High Speed Boondoggle

When was the last time you took a train? If you said "never," you wouldn't be alone by a long shot. Train ridership has precipitously plummeted since the early 1950's with the advent of the interstate highway system and the burgeoning airline industry.

But that hasn't stopped some from trying to revive a rail system that would include Phoenix and other southwestern cities.

The Western High Speed Rail Alliance is a recently created group wanting to use stimulus money and get Phoenix on the high speed rail line "train," if you will, with service to Los Angeles in less than two hours and other cities like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.

They would have more success and spend less money in making better buggy whips.

Let's make one thing blindingly clear: We already have something that will take you to these cities faster, with more departures and a better business model. It's called the airline industry. Sure, the airline industry is flailing, some airlines are in their death throes and some have been bailed out since Sept. 11, 2001. But it has not been government supported -- it is a viable private business venture. Unlike our passenger railway system.

But consider our passenger rail system that was consolidated back in the 1970's when the train industry was ready to go under. The government decided that the passenger train industry was "too big to fail" and monopolized the small train companies like the B&O, Burlington Northern, Union Pacific, leaving them to haul goods but not people.

The National Railroad Passenger Corporation (the Federal Government) launched it to much fanfare, dubbing it "Amtrak" on May 1, 1971.

With its sleek silver cars and locomotives and red white and blue logo, Amtrak services over 21,000 miles of track across the United States.

And it's never made a profit. In fact, as a nation, we still have one of the lowest inter-city rail usages of all the developed nations.

Why does the government keep insisting on using tax-payer money to re-invent the train wheel, with the same, tired argument that if we update technology, more people will use it? With the exception of the Northeast (the Boston to DC corridor, as it's called), using a train instead of a plane doesn't make sense for commuters or people wanting to get from one place to another.

Yet every decade or so, there is a push to modernize and make high speed rail a reality like Japan or Germany. What the eggheads in Washington fail to realize since they never venture outside of the beltway, is that our country has triple or quintuple the real estate and people than smaller countries that utilize and favor high speed rail.

Until gas prices soar to European standards and sprawl creates endless strip malls from here to LA, high speed rail for the Southwest will not only be a waste of our tax money, it'll be a colossal waste of time.

Swine Flu Hits PHX! Do You Care?

Yesterday, it was announced that an 8-year-old boy had been (past tense) infected with the Swine Flu. He has since recovered, but the rest of the Valley has not.

With that positive confirmation, Moon Mountain Elementary School in the Washington School District announced that the school would be closed until May 7th unless there were more children who presented signs for the virus.

One school shut down is one school too many.

I have said before that this Swine Flu panic/concern/scare/pandemic is much ado about nothing. And your elected political heroes are playing you for a fool.

The main reason given in shutting that one school down was for “containment” purposes. That kite has enough string, but I don’t think it will fly.

State School Superintendent Tom Horne announced on Monday (and Governor Jan Brewer reiterated in a press conference yesterday) that any school who has students test positive for the Swine Flu would be shut down. That’s a great CYA move.

Government is very good at pointing out problems. Government is not good at solving them.

If the government were serious, truly thinking that this Swine Flu could have demonstrably, imminently mortal consequences for Phoenix, or any other part of the country, they would announce a full-scale shutdown of our daily lives.

But that hasn’t happened and that’s why I think yesterday’s announcement was a joke.

So far, one child has tested positive for Swine Flu. But it didn’t start with him. He’s not the Alpha case. Swine Flu has been in the Valley for weeks and we are just starting to unravel the trail. But that infectious trail didn’t start with an 8-year-old boy from the north valley.

What I want to know is: where did the kid get the virus? A fair and reasonable assumption would be the child was infected with the Swine Flu from an adult. Why, if logic dictates, doesn’t the government close post offices, grocery stores and restaurants? Why don’t they encourage you to telecommute or (ironically) call in sick to your employer?

Kids aren’t the only ones who catch viruses. Anyone could be a Swine Flu carrier; anyone could infect you, the entire Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, or me. But we are told to carry on with our daily lives.

Except if your child attends Moon Mountain Elementary. Then only you should be concerned.

America's Little (Big) Secret

Here’s a little secret that many people don’t know. But don’t tell too many people because it will throw the media into a tizzy! Most Americans surveyed say they don’t want government intruding on their lives.

Last week when I read that a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll revealed that most Americans “approve of President Obama and the government’s latest assertiveness” in dealing with our soured economy. But they don’t want government’s intrusion to last too long. I hate to tell you this, Sally, but that horse has been out of the barn for years.


The poll stated that, “3-to-1 people surveyed say government’s expansion should be cut back when the economic crisis is over.” Excuse me, but does anyone realize that Big Government’s been intruding, inserting, injecting, insinuating, interjecting, interpolating, interposing, and introducing itself to the American people almost a complete century?

According to Big Government, the crisis is never over.

*When the Great Depression hit and the banks failed, Big Government decided to introduce a novel idea called The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation so people would have faith and deposit money back in the banking system. We still have that program today. In fact, he government recently doubled the guarantee on your account from $100,000 thousand dollars to $250,000.

*When Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law social programs that were titled, The Great Society, it was supposed to wipe out poverty. These programs were expanded under the Nixon and Ford Administrations and we have actually spent more money trying to expunge poverty from America and yet more people are living below the poverty line than when LBJ signed the bill into law.

*Speaking of Nixon, it was on his watch that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) were created. These agencies were supposed to last 10 years and then dismantled.

*After 9/11, George W. Bush decided that all agencies that dealt with security (CIA, FBI, ATF, NSA, etc) in the United States needed to be brought together under an umbrella of one department that would report to the president. Not since the Truman Administration had a layer of bureaucracy been added to that size and magnitude and so quickly. You know it today as the Department of Homeland Security.

From spending trillions of dollars to prop up the economy, to absorbing toxic assets with tax payer money, to firing CEO’s from the private sector, Barack Obama is redefining Big Government’s role in taking control of our current economic crisis. Obama says he inherited the mess created by “the last eight years of failed economic policies.” His solution? Do what many other presidents have done before him. Insert Big Government programs.

The president said at Georgetown University last week, “we’ve been called to govern in extraordinary times.”

Can’t any time in American history be called “extraordinary” if the government feels the need to insert itself into the private lives of Americans?

FDR would be proud.