Those states you refer too defer that cost. Also, the reason Amtrak is forced to support the "fly-over" states is because it is cheaper than building airports and providing air service.

And before somebody says, people choose to live there, that's their problem (or something to the effect), one could turn that around and tell the people of the northeast to grow their own food and drill their own oil because they choose to live there, too.

Why should you subsidize truckers and airports? It costs $3M to build 1 mile of interstate. Sure it looks nice on the back of all those semis that they pay $6,000 in fuel taxes. Too, bad, they don't tell you the damage they do to the pavement is far greater than that. But, of course, if we didn't subsidize the trucking industry and made them pay the real cost of transporting goods, then prices would go up and you, the taxpayer would still be paying for it, plus a profit percentage on top of it.

Why focus on passenger rail as the problem. Most airports are heavily subsidize in the US. Yes, carriers pay gate fees, but those fees do not cover the true cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure.

Face it, Amtrak, highways, airports, etc. are subsidized by the taxpayer because they ultimately benefit the taxpayer.

Instead of defunding Amtrak, maybe it's time to properly fund Amtrak. You seem worried about your tax dollars, but don't seem to mind the billions of them spent on subsidizing air travel and highways and even waterway traffic. What is really lacking in the US is a cohesive transportation policy.

But, hey, it's easier to shout "Defund Amtrak" then it is to actually fix the infrastructure and transportation problems in this country.

What do you expect them to say? But really, the PTC system wasn't turned off for shits and grins. It was still being installed and waiting final calibration and certification. Besides the NTSB is still trying to explain the sudden acceleration (twice) as the train approached the curve. One thought is a software glitch with the onboard system. If that is shown to be the case, then PTC wouldn't make much of a difference.

Heroin was "invented" in the late 1800s as a less addictive alternative to morphine. By 1920 it was strictly regulated as a response to the 200,000 heroin addicts in the US. As such, heroin was readily available for maybe 50 years in the US and it was indeed addictive, which is what caused congress to act with the Dangerous Drug Act.

Addiction is not a biochemical disorder. It is a biochemical process. Opiates, by their very nature, trigger responses in the brain that lead to addiction. It does not matter that some people can become addicted more readily than others. Heroin was an attempt to alter the physical property of morphine to make it less addictive. It worked, heroin IS less addictive than morphine, but it is still easy to become addicted to it. This is not because of a biochemical disorder in the brain, but because of the very way our brains work.

Except that many things are addictive without a genetic predisposition. So even if all of the people with some sort of addiction never bred again, there would still be addictions. Most addictions do not have a genetic trait as much as we want to be able to say it's not our fault.

There are approximately 254.4M registered vehicles in the US and of those about 6M are in an accident each year. That equates to 2.4% of the registered vehicles are in some sort of accident. From the AP report, 4 out of 48 autonomous vehicles were in an accident which equates to 8.3%. Based on the information presented, autonomous vehicles are 3.5 times more likely to be in an accident than non-autonomous ones.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics. -- unknown, but known not to be Mark Twain

No, it won't. Regardless of whether somebody addicted to porn or video passes on their genes, future young men can still develop the addiction. One's parents don't have to use heroin for their offspring to develop an addiction to it.

Cars, in locales that have emission testing, are only required to meet the emission requirements in place for the year manufactured. This is a good thing, because otherwise, emission standards could be tightened and everybody would be forced to buy a new car. Since older cars have a finite life, the problem of poorly running old cars will eventually resolve itself. When that occurs, the studies will show that overpowered high horse-powered cars and SUVs are the major polluters. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a desire to limit those.

Up next on the news US Congress votes that pollution from cars is not a man made phenomenon, but part of a natural cycle..

Cash for clunkers wasn't about pollution. It was about bailing out auto companies. Both initially by the government subsidizing the purchase and later by removing late model vehicles from the used car market causing used cars to increase in price to a point where new cars were seen as an attractive option.

Ironically, the upper middle class would have purchased new vehicles anyway, but the lower middle class and the poor were priced out of the "good" used car market and had to stick with what they had or replace it with somebody else's clunker.

Cash for clunkers is a prime example of unintended consequences of a government program when quick fixes are implemented without looking at the long term effect.

Actually, capitalism is blind to age, it is about supply and demand. On the other hand the actual managers involved in the decisions have their own bias and prejudice. Capitalism may cause many problems, but ageism isn't one of them.

If you can afford tuition of $28,750/yr for elementary school, then you don't need a charity to subsidize the cost for you. This is nothing more than the 1% helping the other 1%. The promise of trickle down is merely a teaser for the other 99%.

Condemning 1.6B Muslims, because they can't reign in a some violent Muslims seems a bit extreme. In the US, it is innocent until proven guilty. Go after the extremists, no problem, but leave the innocent alone.

Nobody said that Muslims should get special treatment, but then again, it sounds like that is what you are proposing. We don't single out all Christians because Timothy McVey was one or the Westboro Baptist Church are. So, why should we single out all Muslims because of the actions of a few? If if there were a million Muslims who were extremists, that is .06% of the estimated total Muslim population in the world.

As for other religious groups shooting or killing others because of religious mockery, one only has to go back a few decades to Ireland or Croatia to see exactly that. As for atheists doing so, one only has to look at China and the former Soviet Union.

Should we condemn all Chinese because of the actions of small percentage? No, of course not. So, why should we condemn all Muslims for the actions of a small percentage? It seems like doing so is the very different treatment you are complaining about.