This is a perfect example of why you can’t rationally cut programs to balance every spending item. This is just stupid:
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed an amended energy and water bill Friday that would divert $1 billion from high-speed rail projects — including electrical upgrades on the busy Northeast Corridor Line in New Jersey — to pay for flood relief along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
But New Jersey’s two Democratic U.S. senators are trying to get the Department of Transportation to obligate the money before Congress gets hold of it.
Weary commuters on the Northeast Corridor between Trenton and New York City have long called for upgrades to the Depression-era overhead “catenary” wires that power the trains. Last month, power problems were blamed for three consecutive days of delays.The amendment to divert the rail money in New Jersey and elsewhere was proposed last month by a seemingly unlikely source — a New Jersey congressman.
“The flooding in the Midwest has been devastating,” U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11th Dist.) told McClatchy News Service earlier in the week. “We must be serious about controlling the deficit.”
A Frelinghuysen spokesman told The Star-Ledger last month the high-speed rail money had not been obligated and was therefore eligible to be rescinded.
Its all about the real Americans punishing the uppity east coasters.
Oh, I don’t know. I think they just want people to die. It’s about ‘real Americans’ like the Rethug Gov of my state and the Obama FEMA telling those facing floods out in the arid west, “We’re not going to ask FEMA for assistance before you flood, so you might as well abandon your homes. And if your community gets destroyed, FEMA won’t help you rebuild because you’re just not worth the money.”
Are you fucking kidding me? Do you know how many times I have had to stand during the first act of a play/ballet/concert in NYC because the stupid signal or electrical system stranded me on the northeast corridor train somewhere between Metuchen and Seacaucus? It got to be embarrassing when I was constantly trying to explain to my friends why I was late.
Jeez, those damn trains are always packed, always busy. Commuters use the suckers to death. Is this any way to treat your taxpaying, working and middle class riders? Unbelievable, not to mention the spike in fares. It costs me $10 more RT from central NJ to New York Penn Station than it did 4 years ago. $28 smackaroos and no discount for off peak hours. Now that the kid is too old to ride free, we might as well drive to the city and pay for parking. She doesn’t take art classes at the Met anymore on the family membership for this very reason. Sixty bucks in transportation costs per week for a single trip is just too expensive.
And inconvenient.
And slow.
Rodney Frelinghuysen: The last of the Northeast Moderate Republicans, now taken over by the pod people of the bat guano wacked out Right.
He also voted to cut funding for a program to assist seniors begun, I believe, by his father (the district’s representative prior to ceding his seat to his son). He must fear some insane Tea Party challenge, even in Morris County, one of the wealthiest counties in the US.