" …and building the railways of tomorrow". I assume this is a reference to modern high speed rail. Perhaps encouraging innovation and less regulations for freight. Meeting the challengers of tomorrow.
What did it mean to you?
Jetpacks.
NYC already did that!
meaningless words
Not much … without the actual reference itself, not just a snippet from it, and without the context. Perhaps the 175th anniversary of the facilities at Derby?
There’s as much transit content in “does this tram proceed to an estuary” and as much alternative transport in “my hovercraft is full of eels”.
Try again and put the context in this time… [:D]
Does this have something to do with ‘building the world of tomorrow’ at the immediately-prewar New York World’s Fair?
(Just as a comment, the Fair had perhaps the most awful, smarmy theme song that was ever written. It makes ‘We are the Children’ sound reasonably good by comparison … and believe me, that takes a heap of doin’.)
Yes, but is it worse than “It’s a Small World” or “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing?” Or, worse yet, “Watching Scotty Grow?” Cripes, now I can’t stop thinking of them! Damn it!
Yes. And “Billy, Don’t be a Hero”, or the song the otherwise-rational music teacher at my sister’s school overreacted to whenever he heard it, “The Music Goes Round and Round” … or any of the awful songs from that awful Sergeant Pepper abomination, which I overreact to whenever I hear it…
I was tempted to put up a link that has the song in it, but I find I have some vestige of compassion left. If you find it … you will know. But be aware that what has been heard cannot be unheard.
“And the railways of tomorrow.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CVTuOyZDI0&t=1h45s
Excerpt from transcript
Our horrible trade agreements with China, and many others, will be totally renegotiated. That includes renegotiating NAFTA to get a much better deal for America and we’ll walk away if we don’t get that kind of a deal. Our country is going to start building and making things again.
Next comes the reform of our tax laws, regulations and energy rules. While Hillary Clinton plans a massive, and I mean massive, tax increase, I have proposed the largest tax reduction of any candidate who has run for president this year, Democrat or Republican. Middle-income Americans will experience profound relief, and taxes will be greatly simplified for everyone. I mean everyone.
Excerpted from an NBC Today Show, originally broadcast February 17, 1979 hyping up the new NBC show “Supertrain”, one of the more infamous failures on network television. See Jane Pauley, young Tom Brokaw, and Gene Shalit introduce a filmed package (remember those?) by Jack Perkins at the MGM lot where Supertrain was filmed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBMVAzIMl5A
Drive your Chevy Citation to the station. All aboard! Next stop is the future.
Thank you, Mike. I am out of the political loop too much, I guess. Strange that a Google search on the phrase produced utterly no reference to this as of this morning – I expect that will change fairly quickly.
Wonder if he left ‘railways’ to the end for special emphasis, or just because that’s where he ranks them?
Wasn’t the theme song to the 1939 World’s Fair “Hi-Ho, Come to the Fair?”
Which to my knowledge actually predates the '39-'40 World’s Fair. Maybe DaveKlepper needs to sound off on this, he was there!
I’ve heard “Come to the Fair,” I think it’s actually quite charming. It’ s a hell of a lot better than “It’s A Small World After All” which I only mentioned because someone else did first!
“Small World” makes my skin crawl, it makes Lady Firestorm homicidal!
Thanks Wanswheel … That was the reference, just didn’t want to venture too far. So glad you picked up on it… I thought it was a fairly profound statement … He hesitated a second before adding it on
He has talked previously about High Soeed Rail and how the rest of the world is ahead of us. I find it at least encouraging that it’s mentioned.
I just hope the trillions of dollars flow in before we build the roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, and the railways of tommorw.
There are many that believe that the way to cause trillions of dollars to flow in is to borrow and spend on those infracstructure items.
I meant the theme song to the World of Tomorrow. “Dawn of a New Day”. Especially awful if you know who wrote the words and the music.
Conventional wisdom but Indiana has already proven it can be done without spending a lot of State or Federal money. How? By selling rights to the private sector to use private sector money and project management over time. The State uses it’s credit to issue bonds BUT the interest and payback of those bonds is done by the private contractor via tolls collected (also could be done via real estate value capture…but this latter idea has not been tried yet and is controversial).
My view on this is we need to prioritize projects on return back to the country in GDP growth, cost avoidance, etc. For example, agree with others on the controversial position that rail is not always the immediate best selection for improvement in transportation between two cities. Mass Transit and Rail do improve what Economists refer to as Economic velocity which they attribute to GDP growth. The bottom line is, and using hypotheticals here these are not actual stats… do we want to build a $100-120 Billion HSR system in California if the payback on that money takes 50 years to accompish via GDP growth. Could we obtain a faster return with that money by improving water use and retention, building reservoirs for prolonged droughts?.
We do have a limited pool of money to spend and we can’t make everyone happy as there isn’t enough money. So I think our priorities should be on projects that advance us the most on GDP and tax collection growth.
How do we best build and advance t
Right, I did a bit of further research and sure, “Dawn of a New Day” isn’t the best of Gershwin’s efforts, however the Horace Height (on You Tube) arrangement isn’t too bad, it has kind of a neat 30’s “Big Band” vibe to it if you appreciate that kind of music.
OK, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, or Tommy Dorsey it ain’t, but I’ve heard worse.
Did you go to the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair? We did, and on the way home Mom (a New York City girl) said, “Well, it was all right, but the one in 1939 was a LOT better!”
Thanks a lot Mom! Ruined it for me!
…and thus we have the perpetual conundrum of economic activity.
Raw materials rarely, if ever, exist where products are manufactured and the manufactured products are rarely, if ever, fully consumed where they are manufactured.
To develop a economic stream you need facilities to transport the raw materials to the manufacturer and facilities to move and distribute the manufacturered products to the ultimate consumer. All of these operations require transportation - if it isn’t built it won’t happen.
Typical mom, typical old phart! Things were ALWAYS better ‘in my day’ than they are now.
I went to the '64 World’s Fair, probably at just the right age, and had one of the best times I can remember. The only bad thing was that I was just in the throes of requiring permanent glasses, didn’t remember to take them … and so my memory of the high point, the enormous Marklin railroad layout, is of a blurred mountain with only a few little trains visible in the foreground. Remember waiting with some excitement for the Hawaii Pavilion restaurant volcanoes to erupt. That was the first place I saw ‘diffraction grating’ jewels; that was really high technology you could hold in your hand. My father got my mom on the flume ride; I forget what story he told, but she wouldn’t talk to him much for a while afterward. You’d think I would remember the E units … but I don’t, probably didn’t remember to look for them. I waited with great excitement for the return next summer … but we never went, and to this day I still watch clips of the goings-on with nostalgia.
(One of my favorite things, from the first time I saw it in my grandparents’ house, was the little ‘souvenir’ Trylon and Perisphere thermometer they brought back. That, and my little ‘I have seen the future’ button (that I wear when giving presentations sometimes) are still prized possessions all these many years later.)
Never went back to see the burnt porkchop unisphere or the surviving buildings, although it was fun to see them from the road to Kennedy Airport. I remember how amazing all those buildings were ‘in the day’ and couldn’t believe all that bustle and all those crowds could just disappear so completely when they had such a cheerful and positive message for us all.
I