Today's Republican Party: Joke or Object of Pity?

[mckitterick]

From the Wall Street Journal: Protesters who attended Saturday’s Tea Party rally in Washington found a new reason to be upset: Apparently they are unhappy with the level of service provided by the subway system.

Rep. Kevin Brady asked for an explanation of why the government-run subway system didn’t, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services.

Seriously.

The Texas Republican on Wednesday released a letter he sent to Washington’s Metro system complaining that the taxpayer-funded subway system was unable to properly transport protesters to the rally to protest government spending and expansion.

“These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration,” Brady wrote. “These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit for them.”

A spokesman for Brady says that “there weren’t enough cars and there weren’t enough trains.” Brady tweeted as much from the Saturday march. “METRO did not prepare for Tea Party March! More stories. People couldn’t get on, missed start of march. I will demand answers from Metro,” he wrote on Twitter.

Brady says in his letter to Metro that overcrowding forced an 80-year-old woman and elderly veterans in wheelchairs to pay for cabs. He concludes that it “appears that Metro added no additional capacity to its regular weekend schedule.”

From the Sing City Chronicles blog: But wait, it gets better, Back in July, HR3288, a Transportation and HUD appropriations bill, came up for a vote. It included $150 million for emergency maintenance funding for the DC Metro.

Brady voted against it.

And from Pamela Sargent: "These folks object to the private enterprise of cab drivers as opposed to a public service like the Metro?"

Best,
Chris

Comments

[skyflame.livejournal.com]

Of course said Congresscritter voted against Metro funding. It's not like they've been asking for funds for the thirty years or anything.

Dunderhead.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

You socialist, wanting to use people's money for essential services!

[skyflame.livejournal.com]

I love me some Metro. But boy, they need to replace the rest of their 4-car trains with 6-car ones.

(My brother lives two blocks from a Metro stop. It's convenient. :)

[chernobylred.livejournal.com]

Joke or Object of Pity

I don't think these terms are mutually exclusive.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

True that.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

For many of these people, I think it's not the publicly-provided services that's the problem -- it's having to actually have to pay taxes for them. They want all of the services, but they don't think that they should have to actually pay for them.

Others are pie-in-the-sky libertarians who think that private industry would provide all of those services if the "guv'mint" didn't, but they're kidding themselves, too. You think that private developers would have paid to buy the land to build the Interstate Highway System in return for putting up toll booths? Ha! Even the transcontinental railroads were built with massive government subsidy in the form of land grants and subsidized loans.

Basically, I think most of these people, if you could possibly question them rationally about it, boil down to "give me stuff for free, but don't give stuff to those Other People because I don't like them."

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

So maybe neither "joke" or "object of pity" but instead "short-sighted and selfish"?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that pretty well sums it up.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

May I link to this?

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

By all means.

[amjhawk.livejournal.com]

Jon Stewart did a great video mash-up earlier this week - of Republicans trying to get out of apologizing for "you lie!" during Obama's address to Congress, citing more important work needing to be done, only to in turn... demand apologies from people.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Hahahahaha!

[velochicdunord.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a FAIL to me.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

One of the great things about the Internet is that political representatives can't make comments like this without becoming an object of ridicule all over the globe.

This is possibly what Kevin Brady will be most remembered for.

*googles*

Hey, maybe he wanted extra public transport because he couldn't trust himself not to drink and drive...