Same Amtrak hypocrisy, different day

First, Congressmen want Amtrak to continue unprofitable runs through their low-ridership rural areas while attacking the subsidies that would make it possible. Now, it's vegetables.

Amtrak certainly knows how to lose money, but the railroad says it can lose less if only it can get out of the business of hauling cars of "premium" freight like perishables behind its cross-country trains.

Instead, Congress has told Amtrak to increase sharply the number of carloads it hauls or forgo $8.3 million in additional federal money.

The order, contained in the transportation bill signed by President Bush last month, was inserted late in the process by Representative Joe Knollenberg, an appropriations subcommittee chairman from Michigan. The Detroit businessman who owns the only company that supplies such rail cars happens to be a large donor to Mr. Knollenberg, a Republican, and other Michigan lawmakers.

First of all, authors Matthew Wald and Glenn Justice, please spare the snark about losing money. The American auto industry is losing money while accepting the benefit of billions in highway construction and maintainance funding that we call "infrastructure" and not "auto subsidy" while Amtrak's track costs are "subsidized." Airlines are losing money hand over fist, while their airports are owned by state or local governments, who love to lavish their terminals with bond-funded makeovers and expansions. Frankly, no reporter who so much as touches on transportation issues should be so myopic as to single out Amtrak as a money loser.

Second of all, Rep. Knollenberg is an idiot. When the Times pointed out that veggie-hauler ExpressTrack got Congress to give Amtrak $8.3 million and forced it run an operation that would lose far more than that, he said he'd reverse course on the legislation. How dumb does he think we are? The Times isn't going to follow up on this, so all he has to do is wait it out and his bigshot contributor will get what it wants just in time for the next election cycle, when Rep. Knollenberg can rake in some fresh dough at Amtrak's expense.

This is where former-Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-San Quentin) had it right and Knollenberg had it wrong - you can't squeeze blood from a stone. If you take a few grand in campaign contributions (or direct bribes, in Cunningham's case), you beef up the appropriations for whatever agency is most likely to give your patron money. Then, the agency turns around and due to the strings to added to the bill, awards the patron a contract for many times the value of the campaign contribution. The Congressman gets re-elected, the patron turns a tidy profit on the deal and agency is stuck with some junk it doesn't need. The problem with using Amtrak this way is that unlike, for example, the Defense Department, Amtrak is foolishly expected to make money in a sector where it bears infrastructure costs that no competitor has to bear.