TxDOT puts out feelers to replace Amtrak running the daily Heartland F

[Paulus]

Privitization means most passenger rail services in the U.S. will get shut down because of profit reasons. There are not a single private non-proft org that can single-handedly run this behemoth known as Amtrak.

Err, no. Privatization can take many different forms, such as different train operating companies bidding for particular routes on the basis of least subsidy required. That's ignoring, of course, that most Amtrak routes are either profitable on an operating basis (NEC) or are contracted operations to the states.

 

[afigg]

Privitization means most passenger rail services in the U.S. will get shut down because of profit reasons. There are not a single private non-proft org that can single-handedly run this behemoth known as Amtrak.

This is not privatization in that the states are not looking to sell off or have a private company operate the route for profit entirely from the ticket revenue. They are looking for private companies to run the service under contract in return for payments from (and control by) the state DOT.

 

[Shawn Ryu]

Listen to we Texans that actually aren't members of the lunatic fringe, its never gonna happen! Texas will be a Blue State by 2020

Oh god no

 

[Railroad Bill]

Listen to we Texans that actually aren't members of the lunatic fringe, its never gonna happen! Texas will be a Blue State by 2020

Oh god no

Blue as those beautiful bluebonnets

 

[tonys96]

Listen to we Texans that actually aren't members of the lunatic fringe, its never gonna happen! Texas will be a Blue State by 2020 and all the haters and kooks can move to Mississippi, Alabama or South Carolina where this kind of moronic day dreaming is considered the norm!

I respectfully disagree, Jim. Although I do hope you are right, I do not see the turn from red to purple until 2026 and purple to blue until 2032.

However, I completely missed the turn from red to deep blue of Dallas County. It happened one election cycle before I thought it would.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Henry J, the great Oracle of Texas.

 

[neroden]

Listen to we Texans that actually aren't members of the lunatic fringe, its never gonna happen! Texas will be a Blue State by 2020 and all the haters and kooks can move to Mississippi, Alabama or South Carolina where this kind of moronic day dreaming is considered the norm!

I respectfully disagree, Jim. Although I do hope you are right, I do not see the turn from red to purple until 2026 and purple to blue until 2032.However, I completely missed the turn from red to deep blue of Dallas County. It happened one election cycle before I thought it would.

I watch major trends, but I never try to time these things down to the election cycle.

 

[cirdan]

Getting back to the topic, we will be seeing more and more states putting their rail services up for bid. The states will be looking for better service and better prices than Amtrak has been offering. Whether other companies will actually be able to operate these services is another question. The freight railroads will have to agree to have someone else operate on their property and their opinions have generally "it's better to deal with the devil we know rather than the devil we don't know." As far as bus service replacing rail service, this is like the process used in deciding whether a new transit line should be built as rail, bus or not at all. It's due diligence. I wouldn't worry about that in most instances.

Maybe at some point the law should be changed to permit other operators to obtain certification and (if they manage to satisfy all the conditions) then obtain track access under similar terms to Amtrak, at least for state corridors. Opening the market to competition would be good for innovation. But the booking system should be kept centralized so as not to confuse passengers.

 

[cirdan]

One diabolical fact of American politics is that the more a state receives from the federal government, the more they hate the federal government!

Maybe it would be good if the low-taxation and small-government types were told to walk the talk and pay their own way. It might change their opinion pretty quickly.

 

[VentureForth]

I wish them luck. They won't get any better offers, though. And furthermore, TxDOT doesn't really have the option of changing the operator on its own; they need OKDOT's agreement, and everyone knows Oklahoma is the driving force behind the Heartland Flyer.

Yeah, but the politicians in OK aren't something I would count on for rational thought.

Texas will never be able to secede no matter how many moronic narcissists we elect. Partly because the federal government wouldn't allow it and partly because larger businesses currently based here wouldn't want to risk their future on a disastrous outcome.

Yep. TX gets $1.32 from the Feds for every $1.00 in tax revenue they send off. They can't afford to leave.

Citation, please? This source claims $0.91 received for every $1 sent.

Let's just give up now and agree that ANYONE can manipulate data to serve their cause.

 

[Ryan]

I'm not going to waste my time re-finding a citation you've already said you're not going to believe.

 

[Bob Dylan]

"There's three kinds of Lies: Lies,Damn Lies and Statistics!". Mark Twain

Texas is one of the Washington hating Red States that receives more of that Evil Federal Money than it sends to Washington!

Our leaders have no shame when it comes to hypocracy and posturing!

 

[henryj]

This train doesn't serve Houston. I have never ridden it and probably never will. I don't care what they do with it.

Henry J, the great Oracle of Texas.

 

[VentureForth]

I'm not going to waste my time re-finding a citation you've already said you're not going to believe.

Of course not. I was actually quite surprised you didn't cite to begin with.
Anyway, it is fascinating TxDot thinks they control the HF anyway. Oklahomans did missy of the footwork to get it going and maintaining it. Texas always benefited more, but until recently didn't pay near as much into it.

 

[Anderson]

Listen to we Texans that actually aren't members of the lunatic fringe, its never gonna happen! Texas will be a Blue State by 2020 and all the haters and kooks can move to Mississippi, Alabama or South Carolina where this kind of moronic day dreaming is considered the norm!

I respectfully disagree, Jim. Although I do hope you are right, I do not see the turn from red to purple until 2026 and purple to blue until 2032.However, I completely missed the turn from red to deep blue of Dallas County. It happened one election cycle before I thought it would.

I watch major trends, but I never try to time these things down to the election cycle.

Neroden has this one nailed IMHO. Anything can jerk a general trend around...you might have guessed where the South was going between 1952 and 2000, but the massive swings in the 1970s and 80s didn't stick cleanly to the trend lines. Also, remember that politics will tend towards a mean...which means that in some form, if the Dems were to take Texas something else would likely end up in the GOP column (possibly the Midwest outside IL) as a "natural" offset. "Permanent majorities" are rare and require very special circumstances, such as the Civil War (which took somewhere between 100 and 130 years to electorally unwind).

*sighs*

With that said, I need to put on my mod hat and note that while this thread is fine now, do be careful here.

 

[neutralist]

Listen to we Texans that actually aren't members of the lunatic fringe, its never gonna happen!

Never underestimate the "lunatic fringe". Everything is BIG in Texas, including their balls.

 

[neroden]

Also, remember that politics will tend towards a mean...

Not really true. I'm expecting a "party shift" in the near future where the parties end up with very different platforms than they have had during most of my life. The parties aren't really aligned with the issues of the day at the moment, and there's a number of issues where neither party represents the majority opinion; this is a situation ripe for a party shift.

 

[Anderson]

What I meant wasn't that parties would moderate...that's hardly a given...but that the electorate would tend to slide back towards 50-50 (or at least being ideologically competitive) as a rule. Of course, ideology and party can get disconnected...the Dems had control of Congress for most of 40 years, but factions within the party messed with the ideological situation therein.

A lot of this also comes down to the fact that, at the national level and assuming no structural issues (generally malapportionment, though gerrymandering and problems with the main opposition can play a role as well), it's rare to see one "side" have more than a 15-20 year run in control in a democracy that is mature. The exceptions in the 20th century all had something in this vein: Japan had a complex electoral system that was rigged to favor the incumbent party, Italy had an overly powerful Communist party which pushed most people into the other side's camp, etc.

This doesn't mean that parties can't change or implode (the Liberals in the UK imploded, as did the Christian Democrats in Italy, while the main opposition force in Japan went through about five names in fifteen years as parties merged and shuffled)...it just means that unless there's a major reason, sooner or later the voters will throw the bastards out.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

This doesn't mean that parties can't change or implode (the Liberals in the UK imploded, as did the Christian Democrats in Italy, while the main opposition force in Japan went through about five names in fifteen years as parties merged and shuffled)...it just means that unless there's a major reason, sooner or later the voters will throw the bastards out.

Off the top of my head...

Major Reason #1 Gerrymandering

Major Reason #2 Electoral College

Major Reason #3 Citizens United

Major Reason #4 CPD (Commission on Presidential Debates)

Major Reason #5 Targeted Disenfranchisement

Major Reason #6 Erosion of Investigative Journalism

Major Reason #7 Proliferation of Partisan Echo Chambers

Regardless of your political leanings the supposedly self-correcting "checks and balances" system seems to be full of gaping holes. Paper stickers sit where the gauges of truth should be and Popsicle sticks are glued where the levers of justice should be. So far as I can tell all our system is designed to do is throw out Problem A and replace it with Problem B. Then eventually throw out Problem B only to reembrace Problem A again. And on and on it goes. It's rather depressing to be quite honest. But maybe that's just me.

 

[Ryan]

It's not just you.

 

[neroden]

What I meant wasn't that parties would moderate...that's hardly a given...but that the electorate would tend to slide back towards 50-50 (or at least being ideologically competitive) as a rule.

Thomas Jefferson's "Democratic Republicans" had essentially undisputed one-party rule for 28 years. When that finally ended, it wasn't due to the revival of the Federalists -- the Federalist Party was *dead*. It was due to the Democratic-Republicans splitting into two factions ("Jackson men" and "anti-Jackson men").

Of course, ideology and party can get disconnected...the Dems had control of Congress for most of 40 years, but factions within the party messed with the ideological situation therein.

This sort of thing can go on for a long, long time.

A lot of this also comes down to the fact that, at the national level and assuming no structural issues (generally malapportionment, though gerrymandering and problems with the main opposition can play a role as well),

We do, of course, have massive structural issues in the US. People who do comparative analysis of the structure of different democratic systems tend to say that the US bicameral/Presidential single-member-district gerrymandered-House malapportioned-Senate electoral-college system is really pretty messed up. The states are slightly better off since the Supreme Court restricted the degree of permitted malapportionment in the Baker v. Carr series of cases in the 1960s, but still have problematic bicameral gerrymandered systems; Ohio is gerrymandered so that 50% of the vote will get the Republican Party 75% of the seats. The NY State Senate is actually malapportioned to the maximum extent permissable by court precedent, with the "Republican" districts all having 5% fewer than the ideal number of residents and the "Democratic" districts all having 5% more. (The NY Assembly is malapportioned the other way.)

it's rare to see one "side" have more than a 15-20 year run in control in a democracy that is mature.

Sure, but (a) we do have serious structural defects, and (b) when the voters eventually do manage to throw the bastards out, it doesn't mean that the current opposition is going to benefit. At the moment I'm pretty sure it *won't* mean that; people are really mad at the incumbent-protection organizations masquerading as political parties, and are grasping at straws trying to find alternatives.
Either the existing parties will re-form and become something totally different (historically, the Republican Party and Democratic Party both completely changed ideologies during the 1960s-1980s, and the Democratic Party completely changed ideologies a couple of times before that). Or parties will fall and new parties will arise, as with the demise of the Federalists and the Whigs and the rise of the Republicans in the 1850s. Unfortunately, our structurally-deficient system makes it hard for this natural change to happen smoothly. (It happens much more smoothly in proportional-representation systems -- they have their problems, but in those systems, the parties shift to reflect the public mood in a matter of years, rather than decades.)

 

[Anderson]

(1) I'm willing to put the Democratic Republican situation down to a non-mature democracy...combined with the Federalists having some almost hopelessly self-destructive tendencies. A lot of the indirect election features of the early American republic were notably dumped between 1824 and 1832 (most almost immediately).

(2) Also note that policy-wise, the Whigs were largely in line with the Federalists in terms of being pro-banking, etc. The Jackson Democrats were in line with the Jeffersonians. A party label was dominant more than anything.

(3) Finally...Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were all founding fathers, and I think that went a long way towards getting them in smoothly after Jefferson beat Adams (who was also on that list).

As to the point about parties shifting ideology:
-The Republicans switched in the 40s/50s and again in the 70s/80s. More properly, somewhere in the 50s a lot of the party seems to have thrown up their hands and just decided to do whatever was needed to win an election. '64 was a revolt against this (it was the first seriously contested nomination since '52 as well), but aside from that from 1940-1976 I can't see too much ideology in the party's presidential nominees (or indeed their presidents).

-The Democrats did a whiplash change in '32. There was a chaotic shift in the 60s-80s (in 1978 it was still possible for a staunch social conservative to challenge for a Democratic senate nomination in VA, and Carter was arguably more socially conservative than Ford was...or indeed than Reagan had been earlier) that didn't really play out all the way until the 90s. There was another shift among the Dems in the 1890s.

--The Republicans were somewhat more consistent in this period, but I think that comes down to winning the White House a lot (Congress was a more mixed bag, and from 1876-1900 the elections were hotly contested) and never getting a massive rebuke (the closest was 1912, which was in unusual circumstances, and the voters arguably repudiated that in 1918-20).

 

[neroden]

(1) I'm willing to put the Democratic Republican situation down to a non-mature democracy...combined with the Federalists having some almost hopelessly self-destructive tendencies.

I submit that the current Republican Party has similar hopelessly self-destructive tendencies. This is not really the forum to discuss this in, but there's a reason I brought up the parallel.

 

[jebr]

Yep. TX gets $1.32 from the Feds for every $1.00 in tax revenue they send off. They can't afford to leave.

I'm not going to waste my time re-finding a citation you've already said you're not going to believe.

I'd be genuinely curious to see your source. Both the Tax Foundation and The Economist peg Texas as a net contributor to the federal government, so I'd like to see how a source to the contrary sees it, their methodology, etc.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

The Tax Foundation numbers are weird. If the total of money sent to federal government is a smaller number that the total of federal funds received, why does it show on the yellow line as a number less that a dollar? IE: a donor state.

Oh wait you have to read the note on the bottom. These numbers are false math, been use to make a point, and should not be factual.

Side note per this adjusted listing. New Mexico is the leader of the pack ever year in federal funds.

Why or what does New Mexico do to earn that?