I Can't Wait To See Sykes Explain This One

So, Chuckles Sykes, like his paper counterpart, keeps trying to hammer into people's heads that Scott Walker is doing them some kind of favor by making them pay hundreds of millions of dollars in order to chase thousands of much needed jobs out of the state, likes to play adolescent games by referring to high speed rail as the "half-fast" train. Get it? If you say it quickly, half-fast sounds like half-assed.

Oh, isn't Sykes the droll one?

But I wonder how Sykes, or Patrick McIlheran, will say a half-fast train is worse than a dead-stop car:

Travel times on the busy section of freeway will more than double during a repaving project scheduled to last about three months, from early April to the end of June.

Motorists commuting between the Marquette Interchange and Wisconsin Highway 16 can expect to add an hour per day to their drive time.

McIlheran Jumps The Tracks For Walker

In Sunday's issue of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Patrick McIlheran claims that Scott Walker did our neighbors to the west a grand favor by cutting off high speed rail. McIlheran's effort is to discredit the majority of Wisconites who are might steamed about Walker turning away all those jobs and making state tax payers cough up hundreds of millions of dollars, all for some malignant ideology.

One of the arguments that pro-train advocates have argued is that by killing the train, Walker has also put Minnesota into great fiscal danger.

In his effort to undermine that argument, ol' Paddy finds one of the few politicians from that state that was in agreement with Walker. Of course, McIlheran also cites Michele Bachmann, and we all know what that is worth.

Patrick even manages to get in touch with the Minnesotan version of WPRI (Wankers Promoting Republican Ideology) who claims that no one in the great state really cares about some dumb old train anyway.

Pretty convincing stuff that Patrick writes. Pretty convincing, indeed, unless one has access to Teh Google Machine which blows up Patrick's craven lies in about .047 seconds.

You see, despite Patrick's claims that the politicians in Minnesota are about to erect a 100 foot tall statue of Walker along the Mississippi River, the fact is that they are much less than pleased with Walker's silliness:

Earlier, Minnesota's Gov.-elect Mark Dayton reacted to the news, lamenting the loss and worried about its impact on Minnesota's plan to be part of a high-speed rail route from Chicago to the Twin Cities.

Today, Jerry Miller, chair of the Minnesota High-Speed Rail Commission called Wisconsin's loss of funding "a setback" but said the commission will continue to work to get the rail line established.

And regarding the common folk that are being affected by Walker's acquiescence to the road builders, well it's seems like there is still an interest by John and Jane Q. Public after all.

So why is Patrick telling lies for Scott Walker? After all, Walker has already won the election, so why continue with this farce?

Well, the main reason is that Walker is not too popular with the people. And that poll was taken before it was learned that Walker was to chase away thousands of jobs or adding insult to injury by making the tax payers foot the bill for the chance not to have a job. I would imagine that his popularity is considerably less now that people have had tome to absorb what the implications of Walker's folly really is. (Also not included in this is his Walker's push to make Wisconsin a right-to-work-for-less state.)

Another reason is that as of November 3, Walker started laying the groundwork for his eventual run for POTUS. It just wouldn't do to start off his presidential campaign by making obvious and egregious blunder after obvious and egregious blunder, so he needs the fallible services of Charlie Sykes and Patrick to keep the lie going that he is not a completely incompetent fool.

Charlie Antoinette and the Elitist Right

Sykes has a condescending post regarding the rally held at the Talgo plant on Monday, calling on Scott Walker to stop his foolishness and to allow the high speed rail to go through Wisconsin. His post is short and sour with its bitterness. After making it seem like 200 attendees were no big deal, he adds this:

Steve Prestegard: observes:

Isn’t this amusing. Walker doesn’t get inaugurated for six weeks, and already he has billboards and chanting protestors.

Where were these people when Taigo got the train contract instead of Super Steel?

And … I wonder how much the protestors pay in state and local taxes each year.

Here's a few facts for Charlie Antoinette and his pal, Stevie, to work on.

The rally was no smaller than, and probably bigger than, most teabagger festivals, and it was genuine grassroots instead of a Koch Brother-sponsored hatefest that they prefer.

And why do they think it is amusing? As they point out, Walker is six weeks away from taking the oath for governor, yet he is trying to act like he has already been ordained as king. And this is on top of the fact that he hasn't even finished his job as county executive, considering the stinking mess he is going to be leaving behind.

As for Super Steel, they seem to forget the truth behind that. It was Tom Barrett that fought for Super Steel while Walker was MIA as usual. In fact, it was Super Steel that cut their own throats in the deal:

However, Department of City Development spokesman Jeff Fleming said city officials originally pushed for Super Steel to get the Talgo contract and only offered the Tower Automotive site to Talgo after the company told city officials that the Super Steel facility would not meet its needs.

Talgo spokeswoman Nora Friend said Super Steel first wanted to be a subcontractor to build the trains. Talgo turned that offer down because it was too expensive, she said. Super Steel then submitted a bid to provide space for Talgo, but the space did not meet the company's needs, she said.

After the Tower Automotive site, the runner-up sites were in Racine and Janesville, Friend said.
Talgo will lease the space at the Tower Automotive site from the city at market rates, for $2.59 per square foot, or $344,470 a year, Fleming said. The city is not providing free rent or utilities, he said.

“What Scott Walker and Fred Luber are saying is false,” Fleming said.

"This is just political talk," Friend said. "We are not getting any subsidy at all."

And finally, what the hell is that crack about how much they pay in taxes? Is he implying that poor people or unemployed people are beneath them somehow, or that one should have to pay a certain amount to be allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights?

Now that the election is over, the right feels it's OK for them to show their true colors and their disdain for anyone they feel isn't worthy, like the poor and unemployed. Apparently they also forgot that there's always another election coming up.

The "What's In It For Me?" Argument

PaddyMac takes on rail again*, this time using a statement by Steve Prestegard, who was complaining that the rail wouldn't take him to Milwaukee to tape Sunday morning's episode of Charlie Sykes' Incite show:

Well, sure -- at ungodly expense and, critically, if you’re in the right spot and have the right destination. Steve Prestegard meets neither of those criteria, he writes at Marketplace.

He starts in Ripon, where he lives. He speaks in Green Bay at 7:30 a.m. He tapes a TV show in Milwaukee at 1. This apparently isn’t atypical. “Good thing I like to drive,” he writes. And:

“Those in business who claim they want the Doyle–Barrett train mystify me, because I am unable to think of many non-office-based jobs that don’t require the ability to go where you want when you want. Unless you sit behind a computer all day every day, or have one location where you do business, you need the ability to see customers or your various facilities, and on your schedule, not someone else’s.”

This is one of the dumbest arguments for or against something, in my opinion.

No, high speed rail isn't go to meet everyone's needs. Especially if they live somewhere far off of the rail line. So what? I am not going to personally benefit from them expanding the I-90 from Madison to points southward. Nor am I going to benefit from the current work of expanding I-94 from the airport south. So why are they doing those?

Supposedly because it is supposed to help the overall region by allowing business people, delivery trucks, etc. get through easier. Well, so would rail.

Arguing for or against something based solely on how that thing will personally affect you is nothing more than self-centeredness and selfishness. These, however, are traits that are all too common among conservatives, so that is what they most often resort too.

The funny thing is, they really, really don't like it when you turn it back on them.

The sad part is their selfishness causes us to miss out on many things that could have benefited us all, including them, even if not directly.

*You can always tell when Scott Walker or one of their other pets are in trouble. They become monomaniacal in whatever the subject is, no matter how silly they end up looking.

I would expect the rhetoric from all aspects of the right wing media, from Belling to Sykes to PaddyMac to PolitiFarce to harp on this for a while, since it is costing their champion and their cause a number of problems.

About Those Subsidies For Roads...

Patrick McIlheran never tires of being wrong or of telling untruths if it will advance his causes.

One such example is that for the past week, P-Mac has been rehashing the same old falsities that highways are completely covered by the gas tax and are in no way subsidized by the government:

...but intercity highways are more or less entirely paid for by the user fees that are gas taxes.

It wasn't true before, and it's still not true:

The researchers wrote: “In 2007, 51 percent of the nation’s $193 billion set aside for highway construction and maintenance was generated through user fees — down from 10 years earlier when user fees made up 61 percent of total spending on roads. The rest came from other sources, including revenue generated by income, sales and property taxes, as well as bond issues.” Forty-years ago, they noted, user-fees generated 71 percent of highway revenues.

Of the 18.4 cent federal gasoline tax, 2.86 cents – about 15 percent – is directed toward mass transit projects, and an additional 0.1 cent toward environmental clean-up, according to the report. That leaves more than 80 percent strictly for highways. Even if we spent 100 percent of gas tax revenues on highways, only 65 percent of their total cost would be covered. There would still be a need for significant outside revenue – in other words, subsidies. Does that mean highways are “government waste?” Or are transportation dollars an investment to provide access to jobs and movement of goods?

One reason for the decline of the user-fee’s contribution is that the gas tax has not kept pace with inflation. Today, there is limited political appetite for a gas tax increase. Americans are also driving cleaner cars than they used to, due in large part of federal action on fuel economy. Less gas purchased means lower gas tax revenues.

So, to the critics who seem to be against all subsidies — unless they’re going to cover highway projects: let’s drop the claim that highways “pay for themselves” and have a debate rooted in fact rather than myth.

So, if Paddy knows this is false information he is spewing, why does he do it? Easily answered, gentle reader. Because road builders are grand contributors to the Republican Party, and without the GOP, the rich might actually have to start treating us lower classes as people also.

McIlheran Explained

The other day, Jesse Russell, writing for dane101, took Patrick McIlheran to task for telling fibs about Talgo's future and how it hinged on whether high speed rail would come to Wisconsin.

He ended his diatribe with this paragraph (emphasis mine):

It would be unfortunate if Walker breaks his number one campaign promise and fails or reverses his decision to stop the train, but somehow I don't think Walker needs to worry about making an excuse if he does. After all, McIlheran will likely figure out a way to justify it on behalf of the Governor-elect.

Russell absolutely nails it, since McIlheran is kind enough to be such a predictable apologist for Walker's foolishness.

We Choo-Choo-Choose The Truth

When it was announced that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation scratched out Oconomowoc as a place for a station for the high speed rail, Sykes and company had a field day.

Sykes has spent the last untold number of months griping about the train (but not the jobs it was bringing). Now he was off on a whole daily rant about how the draconian and dictatorial State was punishing Oconomowoc for "just asking a few questions." He would then add off how much better they were anyway, because no one wanted the dumb old train anyway.

But as is the norm, Sykes is dead wrong on more than one count.

First, as the astute Brew City Brawler points out, the mayor of Oconomowoc was doing more than just asking a few questions:

From the story:

In June 2009, the council unanimously passed a resolution giving initial support for a rail station, but since that time, Mayor Jim Daley has ousted former Mayor Maury Sullivan and two new aldermen have been elected.

Sullivan had said he wanted Oconomowoc to have a stop on the rail if the federal program was going to be initiated. Part of Daley’s campaign platform was his opposition to a high-speed rail station in Oconomowoc, and he maintained his opposition in an Aug. 4 interview.

To make Sykes look even more foolish, which is no small task, who claims the train station is something that no one wants in their community, there's quite a push from a number of places including Wauwatosa, Hartland, Sun Prairie and Waterloo.

I'm sure Sykes will be issuing a correction shortly, since he is so concerned with accuracy in reporting.

Breaking News Already Broken

Patrick Dorwin at Badger Blogger notes that Mark Belling reported today that the high speed train station in Madison will be moved. Dorwin's money quote:

Don’t expect to read about this in the newspaper anytime soon. They never want to repeat news broken by Belling, even when they know its true.

He's right, of course. The newspaper reported this about six weeks ago.

Coming soon: Belling reports the collapse of the Roman Empire. This too will not be covered by the mainstream media.