This is a guest post from Renzo Gasolini who, with some painful satire, highlights how (even) the Chinese have “left behind” the United States in a key path toward a prosperous and climate-friendly future. For those who might question how much this rings true, perhaps it is worth considering that in Wisconsin.
Republican candidate for governor Scott Walker says he’s so opposed to high-speed rail that if he’s elected, he’ll give back every cent in federal funding earmarked for the project.
The $810 million for the rail line between Madison and Milwaukee comes from federal stimulus funds. Walker on Monday said even so, the state will be on the hook for $10 million each year in maintenance and other costs.
Walker wants the money to go to trains. Note that new road construction, as a rule of thumb, means about 10% of that figure required per annum in maintenance. The Wisconsin project: less than 1% in “maintenance and other costs” … E.g., once you build it, minimal cost to keep it running.
And evidently it is fiendishly disguised as a 260 mph train
Because the Chinese have one, and we don’t. And by God the Republicans are going to make damn sure it stays that way
China unveils 260mph train line
“A new high-speed rail line has been opened in China amid boasts from officials over the use of domestic technology to set world records…
…The China-made CRH380 train has been clocked at almost 262 mph – a world speed record – though it will usually operate at a maximum speed of 220 mph…
The line was opened as China prepares to have 10,000 miles of high-speed rail in operation by 2012…
Ten Thousand Miles of of High Speed Rail (HSR) by 2012? Holy fucking yikes!!
That certainly appears to be a very handsome piece of Godless Socialism
“The effort to develop China’s own ultra high-speed rail technology is a showcase project almost on a par with the country’s space programme as a symbol of national pride and importance.
Railway officials recently announced they were working on technology to boost speeds to more than 312 mph.
Railway Ministry spokesman Wang Yongping said all the technology, design and equipment of the CRH380 is China’s own. However, he acknowledged the project began in cooperation with Japan and other countries.
He said: “Now other countries are wanting to cooperate with us. They all want our technology.”…”
And well they should, Mr Yongping. And thank you for having the good manners not to mention you probably paid for the whole damn thing with what you made financing our wars so Paris Hilton could get that Tax Cut. I mean cuts. I am sure Paris will have that HST design of hers off the drawing board any day now.
Want to know what the Chinese really think about High Tech? If they can not eventually design it there and build it there they don’t need it
In other news, the USA maintains it’s lead in the creation of bogus Financial Instruments used to wreck Global Markets, and of course our dominant position in Boner Pill Science remains unchallenged
But I am confident that if we give the top 1% of this Country another tax cut they will be so filled with entrepreneurial vigor that they will finally unleash all those High-Speed Train designs they have been holding back from us. Seriously, the last eight tax cuts for the Rich were just priming the pump. This next one is where it will really pay-off for the Middle-Class. Trust me
“…High-speed rail in the United States currently consists of one rail line described by the US Department of Transportation as a high-speed line: Amtrak’s Acela Express service, which runs the Northeast Corridor—from Boston via New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, to Washington, D.C.—at speeds averaging 68 mph (109 km/h) for the entire distance but briefly reaching 150 mph (240 km/h) at times…”
Whoa…68 mph average? Slow down, rocket-boy. That is almost as fast as a 1934 Packard could average over the same distance
And if the Republicans have their way, that is how it will stay. Except we may privatize the Highway System to boot. But they will be damned if they are going to pay for a Devil’s Limb like Technology. Hell, they didn’t get where they are today by just burning people as witches for doing long division. Nope. And never you mind that if it were not for FDR and Rural Electrification these self-reliant free-market idiots would still be walking 40 miles to gawk at a light-bulb.
Meanwhile the equally Socialist but slightly less Godless Swiss have been busy building the longest rail tunnel in the world (that connects Northern and Southern Europe and is designed to move cargo at 150 mph). It eliminates thousands of truck journeys reducing congestion and CO2 and gives those pristine Alpine passes back to motorcycles as God intended.
Well, who wants a damn hole when you can have Creationism. So what if we are now dropping out of the top two dozen Countries in Graduating Engineers. As soon as the GOP abolishes the Dept of Education, and turns the The Texas School-board loose on the curriculum, I have no doubt that we will be back on top. Sure, once we erase Thomas Jefferson, rehabilitate Joe McCarthy, and, well, what says “speeding locomotive” better than a semester or two studying President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address right alongside Abraham Lincoln’s.
What was that you said, Mr Friedman?
“Here is a little dose of reality about where we actually rank today,” says Vest: sixth in global innovation-based competitiveness, but 40th in rate of change over the last decade; 11th among industrialized nations in the fraction of 25- to 34-year-olds who have graduated from high school; 16th in college completion rate; 22nd in broadband Internet access; 24th in life expectancy at birth; 27th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving degrees in science or engineering; 48th in quality of K-12 math and science education; and 29th in the number of mobile phones per 100 people…”
And yet there is good old GOP Lucy, teeing up the football for good old voter Charlie Brown, just like last time and the time before that and the time before that. We are actually about a week away from ceding control of the House of Representatives to a pack of idiots who have conducted the greatest 30 year rat-fucking of the American Middles Class, our Industrial Base, and our Financial Solvency in history.
Where are the Democrats holding up pictures of Chinese Bullet Trains and Swiss Tunnels, pounding the desk and screaming: “We are losing to the rest of the World. We are becoming a third rate technological power, and these Republicans are the idiots who are making it happen. Keep voting them in and your children will be going to work in Donkey Carts on Privately Owned and Maintained Goat Paths”
Are Democrats so bereft of a spine that we can’t even argue the bloody obvious anymore? (“Oooh, we don’t want them to call us Socialists”). Well guess what, Lionheart, the bastards are going to call you that anyways, and a lot worse besides, so you may as well sack-up and tell the truth. Hell, at least show the American People the bloody math.
Because we are being left behind. Which is a cosmic joke since we are the ones who don’t think every plan for the future ends with: “And then the Rapture occurs“. Nope, I have no expectation of getting Hoovered the hell up out of here. I am certainly not making divine intervention the cornerstone of my “Fuck science…let’s Pray and stomp Tiny Lesbians on the Neck” policy for America’s technological future. No, I think we have to make the place work, for us and our kids. And we will even make it work for all the little math/reality/history/physics-challenged Republicans. And that means we design it here and build it here.
But hey, why rock the donkey cart?
Stay scared. Stay timid. Let the race to the bottom continue. Don’t stand up to these idiots. The polls say it’s safer that way.
I am sure it will all work out fine. Insha’Allah
“Hurry Jim-Bob, we have to get these boner pills to market on this privately owned and maintained highway”
1 response so far ↓
1 frflyer // Nov 21, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Excellent
I suggest you submit this to the Op Ed of major newspapers.