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[quote user="n012944"] [quote user="futuremodal"]And as much as it makes you uncomfortable, for credibility's sake a comparison of railroads to barges is apt in terms of relative government aid.  Since you admit that all modes receive subsidy of some kind or another, would you mind contacting the AAR to remind them of that fact?  Thanks.[/quote]In the original quote from the AAR that you posted, no where did the AAR say that railroads do not receive public aid.  It said barges costs are low because their right of way is maintained by the goverment.  There is nothing wrong or a lie about that statement.Bert[/quote]Then would it be just as *honest* for the prez of the barge company to have said "we might lose some business to increasingly subsidized railroads"?There is nothing wrong or a lie about that statement either.At least the AAR guy could have acknowledged the existence of the Waterways Trust Fund, which does pay the good part of the de jure costs of river navigation.  The bad part of course is paid by the taxpayers, and that bad part is not the de facto costs of river maintenance, it is the de facto costs of environmentalism.I stated that environmentalism amounts to roughly half the costs of navigation maintenance, and got lambasted by the lefties on this forum.  Yet those who aren't stuck on the notion of having their ideas prefabricated for them by the MSM and the Sierra Club can observe several trends in US industrial costs and make the connection to other industrial costs.  For example, we all agree that the cost of energy (electricity, gasoline, diesel) has basically doubled over the last few decades, right?  Can anyone here refute the notion that such a doubling is entirely due to environmental costs imposed on the US by supposedly well-meaning politicians and their pressure groups?  So if it's more acceptable to agree that energy costs have doubled due to environmentalism, why not apply the same common sense consensus to the costs of river navigation maintenance?  Or for that matter the cost of DM&E's PRB expansion project?Here's a nice article that expresses this idea that so makes liberals cringe with denial...The Toxicity of Environmentalism by George Reisman<a href="http://www.mises.org/story/1927">http://www.mises.org/story/1927</a>
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