May14 |
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Mooching Liberal Fat Cats Riding Subsidized Trains
Local suburban angry conservative columnist Tony Phyrillas is angry at liberals! Of course, you say. Yes, but only this time he’s angry at liberals for mass transit. (According to his bio on the prestigious WEBCommentary.com, Phyrillas was also “named one of the leading Greek-American bloggers in the world by Odyssey magazine.”) According to Phyrillas, SEPTA shouldn’t be subsidized because the only people who take it are rich bastards who could afford to pay more to take the train into town.
Ahh, the ol’ strategy of admitting you didn’t bother to look anything up in the first sentence up there. I wonder if the other top Greek-American bloggers know to look up things?
I can see the stories: “Local pundit exposes world of rich SEPTA riders who dine on government-subsidized caviar on train rides they’re paid to take to Center City.”
Tony Phyrillas is so committed to his conservative principles he only drives on toll roads and nothing else. The Mass Transit Swindle [WEBCommentary.com] |
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That’s just awesome. My experience with SEPTA so far is that it features a wonderfully (okay, often horribly) heterogenous mix of “working people” and people in suits, with the balanced tilted in the side of working people. Even those people in suits don’t look like people pulling down $200k.
Anyway, someone should mention to him that subsidized light rail makes for less traffic on the highways. That’d make him happy. Someone should also mention that it makes for less pollution that causes global warming. That’d make him pretty much explode.
Someone should also mention you can’t really say nobody subsidizes your trip to work unless you lay your own roads.
What are you going to tell me next? That gutting SEPTA and having commuters pay their neighbors for lifts to work - the master plan I read about at GrassrootsPA - might not work well in practice? I’m not listening! I’m not listening! I’m cranking up my Rush-filled iPod and re-reading “Atlas Shrugged”!
I make $200,000 a year? Wow, that’s news to me!
Phyrillas is the biggest crackpot in PA. You should continue to follow his pieces and call him out on his BS. It is frightening that there are people out in Pottstown that might read him and agree with his opinions.
$150,000 per mile of new road per lane Mr Phyrillas. Thats what it costs to make a new road that has to be repaved every couple of years at the current cost of around $50,000 per mile and lets not forget how many people it takes keep them clear of snow and the cost of salt , anti skid and deicer. One less car on the road the better whether it be a Lexus or a twenty year old cadillac. Mass transit serves all walks of life and Mr Phyrillas just proved it and I thank him.
Where does it leave us when the problem is cut in half? :-)
New Gas Additive Promises To Double Gas Mileage
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Yeah… I hear the Rittenhouse set now have a champagne car on the MFL–but I have yet to find it.
The only thing rich I saw was some homeless looking douchebag masturbating on a 4:30am ride to 69th Street.
Stay classy!
He’s not entirely off base. Most cities in the US have safe and modern mass transit systems; even New Jersey and Delaware have superb state-wide mass transit systems, for example.
The problem is that this is SEPTA we’re talking about here. A few weeks ago there was a stabbing at 69th St Terminal; there was a shooting on a SEPTA bus in North Philly; in January, there was an armed robbery at the University City Rail Station. And these are three that come to mind off the top of my head.
The problem isn’t as much mass transit per se, it’s SEPTA and it’s inability to make customers feel safe. How else to explain the vagrant campgrounds at the three major rail stations? How else to explain why SEPTA can purchase some “James Bond” type explosives detection device but can’t - or won’t - put enough officers out on the streets (not that it matters, anyway, since most of the current “Transit Police” department wouldn’t even get an interview in Philly, much less any of the suburban departments - ie. Upper Darby, West Chester, Radnor).
Of course, it doesn’t help that Rendell is a fraud of a governor whose idea of tax reform is shoving a proposal that is doomed to fail across the state in the name of “property tax relief.” Rendell just doesn’t get it…
Neither do the suits at 1234 Market. They’re more worried about hiring politically connected hacks than they are about the safe and timely operation of the bus and rail system.
As far as I’m concerned, until such time as SEPTA brings in a new management team to shape the system up, they can go fuck themselves…