Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 395 Editor's Choice: 41
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Why mass transit is not the answer
[Read the article: John Edwards is confused about gas prices]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Syphax said: And most of these countries have nice, convenient high-speed rail (which unfortunately is a pipe-dream in the US).
Europe is old. We are not. Europe is highly centralized because those countries had a large percentage of their growth at a time when traveling even 20 miles was hard. We are highly decentralized because most of our growth was at a time when gas was dirt cheap and everyone had a car.
Busses don't work in decentralized environments. High speed rail only works if commuters are going to a highly centralized area for work. If I took the train to work tomorrow I would still have to find a way to make it the last 4 miles to my job, and then 4 miles back to the train station. A mile and a half to the bus stop on both ends.
The answer for most of us (those with info-jobs) is telecommuting, but corporate interests have resisted this idea with unbelievable ferocity in places where the government has tried to support it. New companies are willing, but old companies are against it. When I worked in Orlando my company was offered a 100% break on all county taxes in perpetuity if they had 50% of their employees telecommute 50% of the time. No dice, even though we had the right kind of jobs (mostly phone work) and the infrastructure in place to do this easily.
Too much of our society and infrastructure is based on the availability of cheap fuel and personal transportation.
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A campaign filled with irony
[Read the article: Ron Paul is blowing up real good]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Paul is more Republican than any Republican in the field, which is crazy in itself. The GOP hasn't had a candidate that embodied its own supposed ideology in decades. Now they have one and plan to use him as a punching bag...
Another irony - if we were still on the gold standard, we'd have fewer problems with the Muslim world. At least they would have one less excuse to hate us, anyway. Money that has no value of its own (like the dollar) is specifically proscribed in the Koran.
While I disagree with an immediate withdrawal from Iraq on moral grounds - we made this mess, we are obligated to clean it up - I am also blown away that there is an ostensibly Libertarian guy who is less idealistic than I am in at least one respect.
Paul running as a Republican points out that we shouldn't need a Libertarian party - the GOP is supposed to stand for just about everything they do, and share their ideology almost point for point. The danger Republicans face is that Paul is making younger voters see that the Libertarians are the New Republicans. This is the best thing to happen to American politics since Ross Perot.
And speaking of Ross, it will be interesting to see what the media does. Perot made a difference, if only for a while. The MSM destroyed him by attacking Stockdale for his public speaking abilities (like any of them were fit to tie his shoes when it came to standing up and representing their country) and flooding the airwaves with opinion pieces about how preposterous it was that a guy who was threatening to remove corporate influence from government could receive credible death threats against his family.
Paul doesn't need the MSM. Paul's younger supporters have had 10 years of the internet to teach them that smart, talented people are defined by what they say and do, not the professionalism of their videos and speeches. If nothing else, the Paul candidacy could be a major step towards marginalizing the MSM, something we desperately need.
Don't write this guy off yet.
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Really?
[Read the article: Ron Paul is blowing up real good]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]12?
Please, expand on this scathing attack. I can only hope you are up to maintaining this high level of intellectual debate.
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Interesting
[Read the article: Ron Paul is blowing up real good]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Democrats attack Paul as being a conservative - how dare he attack an underfunded regressive mandatory federal pension plan or the only President we ever had who really made no secret of his communist leanings - or even a fascist. Republicans attack him as being a liberal - calling for the end of the useless, expensive, and un-American war on drugs or the Patriot Act makes him some kind of a hippie or something.
Those who say we can't undo the damage that has been done in the last 70 years, and that Paul is crazy for suggesting we try, are saying that we can never return to personal freedom and responsibility, and corporate and governmental accountability. Whether they know it or not, and sadly I think they do know it, they have surrendered to the idea that we can't govern ourselves, raise our own children, or make our own decisions. They hide behind ad hominum attacks and straw man arguments because deep down they know that their positions are indefensible.
Things are bad now, and they are going to get worse before they get better. Keep backing horses who agree that we are incapable of ever being a great nation again, that the capitalist republic is a thing of the past and that socialism, whether wrapped in the messages from the Dems or the GOP, is the only answer, and things will probably never get better at all. This guy at least believes we can and should actually change, and that puts him way ahead of anyone else running.