The following will not only help the railroad but it will help the general populace.
1/ Public Health Care. If the government pays for it that the businesses don’t need to have health insurance and neither do people. This should include pharmacuticals and rehab.
2/ Regulate the pharmacutical companies. They charge too damn much for drugs than companies that sell the same thing only with a generic name. Pharmacetical companies must continue producing drugs that are needed for patience even with patience with rare diseases. Failure to do so and the pharmacutical company’s patent on that product becomes invalid.
3/ Regulate the insurance company and make sure that their rates are reasonable as well as just. Failure to justify rate increases will result in government lowering them to an exceptable level to be determined by finacial commitee in Congress. Insurance companies that cancel insurance policies for unjustified reasons will be fined and some cases criminally charged as well as have a demarit point reduced on their licence to operate.
4/ Reduce rates on interests allowed to be charged by both credit companies and bank loans.
5/ Give tax adcentives to industries that choose to use rail either by intermodal, transloading or direct spur access.
6/ Give tax adcentive to trucking industries that choose to use rail either by intermodal or to operate transloading facilities. Also give tax adcentives for trucking industries to use domestic containers on chassis rather than conventional trailers
7/ Give tax adcentives to the railroad to increase capacity to accomidate demand.
8/ Pass legislation that gives STB the right to demand that railroads have to increase capacity for the good of the economy and to reduce bottlenecking. Give them the right to declared certain lines as Key Corridor Access. This allows for the prevention of abandonment and prevents mainline track, signals, and switches to removed.
You want to do something? Here’s what. Compel every entity, public, individual, and private, to internalize and capitalize their uncapitalized external costs instead of foisting them onto the taxpayer at large as they are doing now or will be in the future. Assume that any product dumped into the environment, whether it be fertilizer runoff, carbon dioxide, or household garbage, is now or will soon be an uncapitalized cost foisted onto the taxpayer, and require whomever is dumping it to either find a way to sequester it permanently, or quit doing it. Prohibit any company from employing anyone without paying their full health insurance costs of them and their dependents from day one, or better yet, simply nationalize the health care insurance system to get rid of all the useless bureaucracy and overhead of the health insurance industry, to avoid these costs being foisted onto the taxpayer. Prohibit any import of any good or service from any nation that doesn’t go along with this, or pay an import duty that matches the costs the exporter is not capitalizing, to avoid circumvention of domestic law by consumers and businesses alike, because otherwise we’ll all be cheating. Wipe out unearned capital transfers and their equivalent such as inheritances, legacy admissions to colleges, lotteries and games of chance, and hire, pay, promote, and admit solely on the basis of merit. Standardize the tests so there’s no cheating.
The market will reward those that can easily internalize their costs, and puni***hose that don’t. Railroads having few externalized costs will be rewarded, trucking and some others will have to greatly retrench. There won’t be much coal moving, but the passenger and general freight business will pick up.
Plans like this are highly unpopular because they make it difficult to cheat the system. It will be hard to get really rich, really fast. It will mean the only way you can get ahead is by hard work
Great. So as big brother cashes in on the red light runners, why stop at railroad crossings? Put the cameras everywhere? I mean, if you don’t break the law, you’ll have nothing to fear, right? Catch those litterbugs! Speeders? Automate cameras there, too. Install automatic sensors on cars that detect if you tailgate or forget to signal, and presto, within 60 days there’s another letter in the mail from Big Bother. Let’s join hands, and get on board the CAMERA TRAIN!!! all in the name of SAFETY!!! Privacy? Bah. That’s SO 1776. This is 2004!
Sorry if that got rolling a little bit. It’s too late at night and I just read an article about those photo cop thingies at intersections.
Unless of course you believe the representations of management that the microphone was to be outside the cab for pickup of horn and bell sounds and not for purposes of eavesdropping. I guess Canada doesn’t have real anti-eavesdropping laws…
Not really, but we don’t really seem to care overly much about things like that. It can be advantageous though. Like the police camera that records what the officer is doing and can protect him against citizens falsely accusing the officer, the crews can be protected by folk that might accuse the crew of doing something wrong that lead to an incident.
The following will not only help the railroad but it will help the general populace.
1/ Public Health Care. If the government pays for it that the businesses don’t need to have health insurance and neither do people. This should include pharmacuticals and rehab.
2/ Regulate the pharmacutical companies. They charge too damn much for drugs than companies that sell the same thing only with a generic name. Pharmacetical companies must continue producing drugs that are needed for patience even with patience with rare diseases. Failure to do so and the pharmacutical company’s patent on that product becomes invalid.
3/ Regulate the insurance company and make sure that their rates are reasonable as well as just. Failure to justify rate increases will result in government lowering them to an exceptable level to be determined by finacial commitee in Congress. Insurance companies that cancel insurance policies for unjustified reasons will be fined and some cases criminally charged as well as have a demarit point reduced on their licence to operate.
4/ Reduce rates on interests allowed to be charged by both credit companies and bank loans.
5/ Give tax adcentives to industries that choose to use rail either by intermodal, transloading or direct spur access.
6/ Give tax adcentive to trucking industries that choose to use rail either by intermodal or to operate transloading facilities. Also give tax adcentives for trucking industries to use domestic containers on chassis rather than conventional trailers
7/ Give tax adcentives to the railroad to increase capacity to accomidate demand.
8/ Pass legislation that gives STB the right to demand that railroads have to increase capacity for the good of the economy and to reduce bottlenecking. Give them the right to declared certain lines as Key Corridor Access. This allows for the prevention of abandonm
Egad, you’re quoting Ted Rall?!?! The same Ted Rall who shortly after the death of former President Reagan stated that he hoped the ex-president was turning a “crispy brown right about now”? That ignorant hate filled bigot? What’s next, a quote from Hitler?
The real definition of a poor person is someone who spends more than he makes, whether by lazy choice or unfortunate circumstance. I have been poor in the past due to both reasons, and God willing I can avoid being poor in the future if I can avoid the latter because I sure wont allow it due to the former.
The real reason someone votes for a capital gains cut (or any tax cut for that matter) is so less of his money is garnered by inherently inefficient government entities and more is spent in his own free will, the net result being more comprehesive macro-economic growth, thus more earning opportunities for those who aspire to such (and subsequently, less to those who do not aspire to such).
That said, to stay on topic, if LC really wants to affect a change on the right of way front with the fee simple plan, LC would support a separation of the current railroad industry into infrastructure companies and operating companies. To put it in simple terms, it is better for the economy if the fee simple designation applies to an entire corporate entity dedicated to such, rather than to a classic corporate body who might use the fee simple tax breaks as a tax shelter/write off/collateral/etc. The gist is that investors will know what they are getting into (safe harbor
Dave wrote:
<<
That said, to stay on topic, if LC really wants to affect a change on the right of way front with the fee simple plan, LC would support a separation of the current railroad industry into infrastructure companies and operating companies. To put it in simple terms, it is better for the economy if the fee simple designation applies to an entire corporate entity dedicated to such, rather than to a classic corporate body who might use the fee simple tax breaks as a tax shelter/write off/collateral/etc. The gist is that investors will know what they are getting into (safe harbor investments vs higher risk investments) when the security is more clearly defined, and you avoid any tendency to an Enronesque occurance in the future.
Absolutely not. Nice try though. The reason for the fee simple interest is not to make it easier on the bankers or investors, but to make the railroad companies more secure…