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A History Of Wrecking Things

Posted by MrWebsmith on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 12:21:00 AM

Most everyone has heard or read about the tragic wreck that happened on the Washington, D.C., area Metro Transit Red Line earlier this week. Let me say straight up that I'm not trying to make light of this event but it does provide a vivid example of how government runs things.

National Transportation Safety Board officials said the system failed to heed a 2006 warning to upgrade or eliminate its oldest train cars, including the lead car of the train that slammed into another train Monday, killing nine people. Despite NTSB concerns that the 30-year-old cars couldn't withstand a crash, the officials said the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority didn't act. --from the Wall Street Journal article here

Public transportation, light rail in particular, is being promoted by some groups and politicians as an answer to traffic headaches in many metropolitan areas. However, reality met with the law of unintended consequences earlier this week. The dangers lurking in these outdated, overused cars in use by the DC Metro Transit were well known by the authorities. So why wasn't action taken to help prevent a disaster like the one on Monday? A glaring, disturbing pattern, year after year, is a primary culprit. The pattern of insufficient funding for the upkeep of the Metro Transit cars. In other words, caring for the rail system was RATIONED because public funding was routinely cut. We are told it will cost, for example, 300 million dollars to build a light rail system but extreme environmentalists and politicians often forget about those pesky little things called maintenance, operating expenses, and depreciation. Why should they care? Unlike in the business world, Congress will just raise taxes or ask the Federal Reserve to print more money if it turns out to be an ill-conceived plan. The Light Rail Myth 
 

One could also consider the congressional oversight of the mortgage and financial markets another train wreck that resulted in the market meltdown of the past couple of years. The federal government demanded that banks and lending institutions make bad loans even though many had warned again and again that a financial markets and housing crash would ensue. A Completely Preventable Crisis

I suggest that the Metro Transit tragedy is also a preview of what ObamaCare would be like. As the population continues to increase, and the incentives for innovation are obliterated by a national or socialized health care system, funding will be a perpetual concern for politicians. Which line will get the needed maintenance? Why spend needed money on repairing older models (senior citizens) or defective cars (people)? Rationing of care will become urgent as ObamaCare slides into an unsustainable bottomless pit of despair. Kiss Your Access Goodbye

Unfortunately, Monday's tragedy was not the first nor will it be the last disaster coming down the line from Washington, D.C. How many more train wrecks, literally and figuratively, must we endure before realizing that public funding of industry will always, uh, jump the tracks?
 
**Originally posted on my companion blog MrWebsmith's Reports
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How Do You Spell Corruption? One Letter At A Time

Posted by MrWebsmith on Sunday, November 30, 2008 4:30:53 PM
Since many in the mainstream media as well as the majority of our elected officials seem to have a lack of understanding (or a lack of fortitude?) concerning the true causes of the mortgage meltdown, I decided that spelling it out letter by letter may be of assistance. 

F - Frank, Barney - The guy who pledged allegiance to the soundness of agencies he knew were not on solid footing! He should be thoroughly investigated for, among other things, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to commit fraud!

 
A - A.C.O.R.N. - You know, the advocate corruption of regulators and neighborhoods group, a.k.a. friends of Obama. The organization that bullied banks into making bad loans but looks the other way when its own affiliates have 200+ tax liens.
 
N - Nancy Pelosi - Promised an ethical House as speaker but exempted her hubby's businesses from minimum wage increases. She is the quintessential liberal politician.  The lowest Congressional approval ratings ever have resulted from her leadership and yet it is always someone else's fault.
 

N - Negligent - Defined in Webster's Dictionary as "habitually failing to do the required thing." As our employees (yes, everyone one of you in Congress is elected to work for us, rather than against us) where was the oversight, where is the accountability?  Such gall you have in accusing others of the very crimes you have committed as public servants!!
 
I  - Interstate Banking And Branching Efficiency Act of 1994. Banks no longer had to compete locally, now they could branch out from coast to coast, as long as they remained in the good graces of Janet Reno by making subprime loans under the Community Reinvestment Act.
 
E - Earmarks - A world of bringing home the bacon while claiming ignorance about your own favorable treatment (Yes, I'm talking about you Chris Dodd, Kent Conrad, Joe Biden, and several others in the world's most exclusive club.)
 
M - Moses, Herb - Rep Frank's heart throb while Moses was an executive at Fannie Mae. So, Barney was involved in making laws that would/could/did benefit his lover's GSE initiatives. Well, did Frank block efforts at regulating Fannie Mae because he was trying to prevent a scandal at Fannie Mae or an enraged lover's wrath? Thanks Barney for screwing the taxpayers, couldn't you have kept that sort of thing between the two of you?
 
A -  Accounting standards - Enron, MCI, Lehman Brothers, and Citigroup pale in comparison to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yet, the very elected officials who caused this crisis are grilling others at hearings! If you egotistical brats left a private company is such disarray you "representatives" and Senators would be spending time in the big house - and hopefully, even now justice will be served and so will the guilty parties who committed fraud against the citizens they were elected to represent!
 
E -  Emanuel, Rahm - During a period of time when Freddie Mac was accused of campaign finance violation and accounting irregularities, Rahm was on the board of Freddie Mac and refused efforts to right the ship.
 
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Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers, other former executives sit in jail while Senators and Representatives who caused this present crisis condescendingly feign anger at those who were only attempting to comply with the very laws Congress had forced on the industry?  We're not done yet! In a future entry we'll learn how to spell FREDDIE MAC.
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