Much to the chagrin-I am sure-to the Wall Street Journal editorial staff, this WSJ online “poll” has 72% of the respondents favoring an increase in Amtrak funding.
http://discussions.wsj.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=wsjvoices&nav=messages&msg=3498
Yes, I know these are not the responses of randomly selected individuals and may not reflect the opinions of the universe.
Jay
The Wall Street Journal’s readers want to cut down on oil imports.
Good point - other economists have commented this weekend that high oil costs are the largest threat to our economy.
dd
The Wall Street Journal’s readers are a pretty good cross section of the US business community, and these folks are NOT stupid. Nor are they politicians!
If the readers are so smart, how come several of the post compare highways to individual train routes. Some of those posts made me rather unhappy, as I wanted to point out the apples to oranges comparisons being made. I mean, come on, the Sunset Ltd makes something on the order of 38 other stops along its route. How much would the airlines make if they had to pay for their own individual (i. e. private, like the old “Union Stations”) airports, and the air traffic control. How much would a flight cost if you had to make 38 stops enroute? How much would driving cost if all of the highways were privatized? They may not be stupid, but they can still be as misinformed as others are.
As I remember it, these numbers match up pretty well with a Gallup poll done 8 years ago or so, with something like 70% in favor of continued Amtrak spending. It would seem that Amtrak has quite a bit of popular support.
Don
I think that Gallup poll was even more recent-something on the order of 2 or 3 years ago. However it is interesting that the numbers kind of match up. One would think that that kind of popular support along with an appearant willingness to have the tax dollars spent that way would cause the Administration to rethink there position. Not that majority popular support for an issue should be the answer for every time, but these days if something doesn’t fit the conservative ideology no amount of rational planning and debate is going to have much influence.
The way it seems to work is that since it takes huge sums of money to win elections, and big money is coming from conservatives with the attitude of either you’re with us or unpatriotic, Amtrak and many other popular issues are going to have a tough time.
Jay
You are right - I found the Gallup results. I shoulda looked harder before I typed. It was from July 2002. Roughtly 70% were for contiuned spending, 30% to stop spending.
Again, Bush has to be reminded that Mineta completely forgets about LAND USE!