Amtrak. Again.

President Bush's budget plan calls for cuts in Amtrak...

(Undernews)

I have a soft spot in my heart for rail travel, I confess. But even without that, there can be few better examples of the absolute, soul-numbing insincerity of BushCo's blabbering about reducing dependence on foreign oil - hydrogen! saw grass! (saw grass??) corn! drill Alaska to the bone! - none of which has much chance of ever happening at all, and certainly has no chance of happening any time soon, no matter how many bazillions of bucks get doled out to the corporate base.

But one will that will work, now, is putting those bazillions into public transportation at every level, everywhere. (If we can lose $12 billion in Iraq and call it no big deal, we can surely put a like amount into buses and trains.)

Amtrak runs and people use it. I've recently used it myself. It's a cruel way to travel, especially in the Eastern seaboard states where equipment and tracks are old. But with decent equipment and decent tracks Amtrak could compete effectively, even favorably, with airlines in large, populous parts of the country - the Eastern states and the St. Louis-Chicago-Detroit-Madison-Twin Cities markets come to mind. Even a New York to Chicago run, leaving in the late afternoon and arriving the next morning before office hours would be attractive if the trip allowed for a worthy dinner and a good night's sleep on board - difficult now, but certainly doable with some investment.

Yeah, I can get worked up about this. I would love to be able to travel more by train. Too bad the Feds (and it's not just BushCo - this has been going on for a long, long while) can't get worked up too.