Spring Break
Time for state, U.S. to revisit the rails
Bryan Murphy
Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: Commentary
It's raining, it's pouring. The sky is falling. The end times are near.
And so on and so forth, if one is to listen to the few Chicken Little conservatives around the nation who threw their tepid little tea parties on April 15 to decry higher government spending and the presumed subsequent tax increases.
The tea parties weren't actually about taxes, government spending or anything of that nature, of course. If conservatives actually called about fiscal restraint, they would have been rioting during the last eight years as George W. Bush nearly doubled the national debt with more than $4 trillion in deficit spending.
But nope, no "tea parties" in sight during Dubya's terms. Probably because the tea parties were really all about hating liberals, hating that they're winning and hating that an African-American is president. This outrage is particularly amusing because most of Dubya's expenditures did nothing to improve Americans' quality of life - but Barck Obama's expenditures have the potential to do great things for this country, and particularly for Connecticut. No expense that Obama announced has the potential to benefit Connecticut more than his recent vow to invest $13 billion during the next five years to begin to develop high speed rail networks in 10 metropolitan corridors around the nation.
Connecticut, more than any other state, has an incredible amount to gain from railroad improvements, because our state's economic health is intimately tied to our rail system.
Most, or at least many, nutmeggers probably don't appreciate how much we benefit from the Metro-North line to New York City. But Connecticut owes the rail line much of the thanks for its status as one of the wealthiest state in the nation, per capita.
Even if you never go to NYC, and even if you live on a small farm and decry those city slickers, thank God for Metro-North, because your state and local government funding owes a great deal to those who commute to New York City to work.
And so on and so forth, if one is to listen to the few Chicken Little conservatives around the nation who threw their tepid little tea parties on April 15 to decry higher government spending and the presumed subsequent tax increases.
The tea parties weren't actually about taxes, government spending or anything of that nature, of course. If conservatives actually called about fiscal restraint, they would have been rioting during the last eight years as George W. Bush nearly doubled the national debt with more than $4 trillion in deficit spending.
But nope, no "tea parties" in sight during Dubya's terms. Probably because the tea parties were really all about hating liberals, hating that they're winning and hating that an African-American is president. This outrage is particularly amusing because most of Dubya's expenditures did nothing to improve Americans' quality of life - but Barck Obama's expenditures have the potential to do great things for this country, and particularly for Connecticut. No expense that Obama announced has the potential to benefit Connecticut more than his recent vow to invest $13 billion during the next five years to begin to develop high speed rail networks in 10 metropolitan corridors around the nation.
Connecticut, more than any other state, has an incredible amount to gain from railroad improvements, because our state's economic health is intimately tied to our rail system.
Most, or at least many, nutmeggers probably don't appreciate how much we benefit from the Metro-North line to New York City. But Connecticut owes the rail line much of the thanks for its status as one of the wealthiest state in the nation, per capita.
Even if you never go to NYC, and even if you live on a small farm and decry those city slickers, thank God for Metro-North, because your state and local government funding owes a great deal to those who commute to New York City to work.
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