I would like to see "the Fence" come down. Comes now a fast choo-choo.

[saltpoint]

I would like to see "the Fence" come down at the southern U.S. border with Mexico, immediately if not sooner. "Immediately if not sooner" is the time-table preferred, accompanied, please, by a televised apology from Tom Tancredo and Lou Dobbs.

IN ITS PLACE, constructed from say, Winnipeg to say, Buenos Aires, an international bullet train:

-- The Hemisphere --

While this would suggest job stimulation, the rail component is actually the pragmatic bouquet that lures the public affirmation to the broader project. While a "jobs stimulus" advantage would be apparent and many would be put to work, and many corrollary businesses would thrive attendant to the construction of an extensive rail link like this, there would be a greater economic boost than initially envisioned, as --

-- feeder systems would be linked, so that most metropolitan areas would eventually be connected to The Hemisphere.

Some of the rail would move over-ground; other segments would be undergroud where necessary and in key locations from top to bottom of the map, the rail would actually go atop and beneath or adjoined to the rail corridor would be museums of the Americas from the eras of indigenous peoples to the most current times.

Why not then, along the rail corridor in North Dakota, a sculpture garden dedicated to Sacajawea?

How about an extensive Frida Kahlo Museum in the central plateau cities of Mexico, linked by a feeder rail into Mexico City?

How about the Barack Obama Presidential Library just alongside the rail corridor in Pueblo, Colorado?

How about multiple venues for international language centers?

What this could generate becomes a very wide field of attractive, job-producing options.

Not least among them would be a university. Say, the Gabriel Garcia Marquez University in Colombia, working in tandem with colleges in Alberta or Nebraska, in which students enroll for semesters at all the colleges along the route, taking studies in all of the venues toward a truly international education.

This is a massive jobs stimulus proposal involving a long choo-choo track and lots of good museums.

I think a bicycle path would also be called for.

Wherever possible, wind and solar technology should run the adjoining businesses.

I'd pay for this. No, not all of it. But I would agree to a tax, reasonably apportioned, to support a jobs and cultural undertaking that would connect the hemisphere. Tourism taxes would be understandably raised to draw revenues. Vendor space for restaurants, hotels, and travel agencies, etc. would also throw in to the kitty.

The Hemisphere -- high-speed rail transport connecting peoples of all the countries of what used to be called the "new world" ; and

The Museums of the Americas -- scattered liberally from top to bottom of the route, powered wherever possible by solar and wind technologies and established to celebrate the cultures of the entire hemisphere.

The Chinese have their Great Wall. Let's show the Chinese our fast choo-choo, and let's do it soon.

[Gman2]

1. There were a crew that recently did a bangup job on some radio towers!

[saltpoint]

3. I'd hope for an international work force, with initial preference extended

to those tossed out of work by companies and corporations who then later shipped those jobs to Asia, etc.

I'd hire them first, as through no fault of their own, they remain unemployed with rent to pay, families to support, and so forth.

But the feeder systems into a north-to-south rail almost forces acceleration of regional economies. In addition to an obvious jobs kick, it would be a grand-scale gesture of unification.

[Gman2]

5. Um, that was a joke. They took a wrecking ball to them. Stole that.

Radical enviro's

[saltpoint]

6. Oh. Sorry. I'm clueless sometimes.

Actually I'm clueless most of the time.

[RB TexLa]

2. Cue our isolationistic 'Merica first and only wackos to begin on how international highways and

transportation destroy "Precious 'Merican sovereignty!"

Borders Over People!! Borders Over People!! :puke:

[saltpoint]

4. They'll be resistance. Some more clear and legitimate than others.

I see also that racism based on culture could be diminished. Once cultural exchanges are encouraged, then established, and finally routine, people in the prairies of the Canadian territories can have something to say and hear with an indigenous woman from Ecuador.

I see language centers. Many. Well-attended and ultimately long-standing.

I see barriers breaking down.

A fast choo-choo will save us.

[Edweird]

14. There's this place called Canada, You might wanna check THEIR policies out

before bashing the US.

[RB TexLa]

15. I haven't bashed the US, I've bashed backward thinking morons

I really don't care what country they reside in.

[Edweird]

16. So you think that being anti labor is somehow NON-RW? Are you in bizarro world?

[RB TexLa]

17. regional political/economic unions are not inherently anti-labor

is there another reason you don't want one in North America? Now, run along and "cherish" your "precious" sovereignty. Being a "left wing" Birtcher isn't NON-RW.

[Edweird]

18. Oh yeah, the destruction of the middle class is a progressive value....

:puke:

[charlie]

7. Texas is way ahead of you, bubba

But, rail for all? What kind of penny-ante vision is that? What we're talking about is a corridor of steel, asphalt, pipes, and concrete -- 4 football fields wide -- blasting its way straight through the heart of the Great State of Texas. Freight rail, oil and gas pipelines, communication conduits, and proper toll roads. Anybody breaks down on this thing had better be ready for a 30-minute sprint in either direction, because they won't find themselves in the friendly environs of cow pastures and truck stops, no sir. This is a road for Lincoln Continentals and people of means, the way God intended.

And we'll get this thing because we're blessed with natural resources -- eminent domain and predatory financiers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Texas_Corridor

[saltpoint]

8. Hey charlie. Good to hear from you. And thanks for that link.

Lincoln Continentals, eh?

Sounds a bit pricey for the likes of me.

Hey. If we have to go through New Mexico...

Whoa. The Wiki link there shows the transport rail map. It's awfully thick and crowded there in Texas. The need for multi-use rail is clear.

[charlie]

9. Good thing Rick Perry's been the one handling point for this

It's his play for the ages, alongside being the guv who took us out of the union. Apart from being a stone cold idiot, his cachet has been dropping even amongst the business set, so this overwrought thing has been dribbling away steam at a steady rate. In the end, he'll be lucky to get a new interstate from the dadgummed feds.

[saltpoint]

10. "Apart from being a stone cold idiot..."

LOL!

And just about perfect for GoodHair.


:thumbsup: :hi:

[charlie]

11. If his ineptitude puts the kibosh

on this grandiose Oil Age white elephant, then I will at long last consider him to have been some use as a governor.

Really good seeing you too, saltpoint :hi:

[saltpoint]

12. charlie, you hang in there and visit often. A lot of us

enjoy your posts on this site.

If GoodHair does manage to mount a successful secession, we still want to keep you and Larry McMurtry!


:hi:

[charlie]

13. Oh, no you didn't

You didn't mention me with Larry McMurtry. My man Larry McMurtry!! I don't know whether to get my dander up or die from aw-shucks embarrassment.

Thanks, saltpoint. You're a really good egg :)

[Igel]

19. Sounds like you want the Pan-American Highway

put on rails.

First, finish construction of the highway. It's been stalled for nearly 40 years by the Darien Gap, mostly for environmental reasons. A RR solution would probably entail not much less destruction.

Chunks of the highway are otherwise impassable (or barely passable) at some times of the year. And it's poorly maintained.

[saltpoint]

20. Didn't suggest it as easy or quick.

But see it as having its own environmental virtues.

More rail and fewer autos would be a reasonable starting point, IMO.

[NJGeek]

21. i'm sorry but that place is a shit-show

last thing that is politically tenable is a less secure perimeter with mexico. candidates in elections are being assassinated, along with their families, and whole towns have turn into war zones.

why would we want less security on that border?

we are also losing jobs at home at a rapid clip.

i'm not anti-immigrant by any means, but there is a point where our domestic welfare,, in absolute terms, is more important than those who aren't currently residing in our country. our policies now (not based on conditions that existed 2 or 3 years ago before the housing bust) need to be based on this new reality.

[saltpoint]

22. The fence says to me that we object to immigrants from its South.

We don't have one across our northern border.

It does seem to me that skin color is a significant variable in that difference and my post argues that the broader mission is to connect the hemisphere's many peoples.

[NJGeek]

23. last i checked, canada wasn't on the brink of chaos

and before you blame the us-funded drug trade:

remember that canada exports a very large amount of marijuana to the us. while, there is violence north of the border, there is no sense of lawlessness. violence in the drug trade in canada is routinely punished and handled within the legal system.

the mexican drug problem has exploded into a larger conflict, and is being resolved extra-legally. this isn't the sort of condition you want to start providing easier access from either side. once mexico gets a hold of their internal political struggle, and our economy is healthy enough to support the important jobs that first-generation immigrants typically work, we should look to more progressive ways to handle immigration, travel, and trade with mexico.

[saltpoint]

26. I don't take a Pollyanna view on regional conflicts, but I don't see

them meaningfully confronted by more military presence in those regions and would strongly prefer cultural exchanges to change minds and hearts.

People take drugs for any number of reasons, not the least of which that their lives are comoprised of loneliness, financial ruin, biophysical addiction, emotional despair, and some degree or other of one or another kinds of destitution.

More cops and more soldiers clumsily treat the symptoms of that relationship to chemicals.

[NJGeek]

24. =dupe= sorry plz delete

and before you blame the us-funded drug trade:

remember that canada exports a very large amount of marijuana to the us. while, there is violence north of the border, there is no sense of lawlessness. violence in the drug trade in canada is routinely punished and handled within the legal system.

the mexican drug problem has exploded into a larger conflict, and is being resolved extra-legally. this isn't the sort of condition you want to start providing easier access from either side. once mexico gets a hold of their internal political struggle, and our economy is healthy enough to support the important jobs that first-generation immigrants typically work, we should look to more progressive ways to handle immigration, travel, and trade with mexico.

[Initech]

25. Fences aren't the way to build relations.

Besides wasn't it discovered that the company in charge of building the fence hired illegal immigrants? Oh the hypocrisy!!!

[saltpoint]

27. The gesture is ideologically and physically exclusional.

Robert Frost's neighborhood notwithstanding, fences really don't make great neighbors at all.

[question everything]

28. Not when every day we hear about more assassination

as part of the drug war in Mexico.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4048347

Not when some of these cartels use our national forests to cultivate crops of marijuana with their own armed guards.