Rush
Limbaugh is wrong about Amtrak.
Dear Rush,
You were wrong when you on June 28 mischaracterized Amtrak's
request for $200 million as brazen.
You also erred July 3 when commenting on the efforts of Amtrak's
new CEO, David
Gunn to preserve America's passenger train system. You
had the nerve to attack the CEO for blaming much of the current
funding crisis on Congress.
Who else would you blame, Rush, but the people who control the
purse strings and the ones that ordered Amtrak to run a national
train system on table scraps?
You and the narrow-minded thinkers at the Heritage Foundation
apparently can't understand a maverick like Gunn and the results
he is trying to achieve.
The federal government's lack of responsible rail funding has
precipitated much of the current crisis. When Congress in 1997
passed the Amtrak Reform Act, which required Amtrak to become
self-sufficient within five years -- something
the government has never required of airports or for highways
-- it allocated $5 billion to help Amtrak achieve that goal.
Unfortunately, Congress stiffed Amtrak by providing only half
that amount.
It has been reported that as a condition for the loan, the Bush
administration, through Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta,
demanded that Amtrak dismantle its national route structure, the
trains that serve the majority of this country. Amtrak instead
should concentrate on limited corridor operations between big
cities, they say. In other words, no passenger trains for the
majority of Americans.
Imagine what our airport and highway systems would be like if the
federal government provided only chicken feed to them.
This year alone, sir, aviation is receiving $30 billion - more
than Amtrak has received in its entire 31-year lifetime.
The way you handled a caller from Trinidad, Colorado, who relies
on passenger rail service in an area of the country that doesn't
have the travel options your part of the world has, shows that
you now apparently possess an elitist mentality. "Sooooo you
get train service in the middle of nowhere...." was the only
way you could react to the caller's honest statement and attempt
to take you to task for your unreasonable stance on Amtrak.
Are you aware the federal government funds Essential Air Service
to smaller cities in this country where air service is
"unprofitable?" Do you realize Cape Girardeau, Mo.,
receives up to a half million dollars a year through such
subsidized service, so people can travel via airplane to your
hometown? Do not the citizens of your hometown deserve essential
air service?
Could not others consider Cape Girardeau "in the middle of
nowhere?"
Your conservative idol, William F. Buckley, has stated that funding
passenger rail service in no way betrays conservative principles.
Mr. Buckley has seen through the hyprocrisy of critics who
viciously attack Amtrak but have no problem with federal funding
highways and airports.
Gunn is not a bureaucrat as you mischaracterized him.
Are you next going to resort to name calling and use profanity
against him, as your buddies at the Heritage Foundation have
done?
Gunn has a strong record of turning around transit systems and
other organizations. Congress should allow him to make reforms
without trying to sabotage our important national rail passenger
system.
I would not have written this slam at you, sir, had you responded
to my email messages. I am a regular listener who heard your very
first national radio show in 1988 on one of your first radio
stations, KGNC in Amarillo. In fact, I among others, wrote
letters to a certain radio station to help get your nationally
syndicated show on in Kansas City.
I dare say if you had not been so arrogant and rejecting of any
kind of reason on this issue, this writer may not have slammed
you in a
recently published letter to the editor in USA Today.
You continue to do yourself - and your listeners - a disservice
by ignoring the facts in this case and speaking as an authority
on a topic of which you obviously know little of.
Sincerely,
Doug Ohlemeier
Listener in Kansas City area
FOR UPDATED
LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT
http://www.narprail.org/hot.htm
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