AMTRAK LETTER HELP

[RailFanNebraska]

My senator, Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), sits on the surface transportation and merchant marine subcommittee, this committee as you know oversees Amtrak.

I need help researching the true state of amtrak to send him a letter urgeing him to write legislation that would build a passenger rail network for the future.

I need research on the state of the amtrak board and where many people see the company is headed. Problems with the presidents plan for amtrak, and why he must be stopped. How much money the LD trains and NEC actually lose and make. Rail Efficiencies. why the current state of Amtrak running on freight lines couldnt support an expanded passenger rail network.

If anything that you think i should included, please type it out, i will post it on here when i have compiled enough information so you can send it to your Senators and congressmen ...

Fellow rail fans... our Amtrak is under attack again, we band together to save this company and passenger rail in the united states. NARP has done nothing to help our cause, so we must go around them and directly to the top. if you live in the state and have a senator on the surface transportation subcommittee you must fight even harder. they are as follows ...

1. Senator Trent Lott (R-MS), Chair Senator

Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI), Ranking Member

2. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK)

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV)

3. Senator John McCain (R-AZ)

Senator Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND)

4. Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT)

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

5. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)

Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

6. Senator Olympia J. Snowe (R-ME)

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ)

7. Senator Gordon H. Smith (R-OR)

Senator E. Benjamin Nelson (D-NE)

8. Senator George Allen (R-VA)

Senator Mark L. Pryor (D-AR)

9. Senator John E. Sununu (R-NH)

10. Senator David Vitter (R-LA)

Saveing amtrak starts with us, we band together to form a grassroots movement to inform the public and convince them for their support for a National Passenger Rail System. 70% of americans support continued or increased funding for amtrak, they like trains and want to see them around ... we need to use this to our advantage. use slogans like, what to decrease dependence of oil, All-Aboard Amtrak. we just have to get our of lazy butts and do it !!!

 

[saxman]

Also don't forget to look at S. 1516 being promted by Lott who is the chair.

I can get Dorgan (D-ND) and Hutchison (R-TX). I'll just use my parents address in TX for her. They are both big Amtrak supporters. Anyone live in AZ. McCain needs to be written by lots of people. I'm not sure where the other guys sit.

 

[AmtrakWPK]

Talking points for me include:

No national passenger rail system on earth runs at a profit, anyone who rants about Amtrak not running at a profit is morally bankrupt and a fraud.

This is a NATIONAL transportation system, constitutes Interstate Commerce, and therefore Constitutionally should be run on a NATIONAL basis. The administration should not be allowed to pretend otherwise and insist the individual States fund it.

When the administration keeps harping on "Should be paid for by money from the States", remind them that federal money doesn't come from Mars. It comes from the taxpayers, and, guess what, they live IN the States, so "the States" IS where the money comes from anyway, please stop trying to play a shell game with Amtrak funding. The reason the administration wants to fraudulently transfer the funding burden to the States is to allow it to enact more tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of the population, as they have already done to the extent that our great-great-grandchildren will still be scrimping and scraping by 100 years from now trying to pay the bill. If there were a poorhouse, or debtor's prison, for a whole nation, this administration is putting us squarely and firmly into it, and woe be unto this whole country when that debt has to be paid...

Every poll taken of the citizens/voters in this country has come back saying very clearly and unequivocally that the citizens/voters WANT AMTRAK TO CONTINUE, so the administration needs to remove it's collective head from that dark and smelly location it apparently spends most of it's time in, and start listening to the people that they are supposed to serve, and that's NOT THE LOBBYISTS! Start listening to the citizens/voters, please. Otherwise we may very well vote later this year, and in 2008, in such a way that all those fine folks in Congress and the White House will shortly have to list Washington D.C. as their FORMER address.

Anyway, those are some of my points in the emails and letters I have been sending. Of course, I don't have any money available to bribe...uhh, excuse me, I mean to LOBBY those fine folks with, so unless a whole lot of other people make similar emails, letters, and phone calls, don't expect much of a result.