Arnold Vants Der High-Speed Rail

[Drake Tungsten]

Obama: Supply-Sider?

For President Obama and his party, last week brought another stiff dose of pain: the announcement of 263,000 more jobs lost, while unemployment ticked up to 9.8 percent.

And by all indications, Democrats must endure that form of political torture for at least several more months. Whatever the fate of health care legislation, persistently high unemployment has made “Where are the jobs?” the most potent Republican campaign argument as next year’s midterm elections come into view.

Publicly, White House aides and Congressional leaders have responded with incessant attempts to highlight benefits from the $787 billion economic stimulus package they enacted earlier this year. Privately, Mr. Obama’s economic advisers are sifting options for a new package of tax cuts and other job creation measures to be unveiled in next year’s State of the Union address — or earlier if pressure for action becomes irresistible.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/us/politics/05caucus.html

[Imran Siddiqui]

That's it. You're going back on ignore.

Seriously... best to talk about economics with someone who has some clue what they are talking about, which Zkribbler does not. Added to the nonsensical conflation of supple side tax cuts and regulatory policies to funding for social programs (where the **** did that come from?) makes his arguments basically worthless. It's basically Ben level.

[Ben Kenobi]

Your numbers are all screwy. Greater LA has around 18.5 million which means you're claiming the bay area only has 1.5 million. That's a completely retarded claim as are your other assumptions and claims.

Read the ****ing post. Goddamn, this is frusterating.

LA Metro area is 13. LA County + Orange County.

Bay Area has around 7 million, which you would have seen if you read the damn post.

Greater LA includes San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura, which is a long way to drive to go into downtown LA just to ride the train.

[Dinner]

You are wrong as usual.

The U.S. Bureau of the Census has designated the five county region as the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside combined statistical area, with a July 1, 2006 population estimate of 17,776,000.[

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles_Area

It's probably closer to 18.5 by now.

The Bay area:

t encompasses the metropolitan areas of San Francisco (12th largest in the country) and San Jose (31st largest in the country), as well as four other smaller, surrounding metropolitan areas. The Bay Area when defined as a Combined Statistical Area, is the sixth largest in the country, with over 7.4 million people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area

BTW I do not believe either estimate counts people like illegals who did not get nor filled out census forms. It only counts people who filled out and returned census forms (or in the case of the 2006 estimate... made a yearly growth estimate based upon the 2000 census figure). There are supposedly around 10 million illegals in the state, if you believe the talk radio nuts, and the state gets huge numbers of tourists & business travelers.

The California High Speed Rail Authority estimates that trains going 225mph are competitive with planes at distances up to 500 miles so that would cover virtually the entire state and system. The only problem would be San Diego in the far south and even then it's only because the southern extension won't be a straight line and instead will curve through the inland empire. If they did a straight shot up the coast it would be much faster. I fully expect this system to be competitive price wise especially if they eventually build the LA- Vegas route as that's a very heavily traveled route which tourists as well as locals would love; see Hollywood & the beaches then 40 minutes later be in Vegas. Yeah, that route will be packed.