Thursday, June 19, 2008
Thom Hartmann, More Lies
The girls -- Tiyana Clay of North Portland and and Angela Monique Dow of Northeast Portland -- were arraigned in Multnomah County Juvenile court this afternoon on an indictment from earlier today charging them each on seven criminal counts, including the Measure 11 offense of second-degree robbery.
The six additional charges were third-degree assault; first degree intimidation; two counts of attempted second-degree assault; interfering with public transportation; and recklessly endangering another person.
Continue reading:
Liberal Radio Talking Head Thom Hartmann told another whopper of a lie on his Wednesday program, at 43-44 minutes into the second hour.
Discussing mass transit with a caller, Hartmann said the downtown Portland mass transit, "is free."
Free? Really? Free?
Hartmann, you are such a lying, lying, Liberal POS.
Do the buses or rail cars show up all on their own? When they need upkeep or repair, do they magically heal themselves or is there a company that fixes them and charges absolutely nothing for their labor?
Free? Do the drivers not receive a paycheck? Do they do what they do out of the goodness of their hearts?
Does the Portland mass transit system accept money for advertisers on the property it owns? Do advertisers subsidize the "free" transit?
Free for whom, Thom? Free for the riders? Oh. Interesting.
There is no monetary cost or rider fee for for those who ride in downtown Portland, but to say that it's "free" is a lie.
Liberal Radio's Lying Liar Thom Hartmann
Hartmann is a man who claims that the actual cost of gasoline is upwards of $10/ gallon if you consider the cost of the U.S. Military protecting oil routes (i.e. The Strait of Hormuz) and the health insurance costs related to illnesses related to car exhaust and the environmental damage caused by using oil.
So, using Hartmann's "real price of gasoline standard" - remember Thommy, you can't have it both ways - using your standard of the actual cost of a gallon of gasoline, there must be insurance-related costs to Portland's "free" mass transit. There has to be liability costs. Repair costs. Upkeep costs.
So tell me, genius, how is Portland's mass transit "free." Are taxpayers subsidizing the "free" transit? Is some property and business taxes diverted to keep the "free" mass transit operational?
How is it "free"? I beg you, Thom, to leave a comment here as to how you can justify calling the Portland mass transit "free."
Does Hartmann mean it's "free" for the riders? Why, how benevolent - and what a orgiastic display of Socialism - of the city of Portland redistributing wealth and bestowing it upon those who ride downtown mass transit in Portland by making it "free."
This is what the Cato Institute wrote about Portland's mass transit in July, 2007:
...the costs of Portland's planning far outweigh the benefits. Planners made housing unaffordable to force more people to live in multifamily housing or in homes on tiny lots. They allowed congestion to increase to near–gridlock levels to force more people to ride the region's expensive rail transit lines. They diverted billions of dollars of taxes from schools, fire, public health, and other essential services to subsidize the construction of transit and high–density housing projects.
Those high costs have not produced the utopia planners promised. Far from curbing sprawl, high housing prices led tens of thousands of families to move to Vancouver, Washington, and other cities outside the region's authority. Far from reducing driving, rail transit has actually reduced the share of travel using transit from what it was in 1980.
[...]
Portland–area residents have expressed their opposition to these plans by voting against light rail and density and voting for a property–rights measure that allows landowners to claim either compensation or waivers for land–use rules passed since they purchased their property. Opposition turned to anger when a 2004 scandal revealed that an insider network known as the "light–rail mafia" had manipulated the planning process to direct rail construction contracts and urban–renewal subsidies to themselves.
Maybe Thom doesn't choose to believe Cato, after all, Cato deal in realities where Thommy deals in pie-in-the-sky fallacies. Maybe Thommy will believe someone from closer to his own backyard.
Kenneth A. Small, Professor Emeritus of Economics authored the below, (pdf file, but only one page, thus it opens quickly):
University of California at Irvine
Presented by the Center for Transportation Studies
Portland State University
Portland, Oregon
April 14, 2006
This paper, co-authored with Ian W.H. Parry, derives formulas for the welfare effects of reforming subsidies for peak and off-peak urban rail and bus fares, and applies them to the metropolitan areas of Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and London. The model accounts for congestion, pollution, oil dependence, and accident externalities associated with automobiles and each transit mode. It also accounts for scale economies in transit supply, costs of accessing and waiting for transit service, crowding costs, pre-existing fuel taxes, and the transit agency’s adjustment of frequency, vehicle size, and route network in response to changes in demand. We find that in almost all cases existing subsidies – which typically exceed 50% of operating costs – are either about right, or possibly too low, across bus and rail, peak and off-peak period, in the three cities.
Huh, I guess it appears that subsidies help fund mass transit rather than ridership fees. Amazing. Who could possibly have thought such a thing?
Baby Thom. Do as he says, not as he does.
Do you think Hartmann travels by the "free" mass transit? I doubt it. He's an Elitist Liberal, I'm sure he would say that his schedule will not allow him to use the system of travel that he wants others to use.
Not long ago Hartmann released another one of his books that will lull you to sleep. He went on a multi-city book promotion trip. How did he travel to and fro, city to city? Did he use precious fossil fuels by using commercial airlines? Did he travel from the airport to his hotel by car or did he use horse and buggy? Did he walk? Bicycle? Skateboard? Pogo stick?
Not long ago Hartmann traveled to Darfur. Did you get there by kayak, Thom? Did you cross the ocean by swimming? Did you take a raft?
Hartmann, you are such a lying, lying, lying, Liberal POS. And if that's not bad enough, you are perhaps the most egregious pseudo-intellectual to ever set foot on the planet.
If you listen to Hartmann's radio program, or read his books, and believe anything he says, you are a brainless idiot useless "feeder." Find a cliff somewhere and do society a favor and jump off it.
Only a Marxist like Thom Hartmann would consider that something paid for by a redistribution of wealth and heavily subsidized is "free". This his how Marxists operate, this is what they believe. Hartmann is a Marxist.
©2008
Labels: Thom Hartmann
Hartmann is such a lying POS. His show airs here tape delayed in the mid-afternoon. If he was live here, I would have called his program and asked himn to define "free".
With Cindy Sheehan running against Peloshit for her spot in Congress, I hope she give Peloshit a challenge. I'm going to have to write about supporting Sheehan. I'd actually like to see her beat Pelosi and win her Congressional seat!
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