The Rude Pundit - Republicans Killed the Amtrak Derailment Victims

[meegbear]

Speaker of the House John Boehner, who increasingly looks like he's made of smoky phlegm coughed up by Mad Men characters, was asked yesterday if lack of federal funding for rail safety contributed to the deadly derailment of the Amtrak train in Philadelphia on Tuesday. With a look of the kind of contempt one gives a cat who just figured out how to get the fish out of the aquarium, he said, "Are you really going to ask such a stupid question?"

Of course, it's not a stupid question. It is, in fact, the only question. Because, see, the last time Amtrak was funded through a reauthorization of funds by Congress was in 2008. That bill expired in 2013, and Congress hasn't been able to do dick since then. The previous reauthorization of funding expired in 2002. It took Congress six years to pass something that wasn't bare bones funding by tacked-on amendment to another bill. And that's when Congress was a functioning body, approving worthless wars and shit.

Also in 2008, Congress said that all railroads needed to install technology that would detect speeding, out-of-control trains and slow them down. It is supposed to be completed by the end of this year. Of course, Congress hasn't provided near enough funding. If that system had been in place and running, the wreck would have been prevented.

Who is responsible for spending bills getting out of Congress in the last couple of years? Right: John Boehner and Republicans. So was it really a stupid question?

Actually, the level of fuckery of Amtrak goes further, and it tells you everything you need to know about why nothing will ever be done to save the infrastructure of this country (seriously, the Rude Pundit drives on major highways in the Northeast that are worse than some dirt roads). Listen: "because lawmakers failed to provide the railroads access to the wireless frequencies required to make [Positive Train Control] work, Amtrak was forced to negotiate for airwaves owned by private companies that are often used in mobile broadband."

You might think, "Wait, what the fuck?" Yeah, as David Sirota reports, &quot W)hen Congress in 2008 mandated that rail companies like Amtrak install PTC on their tracks, lawmakers did not require the FCC to set aside any of those airwaves for this exclusive function."

You might still be thinking, "Okay, this sounds like something bad, but I really don't fucking understand and I'm about to tune you out." Okay, okay, fuck, hold on.

See, Congress said, "Yeah, Amtrak, we cut the fuck out of your budget, but you go with your hat in your hand to broadband companies and buy some bandwidth." Of course, the PTC system itself could have operated...

You might think, "It's Friday. Can you just shut up about this hard stuff and say something mean about Republicans?"

Fine. Republican spoogebuckets were busy this week, post-crash, cutting funding for Amtrak because fuck those yankees and their Northern Corridor public transportation. A House committee voted to cut 15% from Amtrak's budget. When Democrats brought up the derailment during the debate, Idaho Republican Mike Simpson said, "You have no idea, no idea, what caused this accident. Don’t use this tragedy in that way. It was beneath you." Because Republicans would never use a tragedy to advance their agendas, oh, no, they are as pure as yellow snow.

Republicans will say, "We're not cutting the budget on safety for passengers." Which is technically true, but if the budget is shit to begin with, then it's pretty hard to make the case that you are standing up for the railroads. If you are responsible for making sure that safety systems are funded to help save lives and you don't fund them properly, then you bear blame for the deaths that occur due to your failure. Of course Boehner wants to shut up questions about it. He has blood on his nicotine-dyed hands.

Let's give the last quote to Florida Republican John Mica: "There's no question the United States has a third-world rail system. It's a monopoly run in a Soviet-style operation. Amtrak."

Unpack that statement: Amtrak is run by the federal government. If it's a third-world level system, who the fuck made it that way?

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2015/05/republicans-killed-amtrak-derailment.html

[daleanime]

1. K&FuckingR......

want scream it from the roof top.

[B2G]

2. Rude Pundit might want to update his research tools

That stretch of track had PPT already installed. It just hadn't been turned on.

[daleanime]

4. And this changes the truth of funding problems how?

[B2G]

5. If the PTP was already installed, how was this a funding issue?

[jeff47]

6. Go re-read the part about Amtrak needing spectrum.

And then read about how it was still off because it took three years to negotiate for spectrum from private companies.

Then take a millisecond to realize that added 3 years to the rollout of PTC.

ETA: And then write a post full of bullshit claiming "We don't know what delayed it!!". Perhaps you can work in "I'm not a scientist" and throw a snowball.

[daleanime]

8. +1

[B2G]

11. Which has exactly what to do with funding?

And please point out where I stated we don't know why it was delayed.

The whole point of my post was that funding had nothing to do with this. It was funded. The hardware had been installed. The delay was due to spectrum negotiations, which were settle in March. Amtrack seems to be blaming the FCC and the FCC seems to be blaming the private companies.

But the PTP was in place. That is not in question.

[jeff47]

16. C'mon, you're not that dumb.

Funding reductions mean delays in purchasing spectrum because...shockingly enough....you don't have enough fucking money to buy it.

And please point out where I stated we don't know why it was delayed.

It's your mantra on every other thread talking about this.

The whole point of my post was that funding had nothing to do with this.

Yep, and you're wrong.

It was funded. The hardware had been installed. The delay was due to spectrum negotiations, which were settle in March.

Do I need to draw a picture?

More money three years ago -> spectrum purchases completed faster -> system is installed two years ago -> system is tested over a few months -> system turned on 18 months ago.

Cuts -> three year spectrum negotiation -> system is installed over those three years, but left off -> system is finally completed two months ago -> system gets turned on September of this year. After the crash.

But the PTP was in place. That is not in question.

It's not "in place" if it isn't on. And it wasn't on due to the delays caused by the three year spectrum negotiation. That negotiation was caused by lack of funding. Lack of funding could have been fixed by Congress reserving some spectrum for Amtrak, but as the Rude Pundit says, "fuck those Northeastern elitists".

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

26. Getting thru the thick wall of government hate, which drives attitudes on the right, is tough

your post was fantastic, by the way

[jeff47]

27. Ty (nt)

[B2G]

33. What government hate??

The only government hate I've been reading about lately is from those screaming that the government isn't providing upgrade funding.

I'm DEFENDING the government here.

What the holy fuck.

[tblue37]

43. You are defending the do-nothing part of the government run by anti-government Republicans who

defund any government function that serves the people while shoveling money to powerful, wealthy, well-connected people and corporations that profiteer off war and off the destruction and privatization of education and other services that should be provided by government.

[B2G]

34. Or, they were negotiating for a better deal

because they knew they had time to do so.

But you seem to have information on this I'm not privy to, like their total budget, how much the spectrum provider was asking for, etc.

But keep moving the goalposts from we had no funding to we didn't have enough, without providing a shred of proof for either position.

Actually, the first position has been discounted already. There was funding. And since an agreement was reached in March, it was obviously enough. Just not in time to prevent this accident that was obviously caused by the engineer. We just don't know why he was speeding at this point.

[BlueEye]

38. Your argument is wrong.

Funding reductions mean delays in purchasing spectrum because...shockingly enough....you don't have enough fucking money to buy it.

You fail to demonstrate that a lack of funding was directly responsible for the delay in the purchase of the 217-222 MHZ spectrum and therefore the delay in the implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC). The delay can be directly attributed to two specific causes, neither of which are a lack of funding. These are:

1) The Railway Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (RSIA) mandated that PTC be implemented for passenger railroads by December 31, 2015 but did not allocate the required spectrum to the railroads for this purpose. This is because spectrum assignment is already the legal domain of the FCC under the Federal Communications Act of 1934, and sweeping legislation such as RSIA rarely delegates such specifics when an administrative agency already handles the matter. Unfortunately, the FCC has the right (under the Comm. Act of '34 as amended, along with administrative case law) to auction off spectrum to the highest bidding for-profit entity. Furthermore, RSIA Section 104 (a)(2) specified that the railroads must plan to have PTC systems possessing "interoperability... with the movements of trains of other railroad carriers." Thus, even though some alternative spectrum and communications technologies can be used in a PTC system, Amtrak was forced to purchase the 217-222 MHZ bandwidth that prevails in American PTC systems but which had already been auctioned off.

Railway Safety Improvement Act of 2008
https://www.fra.dot.gov/eLib/Details/L03588

This is where things get worse, and where the majority of the delay in PTC implementation occurs:

2) The specific portion of 217-222 MHZ spectrum that Amtrak needed to purchase was caught up in a storm of litigation between the original bidder called Skybridge LLC, other plaintiffs (including other passenger railroads), and the FCC. There are many dozens of pages from about five years (between 2010 and 2015) of litigation regarding this spectrum, so I'll just quote a CNN article which nicely sums it up:

At the time that Amtrak was looking to buy the spectrum of airwaves, Skybridge was engaged in active lawsuits with two companies that claimed Skybridge's wireless spectrum interfered with their airwaves. Amtrak opted not to buy the spectrum until the lawsuits were cleared up, according to Warren Havens, Skybridge's president.

"There were a lot of complexities we and other rail companies faced in acquiring PTC spectrum licenses," said Mark Magliery, a spokesman for Amtrak.

Meanwhile, Amtrak worked to build out the infrastructure of its PTC systems at the same time it was trying to secure the spectrum it needed to operate them. The railroad spent tens of millions of dollars over the past several years installing the system.

Also, as it waited for Skybridge's lawsuits to end, Amtrak asked the FCC to simply give it the spectrum through a process similar to eminent domain, by which the government uses its powers to take over private property like land or, in this case, spectrum space.

But that would have taken an act of Congress -- something lawmakers declined to do.
So Amtrak waited.

Havens claims that the two companies he was fighting in court were not actually putting their spectrum to any use, and they were simply hanging onto it in hopes of licensing or selling their airwaves. Havens also said the agency declined to strip the companies of their spectrum licenses.

"That crash did not have to happen," said Havens. "Amtrak could have had the spectrum it needed years ago if the FCC did one tenth of its job."

http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/15/technology/amtrak-braking-system/

Finally, an agreement between Amtrak and Skybridge to transfer control of the pertinent spectrum to Amtrak was approved by the FCC on March 5, 2015:

https://www.fcc.gov/document/environmentelskybridge-transaction-amtrak-promoting-ptc-approved

Unfortunately, this does not mean that Amtrak can simply throw a switch and turn on PTC, even though the hardware necessary was already installed in that segment. If one references the original Amtrak PTC implementation plan submitted to the FRA and FCC, sections were to undergo a five month testing period before activation (see Table 7.2.6 ACSES Testing and Commissioning at the top of Page 57)

https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsEntry/attachments/attachmentViewRD.jsp;ATTACHMENTS=XlnbVW1XhBbR1kv4h2N1d6G4gXW2rkSJJGnF2JhHpnhLWvlj2Gfk!1337272869!-932366712?applType=search&fileKey=160850511&attachmentKey=18651538&attachmentInd=applAttach

So even though the purchase of spectrum was complete in March of this year, it would not have been operational on the accident segment until July at the earliest. The original date of implementation when the plan was submitted was 2012, so it was effectively running three years late. That being said, Amtrak was actually still on-track to meet the 12/31/15 deadline set by the original RSIA legislation.

You can pin blame on a bunch of administrative law bullshit causing delays. You could blame our country where the federal government auctions off communications spectrum even when its critical to safety. You could blame the people who wrote RSIA and signed it into law (a mostly Democratic Congress and Bush, in his last year in office). But to blame this accident on a lack of funding is simply untrue.

[erronis]

39. Oh, I was so hoping to get B2G's most recent intelligent reply. Guess s/he/it has signed out.

[Fast Walker 52]

45. good rebuttal

[trumad]

20. you my hero.

[jeff47]

22. God, I hope not.

[trumad]

23. on that one post you were.

[daleanime]

7. Well, let's think.....

there's been a major crash on that curve before, but that's expensive.

Training takes money. And that is 15 seconds.

[66 dmhlt]

44. PTC was only installed on the SOUTHBOUND route - NOT the Northbound ...

And it was from lack of funding:

“The Federal Railroad Administration twice sought extra funding from Congress to finance the technology for Amtrak and other commuter rails. A first request for $825 million was ignored. A second request for extra funding was made this year for the 2016 budget....

“It was never funded.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/us/amtrak-says-it-was-just-months-away-from-installing-safety-system.html?_r=0

[Fast Walker 52]

46. thanks

[Gore1FL]

10. It isn;t installed where the train crashed, per CNN

From the article:

Why wasn't it installed on this stretch of track?

"That's going to be a key question. We want to find out," Sumwalt told CNN's "The Situation Room." "Why was it in other areas ... on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, but why was it not here?"

A system that can stop accidents sounds like a no-brainer. But there's a catch: It's expensive.

That's one reason the railroad industry has opposed it in the past. And that's likely one reason why even though it has been installed in most of the Northeast Corridor for Amtrak, it hadn't yet been installed on the part of the track where the train derailed Tuesday night, Goelz said.

"It costs billions," Goelz said. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth the price, he said. "We cannot stop. The government needs to help."

Goelz also offered another possible reason the system wasn't in place.

"It could be because this is an intersection of a number of different rail lines, at this intersection they did not have it in place even though it was a relatively sharp turn," he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/13/us/philadelphia-amtrak-crash-positive-train-control/

[B2G]

12. Not according to other sources.

They are saying it was in fact installed but wasn't turned on.

[Gore1FL]

13. Do you have a link to those other sources?

I would like to read them as well.

[B2G]

14. I do

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/05/14/exclusive-train-control-was-installed-turned-off-at-time-of-amtrak-crash-congressmen-say

http://bigstory.ap.org/urn:publicid:ap.org:4271b2ca952348168556f7d234709e78

[Gore1FL]

15. Thanks! n/t

[MH1]

18. Reading is fundamental.

From your link.

"According to Amtrak, PTC was installed in the section of track where the Philly accident occurred," a committee source writes in an email to U.S. News. "There have been delays in 'turning it on' associated with FCC dealings and getting the bandwidth to upgrade the radios from 900 MHz to something higher (for more reliability)."

Amtrak's application for the bandwidth needed to use the positive train control system was approved in "early March," an FCC official says.

“The spectrum Amtrak wanted to use in 2011 was owned by someone else," the official says. "It took them three more years to negotiate with private parties to acquire the needed spectrum for the Washington, D.C.-to-New York corridor. Once Amtrak finalized their application, the commission approved it within two days.”

Amtrak President Joseph Boardman said Thursday the technology was installed where the crash occurred, according to The Associated Press, but it had not been turned on because the system needed to be tested further.

Positive train control uses radio and GPS signals as well as other technologies to detect and reduce trains' speed. Congress demanded the technology be implemented nationwide by 2015 after a California train collision left 25 people dead and more than 100 injured in 2008.

The spectrum was approved in MARCH fercrissakes after THREE YEARS of delay. You might think that a major corporation can spin on a dime to complete testing and go live with a critical system like that ... but if so I'm guessing you don't have much work experience in that kind of organization.

The THREE YEARS of delay was due to having to negotiate bandwidth from PRIVATE PARTIES because the government didn't see fit to reserve it. I believe that was part of RP's point.

[B2G]

24. I am fully capable of reading

And as I have stated repeatedly, if the hardware was installed and the bandwidth acquired but hadn't been fully tested, then the issue with the tracks in question was not a result of lack of funding.

Yes, there were delays, but the law mandates that all commuter tracks be upgraded by the end of the year. The had not yet missed that deadline.

If you can prove to me that this was caused because they lacked the funds to get it done, I will gladly sit down and shut up.

It really amazes me that given all of this, there are still some screaming that this is the fault of bad infrastructure rather that a negligent engineer taking a curve at twice the posted speed limit. But I guess I'm easily amazed.

[gratuitous]

29. Please, the Beatles have already covered this

Didn't they sing, "Take these broken wings and learn to fly"? So it's Amtrak's fault they didn't learn how to fly with their broken wings, and Republicans and their obstructionist tactics win again forever! Yay, America!

[MH1]

21. Installation isn't complete until the system is tested.

At least not where I come from. (Yes, yes, some companies don't make that distinction. Normally it is better to test before turning on a system on which lives may depend.)

[hifiguy]

49. oh, like the Exxon Valdez

which had state of the art radar that no one on the ship was trained to operate. So they turned it off.

Jayzus.

[Thinkingabout]

3. We have a big problem with infrastructure and a blind and non hearing GOP Congress.

They do not want people to have decent jobs and recover from the GOP recession and they damn sure do not want Obama to get any credit.

[brewens]

9. Yup. Cause the problem and then use what you fucked up as an excuse to get rid of it.

I'm going through the same thing at work for the second time in my life.

The first time in the late 80's, the majority owner lady insisted the Budweiser distributor I worked for expand into the wine business. The old school beer guys running the place didn't want anything to do with it. They were forced to though and they mailed in the effort. They lowballed it all the way, refusing to pay top dollar and get a real professional wine salesman. We ended up with a drunk and they refused to fire his ass evenwhen t was obvious he wasn't cutting it. I had made the mistake of taking over the delivery route.

So after what had actually been not too bad of a start, things went downhill. Of course it wasn't the manager, his assistant manager or his supervisor sons fault, it was our fault and maybe it just wasn't a good thing for us to have gotten into. So they eliminated some of the slower selling products, starting us on a downhill spiral. It didn't last long after that and no one was held accountable except for me really. I ended up being demoted but what really sucked was that I had missed my chance to get a beer driver route going through all that. The drunk got fired eventually but he had it coming to him.

Now I have the same exact thing being done at the blood center I work for. I and my crew operate out of a remote center 100 miles from our regional HQ. Management up there doesn't like it down here, especially our recruiting director. She also refused to replace our local recruiter down here when she left, thinking everything could be handled from RHQ. But they don't like to come down here and won't unless they are forced to. So despite past success that proves it's productive and wide open area if someone would put in some effort, we hear rumblings that it's just not really a productive area, it doesn't make sense to put more resources down here. Because they don't like to be down here!

It's maddening really. Now it's gotten to be an issue of their really not wanting to hire a recruiter that might be really good down here, because if they did that, some people might be made to look like idiots! I'd love to give it a shot but they know what I think already and it won't be me. Not a freakin' chance. If they did that, I'd be going after it like a madman! It's really low hanging fruit in an area that has been so neglected. You'd have to be completely worthless not to look pretty good at least right at first.

You see the same moves put on when it comes to Amtrack and the Postal Service. Really government in general as far as the Republicans are concerned, with a little help from those that are supposed to be on our side. They are now in a position where they don't dare allow government to succeed. Even just a little here and there. People will wise up and see their bullshit if they let that happen.

[geretogo]

17. Rethuglicons are hired and payed killers by the Koch brothers and they will kill us all if we don't

stop them . GO Bernie GO !!!

[olddots]

19. no matter how much the pukes think they are " right "

they are evil and extremely wrong .

[Dont call me Shirley]

25. Republicans are Slumlords. They let our infrastructure crumble. That's what Slumlords do.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

35. They want it so everywhere you look it looks like poverty....

That way everyone believes it when they hear "times are tough" and they believe it when the boss says they can't afford to give anyone a raise.

[Dont call me Shirley]

36. And when time comes to gentrify, they get to sell for big profits. Or if in govt, they give it to

big donors for free.

[malaise]

28. Nailed it again

Rudie
rec

[BlancheSplanchnik]

31. Heartsick Kick, Rec and ^ n/t

[world wide wally]

32. Well shit, Rude.

Someone has to sacrifice if we are going to be able to afford all those tax cuts for billionaires.
Fucking grow up already!

[Enthusiast]

37. K&R! Fuck a bunch of Republicans.

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[Paka]

40. Great Piece

You pretty much laid it out. I love Amtrak, but we could do so much better. So sad for those who had to die.

[Ed Suspicious]

41. That's the problem.

"Let's give the last quote to Florida Republican John Mica: "There's no question the United States has a third-world rail system. It's a monopoly run in a Soviet-style operation. Amtrak."

Unpack that statement: Amtrak is run by the federal government. If it's a third-world level system, who the fuck made it that way?"
- See more at: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2015/05/republicans-killed-amtrak-derailment.html#sthash.AC2CgQ3p.dpuf

That's the problem. McCain should be ashamed that he and his republican pals presided over the third-worldification of our rail system, but they don't mind.

No, it just proves that no matter who's in government, it's always going to go to shit as McCain points to the evidence. These people are perverse.

[IHateTheGOP]

42. Think CNN or Fox will cover this???

Ha ha ha ha....

[whereisjustice]

47. Corporate douchebags who fly around the world on private jets funded by tax-free profits

demand the destruction of public transportation.

Anything that gives an average person a simple necessity, corporate America shits on. That's how greedy and selfish they are.

They view us as a threat, so they take every thing away from us that might give us a chance to improve our lives.

[calimary]

48. DAYUM - Again!!!

"When Democrats brought up the derailment during the debate, Idaho Republican Mike Simpson said, "You have no idea, no idea, what caused this accident. Don’t use this tragedy in that way. It was beneath you." Because Republicans would never use a tragedy to advance their agendas, oh, no, they are as pure as yellow snow.

Republicans will say, "We're not cutting the budget on safety for passengers." Which is technically true, but if the budget is shit to begin with, then it's pretty hard to make the case that you are standing up for the railroads. If you are responsible for making sure that safety systems are funded to help save lives and you don't fund them properly, then you bear blame for the deaths that occur due to your failure. Of course Boehner wants to shut up questions about it. He has blood on his nicotine-dyed hands."

Dawgies!!! If that doesn't spell it out in hot burning coals, I don't know what does.

One of the many reasons I like such stuff is how quotable it is. If you're ever at a loss for how to put something, how to word something, how to explain something so somebody else can understand it - like when you're talking with wavering relatives who've heard too much from crazy Pox Noise-loving Uncle Harry. He may be a lost soul but THEY can still be reached - if you put it in a way they can more easily wrap their brains around. Stuff like this can spark good ideas - not to mention MEMORABLE one-liners!!! You want not only to plant a seed, but imbed it so it'll stick and take root.