agency divvying up the money, it would be a cold day in hell before I would send any money to Wisconsin so long as Scott Walker is the governor.
Violet
Why not call it the Rail of Tears?
I hope Walker trying to suck from the federal government’s teat is broadcast far and wide in Wisconsin. Look! Walker wants to take your tax money! Walker wants to increase federal spending! Walker doesn’t care about the deficit!
The ads write themselves.
Omnes Omnibus
They named the train after the poem.
Bulworth
Walker and the GOPFaux noise machine will just say the money is needed because the presence of Amtrack in the heartland represents an unfunded mandate, etc.
Zifnab
Given Walker’s propensity for telling other branches of government to piss off, once he gets what he wants, (see: court blocking the union busting bill that Walker continues to implement) I wouldn’t hand him a bent penny.
That guy is corrupt from leaf to root. I half expect him to just empty new rail money into his bank account and tell the feds to fuck off.
Comrade DougJ
@Violet:
Only if it runs Florida to Oklahoma.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
The arrogance of these fucks knows no bounds. But I really believe that they have finally overreached. Walker, Scott, Snyder and King John I of Ohio are not only becoming unpopular at speeds never before seen in state politics, their tone of “get on the bus or we’ll run you over with the bus” (King John I) are motivating the previously indifferent to care about politics and process. I remain hopeful that there will be some real pushback. That, or the loading dose of methocarbamol I took for the back spasm is helping my attitude.
dave
@BGinCHI: Well he’s certainly turned enough people into slaves with his attempt at governing.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Why can’t it be a both/and situation?
Violet
@Comrade DougJ:
Oh, you want historical accuracy? I thought we’ve established that history is lame, especially the learning from part.
BGinCHI
@Violet: I’m pretty sure the Texas history books now call it “The Trail of Sunshine and Laughter.”
Maude
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Ouch. Hope it eases.
Christie has been faily quiet for a bit. Makes me nervous.
His poll ratings are bit down, but not low.
He’s ahead of the other govs. He’s screwed up twice on fed money.
Linda Featheringill
@Violet:
Excellent!
NonyNony
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I’ve come to the conclusion that in Kasich’s case this is a feature, not a bug.
He wants to be a one-term governor. He’s only in the office to steal as much as he can and then he’s going to get out. In a functional system the legislature would be a check on his greed, but since we have term limits in Ohio the guys in the assembly are buying in and finding their own ways to overreach before they inevitably lose their jobs and go back to their law firms and other jobs they left behind to pillage the government.
That’s the only explanation I can come up with – they aren’t actually interested in their long-term prospects because they don’t intend to do this for the long haul. They want to get in, take whatever isn’t nailed down, and then get out.
Linda Featheringill
@BGinCHI:
:-).
I was raised in Oklahoma. There are people there who are still cursing Andrew Jackson.
danimal
I just realized something that may help illuminate conservative cluelessness about Native Americans.
If the only time you encounter Native Americans is when you visit the local Indian Casino/Bingo Hall, you may see the ostentatious homes of the tribal leaders and assume that Native American poverty has been addressed, or that the problem is in ineffective distribution within the tribal nations. IOW–If the Native Americans are poor, it’s because the leaders aren’t sharing.
This is wrong on many levels, but I’ll bet it resonates with the Real Murkins.
Dave
If there is any justice, the response Walker gets will be a fax of Ray LaHood giving him the finger.
New Yorker
On the topic of the idiot governor of Wisconsin, do you know how I know that the GOP has bitten off more than it can chew with the public sector unions? Facebook posts. People who are normally completely apolitical and probably couldn’t name more than 2 supreme court justices are posting angry messages about how teachers and cops are being shit on by the GOP. White middle-class America is getting pissed, people, and the blowback for the GOP ain’t gonna be pretty.
I can’t wait.
JPL
Republican governors are just following the example of the previous president. Screw up as much as possible, have the next president try to fix it and then create havoc at town hall meetings. People have short term memories and the race to the bottom is not yet complete.
gex
@BGinCHI: I hear the Chinese are best for this, because you can just let ’em die building the line. They aren’t as valuable as, say, black people/property.
ppcli
If a cent of that or any other such Federal money finds its way into the Wisconsin economy, it will be a sign to me that the Obama administration is actually trying to lose in the long run.
It’s as if there was a Tsarist counter-revolution and Obama is its mirror-image Kerensky. The philosophy of “no enemies to the right” doesn’t seem to be panning out.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: I would gladly contribute toward a full-page ad in the NYT and the main WI newspaper, if the ad said something like that!
West of the Cascades
Walker didn’t want the high-speed line to link Madison to Milwaukee and into that other high-speed line to Chicago because it would have facilitated Democratic State Senators fleeing to Illinois to filibuster. On the other hand, he’d be perfectly happy is most of the folks in Milwaukee left for Illinois as fast as possible (one-way tickets only). His current position is perfectly consistent with his past political positions and inherent underlying racism.
bemused
I think many of these overreaching governors don’t care if they are one-term wrecking balls. They are just brushing up their tough on government resumes for better employment opportunities after they are voted out.
Maude
@ppcli:
I don’t read that commie pinko stuff.
Bob L
Speaking of John Galt working on the railroad, Atlas Shurgs has been made into a move. Part one is coming out April 15th
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W07bFa4TzM
Just struck me how silly the plot is since it centers around railroads. Even in the ’30s that was a dorky idea (rail roads were losing out to cars and air travel by then). While Raynd is going on how socialists of the New Deal have destroyed the good old days of the 1870s Howard Huges is making a fortune off of aircraft and oil. The only way you can do that is to pretend everything in technology after 1900 never happened.
Origuy
@Linda Featheringill:
You know the people who want to put Reagan’s face on money? They can have the twenty as far as I’m concerned.
Lori
A lot of time usually passes between a grant application and money coming into a state. Even if the application is approved, I wonder how long it would be before the project would have an economic impact on Wisconsin.
Unfortunately, both Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin have terrible plans for train transit, because the PLANNED ticket prices are unreasonably high. No reason for planning to maintain an expensive $22 one-way ticket Milwaukee-to-Chicago. (That is the current price, and today Walker bragged that the ticket price would remain $22 one-way) Instead, make it $8 like successful train systems in New Jersey, New York, California, Massachusetts. They travel similar distances for WAY cheaper than Wisconsin trains. The current Hiawatha (Amtrak) trains Milwaukee-to-Chicago have a lot of empty seats. With lower ticket prices, the trains could feasibly triple ridership and maintain the same level of revenue.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Origuy: Is that the currency we use to symbolically piss people off? Fun!
PeakVT
@Bulworth: Hasn’t the BIA been screwing the various tribe out of mineral rights money for decades?
Paul in KY
@Don K: Not so sure. I have a list of Republicans I’d like to see defiled (it’s a long list and Walker is on it), but the money can mean real jobs to Wisconsinites & if played in a sophisticated manner (as you know us Democrats do so well), we can point out again who is the friend of the working man & who is an opportunistic shit weasel who has no shame.
Paul in KY
@NonyNony: That sounds like a slogan for the modern Republican Party. Shorter version: ‘Gettin Ours Party, Suckers’
Cheryl from Maryland
@Linda Featheringill: Andrew Jackson was the start of the rot — put in office by lower income voters, he then dismantles the National Bank, creating a credit squeeze, which he then amplified by promoting the Specie Act, requiring land transactions to be paid in gold. So only the rich could easily afford to buy real estate. And where were the main deposits of gold in the US found — why on Cherokee land. The man was a complete and total shit, and he started the script for appealing to the masses while screwing them over.
Paul in KY
@Origuy: He wasn’t one of our better Democratic presidents. He’s sort of early 19th century version of Bush/Cheney (although way more competant in his political machinations).
Edit: See comment above for more examples that agree with what I said.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cheryl from Maryland: Yes, I would like to think that I would have voted for JQA, but who knows.
Emma
You know what made me crazy? Some of the comments on that story. Oh, no, it’s not the same thing. This is for a functional line not for some Obama boondoggle(paraphrase). We are going to have to get used to a permanent minority of morons. With internet access.
Comrade DougJ
@Bob L:
I post about this movie all the time.
Mark Kolmar
“City people” already pass through the Milwaukee-Chicago corridor all the time, and depend on it. Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha – 3 counties along Lake Michigan, toward Illinois – are home to something like 23% of Wisconsin’s population. So even Gov. Scott Walker has consultants who know how to do long division.
And then you have businesses like Premium Outlets who seem to think that it’s a good strategy to have shopping centers between metro areas – Chicago/Milwaukee and Milwaukee/Madison for example. Trains must probably help that case.
One data point about the Johnson Creek, WI, mall: When I last visited, overhead announcements were in English and German. Maybe the Premium Outlets folks know the score.
Chyron HR
Did somebody say Andrew Jackson?
Bob L
@Cheryl from Maryland: You give Jackson to much credit. Jackson attacked the National Bank because he didn’t like the bank president and the whole screw the Indians thing was because Indians had attacked his family when he was a kid. There was no policy to it, just personal revenge. He also hated the British too, just he was only able to get his hands of fewer Englishmen
Madeline
@Dave: Unless LaHood can use this request as leverage to reboot the entire HSR project in Wisconsin, he better give Walker the finger.
And as an aside, who’d be dumb enough to trust Walker with the money anyway?
Cermet
@Bob L: Don’t forget the pirate captain of a rouge battleship(!) that just roamed the seas at will (no long range aircraft – this book was set in the mid/late 1800’s …right?) sinking all commercial traffic that got in ranges of its guns – talk about insane plot devices! And as$wipe Greenspan admired that book? Talk about being stupid and proud of it.
Lori
@Mark Kolmar: People from Racine drive 45 minutes in order to catch the ($7/one-way) Metra train line to Chicago. That’s instead of taking the closer (15-minute drive from downtown Racine) Hiawatha Line (Amtrak), because that line costs $22/one-way and runs at inconvenient hours especially for nighttime outings to Chicago by Racinians (8PM is last train time). Racine is the third largest city in Wisconsin. Both Dems and Republican train plans for the Milwaukee-Chicago Amtrak line plan for a ridiculously high one-way ticket price. Change it to $8, triple the ridership, and the project will succeed.
Omnes Omnibus
@Lori: All I know is that I want my m-fing HSR to come to Madison.
Lori
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m with you!! I love trains. But I hate badly-planned projects, especially when they concern something I very much want to succeed, like mass transit. It would be **so** easy to tweak the train plans, to make them affordable and widely used. I don’t understand why neither Democratic nor Republican administrations can come up with good Wisconsin train plans. Especially when there are great examples in the US, in New Jersey, New York, California, and Massachusetts.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Omnes Omnibus: JQA is the actual founder of the Smithsonian. After loosing to Jackson, he successfully won a House seat, and there he advocated for Congress to accept the Smithson gift and create the Institution, rather than take the money and put it in the general fund or add it to the Library of Congress. As a Smithsonian employee, I consider JQA my ultimate employer.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@NonyNony: So true. King John I really is a shit, and it’s not like it wasn’t sorta kinda known; I mean, hell I knew what a creep he was way down here in Redstown (pun intended).
And the FB stuff kinda confirms my sense that these guys have motivated the previously indifferent. Oh, and Omnes, I do so very much hope that it’s a both/and situation. Like I hope the revisions I just made to Mr. Q’s last minute K to build a website for a realtor who wants to go with new technology to sell houses make sense. :)
artem1s
@NonyNony:
boy did you ever hit the nail on the head. Good luck to NC, SC, GA or FL. When they get done here they are headed south.
IndyLib
@Lori:
That is a steep price for a one way ticket, but I’ve paid it because it’s costs less than
1. The cost of gas for a the nearly 200 mile round trip.
2. The cost of paying tolls the second I hit the Illinois border (Illinois State Motto as it applies to Lake and Cook counties – “Welcome to Illinois, now hand over your wallet.”)
3. The cost of parking in downtown Chicago for the day.
NonyNony
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Anyone who was paying attention to his campaign could tell what he was going to do – he flat out told people he was planning on raiding every resource that Ohio had to sell off to his Wall Street friends.
And they voted for him anyway. Not by a huge margin, but enough to push someone actually interested in public service out of office. And now it’s all piracy all the time in the state.
This state isn’t going to get fixed until term limits get removed – the only way to hold politicians accountable is if they have something to lose, like their job. Convincing people that politicians would be MORE accountable if they’re guaranteed to lose their jobs after just a couple of terms is probably the single most damaging snow job the Ohio Republican Party managed – and Kasich is reaping the benefits.
Calouste
@danimal:
I wonder why ‘Merikans think that that sentence applies when you leave the word in it, but not when you take it out.
Mark Kolmar
@Lori: Someone can pay me to run the numbers, and make phone calls to help make these things happen. I’m not certain about what the fares should be when it is fixed. 414-374-7984. I will call back, and coordinate with my employer as necessary. What you mention would be perverse, broadly unhelpful incentives.
Gravenstone
@IndyLib:
One thing I’ll always hate Blago for is doubling the tolls if paid in cash versus the electronic autopay gadget. Then the Indiana Toll Authority turned around and did the same damned thing. Fortunately, my need to make the trek through that thieve’s corridor from WI to OH has lessened considerably the last few years.
Mark Kolmar
@Gravenstone: It means, corrected for inflation, you pay half tolls in Illinois, but you need a credit card to vote against the old patronage grease.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
what about the koch rail? the kochline?