Is Georgia Spawning Rail Republicans?
Decatur Metro | November 10, 2010Over on Peach Pundit, one of their commentators suggested a couple days back that though new Republican governors in other states, like Wisconsin and Ohio, say they’re planning on rejecting hundreds of millions in already-awarded high-speed rail stimulus, lately Georgia Republicans have been singing a slightly different tune when it comes to some Georgia “rail projects”.
The post points specifically to recent Republican comments regarding a potential transit hub in “the Gulch” downtown.
U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Coweta County said he expects a highway bill next year “that will be able to authorize funds to beneficial projects, like this one, and I encourage GDOT to work to secure funding for this project in this bill.”
Previous transit critics also have come around, including DOT board member David Doss, who chairs the committee overseeing the hub’s development.
Though he still calls commuter trains “choo-choos,” he likes buses and high-speed rail for their potential to transform Georgia, and a transit hub would be a central location for those.
What’s pushing Georgia Republicans out of lock-step with their more traditional brethren?
For one – as the Peach Pundit post notes – Charlotte, North Carolina’s recent aggressive efforts in all-things-rail has Georgians of all stripes concerned. It’s one thing to oppose federal investments in rail and another to willfully turn down competitive dollars, only to see your neighbors benefit and passing you on the economic fast-track.
On top of that, Atlanta is a rail town. It’s got the triple-threat of history, infrastructure and topography on its side when it comes to competing with other cities to be a revived rail hub of South. You can’t go 30 feet in this city without tripping over old and new rail lines. In life, as in business, you need to take advantage of where ever you may have a competitive edge. Rail is Atlanta’s wheelhouse. Ignoring that advantage just seems like bad business.
So, even with the recent Republican landslide in Georgia during last week’s elections, it’s possible we’ll see many of our State’s leaders politicking to get their hands on that Federal money, if Wisconsin and Ohio do indeed turn it down.
Sure it’s great to have an operating philosophy when you’re a political-type, but sometimes you just have to do whatever it takes to survive.
Thanks to Davo for pointing out the PP post!
Well, we already have the busiest airport hub in the world. Why not also have the busiest rail hub in the world? Republicans are pro-business (supposedly), and I can’t think of anything more pro-business then making us a world recognized transit hub (I’m dreaming).
The incoming Wisconsin governor asked Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood if he could take that state’s $400M rail money and use it on highways instead. He was politely told that, if he wasn’t going to use it for rail, he could give it back.
To pick up on the North Carolina thing, GDOT has exactly 3 people who work on rail projects. From their website, NCDOT has over 50. NC also runs 3 daily well patronized round-trip trains a day between Charlotte and Raleigh.
Turning down the money should have little to do with one’s views on rail vs. roads, and everything to do with the fact that we are completely out of real money (vs. the new paper the Fed is now printing) and need to cut spending on absolutely everything. Or, in other words, falling behind Charlotte is bad, unless keeping up with that city comes at the expense of the entire country, which is worse.
All of this rail-mania ignores the fact that we are so screwed econominically that we are now directly financing the debt by printing money. You can call rail an investment all you want, it doesn’t change the fact that we don’t have the money to invest in the first place.
It doesn’t surprise me a bit that Republicans might leap at the chance to get this “free” federal money. That’s what incumbents do — spend gobs of money one everything they possibly can, then pat themselves on the back even as we inch ever-closer to insolvency. This is why I for one did not get very excited about the republican landslide. For the most part, nothing will change.
I guess the only question left is what will get us first, fiscal insolvency or global warming.
Since the trains won’t stop global warming, I’d say insolvency. Unless we have to burn the new money to stop inflation, which would release so much carbon that sea levels would probably rise enough to put half the country under water. But then we could all evolve into shark-like creatures, and won’t need trains (or cars) anayway. See, problem solved!
Wow– a conservative who believes in evolution…far out!
I graduated from high school and got a B in science!
Nice. I’ve always thought to myself: “Women would be so much hotter if they had sharper teeth and could breath under water!”
But seriously, from one peak oil fatalist to a fiscal insolvency fatalist, isn’t it sort of inconsistent to believe that we can avoid a dramatic crash from peak oil if we just let the free market do its job, while at the same time believing that debt can result in a dramatic, apocalyptic crash? Why is it that the economy can adapt to peak oil with gradually higher prices of oil, while debt will be a sudden catastrophe?
If I were to adapt the Repub peak oil argument, often cited here, to the debt shouldn’t I believe that if the U.S. debt gets bad enough, it’s credit rating will fall and the rest will take care of itself?
No, I don’t think so, because the issues are fundamentally different.
Debt is a financial problem that tends to erupt in a panic. We have had true panics quite regularly, with the last one on 2008. Everything seems more or less ok, then things very rapidly spiral out of control. The issue becomes one of confidence, and you can’t predict when confidence will collapse. To wit, anyone would have lent money to Lehman in 2007. In late 2008, no one knew who was solvent, so no one would lend money to anyone. Even companies like GE could not issue short-term commercial paper. Things collapsed in no time.
The problem isn’t that there is no money to lend, it is that no one will lend it. On a national level, we may get to the point that China and Brazil have funds to lend to us, but won’t do it because they fear they will not be repaid. To some degree this can be taken up by increasing interest rates, but if confidence in repayment is low enough, the money won’t be lent at any rate.
Peak oil, on the other hand, is simply a problem of commodity supply. Like any other commodity, prices will rise as supplies dwindle, and we won’t run out of it all at once with no warning. It’s not really possible for every oil well to run dry on one particular day. That means the chances of a panic are very small.
We had a big oil price spike in 2008 and it was nothing like a debt panic. Many people adjusted by using a lot less oil very quickly. Dealers could not give away SUVs, teleworking went up etc. All of that occurred naturally. At 150/barrel oil, no one needs more incentive to drive a small car as opposed to a Hummer.
Interesting discussion, though.
The time to worry about deficits is when we have money, not when we need it. It is undeniable that cutting spending will have a bad effect on the economy; the question under debate by rational people is how big.
I had no idea people other than Paul Krugman actually believed that cutting spending would harm the economy. Spending (by both parties of corrupt idiots and morons) borrowed money will have a much more deleterious effect on the economy, especially in the long term.
Governments are essentially the same as corporations and individuals; if you spend more money than you have, you don’t borrow more. You stop spending so much and cut back. One may think the U.S. Government does not need to subscribe to such fiscal realities, but it does. And the end result of more spending is a worthless dollar, stagnant economy and debts to China that can never be repaid.
Pay off your debts now, and save as much as you can. Because sure as Atlanta will never get rail, we are in for a Japanese-style multi-decade period of decline and irrelevance.
Krugman’s argument from the start has been that the stimulus was too small and not focused enough on creating jobs. He warned when it was passed that it wasn’t going to be enough.
So far he has been exactly right.
My super conservative neighbor, who happens to be a semi-retired civil engineer that worked for the state for years, a bigger-wider-roads man to his bones, has decided that rail is necessary. It is too expensive to buy property to widen freeways and the resulting additional sprawl adds to congestion rather than relieving it. He reminisces about the good old days when they could just condemn what they wanted and bulldoze in a few more lanes. While he realises that we have to increase density in the infrastructure we have, I think he day dreams of access to railroad right-of-ways. If he can’t put a six lane down an under used CSX line, the next best thing is a fast train — design jobs for thirty years.
I disagree, and consider Krugman to be dead wrong. A stimulus, no matter how large, only serves to hide our economic troubles (instead of fixing them). Using more debt to cover other unpaid debts is the worst kind of Ponzi scheme, and does not allow the market to self-correct.
Krugman’s argument from the start has been that the stimulus was too small and not focused enough on creating jobs. He warned when it was passed that it wasn’t going to be enough.
So far he has been exactly right.
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IIRC, his argument from the start was that we needed a “huge” stimulus along the lines of 600 billion. We topped that by a large margin. It did not work. He can’t be exactly right because we have no idea if an even larger stimulus would have accomplished anything. All we know for sure is that the first two rounds (everyone forgets Bush’s first stimulus) failed to keep unemployment anywhere near an acceptable rate.
All of the administration’s economic experts were dead wrong about the effects of the most recent stimulus. Almost everything they said the stimulus would do, it hasn’t. And these are Romer (Cal Berkely), Summers (Harvard), et al. So forgive me if I don’t care what these “experts” think. Reality tends to show they don’t know what they are talking about. And I say that as a former Econ major.
I’m pretty sure you do not, in fact, recall correctly. Krugman has been consistent in saying the that stimulus was too small (and far too much of it was wasted in non-stimulative tax cuts) right from the beginning.
So far, he’s been right on the money. The stimulus kept the economy from going into a full-fledged depression, but it wasn’t big enough to restart the growth cycle. It’s 1990’s Japan all over again.
The Google says I do recall correctly:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/stimulus-math-wonkish/
This contains the 600 billion, which was Krugman’s idea of “fiscal policy [that] should take risks in the direction of boldness.”
He’s a smart guy, but even Princeton professors can be very wrong when trying to precict the macroeconomic future.
Okay, if you want to play this game…
Read this one written only 2 months later, after the Obama plan came out, (but before it was passed) and more data was available on the depth of the recession:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1
At this point he is quoting the CBO as predicting that unemployment would rise above 9% without a stimulus. A month later he predicts that unemployment could go into double digits if the crisis spreads quickly around the globe:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/17/paul-krugman-stimulus-too_n_167721.html
Yet the number everybody remembers and quotes is 8%.
The time to worry about deficits is when we have money, not when we need it. It is undeniable that cutting spending will have a bad effect on the economy; the question under debate by rational people is how big.
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The debate you’re referring to is over. It was won by the “borrow and spend everything in sight” crowd. So we dumped $800 billion into the stimulus package, which followed Bush’s earlier $100 billion or so stimulus. And now you see where we are — neither stimulus delivered anything approaching the promised effects, with Obama’s stimulus being the most spectacular failure. So now, as I’ve said, we’ve turned to simply printing new money. But don’t let that deter you and all the other “rational people” from continuing your debate over spending even more in the hopes that somehow, it just might work. Definition of insanity and all.
Oh and by the way, let me know when we will “have money” and will be able to talk about the fact that we’re trillions in hoc to China. Next year? Year after? Because we have structural deficits that extend, well, forever, even if tax receipts rebound.
Well, it’s really impossible to know what the economic picture would look like if there was no stimulus. You’re right to hold the Prez to his “promised effects”, but between the two of us, I gotta say it’s pretty hard for you to prove conclusively that it was a “spectacular failure”, because you and I don’t have any idea what the alternative would have been.
Also, I’m sorta over this China-fear. I bought into it back in college, when no one was really talking about it, but I’m getting a bit skeptical now that essentially everyone believes it. China’s got its own problems, from an emerging middle class demanding higher wages, to a capitalist system inside a communist system. Yes, they have over a trillion dollars in our stock market and whatnot, but they made a conscience choice a couple decades ago, not to invest in their own country, but it America. And thus, as goes America, goes China.
Where’s the “patriotism” and belief that at the end of the day, democracy (or as I like to think of it “political Darwinism”) wins out over dictatorial systems?
“Where’s the “patriotism” and belief that at the end of the day, democracy (or as I like to think of it “political Darwinism”) wins out over dictatorial systems?”
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Patriotism and democracy have nothing to do with the situation in which we find ourselves. They have no effect on the fact that we, as a people and a country, have overspent ourselves to the point of catastrophe. Debt has no patriotism or political preference.
Sure, China has its problems. And they are massive. But you say “as goes America, goes China.” This goes both ways. When China’s bubble collapses, and it will, America will suffer badly, further exacerbating the failure of our efforts to get back on track. That collapse will mean America has no one to borrow money from in order to continue spending. That’s when the true global depression will hit.
Game over. Kiss your a$$ goodbye.
How did we build a substantial and secure middle class after WW II when we had debts higher than we do now? Why can’t China do the same thing now?
That middle class was built based on the fact the U.S. was the only country left standing with the infrastructure and industrial capacity to meet the needs of world consumption. Thus, there was no competition. That is no longer the case. Many countries today have the means to supply goods and services, so it will be that much more difficult for China to do the same.
Right, plus the debt was clearly temporary. WWII was over, so we were able to shut off the spending to a large degree. Now, the problems stem mainly from entitlements that stretch out forever and are politcally veru difficult to reform. It is apples and oranges.
That middle class was built based on the fact the U.S. was the only country left standing with the infrastructure and industrial capacity to meet the needs of world consumption. Thus, there was no competition.
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Right, plus the debt was clearly temporary. WWII was over, so we were able to shut off the spending to a large degree. Now, the problems stem mainly from entitlements that stretch out forever and are politcally veru difficult to reform.
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How were “the needs of world consumption’ paid for if there was no remaining infrastructure in Europe and Japan?
Answer: We paid for it ourselves or lent them the money or forgave their debt. How could we afford to do that? We were “the only country left standing with the infrastructure and industrial capacity”, infrastructure that was built with deficit spending during WW II. Infrastructure lasts if it isn’t bombed.
The debt wasn’t temporary. In dollar terms the debt was higher in 1956 than it was in 1946. But the Debt/GDP ratio dropped because GDP rose and inflation ate away at the value of the debt. We didn’t shut off spending. We built the interstate system, we sent the GI’s to college, we went to war in Korea. We also collected very high taxes from the wealthy, (who somehow still managed to “create jobs” the whole time).
It is true that the current problem stems mostly from entitlements and, may I add, military spending. We can deal with that over time if both sides will negotiate and compromise honestly. But projections of entitlement debt are no reason to cut all infrastructure spending.
We have much more to fear from deflation than inflation and if the economy dips again we could easily step over that line.
Correct — I used poor phrasing when I said the “debt” was temoporary. What was temporary was the sheer amount of federal spending during WWII. Federal outlays fell by almost half after the war. Obviously, we weren’t going to land in Normandy again just for the fun of it, so much of all of that miliatry expense was going to come to an end. Not so with our current budget issues.
I agree we should take a meat axe to current DoD spending.
Well the patriotism thing was sorta a joke. Half the crap people reference patriotism with has nothing to do with it.
Again, this just sounds like peak oil prediction to me. I guess both sides need an apocolypic vision to motivate them.
If we’re at the point of catastrophe, why isn’t that reflected in the U.S. credit rating?
Oh, and what’s the China bubble?
The best way to describe China’s bubble is from an article I read recently:
Premier Wen Jiabao, who has been surprisingly frank in warning that overinvestment and lack of domestic demand are producing an economic bubble in his country.
“The biggest problem with China’s economy is that the growth is unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable.”
Are there examples of stable, balanced, coordinated and sustainable growth?
If my children are any example…no.
But China IS investing in its own country in the form of modern infrastructure — think dams and high-speed rail. These kinds of investments LAST, unlike playing games with stocks and loans. China rising, no doubt about it.
The administration said, spend 800 billion and unemployment won’t break 8%. We spent it, and it is 10%. Pretty massive miss, no? If that’s not spectacular I don’t know what is.
As for china, not comparing political systems or anything, just saying they are financing much of our govertment spending spree. If they shut down their t-bill purchases, it would be bad for us.
We spent it, and it is 10%.
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10% is not 8%, for sure. But I buy the argument that without the stimulus, we’d be in even worse shape by now. (Count me as a Krugman follower.)
I am a Krugman fan as well. He has the credentials to back up his theories.
But I said you were entitled to holding Obama to his word, so I don’t know why you’re bringing up that “spectacular miss”. I said that EVERYONE is speculating when evaluating the effect of the stimulus because we have nothing to compare it to.
If China shut down their t-bill purchases, it would be bad for us and them.
“What’s pushing Georgia Republicans out of lock-step with their more traditional brethren?”
Why is it only Republicans ever do things in ‘lock-step’? Subliminal biases coming through…
And, for the record, I think if we built commuter rail and called them “choo-choos” it would garner a lot more support from our brethren in the northern suburbs.
I laughed at “choo-choos”. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.