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“101M Get Food Aid from Federal Gov’t; Outnumber Full-Time Private Sector Workers”

Well, I’m no doctor.  But from my layman’s perspective, I’d have to argue that these are the symptom of a once-vibrant free-market capitalist body politic riddled with a host of statist tumors .   Removing the stigma of going on public aid, coupled with disconcerting studies showing that it actually pays more to be an unemployed single parent than a worker making, say, $60K a year in the private sector, is a recipe for dependence and entitlement.

CNS News:

The number of Americans receiving subsidized food assistance from the federal government has risen to 101 million, representing roughly a third of the U.S. population.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a total of 101,000,000 people currently participate in at least one of the 15 food programs offered by the agency, at a cost of $114 billion in fiscal year 2012.

That means the number of Americans receiving food assistance has surpassed the number of full-time private sector workers in the U.S.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 97,180,000 full-time private sector workers in 2012.

The population of the U.S. is 316.2 million people, meaning nearly a third of Americans receive food aid from the government.

[…]

According to a July 3 audit by the Inspector General, the USDA’s Food Nutrition Service (FNS) “may be duplicating its efforts by providing participants total benefits in excess of 100 percent of daily nutritional needs when households and/or individuals participate in more than one FNS program simultaneously.”

Food assistance programs are designed to be a “safety net,” the IG said.

“With the growing rate of food insecurity among U.S. households and significant pressures on the Federal budget, it is important to understand how food assistance programs complement one another as a safety net, and how services from these 15 individual programs may be inefficient, due to overlap and duplication,” the audit said.

America is beginning to look more and more like the customers who appear on “Hard Core Pawn” — the store exists to provide for them, not as a business kept going by profit motive that simultaneously employs as it expands — with the remaining capitalists who work at the shop often left agog at the ostentatious displays of ignorance, arrogance, belligerence, and false nobility of those whose entire lives are subsidized by the taxpayer.

But then, what else would you expect?  After all, the Man didn’t build that.  So why should he get to keep his money?

Our President taught us that.

Though I admit I still haven’t figured out if that lesson should be filed under “hope” or “change.”

 

153 Replies to ““101M Get Food Aid from Federal Gov’t; Outnumber Full-Time Private Sector Workers””

  1. Squid says:

    With the growing rate of food insecurity among U.S. households…

    “Food insecurity,” my ass. The only reason they think “food insecurity” is so rampant is because they’ve set up an entire industry to show people how to apply for free money.

    There’s a pretty fucken wide chasm between “families who cannot feed themselves” and “families who had to go without their rotisserie chicken one night because the car broke down the same week as the cell phone and cable bills came due.” But because I would make such a distinction, I’m a horrible heartless monster who wants children to die…

  2. Blake says:

    As I think I’ve mentioned in the past, I briefly worked at a stop and rob a little over a decade ago. The EBT machine which validated welfare cards never worked the whole time I worked at the store. Every single customer who tried to use their card and couldn’t, paid with cash.

  3. Ernst Schreiber says:

    We don’t have a safety net. We have a security hammock.

  4. geoffb says:

    “families who had to go without their rotisserie chicken one night

    With “rotisserie chicken” selling for $5 or so, not much more than a drive thru burger, I’d go for lobster or ribeyes on the grill as what they have to give up for that night. Then again what it costs to fix even minor things on a car would wipe out a lot of chicken dinners and more than a few surf ‘n turfs.

    Has the cost of food gone up? Yeah and it has been hidden by downsizing the packages. Are we Egypt where even basic foodstuffs cost more than most people make? No, not yet, though it is not for lack of trying on the Left and these subsidies are a part of that try.

  5. Slartibartfast says:

    I would bet some real folding green that “food insecure” correlates really highly with “apt to habitually buy lottery tickets”.

    Just a hunch, not based on formal data. But the people lined up at the convenience store to buy lottery tickets are, by appearances, people who could least afford it.

  6. Ernst Schreiber says:

    lottery tickets, concert tickets, movie tickets, amusement park tickets, ppv “tickets”

    a bunch drive late model vehicles too

  7. leigh says:

    My mother worked briefly at the Welfare Department years ago. One of the conditions of eligibility for any aid was an inability to meet one’s costs of living. If you had a car that was being financed or was newer than a certain model year, you were ineligible for aid.

    I assume all federal programs are now run on the honor system.

  8. Squid says:

    cigarettes, official NFL jerseys, extra color bombs for Candy Crush…

  9. Squid says:

    If you had a car that was being financed or was newer than a certain model year, you were ineligible for aid.

    In my neighborhood, the cars and electronics are paid for by the boyfriend, so that the girlfriend won’t lose eligibility. Unless they get married, that is. Because why would the State want to encourage poor young women to get married?

  10. leigh says:

    I must have been swimming in the wrong pond when I was dating, Squid. No one ever bought me a car, but then I wasn’t exactly a “baby mama” either.

  11. mondamay says:

    OT: It isn’t murder,

    it’s husband abortion.

    Julia Merfeld, a 21-year-old married mother of two from Michigan, did not want to break her husband’s heart by divorcing him – so she decided to have him killed instead, according to investigators.

    It’s just more of the “no consequences” mindset on parade.

  12. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Breaking the cnsis more effective than breaking the heart though.

  13. Ernst Schreiber says:

    cns is

  14. Pablo says:

    Removing the stigma of going on public aid, coupled with disconcerting studies showing that it actually pays more to be an unemployed single parent than a worker making, say, $60K a year in the private sector, is a recipe for dependence and entitlement.

    …and fat bastards. Have you seen these people?

  15. dicentra says:

    The lottery-ticket buyers also have enormous rent-to-own entertainment centers in their living rooms and everyone in the house has a fully leaded iPhone.

    They live better than my grandparents, but they need federal help.

  16. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Yes. They all have (subsidized, of course) family passes to the city pools.

  17. bgbear says:

    Whatever happened to ordinary pawn transactions like Ray Milland trying to hock his typewriter?

  18. DarthLevin says:

    Yep. Mrs. Darth loves to tell me about the people who come into the urgent care using Medicaid. One regular has several pairs of expensive tennis shoes, frequent body art updates, balanced nails, and two iPhone 5s. Because she has two baby-daddies, see, and they don’t like each other, see, and so one baby-daddy has one number and the other baby-daddy has the other number so she doesn’t get them crossed up. And can she get a prescription for Advil because it’s too expensive to buy OTC and it’s on Walmart’s $4 list.

  19. Ernst Schreiber says:

    What happens when polyandry and polygyny* ride in the same cart? Does the whirlwind follow?

    *what are the odds that neither one of these swells has at least one other baby-mama?

  20. Scott Hinckley says:

    $114 Billion for 101 Million in a year? That works out to $1128/year assistance average, or about $3/day per person. That won’t buy a lot of lottery tickets.

    The abuses mentioned here are very real, but they are not just the fault of this program.

  21. Squid says:

    The abuses mentioned here are very real, but they are not just the fault of this program.

    It’s not even “this program,” though. It’s “these 15-plus duplicative and wasteful programs, each one designed to make it easier and less shameful to suck on the public teat, as part of our ongoing crusade to make things like ‘work’ and ‘family’ superfluous.”

    They’re also evidence that gigantic centrally-planned federal efforts are extraordinarily wasteful and stupid, having gone well past the point where they do more harm than good. They’re a living reminder that the Leviathan needs to be dismantled post-haste, to be replaced by private charity programs run by local volunteers who can turn away those who obviously don’t need the help, no matter how well their community organizer has shown them how to fill out some forms.

    As far as the $1,128/person/year average, it fails to mention how many recipients receive benefits year ’round, versus how many use the programs for a month or two when they’re in a really acute crisis. Which also strikes at the heart of the argument, since we’re a lot less upset about the latter group, who likely are doing their best to stay off assistance, rather than teaching their grandchildren how best to work the system.

  22. leigh says:

    Plus the EITC really adds up and discounts on utilities and public housing and . . .

  23. newrouter says:

    “The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a total of 101,000,000 people currently participate in at least one of the 15 food programs offered by the agency, at a cost of $114 billion in fiscal year 2012.”

    what is the amount that the states are spending?

  24. newrouter says:

    that’s the thing with the canada wreck. airbrakes are fail safe.

  25. BigBangHunter says:

    – Which orders will be ardently ignored least DC be emptied out in a week.

  26. BigBangHunter says:

    In other SFO news….

    – Pilots not given post flight drug or alcohol tests….. Say they set auto thrust control system at required 137 knots…. Pilots union bitching about NTSB giving info to public.

  27. newrouter says:

    “To understand the Zimmerman case, you have to live in a neighborhood that has just enough property values to keep you paying the mortgage and just enough proximity to dangerous territories to make you feel like you’re living on the frontier. ”
    link

  28. BigBangHunter says:

    – Not your grannies vacation spot. A room with a v-i-e-wwwww.

  29. newrouter says:

    heights always give thoughts of f=ma

  30. BigBangHunter says:

    – Who says Obama’s policies aren’t creating opportunities?

  31. newrouter says:

    all the frauds you want from prezident fraud

  32. serr8d says:

    OT…an Android app made specifically for geotagging ‘irresponsible’ gun owners’ addresses, phone numbers. Developed by a San Diego ‘lecturer’…

    A newly released Android app may expose gun owner’s addresses to the entire world. The “Gun Geo Marker” application, now available in the Google Play App Store, is intended to allow anonymous reporting and public tracking of “irresponsible gun owners”.

    Developed by University of California San Diego lecturer Brett Stalbaum, the anonymous application encourages random users to document the home or business addresses of allegedly irresponsible gun owners via real-time mapping. What determines “irresponsible” gun ownership is entirely at the discretion of the unknown user marking the map.

    Oh! guess who’s been outed…

    Turnabout Is Fair Play • 3 hours ago
    Irresponsible App Developer:
    Brett O Stalbaum
    (619) 443-0097
    1016 Stage Coach Trl
    Julian, CA 92036-9317

    Hate it when that happens…and so quickly!

  33. newrouter says:

    ““irresponsible” gun ownership”

    does it work in chicago?

  34. happyfeet says:

    they probably eat better than I do

    everything lately is a brown rice dish

    why is that

    cause of I’m on a thai kick for lunch and an indian-food-in-a-pouch kick at home for dinner is why

    and you’d think I’m allergic to grocery shopping

    but I’m a venture forth and scavenge later this week cause of

    this is embarrassing

    I never had tres leches cake

    so Friday morning I’m a head over to Vallarta and hook myself up

    I’m a use my mastercard though as I

    this is embarrassing

    I do not have access to the food stamps

    I have made bad choices in life

  35. BigBangHunter says:

    I have made bad choices in life

    – Truth in advertising?

  36. newrouter says:

    “I have made bad choices in life”

    don’t seek the gov’t for solutions

  37. geoffb says:

    that’s the thing with the canada wreck. airbrakes are fail safe.

    Hit “best” on the comments and read them especially this one. There is a procedure to make sure a train doesn’t move. all cars have manual handbrakes and they are to be set and tied down along with other measures to keep the train in place. RR personnel know this and there were RR personnel there before the FD people left.

    Either there was a massive screw-up by RR people or this was sabotaged.

  38. newrouter says:

    sponge cake is so baracky

  39. Ernst Schreiber says:

    “Police say there’s evidence Canada train was tampered with.”

    From the CNN story Althouse links to:

    Canadian authorities have found evidence that a criminal act may have led to a train crash in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed at least 15 people, provincial police Capt. Michel Forget said Tuesday.
    There have been many questions about the crash and explosion that wiped out a swath of the town 130 miles east of Montreal. As of Tuesday evening, 35 people were still missing, Forget said.
    Authorities offered no further details about the case but said it was not caused by terrorism.

    Besides, I thought we’d already agreed that the brakes need air to stay engaged as well as to disengage.

    Finally, for what it’s worth. It doesn’t seem to me that the story itself lives up to the headline (or Althouse’s*, for that matter):

    Firefighters in the nearby town of Nantes put out a separate blaze on the train shortly before it crashed into Lac-Megantic early Saturday. Ed Burkhardt, chief executive officer and president of Rail World, the parent company of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, has told media outlets there’s evidence the engine powering the brakes was shut down at some point.
    Pressed to elaborate by CTV, Burkhardt wrote Tuesday in an e-mail exchange, “We are now aware the firefighters shut down the locomotive. By the time (Montreal, Maine & Atlantic) people found out, it was too late.”
    In earlier comments to the Montreal Gazette, he said the matter needs further investigation, and his company has begun an internal inquiry.
    “There are a number of missing pieces here,” Burkhardt told the paper, saying he didn’t suspect “the event was malicious or an act of terrorism.”
    ….
    Asked during an earlier news conference whether authorities suspected sabotage, Ed Belkaloul, manager of rail operations for Canada’s Transportation Safety Board’s eastern region, said there was no evidence to that effect.

    So, if anything, the “criminal act” being referred to here is the (arson?) fire that occurred in Nantes.

    * “tampered” implies messed with for mischievious or malicious purposes. “Interfered with” would be more neutrally accurate, if the reports that the fire department shutt down the locomotive are accurate.

  40. newrouter says:

    “or this was sabotaged.”

    well the jihadis and the anti fracking proggtards are lookin’. baracky uniny no?

  41. newrouter says:

    “that the brakes need air to stay engaged as well as to disengage.”

    you reduce the air pressure and then the brake engage. if the air pressure is absent the brakes fully engage. thus “fail safe”.
    the air pressure “disengages” the “mechanism” that applies the brake

  42. newrouter says:

    the air brakes – fail safe. fully applied
    go read some george westinghouse

  43. Ernst Schreiber says:

    This comment from Althouse’s earlier post is worth reproducing:

    I lived just west of Lac Mégantic for many years. The train was unmanned because of a pending crew change at Nantes (common procedure) several kilometres west of Lac Mégantic and (quite importantly) almost 150 metres (about 500 feet) higher. Once the train got rolling in was on a nice downhill run until it hit downtown Mégantic where it encountered a sharp curve, numerous sidings and assorted switches, one of which was obviously in the wrong position for the train at that time. Physics and chemistry did the rest.

    The unusual thing is that there had been a cabin fire in one of the engines, extinguished by the Nantes fire department. I haven’t been reading much English-media about the story, but none I’ve seen have mentioned the earlier fire. My guess is therefore that something in the braking system got compromised by that fire and eventually leaked until the brakes released. From that point the outcome was a near-certainty. I’ve been in downtown Mégantic many times and when I see the photos I can barely recognize anything. There are still dozens of people missing, presumably occupants of a crowded night club near the centre of the explosions. This will be a tough one to absorb in a town of only 6,000 inhabitants.

  44. newrouter says:

    “Besides, I thought we’d already agreed that the brakes need air to stay engaged as well as to disengage.”

    you and some other non railroad loon

  45. newrouter says:

    “My guess is therefore that something in the braking system got compromised by that fire and eventually leaked until the brakes released.”

    yes fail safe brake systems work just like that. good allan too many stupid peeps

  46. newrouter says:

    hey FAIL SAFE BRAKES!!11!! the fire in the engine doesn’t matter. loss of air breaks applied. you need air to move the train!!!!!

  47. BigBangHunter says:

    Pressed to elaborate by CTV, Burkhardt wrote Tuesday in an e-mail exchange, “We are now aware the firefighters shut down the locomotive. By the time (Montreal, Maine & Atlantic) people found out, it was too late.”

    ….would seem to be fairly clear. If putting out the earlier fire neccesitated shutting down the engine critical to powering the brakes, then wheres the mystery? Sounds like some number of RR personel did not follow up and secure the train after the earlier fire was extinquished, unless there was some reason they could not gain access.

  48. BigBangHunter says:

    …If, on the other hand, the brakes are indeed “failsafe”, then the statements are even more confused than the mystery.

  49. newrouter says:

    or you need to go from car to car and manually release the brakes..

  50. newrouter says:

    “If putting out the earlier fire neccesitated shutting down the engine critical to powering the brakes,”

    the brakes are – fail safe- ie air brakes that engage when power is lost. really peeps go read some george westinghouse

  51. BigBangHunter says:

    – So then the mystery continues, and it seems at least a few of the officials are just adding to the confusion.

  52. newrouter says:

    “The unusual thing is that there had been a cabin fire in one of the engines, extinguished by the Nantes fire department. I haven’t been reading much English-media about the story, but none I’ve seen have mentioned the earlier fire. My guess is therefore that something in the braking system got compromised by that fire ”

    by whom since railroad airbrakes are “fail safe”? sorry the muslim/islam/proggtard clowns were trying to attack mass. last month

  53. Ernst Schreiber says:

    How fail safe are the break shoes, peep?

  54. newrouter says:

    ” and it seems at least a few of the officials are just adding to the confusion.”

    railway stuff about air brakes is known since at least 1920. between the “fire” and the train moving: What happened? and what about the “fire”? who started that?

  55. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Why the fuck would anyone want to attack a podunk ville in French Canada?

  56. newrouter says:

    “How fail safe are the break shoes”

    dude go read some george westinghouse on air brakes. 76 cars with no air – fail safe- braked

  57. newrouter says:

    “Why the fuck would anyone want to attack a podunk ville in French Canada?”

    the guy eating the heart of his enemy in syria is asking that too

  58. BigBangHunter says:

    Why the fuck would anyone want …

    – I saw an article that talked about the Canadian Eco-nuts and interviewed one who said “the wreck is an example of the dangers of shipping oil in this way”.

    – At the same time the Pipeline people are using it as a “reason” why the pipeline should be built, thereby eliminating some of the hazardous cross country shipping because the pipe would run underground and be safer.

    – So there’s at least two factions with skin in the game Ernst.

  59. newrouter says:

    “So there’s at least two factions with skin in the game Ernst.”

    yea and the middle east mooslims

  60. newrouter says:

    this was a jihadi attack. if you want to acknowledge it ? to each it’s own

  61. BigBangHunter says:

    – You could be right nr. Just doesn’t “feel” like a Islamic sort of action, especially in such a remote unpopulated area. They have limited resources, so generally go for maximum effect, but its possible.

    – To me, this is more the sort of thing you’d expect from the Eco-terrorists.

  62. newrouter says:

    seriously how do you get this train moving after the fire? the “fire” would engaged the railroad no? there would be questions about the “fire”? yet this train took out a “infidel” village – “tout suite”

  63. newrouter says:

    “They have limited resources, so generally go for maximum effect, but its possible.”

    like blowing up a village of infidels in sarkozyland?

  64. Ernst Schreiber says:

    There are two factions with an interest in spinning the metanarrative, not in sabotaging a train and destroying a downtown.

    And “failsafe” means the brakes will not fail to apply, not that they will not fail to hold.

    And then there’s this (though again, maybe I’m misunderstanding what’s said, and thus unintentionally full of shit):

    The Westinghouse air brake system is very trustworthy, but not infallible. [so much for fail-safe, newrouter] Recall that the car reservoirs recharge only when the brake pipe pressure is higher than the reservoir pressure, and that the car reservoir pressure will rise only to the point of equilibrium. Fully recharging the reservoirs on a long train can require considerable time (8 to 10 minutes in some cases[3]), during which the brake pipe pressure will be lower than locomotive reservoir pressure. [The pressure in the car reservoirs needs to be higher in order for the brakes to engage –it’s the loss of locomotive reservoir pressure that makes them fail-safe, if I’m following the explaination —E.S.]

    If the brakes must be applied before recharging has been completed, a larger brake pipe reduction will be required in order to achieve the desired amount of braking effort, as the system is starting out at a lower point of equilibrium (lower overall pressure). If many brake pipe reductions are made in short succession (“fanning the brake” in railroad slang), a point may be reached where car reservoir pressure will be severely depleted, resulting in substantially reduced brake cylinder piston force, causing the brakes to fail.

    If the brake cylinders are losing pressure faster than the mainline, while trying to maintain pressure equilibrium, don’t we have a problem?

    I’ll happily concede that if I had any mechancial aptitude at all, I’d wouldn’t be just another in a long line of failed humanities majors, but it does seem to me that the railroad officials seem to think shutting down the locomotive(s?) was a Bad Idea, and I think we ought to give them the benefit of the doubt.

  65. Ernst Schreiber says:

    The thing about Jihadis? They like to tell the world they just stuck it to the infidels.

  66. BigBangHunter says:

    – True Ernst, and that’s the other aspect of this event that doesn’t ring true. Wheres the claims of responsibility that the Islamists always need to crow about so badly, because when you are a sand rat everything in the world is against you and any act, evil or otherwise, is an ego boost,

  67. newrouter says:

    “An air brake is a conveyance braking system actuated by compressed air. Modern trains rely upon a fail-safe air brake system that is based upon a design patented by George Westinghouse on March 5, 1868. The Westinghouse Air Brake Company (WABCO) was subsequently organized to manufacture and sell Westinghouse’s invention. In various forms, it has been nearly universally adopted.

    The Westinghouse system uses air pressure to charge air reservoirs (tanks) on each car. Full air pressure signals each car to release the brakes. A reduction or loss of air pressure signals each car to apply its brakes, using the compressed air in its reservoirs”

    link

  68. BigBangHunter says:

    Some Democrats were also dismayed by the White House’s actions. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and an author of the health law, questioned whether Mr. Obama had the authority to unilaterally delay the employer mandate.

    “This was the law. How can they change the law?” he asked.

    – Hey you dumb fuck. See that little tyrant over there. He’s your leader and he doen’t need no steenkin laws, he just issues an “executive order”, which somehow magically has eliminated the need for a Congress at all. So you and the rest of your jackass party that didn’t give a damn enough to recognize what a shithead this guy was when you elected him, that all you gave a damn about was the power, well now you can suck it bunky.

    – Note. If this passes in congress ObamaCare is over, but it will have to be after 2014, and only if we win back the Senate.

  69. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Yeah*. A reduction in the pressure of the main line causes the car reservoir to equalize the pressure and apply the brake. Unless you can tell me where I’m going wrong, having now reread this for the third time, I stand by my original comment:

    If (I’ll grant that’s a bif if) I’m understanding what I’m reading positive pressure is required to both apply the breaks and release the breaks. That is, the pressure is positive at all times, and it’s the change of pressure that engages or disengages the brake. No engine power, no [air] compression, no compression, no resevoir recharge (either main or auxiliary), no resevoir recharge and eventually the brakes fail.

    *And by “yeah,” I mean, “No shit, Sherlock.”

  70. Ernst Schreiber says:

    If… …. …fail. should have been blockquoted.

  71. BigBangHunter says:

    A reduction or loss of air pressure signals each car to apply its brakes, using the compressed air in its reservoirs”

    – The working phrase here is “using the compressed aur in its resovoirs” (resovoir tanks). The resovoir tanks are assumed to be filled, but I can envision any number of possible scenarios, particularly if the source, the engine that has the actual compressors, catches fire and has to be shut down. Apparently the brakes are only “failsafe” with fully charged resovoir tanks, and we have no way, as of now, of knowing their condition at the time of the accident.

    – Maybe such information will become available during the ongoing investigation. In the mean time it’s all just speculation at this point.

  72. newrouter says:

    you can’t disable air brakes

    “The air brakes on the runaway oil train that devastated a Quebec town early Saturday had been disabled by firefighters ”

    link

  73. BigBangHunter says:

    – I think I just described a possible condition where the resovoirs would not be fully charged, and therefore the brakes would not be “failsafe”. But that said, its just speculation for now with that key bit of info missing.

  74. newrouter says:

    “I’m understanding what I’m reading positive pressure is required to both apply the breaks and release the breaks”

    makes no sense?

  75. newrouter says:

    “and therefore the brakes would not be “failsafe””

    the spring would say no

  76. Ernst Schreiber says:

    you can’t disable air brakes

    No, but they’re only as “enabled” as the car reservoirs whose air pressure keep the brakes engaged. Right?

  77. newrouter says:

    you peeps have to get back to a cruder metric for this train stuff

  78. BigBangHunter says:

    – It makes sense if the brake shoes are a “double piston” design which reqiures a positive pressure in the resovoir tanks to move the shoes in either direction. (engage or disingage).

    – There is a mechanical over-ride system that allows a brakeman to set the brakes manually by a crankwheel. Its the wheel you see at the back of every railcar. But theres no indication in any of the discussions aluding to the use of the mechanical over-rides either.

    – I’m not sure about active in sevice cars, but any cars in long term storage on a siding ect, are required by law to be mecahnically locked down.

  79. newrouter says:

    “No, but they’re only as “enabled” as the car reservoirs whose air pressure keep the brakes engaged. Right?”

    no air pressure – breaks engaged = fail safe

  80. newrouter says:

    here try this: the “reservoirs” that is a capacity factor. in fail mode the breaks are on

  81. BigBangHunter says:

    – Just off hand I doubt “springs” alone could apply enough pressure to act effectively as a brake nr. You’re talking very high psi here. Thus the use of a compressed air hydraulic system. In such a system if the resovoir tanks bleed off for any reason you have no air pressure to effect a brake.

  82. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Higher air pressure in the main brake line disengages the brakes while recharging the individual car reservoirs. Drop the pressure in the mainline, and the higher pressure in the car reservoirs seeks equilibrium while applying the brakes. If you lose the mainline altogether, the car reservoirs will eventually empty themselves chasing an ever lower equilibrium point, and the brakes will fail.

    Again. This is my understanding of what I’m reading. I am in no way claiming special knowledge or expertise. But as I said above, from what I can tell, all “failsafe” means is that the brakes will not fail to engage, but not that they will not fail to stay engaged.

    Also, I’m pretty sure that if a runaway train builds up enough momentum, the heat on the brake shoes will cause them to fail, too.

    I bet there’s all kinds of molten droplets along the grade from Nantes down to Lac-Megantic.

  83. BigBangHunter says:

    – But without that information, its all just speculation.

  84. newrouter says:

    “It makes sense if the brake shoes are a “double piston” design which reqiures a positive pressure in the resovoir tanks to move the shoes in either direction. (engage or disingage).”

    yes of course let us look at the none obvious reason for why a scheduled train stopped then crew departs, fire peeps show up, and then the train goes down hill from there

  85. newrouter says:

    ” Just off hand I doubt “springs” alone could apply enough pressure to act effectively as a brake nr. You’re talking very high psi here. Thus the use of a compressed air hydraulic system. In such a system if the resovoir tanks bleed off for any reason you have no air pressure to effect a brake.”

    do some spring design and get back to me

    link

  86. Ernst Schreiber says:

    no air pressure – breaks engaged = fail safe

    No air pressure in the main brake line = brakes engaged. That’s the fail safe. You don’t need to apply air pressure from the locomotive to the inidividual car cylinders in order to engage the brakes. Thus the engineer can always engage the brakes. But the car cylinders need to stay charged in order for the brakes to engage or remain engaged with enough force to be effective, and the car cylinders work by seeking to equalize air pressure. So if the main line keeps losing pressure, the car cylinders will too*. If the car cylinders run out of air, then there’s no pressure to keep the brakes engaged**. Turn off the engine, and you turn off the air compressor too (the individual cars don’t have their own compressors).

    *This might very well be completely wrong on my part. I’m basing this on the notion that even the best valve leaks.
    **alternatively, there’s not enough air pressure to keep the brakes engaged with the requisite force to arrest the train.

  87. BigBangHunter says:

    – I’ll tell you what I’m more suspicious of about this whole deal. The stories of everyone seem to have swiss cheese holes. With something like this, (and the crash at SFO by the way), the first thing everybody connected to the situation thinks about is liability, and it effects some of the strange things you’re liable to hear out of their mouths, as well as a lot of things that should be obvious that either become hopelessly muddled or not mentioned at all for the same liability reasons.

    – In this day and age, everybody immediately goes into CYA mode.

  88. BigBangHunter says:

    do some spring design and get back to me

    – I’ve done much high pressure mechanical design, including both spring activated and hydraulic designs. That’s why I said what I said.

  89. newrouter says:

    ” In such a system if the resovoir tanks bleed off for any reason you have no air pressure to effect a brake.”

    go read westinghouse – you fail safe idiot vanderbilt

  90. newrouter says:

    no air pressure brake on no?

  91. newrouter says:

    ” I’ve done much high pressure mechanical design, including both spring activated and hydraulic designs. That’s why I said what I said.”

    say what you want in the westinghouse air brake the trains in canada DON’T MOVE

  92. Ernst Schreiber says:

    let us look at the none obvious reason for why a scheduled train stopped then crew departs, fire peeps show up, and then the train goes down hill from there

    Umm. It was a scheduled stop, so the crew went looking for booze and broads, or dinner and sacktime, as the case may be. Then there was a fire, the origins of which remain unknown to us and perhaps undetermined by the authorities, the fire department showed up and put out the fire, and may (or may not) have also shut down the locomotive.

    Not everything is a conspiracy, Ollie Fox.

  93. BigBangHunter says:

    – Aside from just raw pressureversus size, another reason springs would be less than useful is heat buildup. Heat will de-temper the springs and then they lose most of their pressure when compressed. You don’t have that problem with air pressure cylinders, just the problem of heat distorting the brake shoe. The temperature buildup in compression brakes can approach the melting point of steel.

  94. newrouter says:

    “Umm. It was a scheduled stop, so the crew went looking for booze and broads, or dinner and sacktime, as the case may be. Then there was a fire, the origins of which remain unknown to us and perhaps undetermined by the authorities, the fire department showed up and put out the fire, and may (or may not) have also shut down the locomotive.”

    Then the train rolled down the hill and killed peeps

  95. BigBangHunter says:

    – nr – if you feel that you’ve solved the case you should contact the Canadian authorities. I’m sure they’d welcome any help in solving what seems to be a confused mystery for them.

  96. newrouter says:

    “The temperature buildup in compression brakes can approach the melting point of steel.”

    go for it! i’m laughing too much or crying

  97. Ernst Schreiber says:

    go read westinghouse – you fail safe idiot vanderbilt

    You go read westinghouse. Or better yet, try looking at the pictures, jackass.

    You’re describing a vacuum brake, not an airbrake.

  98. newrouter says:

    “if you feel that you’ve solved the case”

    please show where i said that? me: commies and jihadies working together

  99. BigBangHunter says:

    go for it! i’m laughing too much or crying

    – When someone makes a statement such as that they announce themselves as a neophyte, at which point I immediately ignore any further comments. From this point on you’ll be debating yourself, so using your own words “go for it”.

  100. newrouter says:

    “You’re describing a vacuum brake, not an airbrake.”

    from peeps who know

    “In 1872, George Westinghouse invented the automatic air brake by inventing the triple valve and by equipping each car with its own air cylinder. Air pressure is maintained in the auxiliary reservoirs and in the train pipe at all times when the brakes are not applied. An equilibrium of air pressure is maintained in the train pipe and in the auxiliary air cylinders.

    To apply the brakes to all of the cars at about the same time, pressure is released from the train pipe, causing the triple valve on each car to apply the brakes. To release the brakes on each car, pressure is increased in the train pipe until an excess pressure above that of the pressure in each auxiliary cylinder is reached, which throws the triple valve so as to close the inlet to the brake cylinder and open the inlet to the auxiliary reservoir from the train pipe, thus allowing the equilibrium of the two pressures to be reached.”

    do wiki peeps

  101. newrouter says:

    “When someone makes a statement such as that they announce themselves as a neophyte”

    yea like ” big bang sumthing?

  102. Ernst Schreiber says:

    go for it! i’m laughing too much or crying

    Oh for fuck’sake! You’re seriously going to argue that steel won’t melt?

    Maybe it was the Booshies and the Bilderbergers, because all that readily developed North Dakota oil is fucking with their grand schemes for the yet to be developed Afghani oil.

    The air brakes consist of a metal shoe that presses against the flange of the wheels when the air brakes are activated. The slower a wheel moves, the more efficiently the friction can convert to traction instead of heat. The faster a wheel moves, the more efficiently friction converts the other way around. Thus, air brakes work optimally when traveling at speeds under 25 mph as this is the speed at which traction is gained more than heat via the input of friction.

    And

    When he realized that the train was gathering too much speed, he did all he could to control the train speed using the train’s air brakes and the dynamic brakes of the lead locomotives, and asked the helper engine’s engineer to do as much as he could to help also, not knowing that he had only one working dynamic brake in his set. As a last attempt to stop the train, the helper engineer initiated an emergency brake application from his helper locomotive, but this ended up disabling all of the dynamic brakes on the train, allowing the train to pick up speed. After the activation of the emergency brake, the only brakes which were operational were the air brakes, which were now melting from the friction and heat. When the NTSB investigators arrived at the crash site (about twelve hours after the accident), they observed that the wheels had gotten so hot that they had started to expand off the wheel axles by the time they left the rails

    source

  103. newrouter says:

    “Oh for fuck’sake! You’re seriously going to argue that steel won’t melt”

    at this point i say way too stupid to argue with. have a GOOD DAY SIR!

  104. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I did. You should read down to where they describe vacuum brakes.

    What do you think applies the breaks, the loss of pressure from the main line? Or the auxillary reservoir (aka car tank or reservoir) reacting to that loss of pressure by seeking to restore equilibrium?

    It’s got arrows and everything newrouter.

  105. newrouter says:

    “You should read down to where they describe vacuum brakes. ”

    nah i know westinghouse system – failed SAFE unlike baracky

  106. newrouter says:

    “What do you think applies the breaks,”

    the spring kinda does it not the air. effin humanities clowns

  107. newrouter says:

    “vacuum brakes” you be exposing some dumb. the air brake is doing something else?

  108. Ernst Schreiber says:

    The funny thing is, you deal with evidence and counter-argument in the same manner as baracky.

  109. newrouter says:

    what’s that spring doing ernst? or the piston?

    http://railroad.net/articles/railfanning/airbrakes/media/airbra-app.gif

  110. newrouter says:

    mr ernst let us have a meaningful discussion of railroad operations!
    like what is an air brake?

  111. newrouter says:

    what is funny you clowns go after me but other stuff not so much. all hail proggtardia

  112. Ernst Schreiber says:

    If you’d bother to look at the schematics I linked, I think you’d see that the spring actually releases the brake.

    And you seem (to me at any rate) to be arguing that it’s the lowering of air pressure in the main line that actuates the brakes when it would be more accurate to describe it as the auxilliary reservoir activating the brake as a consequence of seeking to restore pressure equilibrium inside the triple valve cylinder.

    I don’t know how long the auxilliary reservoirs in the individual cars can keep the brakes under positive pressure once the main brake line starts bleeding pressure, or how fast the main brake line bleeds off once the air compressor either fails or is shut off.

    And neither, I suspect, do you.

  113. newrouter says:

    “If you’d bother to look at the schematics I linked, I think you’d see that the spring actually releases the brake.”

    yea “fail safe” does what exactly? too stupid, dumb, idiotic go for it

  114. newrouter says:

    “I don’t know how long the auxilliary reservoirs in the individual cars can keep the brakes under positive pressure once the main brake line starts bleeding pressure, or how fast the main brake line bleeds off once the air compressor either fails or is shut off.”

    the ‘effin brakes apply loser. it is -fail safe- too stupid

  115. Ernst Schreiber says:

    what’s that spring doing ernst? or the piston?

    Being compressed by the piston as the air fills the cylinder. Or, the opposite of what it’s doing here.

    Where’s the air coming from to compress that spring and move that piston?

    And I’m after you because you told me to research something I’d already researched nearly ten hours earlier, without explaining where or why I was wrong, and after I’d already taken the trouble to acknowledge I was offering my best layman’s guess. Which frankly, I still think is better than yours.

  116. newrouter says:

    you clowns don’t talk about railroad stuff with me. i know this junk

  117. Ernst Schreiber says:

    The brakes apply as long as there’s effin pressure in the cylinder to keep them applied, nicht wahr?.

  118. newrouter says:

    “Where’s the air coming from to compress that spring ”

    the spring is the “fail safe” mechanism clown. you be retarded says jantel

  119. BigBangHunter says:

    – Seems someone has a spring lose.

  120. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I have yet to see the balloon or pool or air mattress that, once blown up, stayed blowed up. And yeah, I recognize that the valve on air brake isn’t the same as the valve on a blow-up pool or an air mattress. But I can’t accept that a brake line doesn’t bleed at all except when bled off.

  121. newrouter says:

    “The brakes apply as long as there’s effin pressure in the cylinder to keep them applied, nicht wahr?”

    no the brakes fail safe

  122. Ernst Schreiber says:

    If the spring is the failsafe, why even bother with the auxilliary reservoir on each and every single car?

  123. Ernst Schreiber says:

    And Titanic unsinkable.

  124. BigBangHunter says:

    – Ernst, forget it. Its obviously an obsession with him. No point in feeding an obsession.

  125. newrouter says:

    “why even bother with the auxilliary reservoir on each and every single car?”

    ask the railroads. they will tell you.

  126. Ernst Schreiber says:

    In any event, I’m sure the Canadians will conclude, after prolonged investigation, that it’s a really bad idea to park X of 73 tanker cars full of crude oil on a gradient for any length of time.

  127. newrouter says:

    “- Ernst, forget it. Its obviously an obsession with him. No point in feeding an obsession.”

    like sfo goofy allan

  128. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Hey, I thought you knew this junk. So I’m asking you

  129. Ernst Schreiber says:

    ask the railroads. they will tell you.

    If you read the USA Today piece linked in the update to that Gateway Pundit item newouter linked earlier, you’ll see that “‘the train’s crew had left the engine idling to keep the air brakes pressurized so the train wouldn’t roll,’ said Ed Burkhardt, chairman of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway.”

    Presumably he knows what he’s talking about.

  130. BigBangHunter says:

    – See, he’s back on the SFO obsession again. Never ends with this guy.

  131. BigBangHunter says:

    – Apparently Leigh is right. He hits the sauce and gets nutso.

  132. Car in says:

    I was at the grocery store yesterday, in line behind a heavily tatooed *** woman who had a very full cart of name-brand items, expensive thing (olive oil), and prepared food. Individual chips, etc.

    She paid with her bridge card. Of course.

    When she walked away, I couldn’t stop myself and said to the cashier “Well, perhaps if she didn’t have so much ink, she could buy her own food.”

    I was nervous for a bit, then the cashier responded “It’s like you READ my mind.”

    I have FIVE kids. The last year has been very hard. We’ve gone w/o a lot just to keep ’em fed, and one of the first things to go extravagances in the pantry.

    ****full color, all over her arms and shoulders and everything I could see.

  133. EBL says:

    Where is my government cheese! Fuck, do I have to go milk and make it myself?

  134. Car in says:

    I’m not wading into the airbrakes thing.

  135. Squid says:

    It’s safe now, Car. The noisy ‘dillo should be sleeping it off at this point.

  136. cranky-d says:

    I’m not wading into the airbrakes thing.

    You and me both.

  137. cranky-d says:

    Or “me neither” I guess. I just got up.

  138. Pablo says:

    Sauce? I always figured Drano.

  139. leigh says:

    My knowledge of baking systems begins and ends with discs and drums. I’m even stymied by trying to explain anti-locking brakes. However, my resident expert on all things mechanical says it is indeed possible for air brakes to fail and to fail spectacularly as they did in this incident. Factor in the slope the fully loaded train was on, momentum, switching station at the wrong angle and blam! If there was indeed a curve ahead of the moving train, it is possible that the train cars tipped and skidded, sparking and causing the explosion.

    But what do I know.

  140. Car in says:

    Has anyone waded into the Michael Hastings’ death conspiracy stuff? It was in The Blaze, so I’m skeptical.

    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/08/three-weeks-later-details-about-reporter-michael-hastings-death-in-fiery-car-crash-remain-a-mystery/

  141. leigh says:

    I’ve read some of it, Carin. Not that article, but some others. I think it was an accident. The guy was a heavy drinker, it was late in the early morning, he was driving too fast for road conditions, et al.

    Someone (one of the car buff magazines?) did an accident recreation and it is possible for the car he was driving to throw the engine block the way it did. It’s unusual, but not impossible.

  142. geoffb says:

    There are two air pressure reservoirs. The “train line” which goes the length of the train and the individual car’s reservoir. The pressure in the “train line” works to release the brakes. The individual car’s reservoir pressure works to apply the brakes. The difference between the two determines what happens as long as there is pressure in the system.

    Air systems always leak air. In normal operation the compressor will supply plenty of air to not only operate the system but also overcome the leakage. Release too much pressure either by using the brakes too often or by not having the compressor resupply the air that leaks away and the pressure overall drops.

    Since the amount of braking is determined by the difference between the two reservoirs if both have run down to low pressure due to leakage there will be little braking.

    Shutting down the engine supplying air pressure means that the pressure will start dropping. The questions that should be asked are was the RR notified that the engine was shut down? If theyb were why didn’t someone respond to monitor the train? Why weren’t the manual brakes locked down if the train was to set there with no one aboard?

  143. geoffb says:

    Somelinks.

  144. BigBangHunter says:

    – Some highlights from SFO presser….

    * NTSB Chair Deb Hersman said at the morning presser yesterday that they did not do a post drug/alcohol test on the pilots because the rules for foreign pilots are left up to the individule countries discretion.

    * The question everyone is asking is why didn’t the auto power controls maintain 137 knots, (the pilot in control and the instructor who was aiding him both say that was the case). She did say that there are “several modes” of operation that the auto control can be set in” without elaborating. They are concentrating on the data flight recorders to determine if the system was working corectly, and on the cockpit voice recorder and in flight communucations with the tower to see if fatgue entered into it in any way. Maybe she’ll expand on that or even have an answer at todays presser.

    * Apparently two of the stewardeses were thrown out the back of the plane during the crash and ended up on the runway, similar to the two Chinese teenager girls, but they both survived although in critical condition.

    * One woman traveling with her 4 year old son who broke his leg during the crash picked him up and carried him out through a hole in the fuselage where the restroom had been.

  145. BigBangHunter says:

    – Todays SFO presser is scheduled for 2pm PT.

  146. Ernst Schreiber says:

    geoffb says July 10, 2013 at 9:30 am

    That’s what I thought. The guy with the fire department says they notified the railroad dispatcher as to what actions they took, and after that it was the railroad’s responsibility.

    Going off of memory here: the runaway and derailment was around 1 am, the fire in the locomotive was around 11:30 pm. At that time of night, I imagine the word didn’t get to the necessary people in a timely manner.

  147. geoffb says:

    The guy with the fire department says they notified the railroad dispatcher as to what actions they took, and after that it was the railroad’s responsibility

    I also thought that the FD said that they stayed there until the RR people got there.

    The Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident, has since confirmed that an MM&A representative was on site with firefighters as they extinguished the blaze – suggesting that the company was notified quickly about the incident.

    also this from the RR Chairman.

    On Wednesday he said the track employee who went to the site of a fire on a locomotive was not aware of the consequences of turning the engine off.

    He said handbrakes were set on the locomotive, based on an initial inspection by the company. He said the local conductor said other brakes — on tank cars — were set, but he added the company has not been able to verify that.

    He said it’s hard to imagine hand brakes were applied on the train’s tank cars.

    “As a matter of fact, I’ll say they weren’t,” Mr. Burkhardt said.

    Asked if he thinks an employee removed the brakes, he said he thinks they “failed to set the brakes.”

  148. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Interesting

  149. guinspen says:

    Sauce.

    Drano.

    Pikachu juice.

  150. BigBangHunter says:

    – Which, in spite of all the confusion would appear to be absolutely the case. One way or another, setting aside the question of blame, the train would have remained in place, even on a grade, were the brakes, in the time frame of the acoident, functional.

    – For whatever reason this was not the case.

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