Except that most of those midwest states are red states and want to shut Amtrak down. If Amtrak's future depends on lobbying midwestern congressman, then they aren't doing a very good job at it. As for Amtrak cities without commercial airports, there are many, unless you consider driving 100 to 200 miles to an airport as having a nearby airport. And if they have a small regional airport, you can bet it is heavily subsidized by tax dollars in one form or another.

And if you are one of the people with food/water and the people around you need it, your pretty much at their mercy, too. Think of all the zombie movies, even though you can actually kill people, you can't kill or defend from all of them and eventually, you, too, will be over run and without food and water.

The best solution is to stop the apocalypse before it gets that bad because if it really happens we're all screwed.

Your anti-Amtrak bias is showing. If you did defund Amtrak and let it close routes, wouldn't it need the profits from the NE to use for operating the NE?

Well, on 9/11, when all planes were grounded, Amtrak looked pretty good. Could the infrastructure in the NE handle an extra 1M commuters? 30% of the bridges there are already classified as sub standard and past their useful life. If the infrastructure can't even be maintained for current levels of use, how will they fare with increased use?

Besides, Amtrak is like the post office, it is a private entity that is extremely regulated by the government. It might make great business sense to stop Saturday delivery for the post office or for Amtrak to cut routes, but they aren't allowed to do so. It's also ironic that most major cities will pay more to build a stadium for a professional team than Amtrak gets in its government subsidy.

Again, why single out passenger trains? Why not all manner of transportation, include air? There is far more spent subsidizing these other modes of transportation than Amtrak gets. There is a reason why every other western country subsidizes rail (and air) transportation and at a far greater level than the US -- it's called the common good.

On a small scale, you are correct. Simple bartering for goods and services works well. Unfortunately it doesn't scale up and some common means of exchange is always developed, whether it be silver, gold, sea shells or even bitcoins.

It may always be worth something, but not necessarily anything close to what you paid for it. As for land always having its value, tell that to the people in Centralia, PA or Times Beach.

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.