Bush Wants All Cities to be Like Houston

Credit to Timshel for the link to the Pic article.

But even Houston has a damn light rail line.

A proposed light rail line from Louis Armstrong International Airport to Union Station in New Orleans is one of a dozen mass transit projects that would become cost-prohibitive under the Bush administration's plan to increase the required local contribution, according to a report released Wednesday by the Sierra Club.

Bush has recommended that Congress require local sponsors of such mass transit construction projects to pay 50 percent of their cost. Until now, local sponsors only had to pay 20 percent of the cost of projects including the return of streetcars to Canal Street.

Without having done the research, something tells me Houston probably forked over the minimum 20 percent.

I'm not all that surprised by the cuts Bush proposes--after all, backwards, half-assed thinking is the hallmark of his administration--but I'm amazed that the public has managed to turn itself so completely away from politics. Hell, the Republicans are looting the national treasury on a scale matched only by the looting in Iraq following Hussein's fall. Yet their thievery is greeted with a yawn.

The Pic article pegs the cost for the airport/Union Station line at between one hundred and three hundred million dollars. Without Halliburton stealing government money in exchange for not providing services in Iraq, there'd be plenty of federal cash to fund this. And it would benefit vast segments of the public, particularly if it became the first step towards a comprehensive system of mass transit. The reduction in pollution, the freeing up of money devoted to highway building (and repair/maintenence) the reduced number of accidents, and so on, would be a tremendous net gain. But projects benefitting the general public don't fly with Team Bush.

For them, it's one or none--percent, that is. If you're truly at the top of the financial slag heap, Dubya will be happy to work with you. Otherwise, you don't even exist.