Today, Senators John McCain (Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (Okla.) issued two amendments to the FY10 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. If passed, these amendments would eliminate the majority of available federal funds for trails, walking and bicycling.
Amendment 2370 would prohibit the use of federal funds for pedestrian or bicycle facilities, efforts to reduce vehicle collisions with wildlife, or other specified Transportation Enhancement (TE) projects if the Highway Trust Fund cannot cover unfunded highway authorizations.
Amendment 2371 would allow states to eliminate spending on TE, the nation's largest funding source for trails, walking and bicycling. Congress currently sets aside a portion of federal funds for TE to support these projects in all states. railstotrails.org
Results tagged “McCain” from Green Mesh
Cindy McCain visits Republican volunteers working on the phone banks at the Victory Center in Springettsbury Township, York.
America didn't become the greatest nation on earth by spreading the wealth, we became the greatest nation on earth by creating new wealth. (McCain at last night's debate.)
This is a key phrase motivating both campaigns and the undercurrent of voter despair.
Before globalization, creating new wealth meant capitalization resulting in more domestic jobs. Today that end more often means "spreading" wealth and power to China, and other developing nations with cheap labor pools and sending our energy dollars to oil producing nations in a global oil market.
It is no longer a simple formula of trickle down economics. It's more rolling pin economics where the roller pin has an oval shape and the dough is spread thin where it is least profitable.
That is the reality of global free trade and the dough in the United States is getting thinner. As some of the bakers get stronger and beat away the other bakers, a few fat bakers roll all the dough.
However, the free market in the United States has always been balanced with a democracy that once the majority believes it is no longer prospering, moves to conserve it's resources.
The old-school conservative thinking that motivated my grandparents to save rolls of string and hoard things in their basement long after the depression was over is different from modern conservative thought.
My "conservative" grandparents would have been repulsed at people who drive huge SUV's and demand drilling when the future of oil is a one way downward spiral. My grandfather would be in the garage retrofitting a bicycle with a lawnmower engine when gasoline got over $2 a gallon. He was a successful small business owner whose employees worked for him for decades and never desired a union even when they were petitioned by a local.
Beneath the blind moral eye of the fat bakers who rule a "free market", those who eat the cookies are always the one who call the shots in the end.
What we use and don't use - in our innovation we change the play of the game.
