Ever wonder why the Tea Party hates building green?

[madfoot]

Safe investment #1

 

[HoverBoarder]

Here is an example from a "Tea Party favorite"Yes, it is stupid.

That is a hillarious link.

If it is green, and it is helpful, than it is bad, we just haven't realized it yet. If it is green and has any negative affects whatsoever, than they told you so.

We live in a reality that is much more rich and varied than the Tea party one.

 

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Uh-huh, and are you still expecting ridership rates more than twice that of any other HSR project on the planet?

Ridership.

There's a brand new made up word for every occasion!

 

[BazBear]

Good intentions, possibly a waste of tax dollars in a budget strapped state...more like PROBABLY...tea party fodder galore I'm afraid

 

[mhaze]

Good intentions, possibly a waste of tax dollars in a budget strapped state...more like PROBABLY...tea party fodder galore I'm afraid

Well, yeah, that's what I was trying to say. Now if they were running that rail line down to the great bbq joint in Compton in South LA.....

No, seriously.

When a state or country is broke, a lot of things start happening that seem irrational or not optimal.

Reminds me of the half constructed freeway that stops dead, 20 feet in the air in the middle of Capetown.

 

[Virus]

They might justify it with crazy conspiracy theories. But in the end they're just puppets of the heavy polluters, that are opposed to everything green for the obvious reasons.

The obvious reason is that Green is synonymous with hucksterism.

 

[mortimer]

Ridership.

There's a brand new made up word for every occasion!

Are you suggesting that "ridership" is a brand new, just made up word? Because it's in the dictionary and has been for several decades.

 

[BenBurch]

Uh-huh, and are you still expecting ridership rates more than twice that of any other HSR project on the planet?

When gas is $7 per gallon? You bet there will be!

 

[mhaze]

Ridership.

There's a brand new made up word for every occasion!

I'm a little concerned here. Ridership, a word made up in 1968, describes public transportation use by headcounts.

It assumes that every passenger has one head. In California, there may be huge numbers of paying passengers with nothing upstairs.

But how can this be remedied if the staff and committees designated to fix problems have nothing upstairs?

 

[lomiller]

Maybe because "it's the spending, stupid"?

No, spending stupid would be a moon base by 2020...

Funny that economic conservatives need to be reminded what an investment is, especially one as safe a bet as infrastructure improvement.

No the really funny thing is what they think are "investments", such as in mhaze insisting what a great idea Newt's moon base plan is

 

[Tony]

It's silly to suggest that there are limits to how much of it the government can print and spend.

It's only silly to suggest it when a black godless muslim kenyan socialist fascist communist radical Jimmy Carterish democrat is president. When a good white Christian conservative American is president, massive spending is great!

 

[Trakar]

High-speed rail is a safe investment?

How on earth do you figure?

There's nothing magic about infrastructure investments. They aren't guaranteed to have positive returns. Especially on projects with massive cost overruns and delays, which we've already seen. And probably not the last of either if this continues to go forward.

Oh, and economic conservatives are quite well aware that it's possible to lose money on an investment. Have economic liberals figured out that truth yet?

HSR may be Travis's pet project but the actual statement for consideration was - "why so many Tea Party types were torpedoing mass transit and other green infrastructure projects."

Cost overruns and delays, are always a serious concern to any project whether we are talking the latest Military toy, or pushing to change national electrical code standards to facillitate distributed residential and commercial power generation. The issue isn't whether or not the end product is of value, it is whether or not the process we are using to achieve that product is functional and viable. Overruns and delays are not automatic, nor should they be accepted as expectations of any properly designed and implemented project.

Economic liberals and conservatives tend to place too much emphasis on their individual bias political filters rather than "economics" in the first place. This tends to produce politicized solutions to political problems instead of best-case economic solutions based upon the facts and metrics of the problems being addressed.

 

[mhaze]

No, spending stupid would be a moon base by 2020...

No the really funny thing is what they think are "investments", such as in mhaze insisting what a great idea Newt's moon base plan is

Right, since this thread is about taxpayers being forced to continue paying for a public project that is 4x cost overrun, and Newt's moon base proposal is strictly private funding.

One affects my wallet, the other doesn't.

 

[WildCat]

Ridership.

There's a brand new made up word for every occasion!

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ridership

In use since 1968.

 

[WildCat]

When gas is $7 per gallon? You bet there will be!

It's already more than that in some areas with HSR, and yet they don't have half the ridership rates projected for California's HSR.

 

[Trakar]

Safe investment #1

I haven't looked into this particular bally-hoo in any depth, as of yet, so I can't say with any certitude that Solyndra represents a bad apple, but as the saying goes, one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch. And public infrastructure investment has historically proven to be one of the highest ROIs available to public(government) investment. This is generally true, even when considering tax cuts as an "investment."

How Infrastructure Investments Support the U.S. Economy - http://www.americanmanufacturing.net/files/peri_aam_finaljan16_new.pdf

Issues and Options in Infrastructure Investments - http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/91xx/doc9135/maintext.3.1.shtml

http://www.usmayors.org/urbanwater/...nvtInMunicipalWaterandSewerInfrastructure.pdf

http://www.economy.com/dismal/article_free.asp?cid=226001&src=msnbc

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/infrastructure_investment_report.pdf

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/09/jobs_infrastructure.html

 

[TimCallahan]

No. Leave aside the innuendo please. I'm NOT SAYING that high sped rail or light rail etc is good or bad. I'm saying HERE is a project 4x cost over run, 13 years lagging on schedule, expected fed help vanished. As a project, it looks like well, it's a sure loser. I'm asking why are you in favor of something with such a high cost over run?

So, are you asserting that, had there not been these cost overruns, the Tea Party would have supported the light rail project?

 

[TimCallahan]

Right, since this thread is about taxpayers being forced to continue paying for a public project that is 4x cost overrun, and Newt's moon base proposal is strictly private funding.

One affects my wallet, the other doesn't.

Question: Why would private industry want a moon base?

 

[WildCat]

Question: Why would private industry want a moon base?

So they can turn the moon into a giant billboard! Think how many pairs of eyes see the moon every nght!

 

[lomiller]

Right, since this thread is about taxpayers being forced to continue paying for a public project that is 4x cost overrun,

Because a moon base would NEVER have cost overruns!

and Newt's moon base proposal is strictly private funding.

IOW he's promising that other peoples money is going to be spent making his election campaign promises come true.

The real issue here is mis-allocation of capital. Given what we know about how future transportation networks are going to have to work high speed rail is not a mis-allocation of capital, while a moon base is about as ridiculous an example imaginable.