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News & Current Events + Happenings
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Government Insolvency And Spending Continues To Skyrocket Under Republican Congress, As Amtrak Infrastructure Crumbles Reader 02/04/2018 (Sun) 15:31:20 Id: ed87af [Preview] No. 6081
THIRD WORLD KENYESIAN ECONOMICS!

Horrible news from South Carolina this morning. If America is going to have a passenger rail system, we have to do much better than this. Via The State:

A crash involving an Amtrak passenger train and a freight train in Cayce, South Carolina, left at least two people dead and more than 50 injured.

It would appear that something is seriously wrong with the way passenger rail is operating in the United States under the federal corporation AMTRAK. This crash is the third fatal AMTRAK crash since the AMTRAK Cascades train derailed in Washington State at the cost of 3 lives and 62 passenger injuries only 49 days ago. Last Wednesday’s crash in Virginia of a train carrying Congressional Republicans to a retreat killed one. And now, the South Carolina crash has killed at least two.

Each of these three accidents had a separate, probably preventable cause, though of course official verdicts await formal proceedings.

The Washington State crash was due to excessive speed going into a curve.

The Virginia crash was due to a garbage truck on a grade crossing being hit by a train. There were some media reports that a crossing barrier that should have prevented access as a train approached was not functioning, but that is not absolutely clear as the cause.

The South Carolina crash was due to two trains being placed on the same track – something that should not happen with the level of sophisticated signaling available to dispatchers.

Rail travel can be a wonderful experience for passengers, but only if the trains are safe. Hurtling down the rails at high speed can be scary if one suspects that a crash may be coming, and these accidents are going to do nothing to encourage people to utilize trains.

https://archive.fo/OP28V


Reader 02/04/2018 (Sun) 15:32:00 Id: ed87af [Preview] No.6082 del
>>6081
Meanwhile...

It was another crazy news week, so it's understandable if you missed a small but important announcement from the Treasury Department: The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year — President Donald Trump's first full year in charge of the budget.

That's almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017.

Here are the exact figures: The U.S. Treasury expects to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, according to a documents released Wednesday. It's the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and a big jump from the $519 billion the federal government borrowed last year.

The uptick in borrowing is yet another complication in the heated debates in Congress over whether to spend more money on infrastructure, the military, disaster relief and other domestic programs. The deficit is already up significantly, even before Congress allots more money to any of these areas.

"We're addicted to debt," says Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He blames both parties for the situation.

Trump didn't mention the debt — or the ongoing budget deficits — in his State of the Union address. The absence of any mention of the national debt was frustrating for Goldwein and others who warn that America has a major economic problem looming.

As shutdown deadline looms, GOP leaders eye yet another short-term spending bill

"It is terrible. Those deficits and the debt that keeps rising is a serious problem, not only in the long run, but right now," Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, a former Reagan adviser, told Bloomberg.

https://archive.fo/4tYjk



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