Never let it be said that Ed Schultz isn't fair. Why, just yesterday he was putting in a good word for German national socialism.
Schultz, who has yet to encounter an infrastructure project that didn't make him swoon (an infatuation he shares with fellow MSNBCer Rachel Maddow), had this to say on his radio show with sidekick James Holm while complaining about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker rejecting a passenger rail line between Milwaukee and Madison (audio here) --
SCHULTZ: He's turned back federal money, this one underpinning story of this whole thing, is the rail system between Madison-Milwaukee, that's got people furious! That's economic development! And then if you take it down to Chicago. You want Wisconsin to grow, you gotta tap into one of the biggest cities in the world and that's Chicago!
HOLM: Yeah. That line would go right from Minneapolis, Minn., right to Chicago, right through Madison and Milwaukee.
SCHULTZ: Boom!
HOLM: It's the greatest economic driver that state could ever have.
SCHULTZ: There you go! There you go. You would see smaller towns pop up because transportation's easy. You'd see a lot of people out of the big cities that would move to a lower area, to smaller areas because their tax base would be probably a little bit different. You know, the communities would be possibly safer. Can we say that? 'Cause not as many people, correct?
HOLM: Yeah.
SCHULTZ: And a lot of people take to small-town living. How do you get in? Well, you jump on the train, you're in Chicago in an hour. What the hell beats that?
HOLM: Exactly.
SCHULTZ: You know, people in, I was telling this story on this program last week, I mean, we got some people in this building at 30 Rock, they commute for two hours one way and two hours the other way. I think they're nuts!
HOLM: But I do it every day. An hour a day on the train is nothing!
SCHULTZ: Well, you still have two hours to go. I meant, two hours in, two hours back. Four hours. You're not in the nuts division yet.
HOLM: But I'm saying that if you live ...
SCHULTZ: I won't let you get that far.
HOLM: ... If you live in Madison and you want to work in Milwaukee and you can hop on a train and be there in an hour, it's awesome!
SCHULTZ: So, he's turned that down. That's infuriated a lot of people and it would have created jobs.
HOLM: Without a doubt, about 5,500, at least.
SCHULTZ: OK. And, but the other thing is, how many sustained jobs would it have done? It would have been a foundation of a job creator because of the transportation and the movement of the people.
HOLM: That's right.
SCHULTZ: That's what they did back in the 1930s to move people and get the economy going. They made the (pause) Autobahn system.
HOLM: Yes they did.
SCHULTZ: 'Member?
HOLM: Yes they did.
SCHULTZ: OK. Just, so it's been done before! That's all I was trying to point out. It's just been done before! You know, so ...
HOLM: Well, Eisenhower did it with the interstate system.
SCHULTZ: Sure, absolutely. Absolutely.
And look at how many jobs were eventually created thanks to the Autobahn -- tens of millions around the world, mainly from people defending their nations against the Nazis.
Don't you love how Schultz gushes about rail lines for their convenience -- while describing how colleagues at MSNBC slog through four-hour daily commutes in and out of 30 Rock. ... If only New York City had mass transit!
