33.6 - The little Thing: Airlines ripping off last-minute passengers is emblematic of capitalism

The little Thing: Airlines ripping off last-minute passengers is emblematic of capitalism

Finally for this week, one of our occasional features, this one called The little Thing, where I was struck by something in a story which was being overlooked, not getting the attention or comment it deserved.

We start by noting that as Hurricane Irma approached Florida, there were, not surprisingly, a lot of people trying to leave.

One person, Leigh Dow, was looking for a flight online. Instead of what she expected for last-minute flyers, that is, flights for about $400-500 one way, the prices were running to $1700. When she found a Delta flight on Expedia for over $3200, she got mad enough to tweet about it - a tweet which went viral, sparking outrage and even moving two US Senators (Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey) and Representative Charlie Crist to write letters to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, asking her to look into reports of possible price gouging.

After a lot of harrumphing and fuming and fussing, Delta got Dow a flight for $315, the Expedia price was chalked up to some kind of screwup, some airlines capped their fares out of south Florida, and some others, such as JetBlue, cut their one-way fare to $99.

George Hobica, the founder of AirfareWatchdog.com, chalked up the increases to standard industry practice and dismissed the notion that the airlines were taking advantage of the emergency, saying "I don't think airlines would be callous or stupid enough to be consciously jacking up fares."

"Sure," he said, "some are high, but last-minute fares are often more expensive in general."

And, in fact, airfare data by Hopper, an airfare search engine, shows that the price hikes that took place the week immediately before the storm were similar to those from two weeks before that.

So all's well and no price gouging, right?

Except for The little Thing, the thing I didn't hear any comment on even though this certainly should have provoked it.

"Last-minute fares are more expensive." Well, of course they are, we all know that, but what does that truly mean?

It means that it is standard operating procedure for airlines to rip off passengers who need to get a flight last-minute for whatever reason. It's standard practice to jack up the price when people are in a take-it-or-leave-it situation.

It has nothing to do with cost: Certainly the incremental cost to the airline of the last passenger to book a flight is no greater than that of the first passenger to do so; in fact having the plane be fuller is to the airline's advantage. There is no economic necessity whatsoever for last-minute fares to be so much more expensive.

Except, that is, for the "necessity" of the logic of capitalism, the "logic" of "maximize profit any way you can," the "necessity" of "get more," and if you can take advantage of someone's situation to do that, then you not only can, by that controlling logic you "must." The fact that last minute walk-up passengers are for the most part business fliers trying to close a deal or make a meeting or whatever and who are working on expense accounts doesn't change any of that.

I've said before that it's not profit itself, it's the love of profit, where profit is made out to be the goal of economic activity, not the means of driving it, the love of profit is the baseline cause behind economic inequality and all the poverty, homelessness, hunger, and the rest that goes along with it. And the fact that airlines so casually taking advantage of last-minute flyers as a normal part of business, the fact that this provokes so little response, is proof of how wound into our psyches that destructive love is.

195.3 - Not Good News: Amtrak again starved of funds to invest in improvements

Not Good News: Amtrak again starved of funds to invest in improvements

Okay, now for the Not Good News part of this.

Right at the top, the funding levels for Amtrak in this bill are just that: level. As happens time and again, Amtrak gets enough to survive, but not enough to truly invest in improvements. And that level funding, when you allow for inflation, means a cut in actual ability to invest, improve, and maintain. For one specific example, it is going to make it difficult for Amtrak to update its aging rolling stock. Which is likely to hurt ridership in the longer run - after all, who wants to ride in an old, worn-out train - which I expect will be used as ammunition by the train-haters in the next assault on passenger rail.

Another and perhaps more important issue is that the bill achieves a long term goal of the train-haters, who have been angling for this since sometime during the Bush years: It separates Amtrak's Northeast Corridor service, which runs between Boston and Washington, from its long-distance routes around the rest of the country.

Why is that important? Because the Northeast Corridor is the only Amtrak line that makes a profit - which is unusual in itself because very few passenger rail lines anywhere in the world make a profit even when you limit the calculation to "above the rails," that is, to operating costs and don't include infrastructure costs such as for maintaining the rails and railbed and so on.

In the past, Amtrak has used the profits from the Northeast Corridor to subsidize some of the other lines. But the new bill blocks that: Any profits from the Northeast Corridor must be spent on improving service in the Northeast Corridor, starving every other line of needed support, the results of which will I guarantee will be used to fill another ammo box for the train-haters, whose entire attitude comes down to "well, I don't ride the train, so screw 'em."

By the way, would it surprise you to know that the Northeast Corridor is also the Amtrak route most often used by corporate executives and members of Congress, particularly between DC and New York? Probably not.

Making a virtue of necessity, the Midwest High Speed Rail Network said the clause about the Northeast Corridor could actually help in the longer term by boosting pressure to increase spending nationally.

I sincerely doubt that will happen but here's hoping that on this, their instincts are better than mine.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/fido-and-fluffy-may-be-your-amtrak-seatmates-under-house-measure
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/house-passes-amtrak-bill-boost-northeast-service-29393649
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20150305/BLOGS02/150309888/all-aboard-house-votes-to-continue-funding-amtrak

195.2 - Good News: Amtrak is funded

Good News: Amtrak is funded

So now we have one of those Good News-Bad News deals. We'll do the good news first.

In a rare bipartisan vote, last week the House voted to approve continued funding for Amtrak. The bill authorized $7.2 billion in support for passenger rail service over the next four years, of which some $5.6 billion, about $1.4 billion per year, would go to Amtrak.

The vote was 316 to 101, with all Dimcrats and a majority of GOPpers voting yes. Passage came after a attempt to strip all funding for Amtrak, a measure that would have killed national passenger rail service, was soundly defeated, 147 to 272.

Once again, the attempts to kill Amtrak - which by the way, was never supposed to survive; it was supposed to fail and has been systematically starved of investment from the get go - but the attempts to kill it have failed because even conservative GOPpers from  some of the reddest of states know that Amtrak is their only reasonable means of long-distance transportation and their constituents know it.

Amtrak survives. That's Good News. So let's get on board.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20150305/BLOGS02/150309888/all-aboard-house-votes-to-continue-funding-amtrak
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/fido-and-fluffy-may-be-your-amtrak-seatmates-under-house-measure
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/05/1368719/-Yesterday-House-Democrats-saved-Amtrak-proving-again-that-they-re-the-only-ones-governing
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2005/03/it-doesnt-take-much.html

Left Side of the Aisle #86 - Part 6

Clown Award: Rahm Emanuel

The Clown Award, given weekly for meritorious stupidity.

What got this award occurred a couple of weeks ago but I decided to include it because the dishonoree he is so thoroughly deserving. It is Rahm Emanuel.

Rahm Emanuel, the man who before spending a trillion - yes, with a T - dollars to bail out the banks, said "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." The man who as Obama's chief of staff called progressive opponents of his boss "retarded." The man who left DC to become mayor of Chicago and now continues to show his command of nutzoid indifference to reality.

The Chicago Transit Authority has announced significant fare hikes for its buses and trains. Commuters are understandably upset about the increases - but Emanuel responded with “Fares stayed the same. Basic fares stayed the same, which you cannot say about gas prices.”

Yes, basic fares, single-trip fares, are staying the same - but the cost of passes are going up significantly and the commuters, who make up 55% of the system's traffic, are the ones you use the passes, you twit.

But that wasn't enough for him: He suggested commuters who don't like the new fares are free to get behind the wheel and drive, saying "you will make that choice" - it's just a "choice" whether you will drive or take public transportation, ignoring the fact that many of the people who rely on the CTA don't have cars and can't afford them.

Rahm Emanuel - we always knew it, but thanks for confirming yet again that you really are a clown.

Sources:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-emanuel-on-cta-increases-not-fare-hikes-chicagoans-can-choose-to-drive-20121126,0,793097.story

Environmental credit where it's due

Updated One good thing Obama offered in the SOTU was a continued commitment to high-speed passenger rail. In particular, he proposed to have 80% of Americans have access to that form of travel within 25 years.

The proposal, however, worthy as it is on its own merits, is not without its difficulties and shortcomings and I'm not referring to financial or technological problems but problems in the proposal itself. The central one is inherent: Its focus is on the glitzy toys of 220-mph trains running in high-traffic areas rather than on building and maintaining an actual nationwide intercity mass-transit system; that is, a national modern railroad system. The National Association of Railroad Passengers put it more delicately but with the same botton-line point:

“The National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP) pledges to support the President’s visionary plan for high-speed rail” said Ross Capon, president of NARP. “And we are asking the President—along with the rest of the nation’s leaders and transportation officials—to work towards expanding the existing intercity passenger rail network to give 100 percent of Americans access to reliable, modern train service.”

The real goal, that is, should not be 80% having access to high-speed trains but 100% having access to good trains.

The other problem is a bit more subtle but still quite real: Focusing on high-speed rail actual undermines rather than advances that broader goal. What's envisioned is a relatively few regional hubs with rail lines reaching out like spokes to other cities in the region, an arrangement whose primary purpose seems to be making it more convenient for business travelers than taking planes. It proposes, that is, to enhance regional train travel at the expense of long-distance train travel. Want to go from Milwaukee to Chicago? You're cool; take the train. Want to go from Boston to Chicago? Um, yeah, you're still gonna fly.

Over the long term, the idea, supposedly, is to link those hubs into a single network, but the economic and environmental questions of completely revamping our rail system just to do the regional hubs are so great that anyone who thinks that we can skip the long-distance trains and get back to them later - especially when the criterion is "better than flying" - is dreaming. In fact, I think that is so obvious that I have trouble believing those pushing for high-speed rail don't see it.

A related point is that we have been here before. This is very similar to the notion advanced by the Shrub gang back in 2005-2006 and again in 2007-2008 as part of its attempts to dismantle Amtrak, just without the panache of high-speed rail: They proposed to break it into a series of disconnected regional lines. And then as now, the primary concern seems to be how to get business travelers from one place to another in the shortest time.

There's another "same as it ever was" aspect to this: The Shrub gang wanted to "split off" the Northeast corridor, which would effectively wreck the system. Now we have this:

Sitting beneath the famous zodiac mural of Grand Central’s main concourse, with the rumble of commuters and trains in the background, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held its first field hearing of the new session this morning. The topic was the future of high-speed rail on the Northeast Corridor.

Chairman John Mica led the committee’s Republicans towards what appears to be their emerging message on high-speed rail: they’re for it, so long as it’s built through public-private partnerships and largely limited to the dense Boston-Washington corridor.

While I'm tempted to think that this is because it's the line these people are the most likely to use, I think the real reason is more fundamental: The Northeast corridor was and remains Amtrak's only profitable long-distance line. So of course private industry, which abandoned passenger rail, which deliberately drove it into the ground to justify doing so, now that government has proven this line can be run profitably which of course we can't have, we can't have the government being able to do anything well, of course private industry is to be brought in as a "partner." Of course it's time for another "public-private partnership," which generally means, as here, public investment and private profit.

In fact, the comparison with the Bush years is even closer, as some voices want to throw the whole thing into private hands. One is the US High Speed Rail Association, which wants the Northeast corridor privatized. In an interview with Fox Business, Andy Kuhns, president of the group, said:

We're pushing for some private companies to come in and run the trains but we do need the new infrastructure to get the high-quality trains that are comparable to Europe and Japan.

Which rather blatantly translates to "Government, you do the work and pay the price to make it convenient; corporations, you take the profit."

Besides the obvious GOPpers and other right-wingers, the voices included former Pennsylvania governor (and Rachel Maddow favorite) Ed Rendell, who said

the federal government could lease the operational rights to a private company or sell the assets completely.

So even before any proposal is formally made by the White House, there is already bipartisan agreement that the future of public rail - isn't public. Not when there's a buck to be made.

Not everyone agrees, happily. Representative Nick Rahall, ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee,

said in his opening statement that a national rail network ought to remain the focus. “After all,” the West Virginia Democrat said,” it was a national vision that led to the creation of the world’s most advanced highway and aviation networks.”

He had already reacted to the SOTU by saying he

supports Obama’s call for more high-speed passenger rail spending as long as Amtrak, the U.S. long-distance passenger railroad, doesn’t get left behind.

Which is exactly the risk I see and that the NARP hinted at.

(Rahall, by the way, was a cosponsor of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act a couple of years ago, which provided some stable funding for Amtrak for the first time by providing around $7.5 billion over five years. “Americans, especially West Virginians, love their railroads,” he said.)

Long-time readers here will likely know that I'm one of those who loves the trains. Not only do I agree with the old Cunard line ad slogan "Getting there is half the fun" or at least it damn well should be, I agree with the travel writer (link misplaced) who said the best way to see the US is from the windows of a train. I say it as I have before: When you fly, you see clouds. When you drive, you see pavement. When you take the train, you see scenery. And yeah, I do walk the walk: I've logged something over 35,000 miles on Amtrak and we're planning another trip.

Amtrak has been a whipping boy of the right ever since it was created, so much so that it has a bad reputation as an inefficient boondoogle - a reputation, while not entirely undeserved in the early years, is now held mostly by people who have never ridden it.

What's not well-known even among its fans, though, is that it was never intended to succeed. In fact, it was set up to fail. How, you ask? Simple: The (claimed) idea was that Amtrak would, after a couple of years of declining subsidies, break even and "stand on its own." But that was a fool's errand and everyone involved either knew it and didn't care, didn't know it and didn't care, or knew it and looked forward to the failure.

[Amtrak] has struggled ever since it was formed," said John Spychalski, a transportation expert and professor of supply chain management at Pennsylvania State University.

He said Amtrak has been systematically starved of investment over the years and subject to unrealistic expectations that it could somehow get up on its own feet and become a profitable enterprise. "You cannot operate intercity rail service at a profit," he said.

Some individual lines may make money "above the rail," excluding the cost of basic infrastructure and maintenance, but "there is no way those systems as a whole are going to make money on passenger traffic," he said.

In fact, there is hardly an example any time anywhere in the world where intercity passenger rail has made money "above the rail" and none have done so when the other costs are considered. Amtrak was set up to be a failure.

But it has survived. Just barely sometimes, scraping by, but it has survived because it has proved sufficiently popular - increasingly popular, it would appear, as ridership was up 14% in November over the year before - that the wingnuts have been unable to kill it. Like the man said, "Americans love their railroads." The very fact that it has survived, it has done better than was expected, that it has even improved, is precisely why the wackos of the right hate it and why they are again trying to kill it. As part of its maniacal plan to slash government spending, the Republican Study Committee has proposed

eliminating federal subsidies for Amtrak ($1.6 billion annually), the Transportation Department's New Starts program for commuter rail and rapid transit systems ($2 billion annually), and all grant programs for intercity and high-speed rail ($2.5 billion annually).

So it's not good enough to spin visions of bullet trains and 220-mph trains getting you from one city to another faster than you can read your paper while at the same time failing to openly and aggressively support long-distance public rail as well as regional public rail. Not when the real system we already have is under threat.

Let me be clear: Obama's support for high-speed rail can't be doubted. Remember that the stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, included $8 billion for related projects around the country, an investment which is already starting to show results in a number of those areas. I have no doubt he is sincere in his desire for the "80% access to high-speed rail" goal.

But high-speed is not the only issue here and, putting it perhaps overly-colorfully, in considering mass rapid transit we shouldn't - in fact we can't, we dare not - put all the emphasis on the "rapid" to the detriment of the "mass."

Updated with a Footnote: Coincidentally, the day before this was posted the Wrexham & Shropshire line, which since 2008 had run trains from Marylebone Station in London to the town of Wrexham in northern Wales, closed down despite getting extraordinarily high ratings from its riders. What makes this relevant is that the line was one of three in the whole of the UK that ran without a government subsidy - and despite the high approval ratings, the company that ran it felt there was no chance it could be made profitable.

Which just goes to show yet another time that if you want to have an environmentally-friendly, efficient, intercity mass rapid transit system - that is, a modern railroad - you have to have public investment. Which is one of the reasons right-wingers hate it.

Flying off the handle

You obviously know about John Tyner, the guy who became an instant folk hero by refusing to submit to the increasingly-customary crap people go through at airports.

He refused to go through the full-body strip scanner, then refused the groin grope. Okay, he was told, you won't submit, you can't fly. So I won't fly, he says, gets a refund on his ticket, and goes to leave the airport, escorted by TSA staff. Then he is told, oh, no, you can't leave the security area without submitting to the grope. Once we pick you for enhanced interro- er, search, you can't just leave. If you do, he was told, you'll be subject to a fine of $10,000.

The TSA confirmed that, actually calling a press conference to announce it had opened an investigation targeting Tyner - and to note that actual penalty could be $11,000.

Apparently realizing that it is not conducive to institutional power to be the target of bad headlines and public mockery - including calls to investigate the agency and for people to refuse the scanners the day before Thanksgiving (one of the busiest travel days of the year) - T&A chief John Pistole told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that "I don't anticipate anything" coming down on Tyner, while continuing to insist that the whole security jazz is absolutely necessary and THE TERRORISTS! THE TERRORISTS!

Which is pretty much how things stand right now. But as is often the case, there's something about this, some side to it, that I think hasn't received enough attention: the fine. Yes, he's apparently not going to be charged, which is good. But that still leaves the fact that he could have been and other people still can be in the future.

Get this now: The only argument offered in this whole airport security theater, the only basis for demanding people surrender their privacy and their Constitutional right against unreasonable search, is that flying is some sort of "privilege" and so you "willingly" agree to be scanned, digitally-stripped, and felt up in order to fly and if you don't agree, well, just don't fly. In fact,

[w]hen he tried to assert his rights, Tyner was told by a TSA supervisor on tape, “By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights.”

Janet Napolitano, Führer of the Ministry for the Defense of the Fatherland, said the same thing, blandly declaring that "if people want to travel by some other means," well, they can go right ahead and do that.

That is, take it or leave it. And we do mean take it: Tyner's experience was far from the worst. For example,

[r]adio host Owen JJ Stone ... claims that as he was passing through airport security this past weekend clad in sweatpants, he was informed by a TSA agent that the rules had changed for those wearing “baggy clothing.”

Stone further maintains that the agent told him “I have to go in your waistband, I have to put my hand down your pants.”

The same article described the case of Thomas Mollman, 54, of Missouri City, Texas, who said at Fort Lauderdale Airport he was felt up

between the underwear, right on the skin, all the way around the back, all the way around my front, 360 degrees, touched inappropriately.

Meanwhile, a woman from Amarillo is suing the government, claiming that during a grope

the agent pulled the plaintiff’s blouse completely down, exposing plaintiffs’ breasts to everyone in the area,

in the words of the suit. It also alleges that security staff laughed and made jokes about the incident "for an extended period of time," with one male T&A employee telling her he'd missed it so "he would just have to watch the video."

Such experiences can be summed up in Napolitano's touching plea to air passengers in a USA Today op-ed:

We ask for cooperation, patience and a commitment to vigilance in the face of a determined enemy.

That is, we expect passive submission and obedience and BE VERY AFRAID!

But hey, tell you want, grant that. Grant all of that just for the sake of argument. Grant for the moment that flying is a "privilege" and we "give up a lot of rights" for that "privilege." Tyner was not going to fly. Tyner had agreed that as a result of his grousing about the grope he would not be getting on that plane. He had accepted the rules and was heading to leave the airport.

And that's when officials threatened to prosecute him! They insisted that once he was in the security area, he couldn't leave without their permission. This even though the entire argument of the "security" system, the entire rationalization for all the scans, scopes, and gropes, no longer existed: He was not going to fly.

It was a true Morton's fork: His choice was either to submit - which he didn't want - or refuse, leave, and get fined $11,000 - which he also didn't want - or, apparently, to just stay in the security area until he starved (or became "more cooperative," in the creepy parlance of the security state).

But more to the point here, what possible rationale could there be for prosecuting him for leaving? Having been told, having the whole basis for the entire process being, agree or "travel by some other means," when he chose the latter he was told pretty much in so many words that he couldn't make that choice, that doing so is illegal. Why? For what? What is the crime here?

The excuse - I can't being myself to call it a reason - for this inanity is that the T&A doesn't want THE TERRORISTS to go into the security area, "gather intelligence" - that is, look around - and then leave.

Time for the next italicized question: Just how stupid does T&A think these people are? Just how lamebrained do they think anyone planning a terrorist strike is? You want to "gather intelligence?" Fine. You get a ticket, you go into the security area with the rest of the passengers, you scope the place out, you go through the screening, and you get on the goddam plane!

Oh, no no no, T&A assures us. That's not what would happen. Oh no, a terrorist wouldn't try to be inconspicuous, wouldn't try to fade into the crowd. Oh no, a terrorist would refuse the screening, turn around, and leave - thus drawing to themselves the attention of every f'ing security guard in the whole damn place. And will the prospect of that undesired attention deter them? No way - but the idea of a freaking fine will stop them in their tracks.

Head. Desk.

We are headed in a dangerous direction. Someone noted that when things have happened on planes, it has been the passengers who acted and prevented a worse outcome - and expressed a concern that the sort of people who would act in those sorts of situations are the same sorts who are increasingly choosing to "travel by some other means" and what that might mean in a future incident. However real that worry, it is clear that a docile, compliant public shuffling through airports in their stocking feet and standing passively with their hands raised while a stranger grabs their genitals is not one conducive to a free society.

So have we established a police state? No, of course not. But have we established the conditions for one, conditions where citizens are expected to passively cooperate with ever-more intrusive, ever-more psychologically dominant official demands such that simply to engage in what is for many an everyday experience -flying - becomes an act of submission to arbitrary authority? Yes. Without question.

At some point we have to as a people say "Back off - you've gone too far." I say we have reached, indeed we have passed, that point.

Footnote: There is some pushback. The very fact that Pistole had to answer Senate questions about Tyner and the screening process was one, temporary though it may have been. Besides the petition at Firedoglake to investigate the TSA and the call to boycott the scanners on November 24, linked above, there is the push by the US Airline Pilots Association for its members to refuse to cooperate with the scanners and call in sick if they find the grope too distressing. Meanwhile, two commercial pilots - one man and one woman - have filed suit, claiming the procedures are unconstitutional.

Privacy being an area where the left and right overlap, a number of right-wing sources have also condemned the intrusiveness of the screenings. This is from the National Post, a right-wing Canadian daily (links as per the original):

Apparently Ralph Nader, an accomplished crusader if ever there was one (for safety, ironically), thinks the naked-picture policy can be beaten. A bipartisan group of New Jersey politicians is pressing the TSA to end the use of the porno-scanners. Congressman Ron Paul has introduced to the House this week The American Traveler Dignity Act.

Jeffrey Goldberg and even World Nut Daily have joined in.

The T&A remains defiant - but Tyner's case could prove to be the one, the always-unpredictable one, that touches a nerve in just the right way at just the right time to make an actual difference. We can certainly hope so.

A small request

So Barack Obama's choice to head the Interior Department is Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) and he has tapped one Representative Ray LaHood (R-IL, 18) to run the Department of Transportation.

According to the New York Times, Salazar's selection was "praised" by "oil and mining interests," who called him "open-minded" and "not doctrinaire," for example by "understanding" the supposed need to open public lands to fossil fuel development.

Meanwhile, he got "mixed reviews" from environmentalists, who charged he "often favors industry and big agriculture in battles over global warming, fuel efficiency and endangered species,” has "a disturbingly weak conservation record," is the "friend" of "oil and gas, mining, agribusiness and other polluting industries," and is "very unlikely to bring significant change to the scandal-plagued Department of Interior. It’s a very disappointing choice...."

As for LaHood, according to Jonathan Turley he

gleefully carried out the wishes of the Bush Administration on the House Intelligence Committee, which virtually shutdown any oversight of the unlawful programs. Even by congressional standards, he was a thuggish partisan who painted democrats and liberals as insufficiently patriotic or a danger to national security.

Overall, as Turley archly notes,

[w]hile liberals are reluctant to admit it, Obama’s cabinet is far more of an insider and establishment group than Bush’s cabinet. ... Obama’s “change” appears to be switching out the red team for the blue team - giving power to the same party leaders who have been ridiculed by voters for years for their failure to confront Bush on issues like torture, unlawful surveillance, and are cited for the very same abuses of earmarks as Republicans.

So here's the small request: Explain to me again, slowly and in great detail, why we're not supposed to criticize any of Obama's choices.

Amtraking the progress made

As I expect long-time readers know, I am a big fan of Amtrak and of train travel in general. So I found this from columnist Derrick Jackson, writing in the Boston Globe earlier this week, a happy observation:

Train travel is finally becoming a third rail of politics. ...

Suddenly, the traveling public is demanding the development of commuter and high-speed intercity rail. According to the American Public Transportation Association, light rail (streetcars) was up 10 percent in the first quarter of this year, commuter rail was up by 6 percent, and subways were up 4 percent (Boston subway travel was up by 9 percent).

And Amtrak, perpetual whipping boy of the "government can't do anything right" crowd, has seen its ridership up 11% over this point last year, a year that saw a ridership of nearly 26 million, an all-time record for the service - in fact, the fifth straight all-time record. Demand was so high over the July 4 travel period that people in Washington DC had trouble getting seats because the trains were all booked.

Meanwhile, travel writers are starting to have nice things to say about long-distance train travel.

Things are up enough that the New York Times has suggested that Amtrak's biggest problem may be an inability to expand fast enough to meet the rising demand. While that may well be true in the short term, in the slightly longer term, say five years, there is reason for optimism: Last October the Senate passed an $11.4 billion authorization over five years for passenger rail projects, including Amtrak, by a veto-proof 70-22. The House followed up in mid-June with a $14.4 billion, five-year, authorization package, passed by another veto-proof majority of 311-104. The portion of each directed to Amtrak would be double to almost triple the funding rate it has received the past several years, enabling significant investment in both new rolling stock and infrastructure improvements.

These of course are authorizations, not appropriations, so there may still be a fight ahead. Still, the overwhelming majority in each house of Congress has declared a willingness to make a sufficient commitment to passenger rail such that this very efficient means of transportation will do more than just squeak by in the face of yearly attempts to kill it altogether. There are good odds that a final appropriations bill will be passed this year that will contain a significant increase in funding for passenger rail. As Derrick Jackson said, "The luster of austerity is gone." And that is a very good thing.

Footnote: That New York Times article contained two bits that serve to point out the continuing political (as opposed to financial or operational) difficulties facing Amtrak.

This is one:

H. Glenn Scammel, a former head of staff of the rail subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the railroad should give up on some of its cross-country trains and redeploy the equipment on relatively short intercity trips, where it could provide enough frequency to attract new business. (Providing one train a day in each direction will not draw many new business travelers.)

Let's leave aside the fact that Scammel is not a member of Congress, he's a staffer - indeed, as near as I can tell, a former staffer. All of which makes him someone who in normal circumstances would be unlikely to be quoted. Let's also skip the fact that the National Association of Rail Passengers says "Scammel spent much of his House career badmouthing the long-distance trains." Let's just consider what he said. First, as the NARP notes, long-distance cars are not designed for short-distance travel and so can't just be "redirected." Second, Scammel's proposal is one of the old ones repeatedly offered up, essentially, for the purpose of dismantling Amtrak by envisioning rail travel as a series of disconnected hubs linking local cities - that is, seeing it in the same way that air travel is largely thought of now: as a means of moving business people around, just in this case between points too close to be convenient for flying.

Third, consider how odd it was for the Times to include this argument, presented as a means to achieve the apparently it goes without saying necessary end of "attract[ing] new business," in particular, new business travelers, in an article mainly about how demand for rail travel is already increasing so rapidly that Amtrak may have trouble meeting it. I can't help but suspect this is a rather revealing non sequitur, considering that the article was part of the Times' business coverage.

This is the other:

When Amtrak began operating 37 years ago, the plan was for it to eventually break even.

That is complete bunk. In fact, the plan was for it to fail, to last just long enough to justify pulling the plug without making it too obvious that the intent was to for all practical purposes shut down the system. It was demanded of Amtrak that it do what almost no other passenger rail system in the world had ever done, and I mean that literally: make a profit on intercity passenger rail travel. It would have been helpful if in writing about Amtrak the reporter knew what he was talking about.

It's a real mass out there

This has got to be one of those situations that "every dark cloud has a silver lining" was created to deal with. Saturdays's New York Times reports that

[w]ith the price of gas approaching $4 a gallon, more commuters are abandoning their cars and taking the train or bus instead.

Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing, with commuters in some towns risking a ticket or tow by parking on nearby grassy areas and in vacant lots.

“In almost every transit system I talk to, we’re seeing very high rates of growth the last few months,” said William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association. ...

Some cities with long-established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more so far this year. But the biggest surges - of 10 to 15 percent or more over last year - are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited.

Of coure, no good news goes unpunished, so the article also reports that meeting the increased demand is proving dificult because of delining tax revenues, higher fuel costs, and rising prices for steel needed for expansion. Still, it's good environmental (and fuel efficiency and global warming) news that mass transit use is increasing and in fact has been for a time:

The sudden jump in ridership comes after several years of steady, gradual growth. Americans took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation last year, up 2.1 percent from 2006. Transit managers are predicting growth of 5 percent or more this year, the largest increase in at least a decade.

It's appropriate that this story came out on May 10 because it's National Train Day. The event was organized by Amtrak to celebrate and promote rail travel. The day was chosen because it's the anniversary of the driving of the "golden spike" to mark the meeting of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, in 1869. The site is now a national park.

Amtrak is building on five straight years of record ridership despite the best attempts to the Bush gang to kill it off and the failure of Congress to adequately fund it. As the Detroit Free Press said last month,

Amtrak will serve a record 26 million riders this year, but Congress has consistently given the railroad hundreds of millions of dollars less than it needs to pay for capital improvements, including the replacement of worn track, repairing bridges and rebuilding rail cars.

President George W. Bush even tried to end federal assistance for passenger rail service. For next year, Bush has proposed cutting Amtrak by 40%, giving it half the $1.67 billion the agency is requesting. Amtrak spends $500 million a year on debt service alone. Bush's proposed $800 million for Amtrak would require the railroad to cut a large share of its 22,000 miles of service.

Put in perspective, the $1.67 billion Amtrak is requesting for the entire year is little more than the cost of one large planned highway project in metro Detroit: rebuilding seven miles of I-94 in Detroit.

Even so, Amtrak has managed to survive - something it was not expected to do; in fact, it was designed to fail. But it survived. It has been accused, abused, and misused, it has been the butt of jokes, it's path (and sometimes its travel) has been rockier than Marciano, Graziano, and Colavito together, at times it has barely scraped by in the face of simultaneous indifference and hostility, but it has survived. It even has some enthusiastic supporters (besides me, I mean), including a fair number of legislators from those "heartland" and "the real America" areas with which we elitist tree-hugger liberals supposedly have so little connection. For example, Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, was quite eager to announce that he was a cosponsor of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act to authorize Amtrak funding.

“Americans, especially West Virginians, love their railroads,” said Rahall. “Protecting and fully funding our railroads must be among our government’s top priorities. This bill provides a long-overdue infusion of funding needed to upgrade and rehabilitate our Nation’s rail network and, once again, give Amtrak a needed boost.” ...

“Rising gas prices and air travel delays have spurred a return to rail travel,” said Rahall. “At the same time, these record rail traffic levels are placing added pressure and safety concerns on our aging rail system. This legislation honors the important role railroads have played in our Nation’s history and the benefit they promise to our future by taking steps to improve and modernize our rail system to ensure its success for years to come.”

The bill, introduced with bipartisan support of committee leaders, would provide Amtrak with

$14.3 billion over five years, or an average of $2.86 billion annually, compared with the current budget of $1.2 billion.

What's more, some people want to expand the service: For one example, a coalition of folks - one which has obtained the support of the Kansas Department of Transportation - wants to extend the route of the Heartland Flyer from Oklahoma City to Newton, Kansas, about 200 miles north. There it would link up with the route of the Southwest Chief, running between Chicago and Los Angeles.

So the fact is, a good number of people see a growing future for Amtrak; with a little investment, some even see "a golden opportunity for Amtrak to prove itself." Representative Rahall is right: Americans love their trains, love them too much to let them die. Much of that love is, admittedly, suffused with nostalgia, but it also is a love that increasingly is being overlaid with environmental realism and financial practicality.

Choo-choo!