OBAMA'S

NOT-SO-HIGH

SPEED RAIL

Valuable Funds and Rights-of-Way to Go to

Waste Under Administration's "High-Speed" Proposal;

Your Taxes Will Go Up

The non-railroad-specialized media has done a terrible job of reporting the details on President Obama's high speed rail announcement. For those of us who are rail proponents, it has been frustrating to get all kinds of conflicting information on the routes.


Now, rely on www.RobertDyer.net to give you the real story.


There is good news and bad news, of course.


The great news is that California will actually receive a genuine high-speed rail line stretching from Sacramento to San Diego. Top speed will be 220 M.P.H. This will be the first real HSR line in the United States, and is fairly competitive with other such lines around the world.


The bad news?


The other lines aren't really high speed rail. Tampa-Orlando will be a decent 168 MPH, Orlando-Miami an even better 186. But those trains can't keep up with HSR speeds in France and China.


Washington D.C. - Charlotte, NC - 90-110 MPH. That's a great development in transportation routewise, but those speeds are not HSR.


Detroit - Chicago? 110. That's not HSR, either.

This is a huge disappointment. Although I disagree with the President on most issues, Candidate Obama promised he would support passenger rail and finally construct a high speed rail system.

Of course, experts estimate that a HSR system rivaling our European and Asian counterparts would require at least $50 billion.

Once in office, however, the President's priorities seem to have changed. Astronomical sums have been spent - over $1.3 trillion for the "stimulus" package alone.

Now here we are, with Amtrak itself inadvertently making the case for its own privatization, and a paltry $8 billion for a handful of kind-of-high-speed rail routes.

To waste most of that on traditional rail certainly fits the theme of high-spending, high-debt economics put forward by this administration.

But this stimulus is really just a "reelect Democrats" scam. The non-high-speed rail dollars are going to track and tunnel upgrades states were going to pay for. This frees up money those states can use to artificially balance their budgets. Thereby postponing coming to grips with their structural deficits. Maryland is not the only state doing this, but Gov. Martin O'Malley is counting on $900 million in stimulus funny money - just for starters - to balance his budget for FY 2011.

What does this do? First, it means we're either never going to have a full HSR network, or we're going to have to build HSR again, making these non-HSR lines a complete waste of money.

And second, that waste of money - along with the devastating levels of debt Obama is bringing to us - is going to hit you and your children with a Triple Whammy of taxes in the near future.

Here's how it works:

Many Democrats - with media help and Obama funny money stimulus funds - may be reelected in 2010. The stimulus will run out (and in 2012, a new Democratic or Republican president may take office). Now those stuctural county and state deficits will be unavoidable.

Montgomery County and Maryland will raise taxes on you at both levels. And then, Uncle Sam - broke from stimulus spending and out-of-control entitlements - will hit you for the Triple Whammy. Because it's your Federal tax money that Obama has been so generously giving to O'Malley and Ike Leggett.

Whether you are talking about fiscal responsibility, or high-speed rail, we are sadly on the wrong track.