Three Cheers for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Inventor of the Airborne Locomotive
https://www.westernjournal.com/author/mweinberger/?ff_source=push&ff_medium=conservativetribune&ff_campaign=manualpost&ff_content=2019-02-09

It took Thomas Edison years to invent an affordable light bulb, but that’s because he was a dummy. If he was really smart, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he would have done it by merely issuing a press release.

After all, if you can hold a news conference discussing your plan for flying locomotives, then surely lift off for the Union Pacific Flyer should only take a few more days.

That reminds me, I think tomorrow I’ll announce my plan to build a 49 cent dialysis machine. I should have it done in about a week. Heck, if I’m late I can always blame it on g****l w*****g, or c*****e c****e or t*********r ageism.

Seriously, the blatant stupidity and utter ignorance of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s “Green New Deal” is astounding. It is as stupid as trying to douse a fire with a mixture of kerosene and diesel fuel. No, it is stupider.

But this is what you get when universities teach classes in “economics” that do not teach how food, clothing and shelter are first produced and then distributed. After all, what is an economic “system” if not a method to produce bread, T-shirts and other things we consume — and then get those items to people who want them?

In a totalitarian regime the system is simple. First, a state employee uses force against a farmer and commands him: “You there, start planting corn.” Then, after some corn has been harvested another guy backed by the force of government tells a trucker: “You, truck this corn to The People’s Retail Store Number 43.”

And after the corn is delivered a third guy backed by government force is posted at the store. This last government employee makes sure that only other government employees get most of the corn. There isn’t much corn, and most ordinary people who don’t work for the state get very little.

That’s how “command economies” work. The state commands people to do something. But, people being people, when you FORCE them to plant corn they do a lousy job. As a result, very little corn gets produced.

In a free market economy, on the other hand, farmers plant corn voluntarily. No one forces them to do it. And to boot, the farmers keep any profit they make after the corn is sold. This provides them with an incentive to do a good job and they invariably produce more corn then the guys who were forced to do it.

Do you think Ocasio-Cortez learned any of this at Boston University, where she got a degree in economics? I doubt it. Instead, she probably learned about the “economics” of affirmative action programs and g****r quotas.

Or maybe she learned about the “economic benefits” of paying people not to work. There are plenty of those, because people who don’t work but have money go shopping, and shopping, the Boston University Economics Department has proven, stimulates the economy because it creates jobs for community outreach directors.

Or was it jobs for r********ns experts, or professional food defrosters? No matter. It was something like that. And these were Green Jobs, because they were performed on top of windmills, or was it underneath solar panels? No difference, as long as the Job Performance Manuals were printed with soy ink, or something like that — you know, something that was Dolphin Friendly, or like, something, you know, um, sustainably equitable.

Do you know what Ocasio-Cortez sounds like to me? She sounds like an immature baby who only knows two words of English: “I want.” She repeats these words over and over, but has absolutely no idea how the things she wants can actually be produced, if they can be produced at all.

But that doesn’t bother her, because she’s too, like, um, you know, stupid. But, she’s smart enough to know at least one thing: There are plenty of ignorant folks who think as she does. Some of them are even Democratic politicians who have co-sponsored her “proposal.”


She can become their leader, and that makes her feel important, which is like, um, you know, really cool, and diversified — and it will save the planet and um, end sexism, and you know, fight dis-equalitarian-phobia, or, um, something like that. Like. You know. Um. And did I mention it’s sustainable?

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website.

High speed electric trains have existed for years, are widely used in Europe and Asia, and could safely replace short and mid ranged air travel in the US. It is just a matter of what industry we encourage. At this juncture much more in the way of tax dollars support air travel this could easily be shifted to clean high speed rail. Are you actually foolish enough to believe she claimed to invent a flying train? Anyone dumb enough to believe that would believe Mexico is writing a check to build Trumps wall.

Except for entertainment on vacations, cases of tourism of beautiful lakes, Manhattan, and DC, passenger trains don't work in the US. And the Metro Rail for Manhattan loses money and gets a subsidy from people who get car license plates, even if they never ride the Metro Rail.

Amtrak loses big bucks.

I doubt that the DC system pays its own way.

There is an old law about cost/benefit analysis. When Baltimore had their subway completed, people did some arithmetic and found that tickets would not be enough to pay even for the daily direct operating costs and that with cost/benefit analysis the "optimal" decision was just to brick up the openings and f'get about the thing.

Wasting money, net, on average, makes everyone less rich -- BUMMER. And for the US, passenger trains WASTE MONEY.

The US HAD a quite comprehensive passenger train system, with stations in, and track to, nearly every tiny crossroads in the whole US. Could walk to the train station in Podunk and ride trains all the way to Claypool. Still the Model T k**led off nearly the whole thing, and the airlines k**led off the rest.

Problems:

(1) Except for the largest origin/destination pairs, spend too much time waiting on making connections. This is especially bad from small towns. For t***sportation in the sparsely populated rural areas, a Model T totally blows the doors off passenger trains.

(2) Trains are HEAVY. For light loads, have to stop all that weight, take on a few people who weigh a tiny fraction of that weight, and get that weight rolling again. All that starting and stopping is too slow and too expensive.

(3) I live 70 miles north of Wall Street and for a while was working on Wall Street and commuting home. I found that even during rush hours, I could beat the trains on time. Each day parking in Manhattan cost less than the two train tickets would have.

(4) Wh**ever short-medium passenger trains can do, buses can do better. But now the buses are not super healthy.

Another point is what want to carry along, luggage, brief case, maybe a few boxes. For a car, easy. For trains, a BIG hassle and now even worse due to the TSA. For any trip of a few hours, say, 400 miles one way, I prefer just my personal car: When I get there, I still have my car and don't need to use taxis or to rent a car. There is no hassle with the TSA or luggage, boxes, etc.

Since Amtrak loses money in the US North-East corridor, NO WAY can passenger trains break even in the US. Not a chance.

But to AOC, none of this rationality means anything. Instead, AOC is in the tribe of people who want MO GUMMENT MA! They just want more government and so that there can be more government, power, money, etc. With that power, get still more government. Dream of The C*******t Manifesto.

Then AOC wants attention. Her buddies in the media commonly also want The C*******t Manifesto but at least want AOC as click bait.

It won't work: Enough Democrats see that AOC will be one of the best players on the team of Trump and the Republicans for 2020 and will let her be a passing fad, soon yesterday's news.

As for AOC's "G****l W*****g"/"C*****e C****e", it really doesn't matter what we do as far as eliminating f****l f**ls or CO2 or wh**ever. With all the volcanoes spewing their CO2 and other toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, we stop using all f****l f**ls right now and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. When Mount Pinatubo blew it's top a few years ago and continued to spew ash and everything else into the atmosphere for a year, it wiped out everything we might have done up to that time. If you consider all the other volcanoes going off right now all over the world, we don't stand a chance at reducing the carbon emissions. AOC might as well just hang up her "Green New Deal" because it's not going anywhere, and it won't do one bit of good for this country or the world!!

And then there is Fukushima, which has been releasing cesium 137 into the Pacific Ocean and the atmosphere since 2011, that's coming up on it's 8th anniversary. And it isn't showing any signs of slowing down. That, of course, was an Extinction Level Event, which will eventually depopulate the entire planet. Nothing will be able to survive it, no plants, no animals, and no humans. Oh, there will be some who attempt to live underground, but they won't be able to survive the millions of years it takes for all the radiation to subside. And they'll probably already be so contaminated with radiation they'll end up with all sorts of cancers anyway.

I shouldn't go on about this, but I worry about my twin great-grand-sons who are only 5 years old and are going to have to put up with this. Not to mention my 9 grand-sons who are also going to have to go through this. I'll be 74 this month, have survived prostate cancer this past year thanks to radioactive seeds implanted in my prostate. I don't know how much longer I have on this old rock, but so far I'm cancer free and my PSA is down to 0.7. If I'm lucky maybe I'll be able to see the twins graduate high school. I've got one grand-son joining the Navy this year and his brother is in college in pre-med. Wants to be an orthopedic surgeon. The one joining the Navy has two years of college under his belt and plans to continue after he enlists so he can go to Officer Candidate School. The military has a college, The American Military College where he can finish his degree and the tuition is fairly inexpensive. I think it's $250 a credit hour. It's open to all military, retired military, and veterans. I don't know why I included this last paragraph, I guess to make the rest of it not sound so bad. Wh**ever.

Except for entertainment on vacations, cases of tourism of beautiful lakes, Manhattan, and DC, passenger trains don't work in the US. And the Metro Rail for Manhattan loses money and gets a subsidy from people who get car license plates, even if they never ride the Metro Rail.

Amtrak loses big bucks.

I doubt that the DC system pays its own way.

There is an old law about cost/benefit analysis. When Baltimore had their subway completed, people did some arithmetic and found that tickets would not be enough to pay even for the daily direct operating costs and that with cost/benefit analysis the "optimal" decision was just to brick up the openings and f'get about the thing.

Wasting money, net, on average, makes everyone less rich -- BUMMER. And for the US, passenger trains WASTE MONEY.

The US HAD a quite comprehensive passenger train system, with stations in, and track to, nearly every tiny crossroads in the whole US. Could walk to the train station in Podunk and ride trains all the way to Claypool. Still the Model T k**led off nearly the whole thing, and the airlines k**led off the rest.

Problems:

(1) Except for the largest origin/destination pairs, spend too much time waiting on making connections. This is especially bad from small towns. For t***sportation in the sparsely populated rural areas, a Model T totally blows the doors off passenger trains.

(2) Trains are HEAVY. For light loads, have to stop all that weight, take on a few people who weigh a tiny fraction of that weight, and get that weight rolling again. All that starting and stopping is too slow and too expensive.

(3) I live 70 miles north of Wall Street and for a while was working on Wall Street and commuting home. I found that even during rush hours, I could beat the trains on time. Each day parking in Manhattan cost less than the two train tickets would have.

(4) Wh**ever short-medium passenger trains can do, buses can do better. But now the buses are not super healthy.

Another point is what want to carry along, luggage, brief case, maybe a few boxes. For a car, easy. For trains, a BIG hassle and now even worse due to the TSA. For any trip of a few hours, say, 400 miles one way, I prefer just my personal car: When I get there, I still have my car and don't need to use taxis or to rent a car. There is no hassle with the TSA or luggage, boxes, etc.

Since Amtrak loses money in the US North-East corridor, NO WAY can passenger trains break even in the US. Not a chance.

But to AOC, none of this rationality means anything. Instead, AOC is in the tribe of people who want MO GUMMENT MA! They just want more government and so that there can be more government, power, money, etc. With that power, get still more government. Dream of The C*******t Manifesto.

Then AOC wants attention. Her buddies in the media commonly also want The C*******t Manifesto but at least want AOC as click bait.

It won't work: Enough Democrats see that AOC will be one of the best players on the team of Trump and the Republicans for 2020 and will let her be a passing fad, soon yesterday's news.

Except for entertainment on vacations, cases of tourism of beautiful lakes, Manhattan, and DC, passenger trains don't work in the US. And the Metro Rail for Manhattan loses money and gets a subsidy from people who get car license plates, even if they never ride the Metro Rail.

Amtrak loses big bucks.

I doubt that the DC system pays its own way.

There is an old law about cost/benefit analysis. When Baltimore had their subway completed, people did some arithmetic and found that tickets would not be enough to pay even for the daily direct operating costs and that with cost/benefit analysis the "optimal" decision was just to brick up the openings and f'get about the thing.

Wasting money, net, on average, makes everyone less rich -- BUMMER. And for the US, passenger trains WASTE MONEY.

The US HAD a quite comprehensive passenger train system, with stations in, and track to, nearly every tiny crossroads in the whole US. Could walk to the train station in Podunk and ride trains all the way to Claypool. Still the Model T k**led off nearly the whole thing, and the airlines k**led off the rest.

Problems:

(1) Except for the largest origin/destination pairs, spend too much time waiting on making connections. This is especially bad from small towns. For t***sportation in the sparsely populated rural areas, a Model T totally blows the doors off passenger trains.

(2) Trains are HEAVY. For light loads, have to stop all that weight, take on a few people who weigh a tiny fraction of that weight, and get that weight rolling again. All that starting and stopping is too slow and too expensive.

(3) I live 70 miles north of Wall Street and for a while was working on Wall Street and commuting home. I found that even during rush hours, I could beat the trains on time. Each day parking in Manhattan cost less than the two train tickets would have.

(4) Wh**ever short-medium passenger trains can do, buses can do better. But now the buses are not super healthy.

Another point is what want to carry along, luggage, brief case, maybe a few boxes. For a car, easy. For trains, a BIG hassle and now even worse due to the TSA. For any trip of a few hours, say, 400 miles one way, I prefer just my personal car: When I get there, I still have my car and don't need to use taxis or to rent a car. There is no hassle with the TSA or luggage, boxes, etc.

Since Amtrak loses money in the US North-East corridor, NO WAY can passenger trains break even in the US. Not a chance.

But to AOC, none of this rationality means anything. Instead, AOC is in the tribe of people who want MO GUMMENT MA! They just want more government and so that there can be more government, power, money, etc. With that power, get still more government. Dream of The C*******t Manifesto.

Then AOC wants attention. Her buddies in the media commonly also want The C*******t Manifesto but at least want AOC as click bait.

It won't work: Enough Democrats see that AOC will be one of the best players on the team of Trump and the Republicans for 2020 and will let her be a passing fad, soon yesterday's news.

Except for entertainment on vacations, cases of tourism of beautiful lakes, Manhattan, and DC, passenger trains don't work in the US. And the Metro Rail for Manhattan loses money and gets a subsidy from people who get car license plates, even if they never ride the Metro Rail.

Amtrak loses big bucks.

I doubt that the DC system pays its own way.

There is an old law about cost/benefit analysis. When Baltimore had their subway completed, people did some arithmetic and found that tickets would not be enough to pay even for the daily direct operating costs and that with cost/benefit analysis the "optimal" decision was just to brick up the openings and f'get about the thing.

Wasting money, net, on average, makes everyone less rich -- BUMMER. And for the US, passenger trains WASTE MONEY.

The US HAD a quite comprehensive passenger train system, with stations in, and track to, nearly every tiny crossroads in the whole US. Could walk to the train station in Podunk and ride trains all the way to Claypool. Still the Model T k**led off nearly the whole thing, and the airlines k**led off the rest.

Problems:

(1) Except for the largest origin/destination pairs, spend too much time waiting on making connections. This is especially bad from small towns. For t***sportation in the sparsely populated rural areas, a Model T totally blows the doors off passenger trains.

(2) Trains are HEAVY. For light loads, have to stop all that weight, take on a few people who weigh a tiny fraction of that weight, and get that weight rolling again. All that starting and stopping is too slow and too expensive.

(3) I live 70 miles north of Wall Street and for a while was working on Wall Street and commuting home. I found that even during rush hours, I could beat the trains on time. Each day parking in Manhattan cost less than the two train tickets would have.

(4) Wh**ever short-medium passenger trains can do, buses can do better. But now the buses are not super healthy.

Another point is what want to carry along, luggage, brief case, maybe a few boxes. For a car, easy. For trains, a BIG hassle and now even worse due to the TSA. For any trip of a few hours, say, 400 miles one way, I prefer just my personal car: When I get there, I still have my car and don't need to use taxis or to rent a car. There is no hassle with the TSA or luggage, boxes, etc.

Since Amtrak loses money in the US North-East corridor, NO WAY can passenger trains break even in the US. Not a chance.

But to AOC, none of this rationality means anything. Instead, AOC is in the tribe of people who want MO GUMMENT MA! They just want more government and so that there can be more government, power, money, etc. With that power, get still more government. Dream of The C*******t Manifesto.

Then AOC wants attention. Her buddies in the media commonly also want The C*******t Manifesto but at least want AOC as click bait.

It won't work: Enough Democrats see that AOC will be one of the best players on the team of Trump and the Republicans for 2020 and will let her be a passing fad, soon yesterday's news.