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Craig Pirrong points out the ways the left is exploiting the train tragedy. Wait ’til you see what the New Yorker cooked up.
One of the least savory aspects of human behavior is the tendency to exploit tragedy for personal or political ends. This low tendency was on display in spades in the aftermath of the Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia. Before the bodies of the dead were even cold, pundits and politicians were out in force moaning that the tragedy proved the lamentable decay of American infrastructure, and the lack of government spending on it. Remarkably (or maybe not), the lamentations have continued even after it was revealed that the train had been going more than twice the speed limit, thereby making it highly unlikely that shoddy track or a poorly maintained train was to blame. No tragedy should go to waste, apparently, and the facts shouldn’t get in the way of a politically useful narrative.
There are many examples of the mo’ guvmint types exploiting the deaths of 8 people in Philly, but for 99.9 percent pure, unadulterated stupidity, you have to read this screed by Adam Gopnik* in The New Yorker. Where to begin?
To leverage the Philadelphia tragedy into a justification for more government spending, Gopnik has to claim that railroads, and passenger railroads in particular, are public goods:
“And everyone knows that American infrastructure—what used to be called our public works, or just our bridges and railways, once the envy of the world—has now been stripped bare, and is being stripped ever barer.
. . . .
This week’s tragedy also, perhaps, put a stop for a moment to the license for mocking those who use the train—mocking Amtrak’s northeast “corridor” was a standard subject not just for satire, which everyone deserves, but also for sneering, which no one does. For the prejudice against trains is not a prejudice against an élite but against a commonality. The late Tony Judt, who was hardly anyone’s idea of a leftist softy, devoted much of his last, heroic work, written in conditions of near-impossible personal suffering, to the subject of … trains: trains as symbols of the public good, trains as a triumph of the liberal imagination, trains as the “symbol and symptom of modernity,” and modernity at its best. “The railways were the necessary and natural accompaniment to the emergence of civil society,” he wrote. “They are a collective project for individual benefit … something that the market cannot accomplish, except, on its own account of itself, by happy inadvertence. … If we lose the railways we shall not just have lost a valuable practical asset. We shall have acknowledged that we have forgotten how to live collectively.”
Trains take us places together. (You can read good books on them, too.) Every time you ride one, you look outside, and you look inside, and you can’t help but think about the private and the public in a new way.”
In point of fact, railroads are not public goods, as defined by economists. Not even close. I get no benefit whatsoever from your trip on a train, or a train that ships a good to you. The benefits of rail travel and rail transport are internalized by the traveler and the consumer of the transported good.
Further, what characterizes public goods is non-exclusivity. If you produce it, I get to consume it too, and you can’t exclude me from doing so. Not true of railroads. You have to buy a ticket to ride. …
… Gopnik’s economic illiteracy is annoying, but his supercilious tone and East Coast superiority makes his ignorance almost unbearable: he fits in perfectly at the New Yorker, and personifies the famous cover depicting the view of the US from 9th Avenue. A condescending ignoramus. Not an appealing combination.
In sum, it’s appalling enough that Gopnik, like others, leaped to use the Philadelphia tragedy to advance his pet political cause. It’s even worse that this pet political cause is economically retarded.
*Gopnik’s name cracks me up, because in Russia the term “gopnik” (го́пник) refers to lower class street punks known for their drinking, loutish behavior, petty criminality, and stylish dress, usually consisting of Adidas track suits and dress shoes. In other words, го́пники are pretty much the antithesis of Manhattan prog Adam Gopnik, and no doubt the typical го́пник would take great pleasure in beating the snot out of the likes of Adam Gopnik.
Carl Cannon says a train crashes and the Dems jump the tracks.
Even in the context of our hyper-partisan politics, the press release that landed in my inbox Thursday morning was surprising in its ugliness. “Republican Cuts Kill… Again,” it screamed, announcing a new attack ad funded by a fledgling liberal group called The Agenda Project Action Fund.
The group’s previous spot—“Republican Cuts Kill”—blamed the Ebola crisis on Capitol Hill conservatives, earning the dreaded “four Pinocchio” designation from The Washington Post face-checking team. The newest installment splices graphic images from Tuesday’s crash of Amtrak Train 188 with random budget figures and videos of Republican leaders calling for cuts in Amtrak’s subsidies and other federal programs.
Yes, you heard right. As Amtrak’s twisted railroad cars remained on their sides, bodies were still being recovered from the wreckage, and the critically injured were being prepped for surgery, self-styled “progressives” sought to score political points by essentially accusing fiscal conservatives of murder. …
Walter Jacobson says if H. Clinton is elected we can expect continuing executive power grabs.
… Obama expanded his power domestically far more than any other president in memory. His executive action on immigration is a good example of legislating from the bureaucracy by implementing policies directly contrary to existing law and anything Congress would be willing to do. So too his use of Environmental Protection Agency rulemaking power to remake the energy sector where previous efforts to do the same legislatively had gone nowhere. And let’s not forget Obama’s unilateral changes to Obamacare to postpone its day of financial reckoning beyond the 2014 elections.
Whether such executive power grabs are upheld or rejected in court, they all show the degree to which Obama has tried to expand his power at the expense of Congress.
Should we expect any better from Hillary should she become president? I don’t think so; in fact, I think we can expect worse. …
Paul Mirengoff says Stephie has more to disclose.
George Stephanopoulos has admitted, under pressure, that he is a donor to the Clinton Foundation. He has also acknowledged that he should have so informed his viewers before attempting to light into Peter Schweizer and feebly trying to discredit Peter’s reporting about the Clinton Foundation on the grounds that he worked (for a few months) as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.
But there is much Stephanopoulos has yet to disclose to his viewers. Schweizer lists the following: …
More on Michelle’s Tuskegee address from Rich Lowry.
Michelle Obama gave a commencement address at TuskegeeUniversity that was a ringing call for the graduates not to be discouraged by her whining.
Much of the first lady’s speech was what is right and proper for a Tuskegee commencement, drawing on the story of the determination and skill of the Tuskegee Airmen. But she devoted a long passage to her own struggles that was off-key and characteristically self-pitying. …
But, the Target story was told by Michelle the Victim another way on the Letterman show. Michelle Malkin was keeping track.
… On David Letterman’s show in 2012, the haute-couture-clad first lady recounted the same “incognito” Target visit to demonstrate her just-like-you bona fides. She chuckled as she shared how the shopper asked, “Can you reach on that shelf and hand me the detergent?” As the audience laughed with delight and Mrs. Obama grinned from ear to ear, she told Letterman: “I reached up, ’cause she was short, and I reached up, pulled it down — she said, ‘Well, you didn’t have to make it look so easy.’ That was my interaction. I felt so good.”
From overjoyed Regular Mom to Oppressed Martyr, can Mrs. Obama’s shopping fable get any more absurd? To paraphrase a popular slogan of the social-justice mob: Jig’s up, don’t compute.
It just goes to show you: Once a race hustler, always a race hustler. …
Here’s another race hustler in training. Al Sharpton’s daughter sprained her ankle in New York. Now she’s suing the City for $5 million. Daily Caller has that story.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, especially when the tree is rotten.
Dominique Sharpton, the 28-year-old daughter of MSNBC host and race activist Al Sharpton, sprained her ankle last October on the corner of Broome Street and Broadway in New York City, and now she wants the city to pay – big time.
Claiming to have been “severely injured, bruised and wounded” by uneven pavement, Dominique is seeking $5 million in damages from taxpayers for the sprain. …