sent to the whitehouse today:



Since it's in the news today, a needed reform of the transportation department is so glaringly obvioius: support our nation's train network. This is one more area where we need a *change we can believe in*, done by a popular, liberal president that can make a sweeping change in the face of gurgling right wing bluster.






I saw that on the dept of transportation's website about the budget, it says that 'the administration' wants to curb federal subsidies. Why? Why are we just feeding amtrak enough to let it limp along and fail, instead of truly getting behind a mode of transportation that can improve so much about our country, from pollution to socialization. Just look at this text from

the DOT website:


First there's what will be spent on roads:


Ensuring Solvency of Highway and Surface Transportation Programs
Fulfills the President’s multi-year commitment to invest in surface transportation without raising taxes or subsidizing transportation spending using other tax dollars. $39.4 billion for the Federal Aid Highway program.


Includes the final installment of the $286.4 billion in highway, transit, and safety program spending agreed upon in the last surface transportation reauthorization act.
Provides new flexibility to manage funds in the Highway Trust Fund so the existing tax structure can continue to support authorized spending for all surface transportation programs.


Then, what will be given to the railroads:


Taking Steps to Rationalize the Nation’s Intercity Passenger Rail System
Curtails Federal subsidies. $800 million for Amtrak, which represents a significant but necessary cut to the railroad's Federal subsidy.


Requires that Amtrak control its operating losses and focus on services that offer the most promise.


Reserves the bulk of funds for capital investment so improvements may continue along the heavily trafficked Northeast Corridor.


Reflects that Amtrak has taken few steps to align its business with the traveling public’s demand for intercity rail service and that it consequently continues to hemorrhage taxpayer funds.
***
$286.4 billion! vs $800 million. Please! There's no comparison. What should be done is to basically make riding the train so cost effective for the customer that it would be foolish to drive or fly. Currently, taking the train any real distance (in other words, taking the eastern seaboard out of the equation) it's close to three TIMES the cost to take the train than to fly... and takes twelve times as long. This makes no sense for anyone, and thus it's no surprise people think Amtrak is a joke.


It should be cheaper to take the train - and sleep on it in comfort - than driving the same distance and staying in hotels.


Further, the rule should be made to put passenger trains ahead of freight trains on schedules and tracks. It's rediculous that we put cargo ahead of people in our train schedules. Passenger trains should get there on time.


I could go on and on about how citizens mixing with one another and seeing the countryside will be better for society, but enough already.


I want to suggest that the Amtrak budget be figured out to truly provide good service to travelers, and then just pay that whole amount out of the highway budget... it'll be barely a rounding error for them.

Retiring to the truth

why is it that people we have in leadership positions wait until they're on the way out to find some backbone? Retired generals, outgoing senators... how pathetic.

"I feel I have to tell the whole truth... now"

Starting over: fixing the whole system

There's a lot of talk about campaign finance reform, lobby reform, etc. and I see that as simply treating the symtoms, not curing the problem. The way to solve the problem is to fundamentally change the system, so that perhaps, one day, we can have leaders who actually work for the betterment of the whole, not just themselves.

Some suggestions:

1. Change all elections to 'rank choice voting', also called 'instant run-off'. This creates more of an honest choice for people; they can actually vote for their favorite candidate first, not simply vote against the one they hate. It would also eliminate the need for these stupid primaries. (see below).

2. Rotate the 'who votes first' system. It's ridiculous that New Hampshire and Iowa are always the first to vote, and thus candidates spend huge amounts of time talking to every Iowan and NHer, while all the other states get ignored. Break the country up into 5 different groups of 10 (it's an interesting debate to decide whether to have it by region, or specifically break it up so that it's evenly distributed... I can't decide) and space those elections out by say 2 weeks. Every election, a different group of 10 would get to go first.

3. Create a blind trust campaign finance program. Robert Reich came up with this, I think. Every candidate gets a blind trust that supporters can put money into. The candidate doesn't get to know who gave how much. Support whomever you want, but don't think it's going to buy you influence!

4. Go to public radio and public TV to create long, serious, actual debates between candidates. Don't allow them to buy commercial time, it's simply garbage anyway.

a. Have actual debates, where candidates talk until the subject is exhausted. The moderator would be there to keep it civil, and to fact check. I hate how they get to make crap up and use it in their arguments.

b. Have like a final four debate series: two candidates face off, the winner goes on to the next round...

5. Please, Please, have voting over a whole weekend. We should be able to go to the polls from Friday morning to Sunday at 9pm.

6. Skip all this money and time on electronic voting. Use an old, reliable system. Who cares if it takes 4 days to count it all? With my rotation system (#2) it'll take 10 weeks until everyone votes anyway. This way, not only do we avoid hackers, mistakes, and ill-spent money, how they voted in one state won't affect how they vote in another. Who in the world votes for someone simply because they're already winning?



I bet I can come up with more, just give me a little while.

What I want my leader to say

Dear people out there, we know that you must have suffered a great deal in order to have done such a thing to us in New York. We know that you must have hated us so much that you have done such a thing to us in New York.
You may have thought that we want to destroy you as a people, as a nation, as a culture, as a religion. But really we don't have that intention. We may have done something or said something that has given you that impression, that has created so much hatred and fear and violence in you so you could have done such a thing to us.
We want to listen to you. Please tell us what is in your heart.
USING THE BOMBS IS NOT THE MOST COURAGEOUS THING
Using the bomb is not the most courageous thing. Using the bombs may show that we are afraid.
Using our intuitions, our understanding, and our compassion show that we are great, we are brave, we are courageous. And I hope that our politicians can use that kind of language.
We want to understand you. We want to understand about your suffering, your difficulties.
In fact, we want you to have safety, to live in safety, in peace, with a capacity to grow as a nation. Because we know that if you don't have safety, we won't have safety either. Because we inter-are.
We are connected to each other. If you suffer deeply there is no way we over here can be truly happy. That is the language of truth, the language of insight, the language of inter-being.

- Thich Nhat Hanh, monk

starting to blame the legislature again

Having just finished the biography of John Adams, my mind turns to the pathetic nature of our current leaders in Washington again. I know that most of my rants are aimed at the media (then again, maybe I need to type more of them up) but lately I've actually started to imagine that the legislative branch could actually be doing something.

Our little shrub leader has actually said that he's looking to congress for 'better ideas' on how to 'fix the Iraq problem'. Ok, here's what I want my legislative leaders to suggest:

Stop attempting to use violence to calm the chaos. Get the military out of Iraq; get those national guardsmen and reservists back home. DO NOT *leave* Iraq, just get the people who are trained (and well trained, and dedicated, and often very effective) to hurt and kill people out of there.

Use all the money currently going towards those violent means and put the Peace Corp in charge. Seriously. Get bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young people over there *fixing* things, making friends, building stuff. Imagine the peace corp with the kind of budget of the regular military... imagine what they could do. I can't, but I know it would be better than staring at these people through a gun sight.

As we all know, we 'broke' Iraq. Some would say it needed breaking, most would say that. I would. However, after we broke the dictatorship that was so horrible, we kept stomping on the shards, and stomping, and stomping.

I don't think many of even the hardest right wing folks believe we first went into Iraq under honest circumstances. I certainly don't, but I'm not going to spend my time trying to prove that now. The only people who should care about that is the prosocutors who should someday be going after the little shrub administration... I'll watch that show with interest. Until then, we need to act on today's reality: Iraq is a violent, horrible place where hundreds die every day from disease, bigotry, and political violence. And America is to blame for that. We went in there pretending we had a solution, and we didn't. Thus, we have the responsibility to fix it.

If we took this attitude, and totally stopped using violence to solve problems, much more of the world would jump onboard, and we'd have more money, resources, and expertise to call apon.

"That's not Walmart's Fault"

I just heard a pathetic debate about whether and how the Walmart corporation is hurting this country. Every time a point came up about job loss through outsourcing, paving over the countryside on the edge of town, loss of small town downtowns, the Walmart defender would use the same basic response, "that's not Walmart's fault". As in, "if people are willing to take low paying jobs just to work at Walmart, "that's not Walmart's fault", or people are shopping there instead of downtown, so "that's not Walmart's fault".

He's right, of course. Walmart doesn't actually do anything illegal. Just slimy.

I kept thinking about how it sounds exactly like drug dealers rationalization. 'I just sell them the drugs, I don't force them to take them.'

So much of our society is hooked on the pathetic high of low cost crap.

http://www.talkingtothewall.com/pages/nsindex.html

what does the government do anyway?

In light of the ongoing blindness to rational thought, public opinion, or expert advice in Iraq, I'm struggling to think of what exactly I do get out of the federal government... when I read that in the administration's 'Pandemic Influenza' plan, they won't:

- help fund local hospitals to help with further care
- help out law enforcement in any way
- pay for more drug stockpiling than the 25% funding they already do
- fund any of the planning at the local level.

Great.

why I think we're in so much trouble

I haven't yet sent this to my republican friends... but I wish I could get them to listen to it.

The best radio... perhaps the best entertainment, period, is the radio program "This American Life". You can listen to all their programs at www.thislife.org

and, specifically, this brodcast: Habeas Schmabeas about prisoners in Guatanomo Bay.

it's so, so sad.