The railroad to nowhere

Drawing upon my own travels and personal experience, I've noticed a peculiar phenomenon. Picture this:

You drive -- or walk if you want -- into a section of a city that's usually located in the Rust Belt, or a one-time "blighted area" in one of the nation's larger urban centers. You come across an area that's like really, really, clean. Often the streets are blocked off, or the street lanes are comparatively narrow, or there's "knuckles" -- where the super-wide sidewalks have occasional indents to allow for car parking. Usually there's something like a wide median strip in the street, planted with neglected, vandalized, and/or dying foliage, or something like a trolley or electronic rail system running down the middle of the street.

OK, it looks kinda like one of those kid's toy villages, the kind that has the streets painted on a sheet of vinyl, and then you arrange the little cardboard buildings, stores and all, where you will. Usually, these areas seem to be designed on the model of Small Town America circa 1938. Like the set of Bedford Falls.

And despite all of these rather remarkable features, the thing that really sticks out about these places is that they're usually empty as ghost towns. Oh, you'll probably see some winos or homeless curled up in a doorway or on a molded-concrete bench. The cutesy trolleys and/or buses (double-deckers would seem to fit) roll past with regularity. But otherwise, there are no people.

The stores are empty. The concrete streets are a bleachy white, like concrete poured in winter. No disposed gum infused into the pavement, no spit or cigarette butts. Matter of fact, you probably can't smoke anywhere around there. And the sidewalks, by the way, might consist of European paving stones for that sort of cozy, homely touch. But the stores are all empty and there are no people.

By the time I'd stumbled upon my fourth location like this, I'd figure it out and confirmed it: It's a federally-funded "renewal" project. Every single time, the area was a federally funded renewal project.

Maybe in one corner storefront, you'll find a place open-for-business, then discover that it's the local Tourist Information Office. Often if there's a parking lot nearby, it's the home of the cutesy trolley or the double-decker bus. The whole thing is a government operation. Paid for the feds, staffed by brave-but-lonely sociology majors who can't find a more politically-correct job.

Down the street, there's the local Unemployment Office, or Welfare Office, or a Free Clinic, junkies milling out front, huffing on tobacco cigarettes as though they were joints, as they wait to see the doctor for today's load of Methadone.

So Vice President Joe "Slappy" Biden makes an appearance in some train station in Philadelphia, trying to rouse some rabble in support of a $53 billion federal project to build high-speed rail that will connect towns all across America. None of the railways will go clear across the country, they'll just connect the major urban centers with.... what, exactly, Joe?

The money is in the budget that the Comrade is submitting to congress. Good luck getting the House to approve that.

We had railroads, Slappy. We still do. Not a lot of people use them for passenger travel. Believe me, I know, because I don't fly and I've taken Amtrak on a number of occasions. Nice way to go if you don't mind sponge-like microwaved food and spending hour upon hour staring out the window at the "worst part of town." I mean, that's where the rails are. No one wants to live next door to a railroad.

Not a lot of people want to travel by railroad, either. Not when they can fly or drive.

Just like not a lot of retailers want to set up shop in gentrified blighted urban areas or dying Rust Belt suburbs. There's just not much of a market for any of this stuff for a whole range of reasons.

Being communists, the feds just don't get it. If these areas were magnets for commerce, if the railroads were the best way to travel across the America, entrepreneurs and venture capital would be falling all over each other to invest. But they aren't there.

Neither is anyone else.

The government doesn't really understand the concept of a "market." But then, the government is not capitalist, and the current regime is rather rabidly anti-capitalist. So they all end up stuffing all of our hard-earned and expropriated tax dollars down one bottomless rat-hole after another.

Save the Republic.