The Heartache of it All

The Heartache of it All

New Ohio Budget May Bring Faster Meltdown

by John Michael Spinelli

July 15, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Down by nearly $20 million in uncollected state revenue after ten days of political fighting between Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland and Senate Republicans, the new $50.5 billion two-year state budget seems likely to create an economic debris field in its wake if tens of thousands of jobs are cut and service reductions for those least able to fend for themselves become reality as some have said will happen. The state of the State of Ohio is a sad one indeed.

The state that once thought itself the "Heart of it All" seems better described as the "Heartache of it All," if revenues continue to decline and one-time dollars from Washington evaporate and projected revenues from slot machines don't materialize as advocates said they would. For those in the business of sewing together and supporting the social safety-net more people will need to weather the so-called Great Recession, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the good news is that they will only have to cut off their hand in stead of their arm, as they figure out how to make due with less. Doing more with less was the management mantra of former Republican Governor George V. Voinovich, now Ohio's Sr. Senator. Sayings like this may sound good in MBA classes or business school, but actually doing more with less for those who actually need more is harder to do than say.

With the spiraling of Ohio's economy downward, a situation long in the making that has accelerated and exacerbated in direct response to the sour economy afflicting virtually every state, the projected loss of possibly another 3,000 state jobs and upwards of 40,000 non-government jobs due to serious reductions in state aid to areas like libraries, food banks, early childhood learning initiatives, elderly in-home assistance, mental health and drug and alcohol addiction services and libraries, is news only the most unsympathetic and selfish would see as the kind of tough-love medicine needed to make Lazarus rise from the dead, find a job and get back to work.

Strickland can boast that his public school funding reform plan remained in the budget, an effort that if continued by future legislatures for the next decade is supposed to make Ohio's school funding plan constitutional again.

The Methodist minister who was against the sinful revenue that can only begot by slot machines before he reluctantly endorsed them as a revenue escape hatch for an economy worsening by the day due to shortfalls in revenue, is now just another gambler, hoping it hit it big. But his wager, that winnings from loosing players, many of whom will be from Ohio, will come close to the projected $933 million slots, is expected, not guaranteed. Of course, before the first dollar is lost, critics of the slot machine gambit vow to file lawsuits claiming the Governor is acting in contravention to the state constitution.

But gambling advocates who have long waited for this day to come say the approximately 17,500 slots that will be distributed to Ohio's seven horse racing tracks will fill a partial revenue hole in the $3.2 budget shortfall Strickland and lawmakers had to work out this cycle.

Ohio's take from allowing these digital bandits to set up shop like never before, made possible by the deal worked out between Strickland and Harris to legally immunize them from lossing lawsuits opponents said they will file to challenge the their constitutionality, may also disappoint as did Keno revenues. This shortfall would force Strickland to add insult to injury by reducing government workers by thousands more.

Republicans are hoping Strickland will take political flack from voters who are less forgiving about how he has handled the already declining finances and economy of the state, and more willing to pin the tail of this Democratic donkey. To help this happen, the budget hammered out between the House and Senate and sent to Strickland was opposed by 59 or the 65 Republicans in the General Assembly.

It would be a dark game to play of how bad things could be if Strickland had taken the advice of Republicans, who said he was making things worse by accepting about $7 billion in non-repeating federal stimulus dollars Ohio took from President Barack Obama and a Congress now controlled by Democrats. Budget-hole hunters found funds elsewhere, too, like the state's rainy day fund, its tobacco settlement monies and by a loan from a state program that helps local school districts finance buildings. But Republicans, nationally and locally, have come to see spending as bad, when they didn't see it as bad when the purpose of the funding was for the War in Iraq or Afghanistan or for subsidizing already well endowed stakeholders in the American system of health care, among other party goals.

And while Ohio's budget is balanced on paper, loosing lawsuits and not bringing in as much money from various sources as had been projected, all eyes on gambling specifically, are situations Strickland and Harris should not bet against but be prepared to fix when they blow a gasket.

The heartache of it all is that Ohio is undergoing a giant meltdown with very little it can do to turn the tide anytime soon. The human toll this budget has wrought has yet to be tallied. But as yet more jobs are lost even though macro statistics may show things are getting better by being less worse, a brighter future for Ohio will only arrive when we start having a heart for all.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter @OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Time Right to Make Ohio General Assembly Part-Timers

Time Right to Make Ohio General Assembly Part-Timers

Elected Officials Should Help Bear Brunt of Balancing Budget

by John Michael Spinelli

July 7, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: While Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland arm-wrestles with Senate Republicans over what combination of hurtful spending cuts or wild-card revenue generators can deliver a two-year balanced budget, one big, blatant expenditure category that could produce real savings is the sacred cow of converting the Ohio General Assembly from one of the longest sessions in the nation to a part-time avocation that could net tens of millions in cost avoidance.

As each day goes by without an agreed-upon two-year budget after July 1, the start of the new fiscal year as required by the Ohio Constitution , the meltdown in cooperation between the executive and legislative branch over what cuts in spending or proposals for new revenue will win the day will only exacerbate the already fiery contest of political wills and agendas Democrats and Republicans are now engaged in.

Current solutions to patch the projected $3.2 billion budget hole include a combination of harmful measures that either weaken the social safety net millions of Ohioans who have lost jobs of late now depend on or undercut the state's investment in education or rely upon the wishful thinking wild-card that bringing new gambling devices and operations to a state that has said no to them four times previously will be a partial revenue White Knight.

Reflecting on the menu of statewide constitutional reform issues brought to a statewide vote in 2005 by progressive groups and labor unions who thought Ohioans would approve them in response to a string of government scandals tied to Republican officeholders and their loyalists, many of whom were judged guilty by a court of law of unethical or corrupt activities, one reform item that should have been included but wasn't should have been to limit the term of the Ohio General Assembly.

While the five reform amendments went down in flames, some by staggering proportions, giving Ohio voters a chance to change how long politicians stay in Columbus, site of the Statehouse, may have been the one that could have passed had it been included. Playing on the general right-of-center gut belief that the longer elected officials are allowed to be professional politicians, the more special interest lobbyists will be able to buy laws that favor their agendas even though the public at large may be the victim of that legislation, it seems the time is right to revisit the issue of converting the virtual year long session of the legislature into a shorter, defined term that will force elected officials to prioritize and address the key issues of the day. If other states can do it, so can Ohio.

But the will of the people must be brought to bear for this to happen. That will, it seems, is no where in site despite the constant carping, bickering about government and taxes and the general contempt Ohio voters have for public officials other than the ones they vote for.

Where are the TeaBaggers and the fiscal conservatives , who generally wave their American flags and spout platitudes about the benefits of small government but who have been asleep at the switch of limiting the time their legislators can boost their pay and pension contributions, the two reasons why professional politicians will fight to stay in office.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Ohio legislators who are term limited to eight years in one chamber or the other are always looking for a chance to extend their terms to maybe a dozen or even more years. Their argument has been that voters can term limit any candidate by unseating them in the voting booth and that so-called "institutional knowledge," the intangible wisdom that comes from being in office for decades as was the case before term limits were approved in the early 1990s, would deliver good government because the experience accumulated over time would accrue to a legislator's understanding of various issues, giving them the perspective and wisdom to make good decisions.

Of the nation's 50 states, Ohio has long ranked as one of the top states with full-time legislatures. The cost to Ohio taxpayers, vis a vis the General Revenue Fund, for running the General Assembly, both the Ohio House and Senate, is not insignificant.

According to most recent FY 2010-2011 Redbook analysis of the executive budget proposal for each agency prepared by the Legislative Service Commission, total funding for the Ohio House of Representatives, comprised of its 99 members, 165 full-time staff and 40 pages, is $20.6 million a year or $41.2 for the biennium.

For the Ohio Senate, with its 33 members, 125 full-time staff and 40 part-time pages, total funding amounts to $12.6 million or $25.2 for the biennium.

Therefore, the combined total of our full-time professional legislature for two years is $66.4 million.

For a state whose residents historically have decried government at all levels as being too big, too costly, too intrusive in personal affairs or an obstacle to business development, it is curiously ironic that those who complain the loudest are suddenly silent to clipping the wings of the very people they charge with either playing politics or for partisan advantage or working in opposition to the what's best for the public interest.

Amid the the flame throwing over whether taxes should be increased or more cuts to government should be made, one cut that could achieve the dual goals of reducing the cost of government and forcing lawmakers to address the key issues of the day would be to send elected officials to Columbus for a limited period, to do the public's business on the key issues of the day. Afterward, they can go back home, where they can work on family or personal business without tax payers footing the bill.

But such a sane, common sense proposition seems a bridge to far for Ohioans, who will suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous politicians acting outrageously at a time when outrageous behavior is not their calling.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter @OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Ding Ding Ding Go the VLTs

Ding Ding Ding Go the VLTs

Can Ohio Walk Away a Winner?

Casinos Betting Race Tracks Finish Last

by John Michael Spinelli

July 6, 2009

Charles Town, West Virginia: To get a glimpse of a possible future for Ohio should Gov. Ted Strickland, with or without the help of the Ohio General Assembly, authorize video slot terminal (VLT) machines at the Buckeye State's seven horse racing venues, one need only drive to Wild and Wonderful West Virginia, as my wife and I did over the July 4th Independence Day weekend, to see the combination of live thoroughbred horse racing and spinning wheels whose "ding, ding, ding" lures many a gambler hoping to win by not loosing.

Charles Town Races & Slots, owned by Penn National Gaming (PNG), which owns and operates casino gaming, horse racing and off-track wagering facilities in many states that generate more than $2 billion in revenues and who spent tens of millions last year to defeat a statewide ballot issue in Ohio to authorize a first of its kind casino-style operation in Ohio, offers visitors 5,000 cash-less VLTs to sit and stare at, hoping to hit it the jackpot even if it is only on a penny machine.

Even though $5-a-pull VLTs stand in silent readiness close by, sometimes it makes sense to play for cents depending on your budget and tolerance for pain.

The owner of Toledo's Raceway Park horse track, PNG, which has gaming venues in Indiana, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, is a major backer of the Ohio Jobs and Growth Plan, which if approved by Ohio voters in November, would authorize casinos in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo. According to a media release in March, Ohio would stand to benefit as the various venues are estimated to bring in $1 billion in new private investment and create 20,000 new jobs and $600 million in new annual tax revenue that would be distributed to Ohio's 88 counties and 614 school districts.

But as we know, Gov. Strickland and Senate Republicans are engaged in a contest of political wills over whether about 12,000 VLTs will be divided among Ohio's seven race tracks through either executive or legislative action. Republicans are daring Strickland to make the call himself through the Ohio Lottery Commission, while the chief executive say he needs them to approve it so as to guarantee the move water tight against expected legal challenges.

Part of the big gamble is whether the VLTs will bring to dried up state coffers the $933 million Strickland's advisers say is possible, or whether that amount will ultimately turn up far fewer dollars, as was the case with revenue generated from Keno, a game Strickland put in place in much the same way Senate Republicans say he should do with VLTs.

Walking through the maze of VLTs scattered through PNG's gaming operation in Charles Town, where players only need be 18 compared to 21 in Las Vegas, the flashing, garish neon lights that inundate the space as thoroughly as fog in San Francisco might likewise light up Ohio's future budget picture. But the odds of that happening seem unlikely in the tussle between a Governor who opposed them but who has now embraced them, and Republican legislators who want to see Strickland roll craps so they can get a leg up on him in 2010 when he runs for a second term.

Further complicating the future is whether Ohioans, who have turned gambling issues down four times in two decades, will show they have had a change of heart this year, when PNG's casino issue is placed before them.

If it wins, PNG and its partners win, turning race tracks, whose clientele is shrinking, into losers. Will Ohio, now surrounded by states with gambling, be able to catch up by keeping its gamblers in-state or will all this sound and fury over VLTs amount to nothing as the state's economic fortunes worsen and the white knight of gambling some say can save the day doesn't ride to the rescue?

Ask not for whom the VLT dings, it dings for thee.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter @OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Status of Ohio Health Care Profiled in HHS Report

Status of Ohio Health Care Profiled in HHS Report

Average Family Health Premiums up 92% Since 2000

Top 2 Private Insurers Corner 58% of Health Care Market

by John Michael Spinelli

June 26, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: In a report released Friday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources profiling the status of health care for each state, a laundry list of why Ohio needs reform from the status quo was presented as another front in the now explosive, partisan debate taking place in Washington about whether private insurance companies remain at the center of health care delivery or whether a so-called public option, where government is in charge and can use its size and clout to negotiate better deals for its members, is allowed to compete, giving Americans another choice as they decide what's best and most affordable for them.

The HHS report, released under the stewardship of its leader, Kathleen Sebelius, former Governor of Kansas and daughter of former Democratic Ohio Gov. John Gilligan, reflects the public policy stance of President Obama, who says he is committed to working with Congress to pass comprehensive health reform this year in order to control rising health care costs, guarantee choice of doctor, and assure high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

"We know that we need health reform to ensure Americans get the high-quality, affordable care they need and deserve. Under the status quo, too many Americans can’t get the affordable care they need when they fall ill. But health reform must make health care more than just sick care," Sebelius said on the Web site HealthReform.gov.

Sebelius, who was chosen to lead HHS after former Sen. Tom Daschle, Obama's first choice, withdrew his name from consideration, says President Obama wants to work with Congress to "enact health care reform legislation that protects what works about health care and fixes what is broken." Ohioans know that inaction is not an option, it said, noting that "sky-rocketing health care costs are hurting families, forcing businesses to cut or drop health benefits, and straining state budgets." It's stark case for change is based on its belief that "millions are paying more for less...and families and businesses in Ohio deserve better."

So what's the profile HHS laid out for Ohio? Here it is in detail:

OHIOANS CAN’T AFFORD THE STATUS QUO

• Roughly 7.4 million people in Ohio get health insurance on the job, where family premiums average $12,689 about the annual earning of a full-time minimum wage job.
• Since 2000 alone, average family premiums have increased by 92 percent in Ohio.
• Household budgets are strained by high costs: 20 percent of middle-income Ohio families spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care.
• High costs block access to care: 12 percent of people in Ohio report not visiting a doctor due to high costs.
• Ohio businesses and families shoulder a hidden health tax of roughly $1,000 per year on premiums as a direct result of subsidizing the costs of the uninsured.6
  

AFFORDABLE HEALTH COVERAGE IS INCREASINGLY OUT OF REACH IN OHIO

• 11 percent of people in Ohio are uninsured, and 64 percent of them are in families with at least one full-time worker.
• The percent of Ohioans with employer coverage is declining: from 71 to 65 percent between 2000 and 2007.
• Much of the decline is among workers in small businesses. While small businesses make up 72 percent of Ohio businesses,9 only 47 percent of them offered health coverage benefits in 2006 -- down 5 percent since 2000.
• Choice of health insurance is limited in Ohio. WellPoint Inc. (BCBS) alone constitutes 41 percent of the health insurance market share in Ohio, with the top two insurance providers accounting for 58 percent.
• Choice is even more limited for people with pre-existing conditions. In Ohio, premiums can vary based on demographic factors and health status, and coverage can exclude pre-existing conditions or even be denied completely.
  

OHIOANS NEED HIGHER QUALITY, GREATER VALUE, AND MORE PREVENTATIVE CARE

The overall quality of care in Ohio is rated as “Average.”

Preventative measures that could keep Ohioans healthier and out of the hospital are deficient, leading to problems across the age spectrum:

• 19 percent of children in Ohio are obese.
• 21 percent of women over the age of 50 in Ohio have not received a mammogram in the past two years.
• 39 percent of men over the age of 50 in Ohio have never had a colorectal cancer screening.
• 72 percent of adults over the age of 65 in Ohio have received a flu vaccine in the past year.
  

For those of us over age 60, having access to affordable, quality health care is a top priority. With Ohio under the gun as Democrats and Republicans try to reach accommodation on a budget that is way out of balance, and that can only be brought back by either more harsh cuts, many of which will affect the poorest and least able to fend for themselves, or by raising taxes, a voodoo dance no elected political official wants to engage in. It's one thing to have a sick budget, it's another to have a sick population that seems boxed in by the rules of the road private insurance companies have put in place. Reform at the state and federal level is long overdue. But the final form of reform will be a prescription some will eagerly swallow while others will find unappetizing at best.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com. SOA can be followed on Twitter @OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Brown's IMPACT Act Included in Climate Change Bill Passed by US House

Brown's IMPACT Act Included in Climate Change Bill Passed by US House

Loan Fund for Transition to Clean Energy R&D

by John Michael Spinelli

June 26, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Ohio's junior Sen. Sherrod Brown had something to crow about Friday, when the US House of Representatives included his bill to establish a $30 billion loan fund to help manufacturers transition to a clean energy economy in a climate change bill that squeaked to passage with only 7 votes.

Even though the battle to address issues related to global warming claimed 44 Democratic defectors, Brown rallied around the work of two Ohio congressmen, who he said fought to include his bill designed to help small and medium-sized manufacturers across the nation adapt to the clean energy economy by providing them with much-needed access to credit.

But another Ohio congressman, John Boehner, the Minority Leader, used his privilege as a party leader to stall the vote, according to one published report that said he consumed just over an hour by reading from a 300-page amendment added in the early hours of Friday.

Boehner and other Republicans have framed the bill as a "tax" that would lead to more job losses and to problems in the voting booth for those members who voted for it. Only eight Republicans crossed over to vote for it.

The goal of this bill is to reduce greenhouse gases in the United States to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 83 percent by midcentury.

All Ohio's Democratic Congressmen, with the exception of Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland and Charlie Wilson from the southeast, voted for it, while Ohio Republicans voted against it as a block. Ohio currently has 18 Congressional districts, although speculation has it that the next Census will reduce this number by 2 seats.

"Our nation's traditional manufacturing industry, which helped build our nation's middle class and is critical to national security, currently faces significant challenges," Brown said in a prepared statement.

Elected in 2006 when Democrats reclaimed many offices formerly long-held by Republicans, Brown, whose gravely voice and perennially musted-up hair contribute to his trademark style, applauded Ohio Congressmen John A. Boccieri (OH-16) and Zack Space (OH-18), both Democrats, for working to include his IMPACT Act [Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology] in the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.

The bill, the heart of which is about a "cap-and-trade" system some say will lead to big changes, both positive and negative, in sectors like election power generation, agriculture, manufacturing and construction. legislation, offers opportunities to use energy better or retool for a new era of jobs realted to clean energy.

Motivated in great measure by the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs in Ohio, where the demise of the US auto industry as tracked by Chrysler and General Motors going in and out of bankruptcy court where they will be reshaped and reformed, Brown hopes his loan fund will help domestic manufacturers recover from the 30 percent slide since 1987 their sector has had on the nation's gross domestic product or GDP.

The manufacturing sector, which according to Brown is responsible for America's great middle class and that accounts for 12 percent or $1.6 trillion of GDP and nearly three-fourths of the nation's research and development, needs access to credit so they can become a part of and not a victim to the rise of clean energy jobs. The National Association of Manufacturers opposed the bill.

He noted that passage of the climate change bill confirms that clean energy legislation is an opportunity for Ohio manufacturing. "By creating a funding source to help Ohio manufacturers retool, we can revive Ohio manufacturing through investments in clean energy," a move he said will "go a long way toward making Ohio the Silicon Valley of clean energy manufacturing.”

Boccieri, a veteran of the war in Iraq who was elected last year, said, “This legislation represents the next step toward freeing our nation from its dependence on foreign resources and it will help fuel our economic recovery.” He said the bill is about "creating jobs right here at home that cannot be outsourced, protecting our national security, and helping our manufacturers retool to thrive in a new green economy."

The impact of IMPACT is that it will allow small and medium-sized manufacturers to improve energy efficiency, retool for the clean energy industry, and expand the nation’s clean energy manufacturing operations.

In his release today, Brown said the current economic crisis has exacerbated existing problems within the U.S. manufacturing industry, and taht manufacturers continue to face a reduction in demand and a lack of capital.

He cited a survey done in May that found that more than 70 percent of manufacturers anticipate difficulties securing credit to purchase raw material and rehire workers as business conditions improve. For the past 16 consecutive months, U.S. manufacturing has contracted. Moreover, Brown noted, according to the Federal Reserve Board, manufacturing output fell 2.7 percent in January 2009 to a level 13.1 percent below that of only 12 months earlier. And just last month, nearly half of the nation’s job losses were tied to manufacturing.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter @OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Strickland Admits High-Speed Rail Won't be High-Speed Anytime Soon

Strickland Admits High-Speed Rail Won't be High-Speed Anytime Soon

GOA Says FRA High-Speed Rail Initiative a "Vision...not a strategic plan."

Chicago-St. Louis Rail Corridor Gains Speed as 1st Route for Midwest Corridor

An Opeditude by John Michael Spinelli

June 25, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Calling into a rough and tumble, shock-jock radio show broadcasting from Cincinnati Wednesday, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland said Ohio needs to be included in the passenger rail system known as the Midwest Corridor, but admitted that Ohio's system would only run at slow, conventional speeds "in the near term" and that if ridership was poor, real "high-speed trains would not run in Ohio."

Strickland, a first-term Democratic Governor readying to mount a second-term campaign in 2010, spoke for a few minutes on the powerful station, answering a couple questions on his most recent proposal to plug a $3.2 billion hole in the next state budget, which by law is to start July 1. As Strickland and the Ohio House and Senate wrestle to find accommodation with each other on hundreds of differences between versions of the state budget each chamber passed in the preceding month, the political drama of who will win the day, and at what cost, is only starting to unfold. If this state budget were a weather event, high tides and fierce winds can be seen approaching on the horizon.

Eddie and Tracy, the hosts of the radio show heard on WLW700am, set the stage prior to Strickland calling in by stating their hostility for the Governor's passenger rail proposal. Jibberjabbering to kill time until they could throw questions at Strickland, the duo demonstrated their anti-rail plan bias, saying everyone they had talked to thought his idea to resuscitate long-dead passenger rail service between Cincinnati and Cleveland via Columbus or the 3-C Corridor was "a horrible idea." Others have said that if a billion dollars is going to be spent on it, it ought to at least be fast. But speed, the one essential ingredient that will attract riders, will be absent. Based on speed calculations from the Ohio Department of Transportation, the passenger train will only average 57-mph, a truly turtle pace.

Buoyant and optimistic despite the sour, declining economic health of the state and its next budget, Strickland again repeated his warning that if Ohio didn't take advantage of federal stimulus dollars being handed out by President Barack Obama's administration for the development of high-speed rail (HSR), Ohio will "be an island...because we won't be hooked into a system that involves entire Midwest."

Talking in general terms, Strickland said that if people had real choices of other modes of transportation, "they wouldn't need a car." But Ohio has cut its funding for mass transit by 60 percent over the last decade and intra-city/regional bus service is only poor at best, if it exists at all. Responding to the simple question of what's the economic upside to the state for a first-phase, conventional speed passenger train system that will cost a minimum of $1 billion to build, all the upbeat Governor could say is that all Ohio's "sports teams are urging him to proceed." One can only wonder how enthusiastic those sports team would be if they had to reach into their wallets to pay for it. Such user-fee revenues are fast becoming a tool of choice Washington is looking to more and more, as its spending comes into question by many who say huge deficits will break us all over time.

But even given what he called "modest" yearly public subsidies the system would need to cover its costs, Strickland said investing in passenger rail is less costly that investing in highways. But roads and bridges are what tie us together now, and as cars become more fuel efficient and cooler in terms of technology, drivers will opt for the privacy and convenience of their cars instead of trains that, after a six hour or more slow ride to the past, will dump them in urban cores where other transportation modes are slim to none, affectively marooning them at their destination.

"We won't establish high-speed rail in the near term," said Strickland, adding that spending upwards of $400 million was a "fairly modest first-step that would establish regular-speed [@ 79-mph] rail service." But putting the caboose before the engine, Strickland, whose job approval numbers have been ebbing as Ohio continues to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs on his watch, said, "if people didn't support it to justify further investment, then we wouldn't have to go to high speed." But for Strickland and his railroad advisers at ODOT, top high-speed means reaching 110-mph, a far cry in reality and cost from the HSR speeds Euro-style trains reach, which top out at 220-mph or more. But even with slick trains that fly along specially built, exorbitantly priced tracks that by design minimize cross traffic or signaling, even France's famous TGV trains have average speeds of 120-mph or less for their trips, according to reputable rail sources.

Strickland likely had not read through the seven-page testimony given Tuesday by Susan A. Fleming, Director of Physical Infrastructure Issues for the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) to the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safey, and Security, Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation of the US Senate.

If Strickland or his Director of Transportation have read it, then they know the GAO has concluded that, while the potential benefits of HSR projects are many, "these projects--both here and abroad-- are costly, take years to develop and build, and require substantial up-front public investment, as well as potentially long-term operating subsidies."

Furthermore, Fleming said President Obama's allocation of a paltry $8 billion for HSR is more a "vision...than a strageic plan," and that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the agency his Director of Transportation headed during the Clinton Administration, has "not established clear goals for the federal government in high-speed rail--other than establishing a 'longer term goal of developing a national high-speed intercity passenger rail network of corridors'--and does not define a clear federal role for involvement in high-speed rail projects other than providing Recovery Act funds."

Fleming said the $8 billion allocated to HSR development is "only a small fraction of the estimated costs for starting or enhancing service on the 11 federally authorized high-speed rail corridors." Sustained funding for HSR will come at the cost of taking federal funds away from other national priorities like health care, national defense, and support for ailing industries, which Ohio has a lot of these days, as Detroit's Big Three automakers try to reinvent themselves or face extinction in the marketplace.

Even though the 3-C Corridor is on the periphery of the federal Midwest corridor, the heart of this system is Chicago, which all train watchers expect to benefit from handsomely, given President Obama's long ties to Illinois and the Windy City, his home prior to the White House.

Making the point that Ohio, where passenger trains stopped running nearly 42 years ago and whose rail plans are so ill formed when compared to plans of states around it, likely won't fair well in snagging any meaningful Obama dollars, the governors of Illinois and Missouri, Quinn and Nixon respectively, have teamed up to lobby for an important share of Midwest Corridor funds to complete a high-speed train route connecting Chicago to St. Louis. For Michigan Governor Jennifer Grandholm, Chicago is at the other end of a HSR route from Detroit. And for Ohio, Toledo should be more energized to connect to this route, because it will be a long, long time [if ever] until it is connected to an intra-state line that would link it to Columbus, the middle C on the 3-C route.

The fanfare of returning passenger rail service to Ohio has caused state and local officials to day dream about their village or burg being a stop on the HSR network. With the absence of state dollars in the near- or long-term to properly fund the astronomical amount needed to build a system that will still need public subsidies for as far as the eye can see into the future and that will never have the ridership capacity to make it eve break even because it will be so slow and time consuming, Strickland and his Transportation Director will need more than pom-poms and smiles to convince hard working Ohioans [those who still have jobs] that they should build and subsidize a system that only a handful of riders will ride.

The Buckeye Institute, a fiscally conservative research outfit based in Columbus, entered the fray over HSR yesterday, when it said the vision of licky-split passenger trains is just too costly to all of us and that few people would ride even fewer miles each year. Much of what the BI said appears to be sourced to Randal O'Toole, of the Libertarian think tank The Cato Institute, who makes a strong case against HSR but fails to identify viable alternatives.

But if Ohio is so desperate for cash that it is ready to shutter many of its libraries, eliminate basic health care coverage to many of its poor including children by cutting Medicaid payments and taking away food from food banks, is it really a smart move to venture down a costly path to subsidize freight rail companies who own tracks passenger trains must run on when so many other human safety nets have such gaping holes in them?

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter @OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Ohio Home to 2 of Nation's 25 Worst Neighborhoods, Crime Study Shows

Ohio Home to 2 of Nation's 25 Worst Neighborhoods, Crime Study Shows

by John Michael Spinelli

June 23, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Both Buckeye cities have been perennial favorites to make the list of the nation's biggest poor cities, so it comes as no surprise that Cincinnati and Cleveland are listed on a crime survey as home to two of the nation's top 25 worst neighborhoods.

While the Cleveland neighborhood ranked 21st, a Cincinnati neighborhood took top honors, as measured by a study performed by Dr. Andrew Schiller at NeighborhoodScout.com, that relied on data from 17,000 local law enforcement agencies about eight crimes the FBI combines to produce its annual crime index.

For Cleveland, the chances of being a victim in the Cedar Ave./55th St. neighborhood are 1 in 9. The predicted annual violent crimes are 69, or a violent crime rate (per 1,000) of 113.67.

For Cincinnati, which lead other big cities like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Kansas City or Baltimore, the Central Parkway/liberty street neighborhood has a predicted annual violent crimes of 457, or a violent crime rate (per 1,000) of 266.94. Chances of being a victim here are 1 in 4.

Of the top 25, Chicago was home to 4 neighborhoods, with cities like Baltimore, Kansas City, Memphis and Dallas each boasting of two worst neighborhoods each.

According to information on the Web about Dr. Schiller, he is the Founder, President and Chairman of Location, Inc. and is responsible for inventing the methods and technology that power NeighborhoodScout .com. Schiller has designed similar studies and reports for various media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Money Magazine, Parade Magazine, Smart Money, The New York Times, and others.

As for FBI's crime index, information describing it said it it "seeks to overcome differences in individual state statues - that would ignore how the individual is charged - and create a standardized definition of crime classification."

Defining serious and non-serious offenses falls into two categories. Part I crimes are comprised of serious felonies and Part II crimes are comprised of non-serious felonies and misdemeanors. Together, the study methodology says, these two types of classifications make up the crimes reported in the Uniform Crime Reports.

These offenses include willful homicide, forcible rape, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, larceny over $50, motor vehicle theft, and arson. In order to compare statistical information on a national basis the FBI came up with this common definition for crime comparison.

25 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods

25) Chicago, Ill. (Winchester, Ave./60th St.)
24) Chicago, Ill. (Wallace St./58th St.)
23) Detroit, Mich. (Mount Elliott St./Palmer Ave.)
22) Orlando, Fla. (East-West Expy/Orange Blossom Trl.)
21) Cleveland, Ohio (Cedar Ave./55th St.)
20) Baltimore, Md. (Orleans St./Front St.)
19) Chicago, Ill. (66th St./Yale Ave.)
18) New York, N.Y. (St. Nicholas Ave./125th St.)
17) Tampa, Fla. (Amelia Ave./Tampa St.)
16) Philadelphia, Pa. (Broad St./Dauphin St.)
15) Little Rock, Ark. (Roosevelt Rd./Bond St.)
14) St. Louis, Mo. (14th St./Dr. Martin Luther King Dr.)
13) Springfield, Ill. (Cook St./11th St.)
12) Dallas, Texas (2nd Ave./Hatcher St.)
11) Memphis, Tenn. (Bellevue Blvd./Lamar Ave.)
10) Richmond, Va. (Church Hill)
9) Dallas, Texas (Route 352/Scyene Rd.)
8) Kansas City, Mo. (Forest Ave./41st St.)
7) Memphis, Tenn. (Warford St./Mount Olive Rd.)
6) Kansas City, Mo. (Bales Ave./30th St.)
5) Baltimore, Md.(North Ave./Belair Rd.)
4) Jacksonville, Fla. (Beaver St./Broad St.)
3) Miami, Fla. (7th Ave./North River Dr.)
2) Chicago, Ill. (State St./Garfield Blvd.)
1) Cincinnati, Ohio (Central Pky./Liberty St.)

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter @OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Why Not Fund Ohio's 3-C Turtle Train with Video Slots?

Why Not Fund Ohio's 3-C Turtle Train with Video Slots?

Strickland's Policy Switch on Slots Would Let Rail Passengers Spin Their Wheels Too

by John Michael Spinelli

June 21, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: The Great State of Ohio has failed four times over nearly two decades to convince its voters to allow casino gaming interests to set up shop inside its borders. From former Republican Gov. George Voinovich to today's Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, the mantra of one chief executive after another has been that gambling is a bad idea that would make the poor poorer, unlock the door to criminals and crime and enrich gaming interests at the expense of state coffers, which would be hard pressed to fund services to combat the social ills opponents of gambling say would be unleashed if the Satan of sin is allowed to run wild here.

Yet despite the moral hazards opponents of gambling predict would happen if slot machines or casino-style gambling were to come to a state already surrounded by states that allow them, the announcement last week by Strickland's budget mavens that Ohio's next budget, which by law starts July 1, has a $3.2 billion hole in it, has caused the good Governor, who has long opposed gaming and gambling, to turn the other cheek by signaling he is ready to permit the state's seven horse racing tracks to add video slot machines to their operations. Unable to resist the lure of maybe as much as $765 million coming to the aid of future budgets, by holding his nose on the ascent of maybe 14,000 one-armed bandits into Ohio's frantic search for public revenues, Strickland can no longer backtrack now that the slot machine proposal is out of the barn.

While the topic of video slot machines has percolated throughout Buckeyeville for a while, the question that sounds like a joke but which might be one practical way to fund Strickland's proposal to spend millions the state doesn't have on a slow train to the past that would chug diagonally from Cincinnati to Cleveland over more than six hours is to replace passenger seats with video slot machines. Doing so would be a perfect passenger-rail user fee, one that would allow those riding the rails to spin their wheels and have their losses fund the slow train to the past, whose need and ridership are simple but important questions state transportation leaders cannot answer with certainly but only with estimates that will only lead to real jaw-dropping if and when any real bids are let and returned.

This kind of user fee, which Washington is smiling on more and more as once dependable road and bridge funding sources like the Highway Trust Fund go broke as driver's drive less and fewer gas taxes are collected, would also liberate the rest of Ohio's taxpayers, who don't live along the corridor and who won't be using the train for various reasons, from funding the $1 billion-plus plan for a train that will only average 57-mph and will take until 2025 to be fully realized as out-dated plans project.

While it sounds like a joke to spend so much one-time federal stimulus money on a train loaded with slots, the idea was raised in all seriousness by one railroad historical society that said Strickland should do just that. One person who attended the meeting and contacted SOA, said the Ohio-only train could have the on-board slots so that the revenues would stay in the state. How would an intercity or interstate train handle slot business when traveling through states that don't permit gambling? Simple, just turn off the power to them while the train is in that state.

For such a sky-high price tag, Ohio's train to the past would be slow. Over the projected six hours or more it would take paying passengers to traverse the approximately 250 miles between Cincinnati and Cleveland, they could spin their wheels while the train spun it's steel wheels. If Lady Luck wasn't riding with them, so much the better for Ohio coffers.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and desperate times have come to Ohio. If a Methodist minister like Strickland who has long viewed gambling as a secular revenue trap and a Biblical moral hazard can reverse course on it, maybe it's not such a far-fetched joke to think that locomotives running on steel wheels can also have scores of other kinds of spinning wheels on it, too.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter @OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

J'aime l'Energie Nucléaire

J'aime l'Energie Nucléaire

Or Why Buckeyes Should Stop Hating the French and Start Learning to Love Nuclear Power

by John Michael Spinelli

June 17, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: The French have a word for it: l'énergie nucléaire, or nuclear power. While the French are usually derided by red-blooded Americans as too sissified and certainly not able to defend themselves, they have mastered many crafts, from making chocolate and cheese to little cars and great fashion. Another important but cruder craft they have mastered, one America has not seen since the late 1970s and one Russia is still haunted by, is making safe, reliable and affordable nuclear power.

So When Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland announced Wednesday that a new nuclear power plant was the project Duke Energy and other partners including French nuclear powerhouse Areva were involved with, I didn't exactly breath a sigh of relief, but I was able to exhale knowing the Frenchies would bring their brand of producing and distributing nuclear power to the southern Ohio hills of Piketon, which has its battle scars and war stories to tell of its decades long involvement with the production of nuclear fuel.

Unlike America, where movies have been made of nuclear accidents and where nuclear accidents have in fact occurred, the French now accept nuclear power without question. Their familiarization with and support of nuclear power dates from the events in the Middle East in 1973 that PBS Frontline producer Jon Palfremanthey said was their response to the "oil shock"

His program, Why the French Like Nuclear Power, show how cozy and unfearful of the China Syndrome the baguette-eating crowd has come with nuclear power.

Ohio's history with nuclear power is not without blemishes, a contrast to the track record of our democracy-loving, cafe-sitting friends abroad.

In the heady days of Arab oil embargoes that took car-centric America by surprise, Palfremanthey said the quadrupling of the price of oil by OPEC nations was indeed a shock for France because at that time most of its electricity came from oil burning plants. France had and still has very few natural energy resources, he notes, summing up France's stock of natural reserves of oil and coal as very poor.

Nuclear energy was one avenue French policy makers took to make themselves energy independent. Ready to unleash and control the mighty power only nuclear power can produce, the French proceeded to introduce the most comprehensive national nuclear energy program in history. A statistic that Americans can only marvel at, is that 56 nuclear reactors were turned on over a period of 15 years. Such a wide spread program in a country the size of Texas was able to quench its domestic thirst and have enough left over to export to other European countries. More curious is that the technology the French used wasn't their own creation, but borrowed from the U.S. and replicated at each plan, making them less expensive to build that the hodgepodge of designs we have here.up

Where France has no coal, Ohio has huge reserves of the black rock. But burning Ohio coal creates toxic emissions that affect others as it drifts eastward to New England. So while burning Ohio coal keeps some miners employed, it creates substantial health problems down wind.

In addition to what Palfremanthey pegs as the pride of independence that everyone Frenchman is born with, is their central management of big technology projects. For the average Ohioan, talk of government being competent to undertake big projects smacks of socialism. But for the French, big national projects like supersonic jets and high-speed rail, done and managed well, are par for the course.

Another big difference is the mindset Americans and French have toward scientists, engineers and lawyers. In America, lawyers rule. In France, scientists and engineers are generally looked upon highly as are educators. The average Frenchman respects and trusts technocrats, whereas the average American probably wants them fired because they represent the kind of big government some have been taught to despise.

Ohioans can also take a lesson from how the French dealt with their fear of nuclear waste and what to do with it. In addition to reusing nuclear waste in ways that delayed eventually having to deposit it safely somewhere, the French became less skittish about it when they learned that instead of burying it somewhere forever, it could be accessed in the future when future advances could better deal with it.

The alliance of companies working to build the Southern Ohio Clean Energy Park says the 700 jobs needed to operate the facility may not materialize for another ten years or more. So while the announcement is good news, it will do little now to help Ohioans who have lost their jobs as Ohio's economy twists in the wind from faltering auto sales and a national recession that is slowing but still dangerous.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter at OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Ohio's Slow Train Plan Likely Not Fast Enough to Snag Much HSR Funding

Ohio's Slow Train Plan Likely Not Fast Enough to Snag Much HSR Funding

US DOT Unveils Grant Criteria for High-Speed Rail Corridors

With States Paying Operating Costs, Can Ohio Handle it?

by John Michael Spinelli

June 17, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: President Obama, Vice President Biden and Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced in April their new vision for developing high-speed rail in America. The troika of leaders outlined a collaborative effort among the Federal Government, States, railroads, and other key stakeholders to help transform America’s transportation system through a national network of high-speed rail corridors.

The US Department of Transportation announced Wednesday the application requirements, procedures and evaluation criteria that would identify which of four funding tracks rail projects from states would qualify for.

While the Midwest Corridor is among the ten high-speed rail corridors the Obama administration and the Federal Railroad Administration have identified, Ohio may be riding in the caboose based on its failure after nearly 42 years of little or no passenger rail service and on the ability of its imploding budget to handle the costs of operation, which DOT said falls squarely on state shoulders.

With about $3.2 billion dollars in budget adjustments starring down Gov. Ted Strickland and Columbus lawmakers, the news of how grim state services could get real fast would argue that Ohio needs to think twice or more about spending unknown millions on a yearly public subsidy for a slow train to the past, that seems to fall short of many DOT funding criteria when those funds could go instead to shore up government services or to pay for basic social services for needy Ohioans hit hard during this Great Recession.

Ohio is like every other state who since the announcement by Obama that $8 billion in stimulus money would be offered as a down-payment on his vision that America can have Euro-style trains flashing across the nation has cultivated its own dream of re-establishing passenger rail service, more than four decades after the last train running from Cincinnati in the southwest to Cleveland in the northeast stopped service.

Strickland and his transportation director, Jolene Molitoris, have been boldly promoting a revival of passenger rail service that would top out at 79-mph but only average 57-mph and take over six hours to make a one-way trip along the so-called 3-C Corridor. The duo had repeatedly said start up costs would be about $250 million until last week, when Strickland upped that figure to $400 million. For rail watchers, the increase of $150 million with nothing to point to was a red flag signaling that the numbers for the plan, until they are backed by real bids, will be as slippery to grasp as holding mercury in your hand. But those figures will likely not be known for years to come, based on the state master rail plan date of 2025, when we'll know whether all the time and investment put into it has been worth it.

But a preliminary review of DOT's evaluation criteria show Ohio may not be as thrilled with what it gets after states like California, Illinois, Texas or Florida take the lion's share of federal funds that will be handed out by DOT in round one this September.

A harbinger of things to come arrived in the form of an AP article that reported that the Obama administration informed Ms. Molitoris, the first woman to head Ohio's $7 billion Transportation Department (ODOT), that she should not spend $57 million of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) dollars on more studies, including about $7 million for the HUB or high-speed rail plan. Federal officials said she should spend it instead on actual ready-to-go infrastructure projects.

Other troubling hurdles ODOT will have to overcome include describing the public return on investment, including factors such as what the transportation benefits will be, the purpose and need of the 3-C Corridor, whether a Service Development Plan is in place and, most importantly, identifying the source of operating costs for the system, which cannot come from ARRA funds but fall to states to provide.

So while nearly all Ohio cities will not become stops on the ODOT's slow train to the past, many small town mayors still harbor dreams that their community will not only be a stop but that the train will bring jobs and prosperity along with riders to their towns.

The irony of this fallacy is that high-speed trains can not travel at high-speeds if they make too many stops along the way. This point was confirmed recently when a spokesman for the Ohio Rail Development Commission issued a reminder that the more small towns that think they should be on the train route, the slower the train will be. Some small-town mayors want a train to pull into either an old, nonfunctional station or one they don't have the money to build.

But DOT makes it clear that trains that cannot hit 110-mph will take a backseat to those that can, such as the California high-speed rail project which wants to connect Los Angeles with San Francisco with trains that run above 200-mph.

Other criteria Ohio and other states will have to meet relate to economic development or jobs created especially in economically-distressed areas, energy efficiency and how it will make communities more livable.

Moreover, additional success factors such as Ohio's track record of comparable projects or reasonableness of schedule and availability of operating financial support could side-trackODOT, which is still waiting for results contained in a special study on ridership due this summer.

Molitoris, the first woman to head the FRA back in the early 1990s, has often said the 3-C is a great business opportunity even though she has had little in the way of firm or fast figures to back up her upbeat assessment of a passenger rail ride that must share existing freight tracks and will go slower than a car would and take 30 percent more time to do it in.

A possible speedbump for ODOT's slow train to the past is the mandate included in the HSR guidelines that require it to produce a National Environmental Policy Act report, that shows it has considered "reasonable alternatives," which it said is "typically conducted during the environmental review process."

The 3-C Corridor won't quality for Track 1 funding because it's not ready to go, or shovel-ready in Washington parlance, it cannot produce the kind of leverage with non-federal investments. projects this category smiles on and because it can't be completed within two years of the award.

For Track 2 projects, which focuses on collective efforts and requires a Service Development Plan be in place, including a business and investment justification with sufficient project cost and benefit estimates -- such as purpose and need, service and operations plan, and prioritized capital investment plan for infrastructure, fleet and stations/facilities, project management, stakeholder agreements and a financial plan for funding both capital and operations.

Buckeye leaders may fall into Track 3 funding, designed to build a pipeline of future high-speed inter-city rail projects by funding planning activities for applicants at an early stage of development. Fifty percent non-federal funding is required, and participation in this category is a prerequisite for participation later in Track 1 and 2 funding. Track 4, the final category, time-lines for project completion are set at 5 years.

In the end, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a Republican and former congressman from Illinois, will have final say. The FRA said it may at its discretion not ward all $8 billion, so funds for potential future rounds of solicitations and awards that which occur after 2009 will be available.

DOT's guidelines say there is no predetermined allocation between Tracks 1 and 2 or between this and any future solicitations, and that all such distributions will cumulatively reflect the nature and timing of the selected applications.

Excluded from funding is commuter rail passenger transportation, which DOT defines as “shorthaul rail passenger transportation in metropolitan and suburban areas usually having reduced fare, multiple ride, and commuter tickets and morning and evening peak period operations.” It said Federal funding for commuter rail projects is available from Federal Transit Administration programs.

DOT noted that Amtrak may enter into a cooperative agreement with one or more States to carry out an eligible project.

As for innovation, the 3-C Corridor plan hardly seems able to make an water-tight case that it is pursuing new technology and innovation where the public return on investment is favorable, while ensuring delivery of near-term transportation, public and recovery benefits.

In answering the question about whether such a plan would promote domestic manufacturing, supply and industrial development, including U.S.-based equipment manufacturing and supply industries, much of the rail equipment used on the 3-C Corridor will come from overseas. Unlike this scenario, an innovative, advanced-train technology as has been patented by Tubular Rail of Texas, could be manufactured nearly entirely within Ohio's borders.

While Ohio mainstream media sources faithfully print the talking points of state transportation officials without questioning them on their sources or statements, which performs a disservice to the readers who need to know real facts and not fantasy, this correspondent knows that Ohio's slow train to the past, while romantic to some, is a bad idea at a bad time.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter at OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com
The Impact of IMPACT

The Impact of IMPACT

The Impact of IMPACT

Brown Bill to Help Manufacturers Retool for Energy Industry

Brown More Open Minded Now about Nuclear Power

by John Michael Spinelli

June 16, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Junior Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown announced Wednesday that he and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, (D-Michigan) will introduce a bill to help auto suppliers and other manufactures retool for the arrival of the energy industry, as prospects dim for Ohio manufacturers in response to the shifting sands of the U.S. auto industry.

Slightly off topic for today's agenda, Brown responded to a reporter's question about his position on nuclear power, with the announcement to day by Gov. Ted Strickland that a new nuclear power plant will be built in southern Ohio at the former nuclear material processing facility in Piketon, south of Columbus, the capital.

Brown said he has come a long way from how he thought of nuclear plants decades ago, and says he is now open minded about it. Supporters of the nuclear power plant, the first to be developed since the near meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, say its power, because it doesn't release emissions long attributed to causing global warming, is in today's parlance, "Green."

What Brown didn't say but what this reporter thinks will bode more confidence in everyone that it will be built correctly, was the announcement that one parter in the project will be Areva, a French energy company. Franc's nuclear energy industry is state owned and standardized and has a long history of producing save, reliable and affordable energy for the nation.

What does IMPACT, or Investment for Manufacturing Progress in Clean Technology Act, mean to Brown, who has added today's announcement to a list of others on energy he has made recently that include the announced release of $3.2 million to support clean energy research and development projects in Akron and Canton, a visit to a solid waste authority in Central Ohio as a backdrop to discuss his proposal to expand the use of municipal solid waste as a source of clean energy and his role in the release of a Pew Charitable Trust report on "repowering jobs, businesses and investment across America," a study he referenced again today.

Speaking on a conference call with reporters, Brown said he expects his bill to be included in congressional legislation on climate change, and that enabling small- to medium-sized manufacturers to transition to become more energy efficient or retool to manufacture parts for wind, solar or bio-fuels or for other industries is also a good public policy goal.

He noted that manufacturing auto components is the largest single category of manufacturers in the nation, employing over 680,000 workers, so any help that can be directed toward this sector to keep them going, if not in the same line of work but in a different one like energy, is good.

Wendy Patton of Policy Matters Ohio joined Brown by supplying research information her non-profit, non-partisan group compiles, showing on a county-by-county basis the possible potential of Ohio businesses that would be eligible to participate in a program to be administered and run by states that meet certain national criteria, including having produced their own plans for addressing high-unemployment areas and assistance directed at building manufacturing supply chains.

Patton said PMO's report identified 3,000 Ohio manufacturers, employing 250,000 workers, that could benefit from Brown's proposed federal initiative.

In prepared remarks, Brown said the backdrop to his initiative is that as Congress is weighing sweeping energy and climate change legislation, but the more immediate immediate challenges faced by auto suppliers and the manufacturing industry, which means federal help is needed to support the development of domestic clean energy manufacturing and production.

Supported by leaders in the business, environmental, and labor communities, Brown said his bill, capitalized by $30 billion in treasury funds, would convert to a revolving loan fund after two years. If passed, the bill will become a new funding source designed to help auto suppliers and other manufacturers retool for the clean energy industry. Over time, Brown said his initiative would lead to the creation of 180,000 direct jobs and three-times as many in indirect jobs.

To accomplish these goals, Brown's bill would improve manufacturers’ access to capital and invest in energy-efficient technologies, which he said would create new jobs and increase the competitiveness of domestic manufacturing.

In questions from reporters, Brown said that not only would wind, solar and other energy-related sectors be welcome, but he said any transportation technology that is clean and energy-efficient would also be a good fit for his bill.

For states, who Brown said will process applications, they will need to show proof of their plans for high-unemployment areas, the development of manufacturing supply chains and increasing steel production, which has plummeted of late, among other national criteria his bill sets out.

Brown is right to be energized to by stopping the abuse the country's economic woes have visited on manufacturers, Buckeye or otherwise. The state's largest paper by circulation, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, ran a story of two reports out today [MSNBC and Brookings] that showed Ohio will again lag behind other states in recovering from the Great Recession, which next to Pennsylvania has hurt Ohio the most.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter at OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com
The Impact of IMPACT

Ohio Cities Fare Poorly on Worldwide Quality of Life Rankings

Ohio Cities Fare Poorly on Worldwide Quality of Life Rankings

Only Ohio City Listed is Cleveland

by John Michael Spinelli

June 16, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Analysis of a report that ranked 215 cities worldwide on their quality of life (QOL) and infrastructure showed that European cities again dominated, with only a handful of American cities making the list. For Ohio, whose major cities have drifted down instead of up in recent years, Cleveland was the only city to make the list for both QOL and infrastructure.

According to Mercer, a leading global provider of consulting, outsourcing and investment services owned by Marsh and McLennan Companies, its 2009 Quality of Living Global City Rankings Survey showed Vienna, Austria as the highest for overall quality of living and Baghdad, Iraq, the worst.

With respect to city infrastructure, Singapore ranked first with Baghdad again bringing up the rear.

For North American cities, Canadian cities still dominated the top of the index, with Vancouver (#4) retaining the top spot and Honolulu (#29) being the top-ranked U.S. city for QOL. Washington D.C. and New York ranked 44 and 49 respectively. For purposes of scoring, New York was the base city.

In the list of 215 cities based on QOL, the U.S. scored rankings for San Francisco (#30), Boston (#37), Portland, Oregon (#48), Washington, D.C. and Chicago tied (#44), New York (#49), Seattle (#50), Lexington, KY (#51),Pittsburgh (#52), Winston Salem (#53), Los Angeles and Cleveland tied (#59), Minneapolis (#61), Houston (#62), Miami #63), St. Louis and Detroit tied (#65) and Atlanta (#67). No other U.S. cities made the grade.

For its ranking of cities based on infrastructure, Singapore was first, Munich second and Copenhagen placed third. Infrastructure was based on electricity, supply, water availability, telephone and mail services, public transport, traffic congestion and the range of international flights from local airports. For fans of Ohio, this adds some fuel to the discussion of whyNCR moved from Dayton to Atlanta, which was the first U.S. city to make the list, coming in at #15.

It was followed by Washington D.C. (#24), Chicago (#28), New York (#32), Boston (#33), Honolulu (#41), Miami ($47), Houston (#49), Seattle ($49), San Francisco (#52), Minneapolis (#56), Los Angeles (#57),Pittsburgh (#61), Detroit (#62), Portland, Oregon and St. Louis tied (#63), Winston Salem (#66), Lexington, KY (#68) and Cleveland (#69) being the rear guard of U.S cities.

Performed to help governments and major companies place employees on international assignments, Slagin Parakatil, senior researcher at Mercer, said, "As a result of the current financial crisis, multinationals are looking to review their international assignment policies with a view to cutting costs."

On the topic of infrastructure, Parakatil said it has a "significant effect on the quality of life of living experienced by expatriates" and that while it is often taken for granted when functioning to a high standard, "a city's infrastructure can generate severe hardships when it is lacking." He noted that companies need to provide adequate allowances to compensate their international workers for these and other hardships."

Even though Cleveland has garnered the ignominious honor of being ranked high among America's poorest big cities on several occasions, it can be proud that it stands head and shoulders above all other Ohio cities, none of which made Mercer's top 215 city list.

As Ohio seeks to restore jobs and prosperity to itself, it should work to bolster those QOL criteria that others see as important. Otherwise, we'll be talking a good game without actually taking the field to make it happen.

But with Ohio's next biennial budget in free-fall, it's little wonder the state will have a decreasing ability to follow through on larger statewide policy goals, leaving locals, strapped for cash themselves, to figure out how to keep their boats floating with so many leaks to tend to.

Mercer press contacts said the data was largely collected between September and November of 2008 and is regularly updated to take account of changing circumstances. In particular, Mercer said the assessments are revised in the case of any new developments. The Mercer database contains more than 420 cities, ,but only 215 have been considered for the QOL 2008 ranking in order to compare them from one year to the next.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter at OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Ohio Bill New Tool to Boost Regional Transportation Projects, Sponsors Say

Ohio Bill New Tool to Boost Regional Transportation Projects, Sponsors Say

Government, Business Potential Partners on Qualified Projects

Lawmakers Vest Final Vote with State Transportation Director

by John Michael Spinelli

June 14, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Ohio governments and businesses could form investments teams to construct and operate regionally significant intermodal systems including public transit, freight and passenger rail systems, according to testimony provide last Wednesday by two prominent Ohio senators from opposite ends of the state and political spectrum, who have teamed up to propose the formation of Transportation Innovation Authorities (TIA).

The senators, Capri Cafaro, a Democrat whose district is in northeast Ohio, close to Cleveland and Lake Erie, and Tom Niehaus, whose district is in the southwest, close to Cincinnati and the Ohio River, stood next to each other last week, when the Senate Highways and Transportation Committee convened for business.

In addition to a first hearing on the outline of TIAs (SB121), the approval of Governor's appointment including the naming by Ted Strickland earlier this year of Jolene Molitoris to be the Director of Transportation was also on the agenda. Molitoris became the first woman Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration when then-President Clinton appointed her in 1993 and the first woman to break the glass ceiling at the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) when Gov. Strickland promoted her this January to hold the reigns of and director the horsepower of the $7-plus billion agency that oversees federal and state funds.

Strickland and Molitoris are backing the re-establishment of passenger rail service, diagonally across the state from Cincinnati to Dayton to Columbus to Cleveland, they hope $400 million in one-time federal stimulus dollars will cover the estimated costs for re-starting a service that has not left or arrived in any station in nearly 42 years. Strickland said he does not want Ohio to be left behind as an island as federal plans to fund more passenger rail gathers momentum despite the few funds President Obama has made available for such uses.

Cafaro, whose dozen-member caucus elected her as its leader last November, said in written testimony that it was her hope that the bill "will enhance the efficiency of Ohio's transportation system by encouraging the investment of public and private resources in the planning and implementation of innovative transportation Projects."

Creating a new authority for a defined period of time, in a defined geographical jurisdiction, where various government subdivisions or agencies can rally around a common regional transportation project with private business would be a boon for a state whose state budget is imploding, leaving locals to look to each other instead of Columbus for help with transportation priorities and plans.

Addressing Chairman Sen. Tom Patton, a Republican from Cleveland, and committee members, Cafaro said that among the various funding sources made available to TIA by the bill, taxes imposed by the authority itself would be prohibited.

Niehaus, a term-limited Republican by 2012, said the "newness of the concept and the many questions surrounding its proposed utilization," were two reasons to yank it from the State Transportation bill agreed to in March. "TIAs offer a unique ability for the pubic and private sectors to partner on the construction and operation of conventional transportation investments, as well as on intermodal, light rail or intercity rail projects,"Niehaus said in prepared remarks.

While Molitoris was not personally in the room, the authority vested in the transportation director was. As currently proposed, the bill would give the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) authority to approve a TIA or any of its projects. Projects qualified for ODOT approval would be contingent upon local entities adopting planning and zoning guidelines with the TIA' defined geography that would "assure that land use is conducive to the purpose of the district and does not set the stage for unintended, unplanned and unprogrammed additional improvements."

Once a partnership is struck between ODOT and a TIA, the transportation fun could begin. ODOT, in return for the TIA meeting standards established in the bill, would be free to provide planning and project development funds, favorable financing and improved project scheduling to the communities of the TIA. One helpful resource would bee access to a "new generation of investment" by ODOT's State Infrastructure Bank. The OSIB could offer low interest loans for public transit, multi-modal projects and intercity rail, an extension of what it currently does for roadway and bridge projects. Niehaus said ODOT is working to identify $170 million over the next two years to expand the OSIB.

Responding to questions from Senators, Cafaro reminded them that, as the Highway Trust Fund runs dry due in part due to less gas tax being collected as people drive fewer miles as the price of gas rises, locals looking to each other is better than looking for help from Washington.

The inclusion of the word "innovation" in the new authority's title should extend to not only innovative ways of financing a shared public interest with infrastructure we are familiar with, but also to the "innovation" of the transportation technology being considered. For an advanced train technology like Tubular Rail, whose capital costs are significantly lower than traditional railroads, the news of what a TIA can do is good news. Other technologies that bring new solutions to old problems should be embraced not as red-haired outliers but as a new way of moving people and goods in new ways.

The debate over investing untold billions in roads and bridges and other conventional transportation modes, no matter how familiar we are with them, is an important one. The cost of standard infrastructure, including water, sewer and energy facilities, is at an all-time high. The cost of transportation infrastructure, from trolleys, to light rail to high-speed trains, is even more expensive, which means TIAs and the planning groups they are tied to need to look either for ways to reduce project costs or look for innovative transportation technology that is less capital intensive.

The Senate bill is the upper house's version of the House version, which Niehuas characterized as a "starting point for consideration."

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. SOA is now on Twitter at OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to owners of Amazon's Kindle. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

American Idol for Train Transportation Needed in Ohio

American Idol for Train Transportation Needed in Ohio

Strickland Increases Cost, Time for 3-C Rail Plan

Texas TV Covers "Big Dig" for TR Technology Prototype

by John Michael Spinelli

June 10, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: In Washington Tuesday with other state officials like Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan who hope to snag a share of federal stimulus dollars to spend to launch a comeback for passenger rail service, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Jolene Molitoris, the state director for transportation, have revised the cost upward and pushed back the time to connect Cincinnati to Cleveland by rail, according to one published report.

"If we don't do this we will be left behind," Strickland told Ohio reporters at the state's Washington office before his meetings with the federal officials," as reported by The Columbus Dispatch. "Ohio will be an island in the middle of this nation without passenger rail service -- we will not be appropriately connected to a system that will be broad-based, and it would be intolerable for us."

The Washington bureau chief for "Ohio's Greatest Newspaper" reported that Strickland, who knows his Republican challenger for re-election in 2010 is John Kasich, and Molitoris , whose confirmation to her post will be considered this week by the Republican-led Ohio Senate, are still tap dancing around the cost and time-frame to return passenger rail service to Ohio via the existing network of freight tracks that cannot handle high-speed trains. Jonathan Riskind of The Columbus Dispatch reported the duo saying the cost to launch their runaway train to the past has escalated from $250 million to $400, while pushing its launch date back another six months to the first quarter of 2011. Strickland said the costs could be less, depending on findings from a passenger rail study to be finished this year by Amtrak. He didn't say and no reporter asked if they might also be more.

3-C CORRIDOR PLAN NOW MORE COSTLY, LATER TO ARRIVE

Hedging on the costs of an idea that has turned into a runaway policy train Strickland, Molitoris and supporters of the slow train to the past are stuck on, the governor told Riskind that "it wouldn't require too much in the way of state funding for annual operation costs - in the neighborhood of $10 million or less."

Keep in mind that Strickland and House Democrats who support the so-called 3-C Corridor rail plan are engaged in a battle royal with Senate Republicans over Ohio's worsening budget picture, which some sources say could require a $2-billion patch job just for the current fiscal year that expires at the end of June. Combining this sour situation with the growth in Ohio's jobless benefits and a shrinking state GDP, why are Gov. Strickland and Director Molitoris so headstrong about a rail plan that doesn't deliver speed but will still cost a lot and may not be fully functional, if ever, for decades to come?

Draconian cuts wait in the wings for various state programs and agencies. Eschewing a public subsidy as far as the eye can see for a train system that few will ride even though all tax payers will be tapped to pay for it appears both tone deaf to economic reality and blind to the dangers of politics, especially if Kasich and Republicans decide to make the 3-C rail plan a campaign issue that shows just how far out of touch the good governor and his eminence gries are with newer, faster, greener train technologies.

Molitoris, appointed by President Clinton in 1993 to be the first woman Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, has been the Casey Jones of Ohio's ill-conceived passenger rail plan, high-balling a likely $1 billion investment plan down a freight track that will never accommodate truly high speed trains that need separate, purpose-driven tracks on which to attain truly high speeds as Euro-style trains do.

In a separate story this week showing the advantage of a grade-separated system like Tubular Rail offers over the surface-based system state officials want to push, a tractor-trailor ran into a CSX train in Worthington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. Such a collision is impossible with TR technology.

AMERICAN IDOL FOR OHIO TRANSPORTATION

Ohio should do for train transportation what American Idol does for singers who think they have talent, namely, sponsor and conduct an audition for any train or transport technology that thinks it has a smarter, faster, greener, emission free, affordable and less disruptive idea to current infrastructure when compared to current technology to come forward and audition for state leaders and their technology advisers, who would give them fair and balanced consideration and select those they want to "pass through to Hollywood" for further R&D funding or even outright investment in, so Ohio could enter the future confident that they had found a future-ready train system it would use to create jobs and spur economic development.

At a meeting recently between officials of Tubular Rail, a Texas-based company who holds patents for its "trackless train" technology, and top officials for the Ohio Department of Development, the idea to use ODOT's pavilion at the Ohio State Exposition and Fair to showcase advanced transportation technologies -- like Tubular Rail, Monomobile, MegaRail, Personal Rapid Transit or other innovative systems -- was well received by Mark Barbash, ODOD's interim director at the time. Barbash no longer is heading ODOD due to IRS tax problems that arose after Tubular Rail met with him on the 6th of May.

DC CONSIDERS GAS TAX, VMT OPTION

Lurking on the periphery of this discussion, as The Hill reports, is the notion favored by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) that an expanded federal transportation bill should be funded by a boost in the gas tax or a "vehicle miles traveled" tax, two ideas that while they may be needed to replenish an otherwise depleted Highway Trust Fund, Republicans will hang Democrats with it if they actually become part of the bill.

Molitoris oversaw an Ohio committee that looked into the future of state transportation planning and saw a need for increasing the state gas tax as a reliable, sustainable means to fund a so-called seamless inter-modal transportation committee. A couple hours after she made the major finding of her committee public, Strickland, a gun-rights supporter, shot it down like a low flying duck at close range. The Governor took apart in a few minutes what the committee had spent months devising as their big idea for funding Ohio's transportation future.

TUBULAR RAIL IN TEXAS

Meanwhile in Pecos, Texas, Tubular Rail inventor and founder Robert Pulliam caught the attention recently of two mainstream media stations who assigned TV crews to cover the digging of a hole that the Mayor of Pecos, Richard Alligood, said could turn the small West Texas town into a "center of transportation," if Tubular Rail is on the winning end of a $20 million federal Department of Energy grant it applied for two weeks ago.

In a letter dated early June to Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn about Tubular Rail's plans to build its prototype in Pecos, Robert M. Tobias, Jr., Executive Director of the Pecos Economic Development Corporation, says his group is working in partnership with the Governor’s Office, Texas A&M, Texas Transportation Institute, TXDOT and other state and regional partners "to bring these types of projects to fruition." News reports said 150 jobs could come to Pecos if TR technology takes off. In a related story, ODOD told TR officials it is ready to help the company build a supply chain of Ohio manufacturers, who stand to benefit should the DOE grant for energy projects that "disrupt the status quo" find its funding footing.

Tobias correctly notes that having the research funds to test this technology "is an integral component of moving this opportunity forward." Continuing, he says the recent announcement by President Obama on making funds available to transportation projects of this type "could serve as the impetus" to TR technology rising from the scrub brush landscape of the test-track facility located close by. "Therefore, your support and assistance in connecting this transportation project to research funding is greatly appreciated," Tobias told a staffer in Sen. Cornyn's office.

Watch the reports here:
CBS 7 West Texas, Midland-Odessa
http://www.cbs7.com/news/details.asp?ID=12513

NBC 9 West Texas, MIdland-Odessa
http://www.kwes.com/global/category.asp?c=163304&clipId=&topVideoCatNo=121765&topVideoCatNoB=83259&topVideoCatNoC=83262&topVideoCatNoD=138849&topVideoCatNoE=124443&clipId=3824569&topVideoCatNo=121765&autoStart=true

As Ohio's political range war rages over whether Strickland let Dayton-based National Cash Register be lured to Georgia or whether the company's move was already a done deal, Ohio officials know that companies, by and large, are not beating a path to their door despite Strickland's cryptic comments today about landing one that will bring jobs here. Accordingly, state officials ought to consider all comers, like Tubular Rail, and consider what its advanced train technology can do for the state's future, instead of being stuck in the past of status quo technology that will only lead us back to the past even as we move forward in time.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Tubular Rail, the Valley of Death and Helping a Hurt Ohio

Tubular Rail, the Valley of Death and Helping a Hurt Ohio

"Trackless Train" Company Wins State Support for Ohio Supply Chain in Bid for DOE Energy Funds

TR technology as Cool as "Making a Rock Float."

by John Michael Spinelli

June 2, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Officials from Tubular Rail, the "trackless train" company from Texas, had reason to smile last week. After eights months of seeking an audience with Gov. Ted Strickland's development staff to introduce them to the company's patented technology that reorganizes the essential elements of conventional railroads by eliminating the need for tracks or bridges, a letter of general support from Ohio was issued that signaled state officials are ready to help the company build an Ohio supply chain for both its transformational prototype and for the next generation of trains it believes will become the fourth transportation industry, after trains, cars and planes, that promises to become a new standard for America and the world.

With the understanding that "a significant portion of the components for both the demonstration and commercial system can be sourced in Ohio," StevenSchoeny, Director, Strategic Business Investment Division, affixed his name to a letter than informed company officials that "the Ohio Department of Development is prepared to work with Tubular Rail and your suppliers in Ohio to take advantage of Ohio's economic development programs to build your supply chain capacity."

The announcement Monday by General Motors that it was entering bankruptcy court where it will reinvent itself in a final turnaround effort to remain a viable auto-manufacturer in the U.S, makes the hunt for new jobs that much more compelling. Ohio has everything to gain and nothing to lose from taking an interest in the birth and development of a new industry, as Tubular Rail thinks of itself.

Combining GM's announcement yesterday that its future reorganization plans will cost Ohio another 1,000 jobs with Tuesday's announcement by NCR that it will relocate its headquarters from Dayton to Georgia, taking about 1,300 jobs with it, and adding it to the dour backdrop that more than 300,000 jobs have been lost on the watch of Gov. Ted Strickland, elected in 2006 on the campaign promise to turnaround Ohio, solidifies the expectation that the state's unemployment, now above 10 percent, will continue to tick upwards.

And now that John Kasich, a former Ohio Congressman and investment banker, has declared he will challenge Strickland in 2010 and whose campaign slogan is "A New Way, A New Day," the race is on to see which man can best restore jobs and prosperity to a once mighty industrial state bobbing in a sea of red ink.

GM's bitter-sweet news makes Ohio's rough road to recover even rougher. The Hobson's Choice now, exacerbated by an imploding economy that has triggered a range war in Columbus over how to balance the budget by the next fiscal year, which starts June 11, pits Democrats, who want to fill a current and growing budget gap with billions in one-time stimulus funds, and Senate Republicans, who are ready to wield a big ax and lop off even more state-funded programs, better syncing future state expenditures with expected shrinking revenues.

Amid this economic turmoil in Ohio, Tubular Rail has submitted an application to the federal Dept. of Energy, Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy, which is offering up to $20 million per project for new energy ideas that are so "transformational" they will "disrupt the status quo" so much that a new industry standard will emerge.

From the DOE grant guidelines: "Often, a technology is considered transformational when it so outperforms current approaches that it causes an industry to shift its technology base to the new technology. The Nation needs transformational energy-related technologies to overcome the threats posed by climate change and energy security, arising from its reliance on traditional uses of fossil fuels and the dominant use of oil in transportation."

With their Ohio letter in hand, company officials added the Buckeye State to the list of team members located in Texas and Ohio that it hopes will catch the eye of DOE grant staff.
If Tubular Rail is passed through to the next round of the , when a full 150-page application will be completed,

"This project effectively creates a 'fourth form' of transportation, one that will have the impact today that the locomotive, Model T and Kitty Hawk had in their day," according to Robert Pulliam, inventor of TR technology and president of the company.

Pulliam, born and raised in Detroit but now residing in Houston, Texas, said the two mile prototype system will be proof-positive that a new "Green" industry addressing Green House Gas emissions, oil imports, infrastructure costs and job creation is upon us.

Tubular Rail's goal, according to Pulliam, is to build a transportation system that reduces the cost of installation and the affect of infrastructure impact, yet achieves the energy efficiencies inherent in steel railway systems.

Pulliam said the "Pecos Project" will be a full-scale operating system to test and prove all components, reconfiguring the essential functional elements of the rail-bed and train. It reverses orientation of steel rail and steel wheel by ingeniously putting the rails on the car and propulsion on the supports or O-Ring stanchions.

The stated goal of the program is to take an "immature technology that promises to make a large impact on the ARPA-E Mission areas...and develop it beyond the 'valley of death' that prevents many transformational new technologies from becoming a market reality."

As stated in its grant guidelines, DOE's goal is to provide funding such that a company like Tubular Rail, which already has preliminary engineering and patents in hand, can overcome the later phase of the "valley of death" by funding the technology (component, system, hardware, software, or other) that must be matured to the point that it can transition into industrial development and deployment.

The Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, which performed work for Tubular Rail, contrasted and compared TR technology with current convention railroad technology. "We strongly believe in the spirit of Tubular Rail and would like to see the project receive funding soon," theThayer report concluded. It added, "An improvement upon conventional technology is necessary because existing technologies for high-speed and urban transit are expensive, difficult to build through populated areas, and more environmentally unfriendly. In summary the basic advantages of Tubular are an initial investment 54 percent less than the competition,operations 450 percent more efficient than conventional technology and emits 35 percent less CO2 than other forms of transportation." Simply put,Thayer said "Tubular Rail is a viable option for the future of the rail industry".

What does all this mean for Ohio? Jobs, jobs, jobs. Ohio, by agreeing to have its name added to TR's list of potential partners, puts itself in a prime position to seize the day on the birth and development of a new transportation industry. Although TR's prototype will be built in Texas, Ohio can still be home to another Wright Brother's Kitty Hawk moment, TR's 1st commercial passenger.

With daily announcements of job losses battering the spirit of state leaders, workers, their family and friends and the communities they live in, any lift Tubular Rail can give to the Birthplace of Aviation should befacilitated no matter the cost. But helping TR out means state leaders and the citizenry at large need to re-think how they think about rail. Locomotive engines guided by tracks in the ground have been around for a long time. But the new paradigm, as invented by Mr. Pulliam, takes those relationships apart and puts them back together differently, but uses readily available technologies.

Frank Sonzala, a TR board member from San Antonio who is also a proven entrepreneur and patent holder, says the simple concept behind the company's game-changing technology is tantamount to "making a rock float." With Ohio sinking like a rock, it's letter of support is one small step for a state sinking beneath the waves of the Great Recession, but one giant step for Tubular Rail.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

New Credit Card Rules Could Stop Sucker Syndrome

New Credit Card Rules Could Stop Sucker Syndrome

Trips and Traps Business Model for Plastic Vendors

Personal Responsibility Works With Disclosure, Certainty

by John Michael Spinelli

May 20, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: As the Obama Administration attempts to re-float the U.S.S America, through massive injections of federal largess that will be foisted on future generations as pay-back punishment for the disastrous financial policies employed by the Minister from Midland, a hint at whether their financial skills will be up to the task could be seen soon, as America retools its credit card laws and one Ohio school system realizes equipping young Buckeyes with financial knowledge will better prepare them to enter the sea of financial sharks without being eaten alive.

To understand the deceitful, ever-changing world credit card companies have been allowed to build that places consumers on a game board rigged with financial rapids that bring them great profit while impaling individuals and families with protean rates operating in league with shifting fees, listen to how Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren describes to Bill Maher the lawful ability lenders of plastic have to put consumers behind the Eight Ball with little chance of escaping in tack.

Warren, who is also known as the "TARP Queen" because she chairs the panel that oversees the Trouble Asset Relief Program, which was set up by Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who asked for a blank check for hundreds of billions of dollars to bailout Wall Street banks infected by subprime loan securities, says credit card companies make billions by setting "tricks and traps" for consumers, who whether they know it or not, fall prey to the cruel consequences spelled out in their small-print agreements.

But hope is on the way in the form of new credit card laws that, if passed by Congress and signed by President Obama, would protect consumers from sudden increases in interest rates and curtain that one study performed by the Pew Safe Credit Cards Project said "current credit-card practices place American cardholders at risk of sudden, potentially drastic price increases, which can seriously impair a household's stability and spending power."

In a related story Tuesday, the Cincinnati Public Schools announced students from kindergarten through grade 12 will be taught financial education, in compliance with a new Ohio graduation requirement mandate that high school students, starting with the 2009-10 academic year, study personal financeas part of a curriculum that school superintendent Mary Ronan said will "graduate well-rounded students who know how to thrive amind financial challenges."

The Cincinnati-centric Business Courier reported that 25 percent of American homeowners have no savings to cover living expenses if they lose their job. Taken from a a quarterly survey performed by the Wells Fargo & Co, the study says 34 percent of homeowners have "had family or friends move in with them" and that 43 percent "think about their debt every day" while 36 percent say "they're cutting back on small expenditures, such as dining out, buying clcothes an gifts for friends."

Concerned about their members' financial aptitude as much as the CPS is about training their young students minds to know a good deal from a bad one, the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees is offering a free one-hour online class, or Webinar, through Union Plus, that will help members avoid credit card fees, understand their credit score and ow to read a credit report, among other topics.

It's never too late to wise up, but full disclosure and certainty are keys to consumers exercising their personal responsibility. You remember personal responsibility, don't you? It was used by banks and credit card companies to shift the blame of deep debt to people who didn't know the rules because the rules were ever changing, at the whim of the companies who extended credit to anyone with a pulse but then shackled them in handcuffs of repayment terms that essentially sentenced them to a debtors prison without bars.

Business advocates have long said that all business wants is "certainty" about the future so they can plan accordingly. The same demand can be used by consumers, who without access to affordable, clear and reasonable credit terms cannot perform as the loyal consumers the economy needs to grow.

Turning the tables on credit card companies seems only fair. Personal responsibility is great as long as the rules and options are clear for everyone. If "Apples to Apples" comparison is good for electric and gas rates, then it ought to apply to credit card companies and all lenders too. An informed populace is a wise populace. Playing Three Card Monty with a stacked deck is inherently unfair and only rewards deception.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Happy Days Are (Still) Not Here Again

Happy Days Are (Still) Not Here Again

Ohio Among 10 Lowest States on U.S. Well-Being Index

by John Michael Spinelli

May 13, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Only Mississippi, Kentucky and West Virginia ranked lower than Ohio on a national well-being index that not only considered absence of infirmity and disease but also a state of physical, mental and social well-being.

Performed by the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, the first and largest survey of its kind, with 1,000 calls a day, seven days a week, Ohio ranked 47th among the nation's 50 states on six sub-indices including life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behavior, work environment and basic access.

The top 10 states ranged from #1 Utah to #10 Arizona. The report showed a clear pattern of higher well-being states located primarily in the West and lower well-being states in the Midwest and the South.

The Web site of The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™, an alliance with America's Health Insurance Plans, says it has been developed to "provide the official measure for health and well-being. It's the voice of Americans and the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to measure what people believe constitutes a good life."

Of Ohio's 18 Congressional Districts, District #08 (John Boehner,R), #12 (Pat Tiberi, R) and #14 (Steve LaTourette, R)ranked in the middle 20 percent.

Districts one level down from the middle 20 percent were #05 (Bob Latta, R), #16 John Boccieri, D), #15 (Mary Jane Kilroy, D) and #02 (Jean Schmidt, R)).

At the bottom were #09 (Marcy Kaptur, D), #13 (Betty Sutton, D), #10 (Dennis Kucinich, D), #11 (Marcia Fudge, D), #17 (Tim Ryan, D), #04 (Jim Jordan, R), #18 (Zack Space, D), #06 (Charlie Wilson,D), #07 (Steve Austria, R), #03 (Mike Turner, R), and #01 (Steve Driehaus, D).

But are these rankings any wonder, given the loss of 269,000 more jobs in the past 15 months, which has produced the highest unemployment rate in 25 years (9.7%)? With more than one in 10 Ohioans receiving food stamps and with more than one-third of Ohio's schoolchildren now qualifying for the federal lunch program and Ohio's food pantries with more hungry mouths than they have food to feed, the well-being of Ohioans is in deep trouble.

Coinciding with this gloomy news were reports that seven companies in business in Ohio plan to eliminate another 2,300 jobs at plants in more than a dozen locations. Moribund auto sales were credited for the job losses.

Keith Ewald of the Ohio Bureau of Labor Market Information said in a published report the number of unemployed Ohioans is now 577,500, up nearly 200,000 from a year ago.

Ewald, who said the "job market will likely be one of the last parts of the economy to recover," was joined in his dark prognostication by James Newton, chief economic adviser for Commerce National Bank in Columbus, who said, "Job markets are going to be horrible for quite some time."

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Budget Battle Leads to More OhiWoe

Budget Battle Leads to More OhiWoe

Ohio Poll Shows 46% of Ohioans Fear American Dream May Fail Next Generation

by John Michael Spinelli

May 11, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: With fewer than 50 days left for a split General Assembly and Governor to hammer out a budget they can both agree on, the news last week that figures for the current fiscal year could be as much as $900 million more out of whack due to plummeting tax hauls was tantamount to pouring more salt into an already gaping wound.

Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, the first of his political ilk to hold that office since Republicans dominated it starting in the early 1990s, has had to trim state spending three times to the tune of about $2 billion in his first three years, due to an economy that was already failing fast when he won the office in 2006, and is falling further and faster with little expectations for recovery anytime soon. The Ohio Constitution requires a two-year balanced budget effective July 1st.

Strickland has stuck to his story that Ohio's woes are the result of a national economy gone sour, due in large measure to reckless management by former president George W. Bush and a Republican-led Congress that turned a blind eye to their leader's flagrant spending on the war in Iraq and his staunch philosophy toward business that regulating them is wrong.

But Strickland, who by one recent poll may still be popular enough to beat any Republican opponent in 2010 when he runs for relection, is taking lightning strikes from Republicans, who want to see his apple cart upended at all costs, and from Ohio media, which is less timid to assign more of the blame for a bad economy on the good governor and his budget director,, who has been lambasted for poor prognostications that fewer statehouse watchers put much faith in these days.

In a one-two punch from Ohio's Greatest Newspaper, the lead editorial in last week's Columbus Dispatch pegged Gov. Strickland and his new Democratic House of Representatives with performing a "profound disservice to the state" by ignoring reality and putting off tough decisions.

Part of Strickland's budget problems stem from his use of $7 billion in one-time federal stimulus money to patch program funding for the next two years while whistling past the graveyard of future budgets that won't have manna from heaven to rely on.

A second problem was the gamesmanship over budget numbers and forecasts used by the Ohio House to justify adding even more funding to placate social service advocates who saw their clients going without with no happy ending in sight. Adding to the mess are the happy budget forecasts Strickland received from the Legislative Service Commission that House Democrats relied on when they padded the budget and passed it to the Senatet, where Republicans rule the roost.

Further exacerbating his budget woes is the news that funding for his new education plan, a plan he said would make or break his administration in terms of being successful, was determined to be under-funded by more than $1 billion.

Republicans, who have been good at throwing brick bats at the phlegmatic governor but who have offered little in the way of realistic remedies, are as happy as pigs in mud over Strickland's plight. State Auditor Mary Taylor, the lone Republican to hold a statewide office after Democrats swept the election of 2006, estimated recently that the "structural deficit" will be as much as $4 billion in each year of the next two-year budget. But estimates are, well, estimates, and things could change, but no one can forecast with any certainty which direction change takes us in.

The paper's senior editor chided state leaders, including Strickland, House Speaker Armond Budish and Senate President Bill Harris, for not acting on the reality they can see before them. Joe Hallet said this about OhioWoe's difficult situation: "The state is bleeding jobs, 269,000 more in the past 15 months. The jobless rate is the highest in 25 years. More than one in 10 Ohioans receive food stamps. More than one-third of Ohio's schoolchildren qualify for the federal lunch program. Food pantries are overrun, and some have closed because they can't keep up with demand."

Hallett, whose paper's long tradition of siding with Republicans against Democrats and backing business over consumers, called for raising taxes, even though his paper regular demonizes the need to raise taxes on the wealthy or business in general.

While journalists are notoriously wrong about what will happen, the results of The Ohio Poll that gaged what OhiWoeans thought of the American Dream was cannily pertinent.

In a media release on whether OhioWoeans see trouble ahead, 46 percent said the next generation of working adults will be worse off economically than the current generation of workers.

"The poll found a majority of Ohioans pessimistic about their current economic conditions when compared to their parents and that a majority say the next generation will be 'worse off' than the generation working today," according to the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati that conducted the poll this April.

Thirty percent of Ohioans, the poll showed, said their household had been impacted by job loss during the last year.

Even though Mark Zandi, economic adviser to Sen. John McCain, said on the Nightly Business Report that the Great Recession had bottomed out, Ohio's woes will not soon rebound. Not having recovered from the recession of 2001, it's a long shot that Ohio can rebound from the crippling blows of lost jobs that will continue to roll its way, especially as we watch the fate of Chrysler and General Motors, two automakers who still employ tens of thousands Ohioans each.

In a news release today from Ohio junior U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), he said a proposed Chrysler plant closing in Ohio will make him explore "all avenues to keep jobs and economic activity in Twinsburg.” Brown said he has "discussed the Twinsburg closing with administration officials and will continue to fight for federal assistance.”

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Turtle Train Problems Revealed in Public Records Request on Amtrak Study

Turtle Train Problems Revealed in Public Records Request on Amtrak Study

Ohio Media Opposes Reporting Opposing Views on Misguided Snail Rail Plan

by John Michael Spinelli

May 5, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Discouraging information contained in Amtrak's preliminary study on restoring passenger rail service between Cincinnati and Cleveland was revealed to Ohio taxpayers through a public records request, the Associated Press reported Monday.

In an AP story run in the Dayton Daily News , it was learned that a preliminary study performed by Amtrak for the Ohio Rail Development Commission (ORDC), the state agency that hired it and that manages the upgrade of thousands of miles of freight rail tracks, confirms that the time to creep along the approximately 250-mile route connecting Cleveland and Cincinnati, via Dayton and Columbus, will take six hours to complete or an hour and one-half longer than driving the distance by car.

More complications came into view with the one billion dollar plan that will take a decade or more to get up and running. It was learned that new train stations will need to be built in Cincinnati and Columbus and other potential stops where passenger trains have not run nearly a half century.

Ohio Taxpayers can only wonder where such funds will come from to build train stations in cities where budgets are already under pressure and where the idea of raising taxes to pay for them is as likely to happen as the priesthood letting a gay atheist into its ranks.

Matt Dietrich, ORDC's executive director, was as unconvincing in this story as he was in person, when he stumbled for answers to simple questions posed to him by state senators holding hearings on the recently passed state Transportation Budget. In committee, Mr. Dietrich, who runs an agency that supposedly has studied this issue for many years, had little in the way of hard facts to support his contention that bringing back slow, costly trains is both a good idea and one that can pay for itself over time.

The phrase "rough estimate," appearing again in this AP article, will go unchallenged by the Ohio Media, who by not challenging such vacuous statements will allow Mr. Dietrich and other government spokesmen to continue to hide the real financial and operational pain that once learned by Ohioans, will doom the turtle train to the past to the scrap heap of a bad idea gone worse. This juggernaut plan to squander one-time federal stimulus dollars on a train system that won't travel much faster than Civil War era trains must be stymied now so wiser, more enlightened minds can enter the debate about what train system Ohio needs that will match up in performance to the demands of the future.

If Gov. Ted Strickland thinks the turtle train to the past is the best train technology available, then he has been sorely misinformed by Dietrich and others, who should know better given their jobs descriptions and assumed expertise on issues related to rail traffic.

At a time when Ohio is looking into the great abyss of a state budget gone very sour, why are public officials like Mr. Dietrich given a free ride in the media, when strong voices that oppose the 3-C Corridor plan are ready and willing to be heard?

They are few and far between, but the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer ran an article by Randal O'Toole, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who made the case that so-called high-speed rail isn't any solution to saving energy or reducing pollution or road congestion, as is commonly assumed. Slow train speeds like those Mr. Dietrich has acknowledged will be standard on his slow train to the past, were common 70 years ago, according to O'Toole, when cars and airplanes out competed trains of the day even then. As cars and air travel advance in design and performance, why are we stuck with 100-year old train technology when new, innovative proposals exist?

Ohio would be better served by redirecting its one-time federal stimulus dollars to advanced train technologies like Tubular Rail, which will be knocking on Ohio's development door this week, making its case for why it can revolutionize the way people and goods move from one city and region to another.

For a state that never recovered from the the job losses of the recession of 2001 and now trembles with each day's headlines, fearing the loss of even more jobs as Chrysler and General Motors meet their maker in bankruptcy court or reorganization, isn't it the perfect time to find a new industry that can create jobs, spur economic development and bring Ohio back into the 21st century?

Ohio lawmakers, who along with Gov. Strickland share the blame for allowing the 3-C Corridor Plan to live on, should not allow Mr. Dietrich and Transportation Director Jolene Molitoris to go unchallenged, as they blindly push to embrace out dated train technology. By their own admission, their turtle train to the past will cost a minimum of $10 million per year in public subsidies. But those are just "rough estimates" that will probably pale in comparison to the real figures from real bids when they come in. With more straight talk about the underlying realities and costs associated with the 3-C Corridor train, maybe that day will never arrive.

Should that day arrive, Ohioans will follow in the footsteps of Floridians who after learning in 2004 that the system costs quoted to them to get their vote in 2000 were double what they were sold, reversed themselves and directed their state leaders to stop pursuing plans for high-speed rail. A similar move to turn the train around is underway in California, where a nearly $10 billion state bond fund to pay for one-quarter of that state's proposed high-speed rail is already entering massive obstacles from communities who are suing the train authority over routes because they don't want it running through their towns.

One reporter from the United Kingdom who knows about high-speed trains and who has taken an analytical view of President Obama's puny plan for rail development here, says the real costs American taxpayers will have to fork over will be crippling, especially for a country where the word tax has been demonized.

Gabriella Gurley, writing for the online edition of The Guardian, knows the lack of appetite Americans have to paying more taxes. "But moving a tax-adverse country toward this vision demands a massive attitude shift," she writes, adding that "Down payments may look good, but Americans have had trouble paying off balances" and "With other pricey domestic headaches like healthcare looming large on his fast-moving agenda, how much political capital is Obama is willing to spend to get America into training?"

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Drive-Thru Bankruptcy Court Next Stop for Chrysler

Drive-Thru Bankruptcy Court Next Stop for Chrysler

Junior Ohio Senator Likens Plant Closings to Natural Disasters

by John Michael Spinelli

May 1, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: President Barack Obama, on his 101th day in office, announced that Chrysler, the third largest of Detroit's Big Three automakers, would pull into in the drive-thru lane of bankruptcy court where it could emerge in a few as two months with a new driver at the wheel, and new partners in the form of autoworkers and the federal government.

While the president painted a picture of time spent in bankruptcy court as one serious step along a path towards healing, he also scolded a small group of hedge fund debt holders for not compromising like everyone else had. Mr. Obama said he "stood with" United Auto Workers and their families and other debtors, and against those who held about 35 percent of Chrysler's approximately $6.9 billion in secured debt.

Speaking sternly to them in Washington surrounding by an entourage of supporters, Mr. Obama announcement means those who sought to exact a greater return on the trade out of debt for equity will now have to fight it out before a yet-to-be named bankruptcy judge, who may or may not look kindly on their stubbornness at a time when the fate of Chrysler hung in the balance.

Mr. Obama said it was unacceptable to let a small group of investors jeopardize the future of the company.

In Ohio, hard hit by auto industry job losses, the announcement was not openly welcomed by the Buckeye State's junior senator.

Sherrod Brown, a first-term senator from 2006 who spent years as a Congressman representing a northeast Ohio district where auto-related manufacturing was strong, said in a written statement that he was "disappointed that Chrysler bondholders were not willing to compromise and avoid bankruptcy."

The former Ohio Secretary of State whose state unemployment rate is 9.7, said he saw it as a "setback for auto workers, auto retirees, and auto parts suppliers" and said his "thoughts are with workers at the Jeep assembly facility in Toledo and all the other employees at suppliers and dealers elsewhere who may be affected."

Published reports say Chrysler spokesman Max Gates confirmed that all U.S. manufacturing facilities will stop production beginning Monday and be idle for 30 to 60 days or until Chapter 11 proceedings are worked out. Gates also said in the report that it is also possible that the downtime could vary from plant to plant, but that a shutdown schedule won't be known for awhile.

About 3,200 Toledo-area Chrysler workers will be idled - about 1,700 at Toledo Jeep Assembly, 1,300 at Toledo Machining in Perrysburg Township, and 190 at the Global Engine Manufacturing Alliance plant in Dundee, Mich, The (Toledo) Blade reported Friday. An estimated 3,000 other workers at area suppliers also are likely to be laid off.

"Auto communities need targeted and timely assistance from the federal government," Brown wrote, adding, "A major plant closing is an economic disaster and the federal government needs to treat it with the same level of response we give to natural disasters."

Brown's media release said more than 440,000 Ohio jobs directly or indirectly depend on the auto industry, and that auto suppliers directly account for nearly 100,000 Ohio jobs.

Covering the story for the Associated Press , Stephen Manning and Tom Krishner noted that Fiat, an Italian car maker who a few years back had a turnaround of its own under its own CEO, Sergio Marchionne, would claim about 20 percent of the company as a starting level, with greater ownership coming in future years, in exchange for bringing its fuel-efficient and lower-emission technology to the American marketplace.

Mixed into the announcement Thursday was the news that Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli would depart after Chrysler's drive-thru bankruptcy was over. Unlike Rick Wagoner, long-time CEO of General Motors who became a casualty of that company's deal to accept money from Washington but who departed with more than $20 million retirement package, Nardelli won't be handed a so-called golden parachute, but will rejoin Cerebus, the private equity group that purchased Chrysler.

With Fiat now in the picture, the hope is Chrysler, which has had problems in the past and some say was too slow to adapt to the future, will reinvent itself by offering cars featuring the Italian automakers "cutting edge technology." Fiat has not faired well in America, but the small-car company now have a special chance to show Americans, who took to big cars, vans and SUVs because fuel was inexpensive, they can deliver trustworthy, fuel-efficient cars Americans want to buy.

Mr. Obama, who has been criticized mainly by Republicans for investing taxpayer dollars in a company they thought should go out of business, said Chrysler could not continue to limp along on an "endless supply of tax dollar." Thirty days after a plan for reorganization was submitted and turned down, Mr. Obama noted with pride that "seemingly insurmountable obstacles have been over come." When it's all over, Mr. Obama said he believes Chrysler will emerge stronger and more competitive.

Sen. Brown, while not elated with the news, said he will continue to work to reassure potential car buyers, and hopes Chrysler's new lease on life will "create new demand in the auto industry," a factor he deemed critical to "getting our auto industry back on track."

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Will Lack of Curiosity Doom Ohio to Turtle Train Technology?

Will Lack of Curiosity Doom Ohio to Turtle Train Technology?

Senators, Representatives Express Curiosity in Tubular Rail

" Trackless Train" Company to Meet with Development Officials to Talk Jobs, Economic Development

by John Michael Spinelli

April 30, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Curiosity, it's long been said, killed the cat. But can lack of curiosity kill a state? For a state like Ohio, where legendary inventor heroes like Orville and Wilbur Wright and Thomas Alva Edison were born, believing the train technology of 1934, when the Burlington Zephyr, the first Diesel-electric streamliner in the US, topped out at 112 mph on a dawn to dusk run between Denver and Chicago, is as good as it gets does not bode well for its future.

Why would a state who says they champion innovation and name programs after the Wrights and Edison want to squander a billion or more dollars on a slow, costly system built on train-museum-era locomotives that even in 2010, when the first train may crawl out of hibernation to cross the state diagonally for the first time in 41 years, average 20 mph less than the Zephyr did on its historic run during our Great Depression?

It's a question that needs to be asked. Given Ohio's rhetoric on innovation and funding schemes designed to court the most innovative advancements in all industries, why is transportation reform such a taboo subject?

What state would want to broadcast to the world that it's stuck in the past when it comes to energy, education, medicine, information or any other industry for that matter? But that position, blindly defending old technology, is exactly what Gov. Strickland and his Transportation Director, Jolene Molitoris, are doing by refusing to consider any train technology that doesn't look, sound or perform like railroads from days of yore.

But a growing chorus of state senators who know the proposal to fund a train to the past, as many say the 3-C Corridor proposal is, is a bad idea at a bad time are penning letters of curiosity in anticipation of a meeting next week between Tubular Rail and state development officials is a no cost, no obligation query that should challenge the status quo on how we think about train technology.

Robert Pulliam, inventor and founder of Tubular Rail , based in Houston, Texas, will arrive in Columbus next week to make his case for why his patented technology, featured in the Discovery Channel show called "FutureTrains," can create manufacturing jobs and spur economic development while transporting people and goods in new ways.

As one connected statehouse insider said recently, if the state is going to spend all this money, shouldn't we at least buy something that's fast? By its own admission, the 3-C Corridor or Turtle Train, will only average 57 mph, a pathetic pace that will take longer than driving from Cleveland to Cincinnati, via Columbus and Dayton, and will leave passengers to fend for themselves once they reach their destination.

Sens. Jason Wilson (D-30th), ,Tim Grendell (R-18th) and Karen Gillmor (R-26th) have expressed their curiosity about Tubular Rail in a letter to Mark Barbash, Interim director of the Ohio Department of Development.

Verbal commitments for similar letters have been received from Sens. Fred Strahorn (D-5th), Robert Schuler (R-7th), John Carey (R-17th), Ray Miller (D-15th) and Tim Schaffer (R-31st) and Reps. Bob Hagan (D-60th) and Todd Book (D-89th). The bi-partisan lineup of senators and representatives curious about Tubular Rail's technology shows the bi-partisan nature of the need to reform transportation.

Sen. Gillmor, of Tiffin, has already written an article on why Ohio isn't likely to see so-called high-speed trains, like are common in Europe, here anytime soon. In her article, she says the proposal for a publicly subsidized passenger rail system is "undercooked" and missing many details that "confirm a rail system is needed or supported by the taxpayers who would foot the bill."

What we do know, she writes, is that officials say the system would cost $250 million to launch and require a state subsidy of $10 million each year. Continuing, she notes that, based on studies conducted by the Ohio Rail Commission in 2004 and 2007, "the system would likely cost be between $1 billion and $1.3 billion after adjusting for inflation and only run "at speeds of up to 69 miles per hour along existing freight tracks," a speed that is "unlikely to be much faster than highway travel."

Gillmor and other members of the General Assembly who are asking development officials to be as curious about Tubular Rail as they are, are in line with the campaign goals of Transportation for America, a coalition of housing, environmental, public health, urban planning, transportation, equitable development and other organizations who say Americans need transportation options that are "cheaper, faster and cleaner" than the current system of transportation they say leave "too many older, younger and rural Americans stranded."

Ohio needs to be future-ready. By developing and employing a new, energy efficient train transportation system that could reduce road congestion, travel fast, go places where conventional railroads cannot, and be built by Ohio manufacturers, Buckeyes can stake a claim on their future without waiting for some other state, or country, to do the heavy lifting first.

Being a leader means doing something first. Ohio, who has yet to walk away from its reputation as a "rust-belt" state and who frets each day that more more layoffs from automakers will further complicate its already shaky budget picture, should spend a little time, and maybe even a few funds to see of Tubular Rail technology is all Mr. Pulliam and others say it is.

The Wright thing to do is be curious. Gov. Strickland and Director Molitoris would do well to be more curious. Lack of curiosity could kill the state.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Ohio, Nation Less Religulous

Ohio, Nation Less Religulous

Atheists, Humanists No Longer Fear Their Secular Orientation

by John Michael Spinelli

April 27, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: As the high tide of Republican control of government in Ohio and the nation recedes from the sea change made possible by the onset of the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, is the related retreat of religion among Americans being filled in part by atheists who no longer fear proclaiming their secular orientation?

The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS ), performed in 2008 by investigators at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn, shows Americans are "slowly becoming less Christian," not because the dominant religious sect in America is being threatened by other world religions but from a general "rejection of all organized religions."

Whether "Religulous," the documentary spoof released in 2008 about the absurdity of religion in general and the sheer goofiness of some true believers in particular, was a factor in the ARIS survey can only be attributed to either divine intervention sheer speculation. But such a movie would have been impossible to produce or show in public in decades past and would have been difficult to distribute just a few years ago. The times are indeed a changing

Other celebrity atheists like Christopher Hitchens , who believes religion poisons everything, or Richard Dawkins , who said he is against religion "because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world," have helped lead the charge out of the pew and into the public square, where others of their ilk will gather to brandish their status as non-believers.

Principal ARIS investigators Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, who conducted this third landmark series of large, nationally representative surveys that track changes in the religious loyalties of the U.S. adult population within the 48 contiguous states from 1990 to 2008 and that collected answers from over 54 thousand participants, said people who identified themselves as not being affiliated with any religious group grew by almost 20 million adults since 1990, or a rise from 8.2 to 15 percent of the total population.

More worrisome for traditional believers in "The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost," or as Bill Maher, the force behind Religulous, calls them, "people who believe in talking snakes." is that that figure rises to nearly 20 percent, or one in five adults, if those surveyed who didn't know their religious identification (0.9) or who refused to answer their key question (4.1) is included in the "None" category.

In a related story about the coming out party many atheists who once kept silent on the topic of religion for fear of being socially ostracized or hurt professionally are experiencing, Laurie Goodstein, of the New York Times , writes that the new-found bravery by a growing number of non-believers to proclaim their secular, humanist leanings is refreshing and beckons others to do the same.

More than ever, Goodstein says, America’s atheists are "linking up -- on the Internet, in bars, advertising on billboards and buses and in other ways" -- and speaking out in the same way gay-rights advocates have done for decades in their plight to gain legal and social legitimacy.

One reason atheists have become bolder of late to stand up and be counted, is reaction and fallout to eight years of the George W. Bush administration who overtly embraced and invited the religious right -- who in recent years were strong enough to nominate and elect public officials at all levels of government -- to participate and share in the re-creation of government in their image.

And while an avowed atheist probably still has little chance of being elected to any office let alone a national one, the days of cowering in a closet are over. Atheists as a group still rank lower than any other minority or religious group, according to ARIS. But their gains, exemplified by a once unthinkable advertising campaign that says "Don't Believe in God? You Are Not Alone," may affect the coming war between Republicans, who believe staunchly in Jesus but who show little sympathy for helping individuals who are treated unkindly by fate and circumstance, and Democrats, who are seen by more young people especially as more socially conscious and sympathetic to the plight of those less fortunate.

In Ohio, where the Christian right has had a major impact on state laws, from the regulation of adult entertainment businesses to passing a statewide amendment to the Constitution in 2004 that banned gay marriage , the resurgence of Democrats in the guise of a new governor and a new majority in the Ohio House of Representatives may bode ill for Republicans who find themselves on the defensive as the human wreckage of job losses resulting from a dystopian economy many blame them for piles up below executives and general assemblies who are being thrashed for not budgeting for their needs.

In their statistics on states, ARIS investigators show Ohio's "Nones" category more than doubled, from 8 to 17 percent, between 1990 and 2008. Similar gains by atheists were seen in Ohio's neighbors, Illinois (13), Indiana (15), Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (15).

Among the surveys highlights are that 76 percent of American adults identify as Christians, down 10 points from 1990 and that 34 percent considered themselves in 2008 to be "Born Again or Evangelical Christians." Catholics declined in New England states and in New York but rose in California and Texas where Hispanics are on the rise.

ARIS said that based on their stated beliefs rather than their religious identification in 2008, 70 percent of Americans believe in a personal God, while about 12 percent are atheists (no God) or agnostic (unknowable or unsure), and another 12 percent are deistic (a higher power but no personal God).

ARIS broke out 31 categories of religious traditions from Catholic to Baptist to Pentecostal, to Buddhist, Muslim or Jehovah's Witness. There was no category for "Born Again Pagans" or "The Church of Dark Energy," two traditions I hope to lead one day.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Ohio Chugs Forward on Billion Dollar Train Museum Plan

Ohio Chugs Forward on Billion Dollar Train Museum Plan

State Rail Planners Silent on Future Costs

Should All Taxpayers or Just 3-C Corridor Cities Subsidize Slow Train Plan?
by John Michael Spinelli

April 20, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: During a visit last week to Detroit, where Ohio Governor Ted Strickland heard in first person from executives of General Motors that its Chevrolet Cruze will be built at Lordstown in northeast Ohio near Cleveland, he took a spin in two new advanced technology vehicles. One was an electric-powered truck cab made by GM, which is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and one was a new fuel efficient engine produced by Ford, whose financial health is far better than either GM or Chrysler, who soon may also be seeking last rights. Together, about 250 thousand Ohio jobs are tied to Detroit's Big Three automakers.

Governor Strickland, a first-term governor gearing up for re-election in 2010, was no doubt impressed with the advancements in car and truck technology embodied in the new-century vehicles he drove.

A DECADE AND A BILLION DOLLARS TO BUILD A TRAIN MUSEUM

But as the first Democratic governor in 16 years of a state hard hit by the loss of 150 thousand or more manufacturing jobs this decade alone, and that was among the only three states not to recover from the recession of 2001 and whose official unemployment rate last week reached 9.7 percent , the highest in 25 years, why would the good governor push a billion dollar plan to reestablish train-museum era locomotives that won't be pulling out of any railroad stations for years to come, and that when they do, will only average 57-mph, a speed so slow that it'll be a state-sized equivalent of the kind of kiddie train that runs in circles around zoos?

With a transportation department (ODOT) that has soaked up billions of tax dollars every two years for decades, why would Strickland be so ill informed about advancements in train technology that he should be interested instead to clinging to 100-year old slow, costly trains?

Is he misinformed because ODOT'S new duo of co-deputy directors don't know anything about railroads or train technology? Maybe he's being sidetracked by a director that while she once administered the Federal Railroad Administration and is credited for improving Amtrak's customer service , is not an engineer by training and has never run a railroad? One simple explanation is that the Ohio Rail Development Commission, which has been tinkering for decades with patch-ups of a quilt of shrinking freight rail tracks, has its engine up its caboose, despite having studied the matter ever since the last passenger train that crossed the state diagonally stopped running 41 years ago. A second simple reason for misinforming Gov. Strickland is to keep under wraps the real costs of the system. When real bids come, they will likely trigger a ferocious backlash of opposition from taxpayers who are their jobs, lives and futures with each passing day and will not be in any mood to financially fuel a debt train to the past just so a few people can ride them.

THE REALITY OF REAL RAIL COSTS

As a refresher course on real rail costs you won't hear from either ORDC or the media, digest these numbers before rushing where angels fear to tread: High-speed rai (HSR)l - $40 to $80M/mile - (German [maglev] - $77M/mile); Commuter rail (Existent track) - $24 million/mile; Urban light rail - $30 to $60 million/mile - (Houston - $37 M/mi). When an ORDC spokesman was asked by one reporter whether faster trains would require new tracks that cost considerably more, despite years of time and millions spent on consults to study the issue, he could "not give an estimate" to the question. Being silent on future costs is always a bad sign. It should be a big red flag for Strickland, lawmakers and Ohio taxpayers that danger lies ahead. Floridians have already recoiled from the sour news about the real costs of real HSR and California, which barely passed a nearly $10 billion bond plan that will only cover one-quarter of the system envisioned by its HSR authority, may find a new ballot issue that reverses the vote in November.

What ever the reasons are behind Strickland going down the wrong track at a time when President Barack Obama is doing a 180 degree turnaround from President Bush on restoring passenger trains to Ohio by budgeting $8 billion now and $5 billion more over five years, he should be as excited about learning about other advanced train technology as he was tooling around in new vehicle products from GM or Ford.

NOT ALL MEDIA LAZY ON HSR

Part of the problem is the utter failure of the media to report on views other than what government spokespeople, paid to defend the status quo, are saying about upgrading freight rail tracks to one day accommodate high-speed trains. The "news" in newspaper seems unimportant to many reporters who regurgitate government talking points on HSR no matter how lame or lacking in solid evidence they are.

Case in point, The Columbus Dispatch ran yet another article on Ohio's misguided effort to spend a billion plus dollars on pushing a slow train to the past. ODOT spokesman Scott Varner went unchallenged by the reporter when he declared upgrading old freight rail tracks will lead to HSR. "That's how you get to these higher speeds -- you start with conventional speed," Varner, who should know better, said.

Varner's statement is just false. But lazy media types who refuse to include opposing views do a big disservice to their readers, who are as well intentioned as Ohio's good governor but as in the dark as he is about the potential for new-century transportation technology that is faster, greener, less costly and less disruptive to the environment than freight-rail trains or even Euro-style trains that travel at speeds exceeding 200-mph or more.

But some reporters do understand the dynamics of HSR as envisioned by Obama. They know it is woefully underfunded -- a national system could exceed $1 trillion -- and that, as proposed, will never allow really fast trains to run on really slow tracks, which by the way are way beyond capacity for existing freight rail traffic that is expected to increase.

Mark Stencel, a Congressional Quarterly columnist , made it clear in this piece. An editorial in The Oregonian said what other reporters refuse to say, which is conflating the U.S. and European standards for high speed rail is like "calling dial-up Internet service 'high-speed' and therefore fast enough." Investors Business Daily editorialized that federal funding is a fraction of what is needed to properly build out a separate, dedication track system for high-speed trains. It also said "People are likelier to ask the tough questions about cost-effectiveness when they know the costs are being paid straight from their pockets," a call to fund it by increased gas taxes, as is done in Europe and elsewhere, or by cities who stand to benefit from rail traffic, like Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and Cleveland in the case of Ohio.

CLINGING TO OLD TRANSPORTATION TECHNOLOGY NOT SMART

Robert Pulliam, inventor and founder of Tubular Rail , an advanced train technology company based in Texas, said government officials should spend more time "stretching the dollar rather than the truth." Pulliam's Tubular Rail, while yet "unproven technology," showcases what leaders like Strickland and others should be be opting for as a way to bring needed jobs and economic development to his state, which is gasping for help in these areas.

Walt Brewer, writing in the Voice of San Diego, offers sound logic about why a military-style process should be applied to transportation technology because it supports military needs in many areas.

"Why don't we have an equivalent interactive overview for the nation's future transportation facilities and operations supported by objective facts based analysis?" he asks. He notes that "'Blue Ribbon' Committees have dealt more with raising funds to continue more of the same roads and transit, without identifying technology driven major new systems intended to absorb inevitable growth, and reduce energy use, land use and pollution. Transportation clings to concepts 100 years or more old."

Brewer opines that national highway support comes from one agency and is unrelated to the one supporting mass transit. "Clearly there is need for coordinating investments into different modes reflecting cost effective facts based analysis taking advantage of new technologies beginning to appear."

OHIOANS, NATION WILL WAKE UP WHEN THEY LEARN THE TRUTH ABOUT HSR

In his written statement supporting Obama's plan for restoring passenger rail service, Gov. Strickland said this: "When completed, the Ohio Hub will connect Ohio communities with each other and with neighboring states, including the three federally-designated high-speed corridors that will link Cleveland and Cincinnati to Chicago, and link Cleveland and Cincinnati via Columbus."

One Ohio blogger, who notes that just when the Federal government is ready to push this green technology, the state "isn’t ready with plans to put us on the map." David Esrati writes at Dayton OS that "It’s critical for Ohio’s future to have solutions that aren’t based on cars. Right now, our elected officials should be scrambling to Washington to get our high-speed rail line on their radar."

When Ohioans know specifics related to cost and time, the "when" in Strickland's statement on the Ohio Hub Plan - a fantasy document by some accounts -- will change to "why do it" when less expensive, far faster and greener energy train technology exists now to challenge the slow train-museum plan to the past that achieves none of the goals supporters of HSR rail say are needed going forward.

John Michael Spinelli is an economic development professional, business and travel writer and former Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is also Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Obama Outlines Plans for High-Speed Trains

Obama Outlines Plans for High-Speed Trains

Is Rebuilding Slow Train Network Really Right for the Future?


by John Michael Spinelli

April 16, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: President Barack Obama provided a broad outline Thursday to bring high-speed rail to America. Joined in Washington before his trip to Mexico by Vice President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Obama called upon Americans to "make no little plans" on restoring passenger rail service and then forecasted that his commitment to fund higher speed trains will result in a "new foundation for lasting prosperity."

Mr. Biden, known for using the nation's only high-speed train in operation, Amtrak's Acela line, to commute to and from his home in Delaware to the nation's Capitol as a U.S. Senator, said his comments would be shorter than his train trip. LaHood, an Illinois Republican and former congressman, said today's announcement would not be possible but for the help of Obama and Biden, who he characterized as "two rail men" who supporters of passenger rail owe a debt of gratitude to for including high-speed rail funding in the recently passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) or the stimulus bill.

Biden said that while much attention has been placed on the recovery part of ARRA, funding for high-speed rail will focus on its reinvestment half. In that context, Obama said, "We need a smart transportation system equal to the needs of the 21st century," adding that high-speed rail will reduce traffic congestion, cut dependence on foreign oil, and improve the environment.

In a coordinated announcement yesterday covered by the Associated Press, the governors of eight Midwestern states announced that they are joining forces to "boost their chances of getting a cut of $8 billion set aside for high-speed rail." Among the mix of state chief executives was Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, who would like to see restoration of passenger train service connecting Cleveland-Columbus-Dayton-Cincinnati after 41 years of inactivity. Ohio Republicans, who control the state senate, are leary of Strickland's passenger rail plan because it relies too heavily on one-time federal stimulus bill funding and because they think ridership is not sufficient now to justify the over $1 billion in funding needed to build out the so-called 3-C Corridor route. The first passenger train is not expected to run until late 2010, and that scenario is contingent upon other factors that may or may not play out as predicted.

Even more worrisome for Strickland and his transportation department director is the report in the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer today by State Auditor Mary Taylor that Ohio's 2012-2013 biennial budget may be as much as $8 billion out of balance. Using Strickland's own revenue forecasting numbers, Taylor, the only Republican to hold statewide office, said relying on one-time federal stimulus funds to close gapping holes in the budget, as is being done for the next two-year budget, "is setting up lawmakers to raise taxes two years down the road by relying so heavily on one-time money." Funding for the slow train to the past Strickland wants to build is totally dependent upon a budget that will not be negatively impacted by state funding for restoring passenger rail service. Taylor's report shows that that scenario is a fantasy.

Saying the nation's aging infrastructure is hindering growth, Obama pointed to other countries like Spain, France and Japan where high-speed rail is a viable transportation standard. "This is not a fanciful pie in the sky vision of the future," he said, noting that its "happening elsewhere, not here." The nation's chief executive, who expressed his interest in high-speed rail during his swing through Europe recently, painted a picture of "whisking along at 100-mph" that while it sounds fast to Americans, is in reality very slow when compared to Euro-style trains that reach speeds of 200-mph or even slower when compared to Japanese magnetic levitation bullet trains that easily reach speeds exceeding 300-mph.

The president said first round funding will concentrate on improving existing lines to make trains faster, while second round funding will identify corridors for world class high-speed rail.

Reading from prepared remarks, Obama said funding will be distributed soley on merit, not political considerations. He emphasized that no funding decision have been made so far, but likely routes will be found in the Northwest, Florida, Gulf Coast states, New England, the industrial heartland centered around Chicago and California, which he said recently passed a nearly $10 billion bond package for bullet trains running between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Doing what he has done before on other topics, Obama took the arguments of his critics and provided responses to each of them. Maybe his most compelling argument was that Abraham Lincoln, while fighting a Civil War to keep the Union together, was also focused on connecting the nation from East to West and became a driver of the build-out of the first transcontinental railroad that finished after his death in Utah in 1869.

The announcement by the Midwest governors said "faster trains would include boosting regional economies, as well as reducing highway congestion and U.S. dependence on foreign oil."

As exciting as President Obama's announcement today was, the reality of the situation was expressed by Kevin Brubaker of the Environmental Law & Policy Center in Chicago, who said the $8 billion "isn't nearly enough to transform U.S. passenger service." Brubaker, who said getting eight governors to agree where to go to church is a challenge, said their joining of forces on rail, while being good news, is "not a realistic expectation right now given the federal funding."

The AP reported that authorities warned that Illinois won't get trains traveling more than 200 mph, the speed of some already in Europe and Asia. Such a system, according to the unnamed authorities, would require dedicated lines, ones with far fewer stops and without the multitude of crossing so common along U.S. railway lines.

And therein lies the rub over high-speed rail. It sounds good, but until and unless Americans are ready and willing to increase their taxes many fold, the massive funding needed to build a separate, dedicated system of tracks capable of handling Euro-speed trains, America will end up spending decades and billions rebuilding a slow system of trains that won't be profitable because ticket prices will never be high enough to cover the capital, operational and maintenance costs of these trains. And until sufficiently high speeds are achieved, such that the same journey by car can be cut in half, all taxpayers will be forced to subsidize the transportation preference of a very few travelers who can afford the cost of traveling by train.

And with estimates of a quarter million or so people joining in yesterday's so-called teabag protest parties against more government spending, it's not likely that individuals will choose to increase their tax rates to pay for high-speed rail given the staggering cost in time and money needed for this kind of transportation.

John Michael Spinelli is an economic development professional, business and travel writer and former Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is also Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Is Ohio Getting Railroaded by an Expensive, Slow Train to the Past?

Is Ohio Getting Railroaded by Slow, Costly Train to the Past?

Addiction to Cars, Planes, Limited Funding Obstacles to High Speed Trains, Experts Say

Opeditude by John Michael Spinelli

April 10, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: A lot of digital ink has been spilled of late by Ohio's mainstream media and blogger community about whether resurrecting passenger rail service diagonally across the state is a good or bad decision. Given the state's ongoing fiscal failings, the debate about whether it will ever amount to anything more than a slow train to the past, even after a decade or more passes and over a billion in additional federal and state funding is thrown at it, is absolutely critical. But to make sense of it, facts and views other than those routinely posited by government officials is sorely needed.

I reported in early April that Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, supported by his Democratic homies and even some Republicans, agreed to retain in the recently passed $9.6 billion state Transportation Budget the expensive commitment to resume passenger rail service that will link, after 41 years of no rail cars but lots of studies, Cleveland to Cincinnati via Columbus and Dayton or the 3-C Corridor. Since then slow slow freight trains creep along the 260-mile swath of surface-grade steel rails that runs in close proximity to 5.9 million people or 60 percent of Ohio's population.

Speaking to a townhall meeting of mostly young people in Strasbourg, France, last week, President Barack Obama expressed to his audience his desire to emulate European-style high-speed trains back home. "One thing that, as an American who is proud as anybody of my country, I am always jealous about European trains," CNN reported Obama saying. "And I said to myself, why can't we have -- why can't we have high-speed rail? And so we're investing in that as well?"

Such fresh thinking on rail, when compared to the lack of same from former President George W. Bush, who showed no interest in passenger rail, has rightfully generated a runaway train of buzz. Conventional railroad advocates and special interests are actively lobbying public officials to blow their whistle for patching up an old, costly, slow system that will be even older in 2025 when outdated plans say the old system connecting major Midwestern cities including Chicago will be built out. Don't ask about cost. No one knows. But well-paid consultants are probably working on the right answers. The growing legion of supporters for the slow train to the past include the usual suspects of chambers, planning groups, corporate and community groups, who know little about railroads except that a sluice gate of federal funding is open, spewing billions for special-interest consultants to who want officials, great and small, to think their village, town or burg will some day be a stop on the high-speed rail (HSR) line.

But what's really coming down the track, unfortunately, is a slow, costly train to heartbreak city. Americans, who are not being well serviced by media that either doesn't understand the facts about rail or is to co-opted to challenge the misleading misinformation being trotted out by government spokespeople, should know that unless they are willing to increase their federal, state and local tax burden by multiples, the fantasy of whisking along at speeds nearing 200-mph as you enjoy a beverage as trains in Europe, Japan or China routinely do, will be just that -- a fantasy.

It just will not be in the cards for a state like Ohio, who may be looking at budget red ink for years to come, to deliver on what state officials routinely say is such a good business decision that taxpayers can expect to both pay a minimum of $10 million a year in public subsidy and not really ride it for maybe ten years or more. When states like California, which recently passed a $9.5 billion HSR bond issue, or Florida, which made a statewide commitment to HSR in 2000 only to reverse itself in 2004 when the bids came in twice what the public was told, show how many box cars of money will be needed to chase the European model, Ohio should perk up and take notice. If it doesn't, the light at the end of the tunnel will be that of an oncoming debt train, and Ohioans will be riding coach on it for years to come.

But while media stories about HSR and "bullet" trains abound these days, one expert says not only are European and U.S. high-speed standards different, but that the money Obama has to offer isn't enough to "build a single system, or to dramatically increase existing train speeds."

Joseph Vranich, The author of "End of the Line: Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America's Passenger Trains" and a former Amtrak public affairs spokesman, says the illusion of Euro-style HSR here is a mismatch. "We're not Europe. We're not Japan. We're looking at shorter travel times, through population densities that are much higher," Vranich told the AP. While $8 billion may sound like a lot, Vranich was not optimistic. "Here's what's going to happen: The (Obama) administration will issue these funds in dribs and drabs — to this project and that project — and the result will be an Amtrak train from Chicago to St. Louis that takes maybe 15 minutes off the travel time."

Another natural supporter of passenger rail, Ross Capon of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, someone who believes that "anything is better than nothing," sees other reasons why HSR won't happen anytime soon. Capon told Deborah Hastings of the AP that Americans are wed to their cars and enjoy planes. "The reason why high-speed rail has never taken off is because this country is determined to live on cheap gasoline and airplane travel," he said, adding, "It's very likely that all of the money will go to significant improvements of existing tracks. It's not going to build bullet trains." But purpose-driven, exorbitantly expensive tracks are indeed what bullet trains need to run on.

The misleading and false notion that upgrading freight tracks to accommodate high speed trains may be behind the announcement Friday by Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL), who along with his state Congressional Delegation is asking the Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, another son of Illinois, to support their effort to revive the passenger rail car manufacturing industry in Illinois.

To really have a European-style high-speed train system here, a new, separate and independent system of rails must be built. That won't happen. And since the rail system we have is designed for freight, conventional trains that will run on them at conventional speeds could use American made passeenger rail cars.

According to a media release from Durbin's office, the U.S. Department of Transportation recently announced that $90.8 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been committed to rehabilitating train cars in the United States and returning them to service - the average age of an Amtrak car is now 25 years.

"It is time to establish rolling stock manufacturers here in the United States," Durbin wrote. "Although we no longer manufacture passenger rail cars in Illinois, Illinois is still home to a vibrant rail industry that has the capacity to quickly modify existing facilities to accommodate the production of passenger rail rolling stock."

Durbin believes the "time is ripe to harness Illinois' position and to capitalize on the massive new investment into intercity passenger rail. With the Department's assistance we could bring good paying jobs to the United States while advancing cleaner, cheaper and greener transportation options for Americans."

Laudable on its merits, Durbin's call to start manufacturing on rail cars in Illinois points out the unavoidable fact that the tsunami of federal dollars washing over America for rail infrastructure projects will be shipped overseas to countries like France, Germany, Spain, Canada, Japan and China, where advanced train technology is headquartered in the handful of companies who can build really fast trains. For a global scorecard of who the big players are, this Business Week article identifies the major players. One of them, Siemens, was found guilty of orchestrating a vast, global sytem of bribes that were budgeted for like any other line of expense.

Ohio transportation director Jolene Molitoris, who directed the Federal Railroad Administration as its first women administrator but who never run a railroad, testified in Washington recently along with Joe Boardman, President and CEO of Amtrak, who actually runs a railroad - Amtrak, established in 1971. Boardman testified that the train of the future must be safer, improve operations, equipment and signaling; it must uppdate our plant and be financially healthier; it must al be for the nation and the environment by being greener, reduce emissions and reduce demand for imported oil. The 3-C Corridor train Molitoris supports accomplishes none of these goals, but will cost consumer billions and take decades to fully bloom if it ever does.

In his presentation before the Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development of the Committee on Appropriations, Boardman identified six conventional railroad bridges built before the Model-T in 1908 that while still in use, will cost many billions to replace in order that conventional steel-wheel train technology can still run. Such expenditures would be obviated if an advanced train system like Tubular Rail is used, because TR technology doesn't need roads or bridges to work. Moreover, visionary, future-designed TR technology can be built in America instead of other countries like Canada or France, where key parts for the Amtrak's Acela train, the only high-speed train in America, were purchased, respectfully, from Bombardier and Alstrom.

Interviewed by ABC news, Amtrak's Boardman said, "The track that's out there today ... for most of it we can't go over 79 miles per hour." Boardman, who acknowledge that upgrading current freight-rail tracks will only permit trains traveling at 110-mph, said President Obama "is not talking about high-speed rail -- those are those bullet trains in Japan and France" and that it will take much more money than the government has allocated already to truly bring about high-speed rail.

"We are not going to see 200 miles per hour trains with an $8 billion investment," Boardman said, reported by ABC news. The Economist, in an aptly named article, "Slower than a speeding bullet," makes the same argument in correctly comparing high-speed to medium-speed trains.

Molitoris, whose claim to fame is improving Amtrak cutomer servic, continues to misguide other state officials and the general public into thinking erroneously that all high-speed standards are the same. But that's not the case. European high-speed trains run at speeds of 125-mph or more, while American high-speed starts out much lower at 90-mph. The slow, heavy train Director Molitoris gushes over will only average 57-mphs, a tortoise-like pace when compared to other technologies like Maglev, TGV or Tubular Rail.

It's not too late, thought, to stop Ohio from getting railroaded. For that to happen, Gov. Strickland and members of the General Assembly must be given a full spectrum of technology choices to choose from other than a slow train or no train. Companies with innovative ideas are out there. Not to include their potential in the debate is short sighted at best and reckless at worst. In no other industry is the status quo so fiercely defended as it is in transportation. If the average citizen, taxpayer or elected public official was given a choice between candles and electricity, hotair balloons and planes, stagecoaches and cars, galleons and cruise ships, who would choose the former? What would happen if pharmaceutical companies stopped making new drugs to cure sickness or prlong life, or Internet developers stopped developing?

Would we think that's a good thing? Hardly, so why do we say old, slow, expensive surface-level steel-rail trains is the best we can do?

Contrary to inventors and innovators who constantly look for the new, new thing, it appears some transportation officials, in Ohio and elsewhere, think early 20th century train technology is as good as it gets. If speed makes trains competitive with cars and planes, Ohio's slow train to the past is a bad alchemy of wasted dollars and time.

John Michael Spinelli is an economic development professional, business and travel writer and former Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is also Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com