5 Reasons Right-Wingers Are Sabotaging Public Transportation Projects

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Sarah Jaffe

Why Do Conservatives Hate High-Speed Rail? 5 Reasons Right-Wingers Are Sabotaging Public Transportation Projects
In addition to busting unions and gutting voting rights, Tea Party governors are refusing federal funding for high-speed rail. What do they have against it?

July 22, 2011 |


High-speed rail is one of the rare areas where business, labor, and environmental activists are often in agreement. Republican transportation secretary Ray LaHood is a fan, as are, of course, President Obama and Vice-President Biden.

But Tea Party-supported governors like Scott Walker in Wisconsin, John Kasich in Ohio and Rick Scott in Florida have made headlines by refusing billions in federal stimulus dollars aimed at creating new high-speed train lines between major cities.

The trains would be electric-powered, providing comparable travel times to regional plane flights but cheaper, running on cleaner energy, and without the same security concerns. Real estate developers and other business types saw new rail lines as an opportunity to invest in new places, and the rail projects would create both construction jobs and permanent jobs operating and maintaining the new trains. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/151748/why_do_conservatives_hate_high-speed_rail_5_reasons_right-wingers_are_sabotaging_public_transportation_projects/

[nxylas]

1. Good article, but I can think of a sixth reason

Teabaggers fear that anything which benefits the environment is part of a communist plot to sap and impurify their precious bodily fluids. Apologies if I've written this before, but I can't help wondering what Dr. Freud would have made of "drill, baby, drill" and their terror of their emissions being reduced.