FORGIVE, BUT DON'T FORGET.

From time to time I have taken writers for The Bulwark to task for abandoning their purportedly conservative principles to carry water for Democrats as a way of showing their disgust with Donald Trump.

Let us, thus, be grateful for an Act of Contrition offered by Mona Charen. We Elected Biden to Be Better Than This.  Yes, you might have been among the people who thought Joe Biden to be an anodyne Democrat, but didn't you notice him running on Bernie Sanders's platform?

In 2020, America elected Joe Biden to be not-Trump—a role for which he seemed well-suited. In 2016, the country voted for burn-it-all-down upheaval. Trump was the tribune of those who felt betrayed and misled and mistreated. Four chaotic years later, alarmed voters fled into the arms of an aging former vice-president and senator—a man they had twice rejected as a presidential contender—who seemed the personification of the steady hand.

Oops.

No one expected Biden to be transformational or extraordinary, but we did need him to be the anti-Trump in the most important ways. We needed him to be sober and responsible, to play by the rules, and to uphold the primacy of law and procedure. And he delivered. President Biden freed the country and the world from the tyranny of tweeted insults, conspiracies, threats, lies, fantasies, and reversals. And while naturally some will criticize his policies, Biden has conducted the presidency with dignity. He has gone some way toward restoring a sense that the system, whatever its flaws, is basically sound.

What do you mean, "no one"?  Didn't Mr Biden have aspirations, all along, to be "transformational," and doesn't he sound off about all the legislation he's gotten through Congress, stagflation and future road repair liabilities be damned?  Dignity?  Have you no shame, Mona Charen?  What is dignified about "Jim Eagle" or "Ultra-MAGA"?

The Presidential Sin, though, is Trump-adjacent conduct.

But the revelation that, like Trump, Biden mishandled classified documents, including storing them in his garage next to his Corvette, drags us back to precisely the world in which Trump is most comfortable. Like all reprobates, Trump’s default justification when caught out is “everybody does it.” Last summer, when the FBI executed a search of Mar-a-Lago for purloined classified documents, Trump demanded, on his social media platform Truth Social, “What happened to the 30 million pages of documents taken from the White House to Chicago by Barack Hussein Obama? He refused to give them back! What is going on? This act was strongly at odds with NARA. Will they be breaking into Obama’s ‘mansion’ in Martha’s Vineyard?” It was rubbish, as the National Archives confirmed in a statement.

In Bulwark World, dear reader, the greatest sin is riling up Trumpians.

The TV analysts who are rushing to explain that what Trump did was orders of magnitude worse than what Biden did are correct, but it will not alter the political calculus. What Biden did (so far as we know or have reason to suspect) was negligent but not intentional. And yet, it’s still way too close to Trump’s transgressions for comfort. Millions of Republicans, marinated in grievance, are primed to believe that Trump is the victim of a double standard and they won’t delve too deeply into the distinction between purposely absconding with classified material, lying about it, and defying a subpoena, and simply leaving classified documents in an office closet and in a garage.

An office closet at a university center funded inter alia by Chinese interests?  Is the "simply leaving" a symptom of dementia, which is what "senior moment" makes light of?  It's a good bet that the populist grievance industry is all over those possibilities, whilst the palace guard media and the White House staff look weak.  "It was an oversight, but as soon as it was discovered, we did things by the book."

Ms Charen's conclusion is less than inspiring.

That is demoralizing for those who believe that Biden’s chief accomplishment–and purpose–as president has been to restore a modicum of trust to a nation that has been sunk in suspicion and bitterness for too long. Being not-Trump demands better.

It came to this, Mona Charen, when, rather than suggesting voters leave the presidential ballot unticked, or vote for the Libertarian or the Free Soiler, your Bulwark lot actively backed Democrats all up and down the ballot.  Be better.  Recant your Swampy ways, and beg forgiveness.

WHEN THE POOBAHS OF HIGHER EDUCATION COMPROMISE THEIR INTEGRITY.

You get the ongoing Charlie Foxtrot that is Hamline University.

The Board of Trustees issues a statement suggesting the university is reconsidering its stance on academic freedom, which set off a controversy. The university’s president issues a statement strongly defending the university’s position. Outside groups—including some Muslim organizations—reject the university’s position.

The trustees put out a statement that might have been put together by a business jargon algorithm augmented by Rowan and Martin.

As Minnesota’s first university we’ve learned a lot in our nearly 170 years. Recent events have required us to look deeply into our values. We are a beautifully diverse community committed to educating our students and ourselves, and sometimes that means we need to make space for hard conversations and serious self-reflection. This is one of those times. We are listening and we are learning. The Hamline University Board of Trustees is actively involved in reviewing the university’s policies and responses to recent student concerns and subsequent faculty concerns about academic freedom. Upholding academic freedom and fostering an inclusive, respectful learning environment for our students are both required to fulfill our mission. We will move forward together and we will be stronger for it.

Taken together, neither the trustees nor the box-checking president look very good and they're, deservedly, being lit up for it.

“We are pleased to see the Board of Trustees taking an active interest in this case. It’s our hope that Hamline might reverse their decision, and we’d be eager to engage with them regarding this challenging situation. Universities can hear out their students’ concerns, and they should work toward fostering an inclusive climate,” said Jonathan Friedman, director of Free Expression and Education Programs at PEN America.

Responding to the president’s statement, he added, “Many are speaking out not to ‘attack’ the university—rather, to protect it. The idea that any one student’s beliefs can trump the honest teaching of art history is a chilling idea indeed. What if that logic were applied to every discipline or subject, from science to world history to LGBTQ identities? Everyone knows that adjunct faculty often have the fewest protections for academic freedom, and that the academy’s cardinal commitments to the open pursuit and transmission of knowledge are under threat. The Hamline administration should have taken this opportunity to take a strong stand for academic freedom and support their instructors. In fact, they still can.”

A number of other advocates have weighed in. By all means go to the article and make your own judgements.

Nothing in that column induces me to modify my judgement that our universities are being run by terminally stupid people.

Cold Spring Shops headquarters is on land that was in Wisconsin Territory before Illinois became a state. We recognize the labor applied by those settlers marking the trails that contemporary Illinoisans use to visit Lake Geneva, the Dells, and Door County, and to watch their teams get owned in Green Bay.

IT IS STILL TIME TO THINK ABOUT THE SUCCESSION.

The Green Bay Packers had a chance of making the playoffs, but two loss-of-composure penalties on defensive players in scoring situations helped the Lions put up points, and two ill-timed turnovers, the final an interception airmailed by Aaron Rodgers at the end of the game, put an end to those hopes, which, all the same, were stronger than I had anticipated.  "Best case scenario, the new quarterback continues to develop, the young receivers gain experience, and the transition to another quality quarterback occurs. First, though, let's see what the remaining four games bring."

The transition, though, will not go away.  "It’s a period of contemplation in the world of Green Bay Packers star Aaron Rodgers, who at age 39, is mulling retirement more seriously than ever before."  If popular sentiment mattered, the sense I'm getting is that he and Harry Sussex going on a Magical Mystery Tour would be just fine.  Perhaps he gets full range of motion back in his thumb, and his ribs heal, but I keep having those memories of a battered Bart Starr hoping to find the magic again.

That puts team management in a difficult position.

As for the next steps in Green Bay’s offseason, much of the future rests in [general manager Brian] Gutekunst’s hands. There has been much discussion about backup quarterback Jordan Love stepping in for Rodgers at some point — especially considering the Packers spent a first-round pick to draft him. If he takes over at quarterback, it’s reasonable to expect that Rodgers will be traded or retire.

However, if the Packers decide against moving forward with Love, Aaron Rodgers would be open to returning so long as appropriate roster moves are being made.

“If there’s a rebuild going on, I won’t be a part of that,” Rodgers said. “If they want to go younger and think Jordan [Love] is ready to go, then that might be the way they want to go. And if that’s the case and I still want to play, then there’s one one option, right? That’s to play somewhere else.”

Rodgers did, however, describe “reloads” as being a fun process because it makes the team “feel like you’re close.”

For now, let's pay attention to the Milwaukee Bucks (will all the regulars be healthy come April?) and note that pitchers and catchers report in a month.

DON'T GET YOUR HOPES UP.

The Northern Star offers students hope that they don't have to transfer from Huskie Bus to Commuter Streamliner at Elburn.  "Metra could come to DeKalb following new study."  I'll take Analysis Paralysis for $200.

The DeKalb City Council gave the green light Monday to fund a transportation study that could bring a Metra train line and station to the city.

The city council voted unanimously in favor of the study to be conducted by Sam Schwartz Consulting LLC to assess the feasibility of the potential train station.

The $98,379 study will determine the current traffic patterns of DeKalb commuters, the number of residents that could benefit from public transportation and major sources of traffic like NIU, according to the project.

A sad prediction: the study will turn up some small benefit to the trains, but the necessary taxing district will come a cropper in the rest of the county.  "When I hired out at Northern Illinois University, local thinking was that the Metra commuter train would be coming to DeKalb sometime in the next ten years."  So it was in 2019, so it was in 2010, so it might always be.  Never mind that Genoa and Belvidere fight over the scraps that might be available for Amtrak service returning to Rockford.

EXPERT FAILURE IN THE ABSTRACT, FAILURE IN THE CONCRETE.

By their failures, argues Spiked's Fraser Myers, shall we know our Wise Experts.

As we enter 2023, we desperately need to cut the technocrats down to size. The great lie of technocracy is that the experts are best placed to make decisions in the national interest. That they somehow stand above the wayward passions of the electorate or the ideology of elected representatives. In reality, technocrats tend to simply pass off their own prejudices as superior insight.

That's the vulgar version of public choice theory. Duke's Michael Munger has thought through the vulgarities, with the following elaboration.

If Progressives understood that the politics of democracy meant that market processes were no worse, and might be better, than elections, why did they favor expanding government? The answer is that Progressives did not, do not, favor democracy, at least not majoritarian democracy. They favor the suppression of individual discretion in favor of centralized planning, government control and direction of resources, and the suppression of individual discretion.

It’s the Progressive “social contract”: government experts know what voters should want, and would want if they were correctly informed and had altruistic motives. Real voters fall short of this ideal, of course, but that’s why voters should want to give up their own power to make free (wrong) choices, in favor of a priesthood of technocrats who will run things.

In that "priesthood of technocrats" there's likely millennia of institutional memory. Did the people who were less effective fighters agree to become servants, later subjects, of the more effective fighters?  Did the people less attuned to the clues Nature provided for all to see agree to support the people more attuned as ambassadors to their gods?  In that latter post I concluded, "I might be off base suggesting that the Technocratic Vision is contrary to longer term tendencies. I suggest, however, that some organizing framework is superior to none."  Professor Munger got to the heart of the matter.  "Progressives mistrust democracy, and always have."

So it always is with philosopher kings.  Eventually even the most loyal of subjects finds it hard to square his prior beliefs with the accumulating evidence.  "Not only is Joe Biden the oldest president in U.S. history, but he has presided over a period of widespread dissatisfaction with the direction of the country under Democratic Party rule."  I cannot square that "widespread dissatisfaction" with "Democratic rule".  Yes, there are compelling reasons for people of a conservative, right-populist, or libertarian bent to say the country is on the wrong track, but the very conflict within the Democrat coalition between the old school technocrats and the contemporary deconstructionists who suspect there's too much toxic masculinity in linear thinking also might be reason to venture a "wrong track" judgement.  It's right there in the Democrats' succession plans.  "But in making [Kamala Harris] an avatar of the party's future, the party has made her problems their own too, embracing box-checking at the expense of political or administrative competence."  That's being kind.  Their incompetence is their diversity.  Let us celebrate.

There is nothing funny about Joe Biden. Every day he remains in office he does incalculable damage to the country. The Biden matter is likely the least of it. He has dissolved our southern border, prioritized the climate madness, furthered the woke insanity, weakened our military, promoted a gusher of federal spending, and so on. His administration is shoddy and destructive. He is personally corrupt.

Where, though, is the message that will get him turfed out?  It's so easy to substitute "Trump" for "Biden" in that passage, and you know that the palace guard media and Donk strategists will do so.

A SELF-FISKING.

Jerry "Why Evolution is True" Coyne finds a terminally silly jargon-laden pedagogy paper, and a more efficient way of fisking it.  "I’m rejecting both ways today in favor of The Third Way: let the paper reveal its own ideology, postmodern craziness, and authoritarianism by just giving quotes."

The abstract itself gets off to a good start.  "This article presents an argument on the importance of teaching science with a feminist framework and defines it by acknowledging that all knowledge is historically situated and is influenced by social power and politics."  Knowledge has to be "historically situated" in the sense that all learning is cumulative, and builds on that which is established previously; the role of knowledge in creating or distorting social power and politics suggests there is not a single direction of causation.  That "feminist framework," however, suggests a tight prior trammelling inquiry:  "We present this work as an example of a transformative pedagogical model to dismantle White supremacy in Chemistry."  I wonder what the reaction of the authors would be to "What evidence would motivate you to revise your priors?"  It probably would not be reasoned.  Check out the Testament of Faith that follows.

When scientifically established facts, such as the nonbinary nature of both sex and gender are seen by students of science as a belief, one might ask: Are we being true to scientific knowledge? We use this student comment as a reflection of the subjectivity of how the pedagogical decisions are made in teaching “true science” vs what existing scientific knowledge tells us. This has resulted in the propagation of scientific miseducation for generations.

Two-four-six-eight, time to trans-substantiate.  Also time for the economics faculty at East [North] Carolina to time-slip the chemistry department.

In this article we describe the development, implementation, and student experience from a special topic course in chemistry, Science and Feminism, as a disruptive tool to challenge the status quo in Chemistry. Using Critical Race Theory and intersectional feminism as the framework, this course aimed at creating an intellectual as well as physical space for STEM students at East Carolina University (ECU) where they could explore their identities and how these intersect with the knowledge base and the pedagogy of science by looking at these from historical, political, and feminist lens. The other aim was to shine light, through this process, how scientific epistemology and culture have strong links with capitalism, enslavement, colonization, and exploitation of female-bodied folks. We provide the historical context of teaching this class in our institution, development of the course syllabus, assignments, and evaluations adopted for this course over the past two years as a template for future course development.

Go to Why Evolution is True for the rest, which is a convex combination of the mock-with-glee and fisk-each-line approach to online commentary.  Apparently in the Church of Intersectionality the "historical context" can be carried off without much knowledge of the history of political economy.  But call the project "disruptive" and that might be truth in packaging, although not in the good connotation of the word.  Additionally, it's possible to pass the course with no knowledge of mathematics.  That is, unless somebody is running another Sokal hoax.

Unit 3 explored the development and interrelationship between quantum mechanics, Marxist materialism, Afro-futurism/pessimism, and postcolonial nationalism. To problematize time as a linear social construct, the Copenhagen interpretation of the collapse of wave-particle duality was utilized. The end of the unit assignments was writing a reflection from all the readings and participation in a debate with the topic: past is never dead, it is not even past. The students also had the option of watching the 2020 movie, Antebellum. However, the instructor was flexible on this assignment as some of the African American students did not want to watch it and be triggered. They wrote a reflection on a book on race and gender that they had read.

"Flexible" is the new underwater basketweaving.

The paper concludes, predictably, more like an Order of Worship than a scientific paper, with a confession of sins, namely, the oh-so-popular land acknowledgement.

Perhaps I should append one to future posts:  Cold Spring Shops headquarters is on land that was in Wisconsin Territory before Illinois became a state.  We recognize the labor applied by those settlers marking the trails that contemporary Illinoisans use to visit Lake Geneva, the Dells, and Door County, and to watch their teams get owned in Green Bay.

THEY VANISHED IN THE UKRAINE.

Nameless numbers on a list that was later misplaced.

Hundreds of Russian draftees reportedly fear they have been sent on a suicide mission by top military officials who are planning to conceal their deaths through an inventive new scheme: changing records to show they are part of a regiment that doesn’t exist.

“They assigned us to regiment 228–such a regiment does not exist,” one of the men told the independent news outlet Sota. “They want to send us to a hot spot tomorrow with machine guns [to go] against tanks, drones, and mortars on minefields. We’re just cannon fodder.”

That happened often, according to Boris Pasternak as interpreted by Alec Guinness and Julie Christie, in Stalin era.  It's not unknown to evil emperors outside the movies.  "The men described manipulation of their official paperwork that effectively rendered them lost without a trace."

Does Vladimir Putin have a garage in one of his dachas where he keeps Corvette and box of official papers?

REGIONAL RAIL RETURNING TO WISCONSIN?

With the coming of Amtrak the privately-operated passenger trains serving Madison and Green Bay made their last runs.  Over the years, Wisconsin politicians, primarily Democrats, have sought the return of passenger trains connecting Madison with Milwaukee and on to Chicago, and with a Democrat in the White House (with a transportation secretary from McKinsey and here to help you) they're wishing for one again.  Republican politicians, including former governor and later Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson, did support the Madison train.  There is a positive case for extending the Hiawatha service to Madison, but it's on local Passenger Rail advocates to make that case.

GOVERNOR PRITZKER TRAILS BY 18,068

From the beginning of this series, a year and a half ago, we noted, "The geographic area and population of Illinois are both similar to those in Sweden, and there are similarities of the Chicago and Stockholm metropolitan areas.  But  Springfield politicians are hazardous to your health."  More hazardous than the latest coronavirus variant, which, apparently, more readily evades the latest vaccines, but appears to have mutated into something that doesn't "appear to be more serious" than the earlier mutations.

The verdict is in.  "Sweden Wins! Country That Refused Lockdown and Kept Schools Open Has Lowest Pandemic Mortality in the World."  Not only that, the Swedes did better on excess deaths from causes other than coronavirus.  That despite Worldometers reporting more infections but fewer attributable deaths in Illinois.  In the United States, the restrictions themselves were deadly. "The 'experts' and leaders who pushed these failed policies need to be held accountable so they can never perpetuate an injustice like this again."

The emergency decrees for the United States taken together, as well as Illinois, remain in effect, if in modified form.  The emergency is over.  The emergency powers should be rescinded.

These posts will continue until the emergency decrees end.  This is what a majority of Illinoisans voted for.  I retain the right to call attention to what they've inflicted on themselves, and it's going to be fun come January, when two years of inflation adjustments to the motor fuel tax kick in, and later in the year, when the sales tax moratorium on groceries expires.  In addition, the winter fearmongering about coronavirus, flu, and other respiratory ailments is under way again, and I'm seeing more people masking up in stores or riding alone in their automobiles.  Meanwhile, letter carriers in Chicago are being hunted for their master keys to cluster mailboxes in apartment complexes and office parks that don't have individual curbside or in-house delivery.  The most recent flight of fantasy out of Springfield, which will do nothing about that sort of crime, is a ban on some firearms.  "The law is hard to defend on logical, practical, or constitutional grounds."  There are county sheriffs who give a low priority to enforcing it.  The potbellied dictator issues empty threats to have such sheriffs fired.  As is to be expected, people stocked up on weapons ahead of the law, which might not hold up in court, being signed.

A service called Worldometers has been keeping track of coronavirus infections and deaths, disaggregated in a number of ways.  With local, state, and federal governments in the United States changing the way they count infections (and they might be rethinking how they classify deaths) I'm not sure how valid any numbers, even from a service consistently used from month to month, is.

The latest report from Sweden counts 2,697,840 infections, up by 47,471 from last month, and 22,610 deaths, a change of 929 from the preceding report.

The latest report from Illinois counts 3,969,832 infections, an increase of 763,031 over last month and 40,678 deaths, adding 272 to the Pritzker Body Count in one month.  End the emergency decrees.

The most recent tally of vaccinations gives around 26 million doses of the various vaccines, initial course or the various boosters, or perhaps reformulations, administered as of January 13.  The state also appears to have ended their count of the scary variants, although the page has been updated to January 1 to show a mix of Omicron variants circulating.

At the end of the fall semester, the governor trailed by 19,204.

At Veterans Day, the governor trailed by 19,284.

At Columbus Day, the governor trailed by 19,436.

As Oktoberfest season began, the governor trailed by 19,467.

At the start of the academic year, the governor trailed by 19,611.

At Bastille Day, the governor trailed by 19,567.

At Flag Day, the governor trailed by 19,295.

At Syttende Mai, the governor trailed by 19,149.

At Patriots Day, the governor trailed by 19,243.

At St. Patrick's Day, the governor trailed by 19,580.

At Valentine's Day, the governor trailed by 19,533.

At the National Day of Service, the governor trailed by 17,062.

Note the time series: a margin of terror that used to be growing by hundreds in a week has been growing only slowly.  The details for earlier in 2021 and the end of 2020 are on page 2.

THE FARCE THAT IS LIBERATING TOLERANCE.

My old "The Burden of Sixties Ideas" alluded to a distinction between reactionary and revolutionary violence, as well as to the concept of liberating tolerance, necessary because pure tolerance gives too much voice to defenders of institutions or traditions the Anointed consider oppressive.  Once upon a time, people with intellectual integrity could address those concepts in a serious way.  "At some point these acts of brazen viciousness [scaling back the public sector, to the less aggravated] are going to lead to a renewed philosophical interest in the question of when acts of political violence are morally justified, an issue that has, oddly, not been widely addressed in political philosophy since Locke."

THE ROUNDHOUSE FOREMAN DOES NOT RULE THE ROUNDHOUSE.

It is often the case that a railroad shop facility is guarded by an 0-2-2-0 Mouser, and sometimes that Mouser becomes famous.  There's a rainbow bridge at the final summit.

Dirt, who became a celebrity in 15 years as the shop cat at the Nevada Northern Railway, has died, the railroad has announced on its Facebook page.

The orange and white male cat was adopted as a stray kitten by shop crews in 2008 and became famous for his coal-dust-tinted fur, photogenic nature, and regular appearance during shop tours and other special events.

The cat was at first wary of railroaders.

Dirt was discovered in the railroad’s locomotive shop all alone as a kitten in 2008. Not wanting the little cat to starve, the shop crews started providing him with cans of tuna and soft cat food. It took time, but after a while, the cat started to trust the workers, and shortly after that, the master mechanic brought him to a vet for a checkup.

After a while, the cat realized that the warmest place in the entire shop was in the cabs of the railroad’s two steam locomotives, NNRy 4-6-0 40 and 2-8-0 93. Because of that, the cat’s fur started getting dirty so the crews nicknamed it “Dirtbag.” Later it was shortened to “Dirt.”

“The engine house and machine shop are very dirty, noisy environments. In addition to the locomotives and railroad cars being moved in and out, repair work goes on all the time. Dirt got very wise, very fast, quickly figuring out where not to be when locomotives and cars were moving, or work was being performed,” the railroad’s staff wrote.

Later, he figured out the routine of the roundhouse enough to come out and show off for tourists.  "To commemorate Dirt, the railroad plans on having two life-size bronzes cast of the cat. One will serve as his gravestone, the other will be placed in the machine shop, so Dirt can continue watching over things."

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Pay attention to internal migration.  "[Democrat-run states] are also beset with crime and homelessness, and they tend to have more oppressive, authoritarian governments, a fact that became evident during covid."

The weekly roundup of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

ANOTHER UNDENIABLE TRUTH?

Perhaps it is inevitable that school lunches suck.

School lunches are still unappetizing.  Once upon a time, the Milwaukee Public Schools must have had a creative writer on the payroll, to make mystery meat on a stick sound good.  In the menu published in the Thursday Milwaukee Journal, it would be mock chicken leg with a savory gravy, and it might be accompanied by golden glow salad on crisp lettuce -- that being a concoction of orange jello with carrot shavings.

I wrote that ten years ago, concluding,

A lot has changed in fifty years. The Thursday newspaper might on occasion mention Italian pizza with sausage and cheese and a tossed salad. That's what everybody got, and if it was assembled out of government surplus ingredients, all we could do was joke about it.

Perhaps not just joke, you might have heard of s*** on a stick, right?

Let's see if the current crop of students has more success.

For a year, high school students across Milwaukee have been advocating for better meals at Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS).

On Thursday, students took that fight to MPS’ school board meeting as the board voted on a resolution to implement a “School Lunch Justice Task Force.”

That task force is aimed at allowing students a seat at the table when it comes to decisions and implementation of changes for school meals.

Eliza Palacios is a junior at Alexander Hamilton High school and a part of Youth Empowered in the Struggle (YES), a student-led organization at the forefront of the fight for better school meals.

“I have a lot of friends that don't have a lot of food at home, and they depend on the school lunches,” shared Palacios. “And sometimes they won't even eat the school lunches, so they'll just go home hungry.”

I remember the Hamilton of years ago, when it was not yet a poverty pocket, in which an awful lot of fresh apples were discarded uneaten at lunch.  Those might have been locally sourced.  Back then, the school lunches were sensitive to cultural and religious needs: fish stick Fridays.  Probably frozen.

THE FACT-CHECKING ENTERPRISE, INDIFFERENT TO TRADE-OFFS.

Just for fun, I posted some captioned train photographs to Facebook.  The first showed an active four track railroad.

Yes, I was having some fun, because there was a second, less railroad-magazine worthy captioned image I also posted.

The railroad magazine editors would prefer either some sort of arty shot, or a well-lit image of the motive power and the consist.  My motive, though, was to see how Facebook's rivet counters would react.  Sure enough, within a few minutes of my posting it, there was a "partially misleading" label on it, complete with a link to what the algorithm thinks is the proper nuance.

Posts on social media suggest electric cars do not help lower climate-changing emissions because people rely on coal power to charge them. This is misleading; data shows that they still produce fewer emissions over their lifespan than gasoline-powered vehicles, even in regions where coal is burned to produce electricity for the grid.

That reminds me of a train-off petition filed by the South Shore Line in the early 1970s in which the regulator concluded that, with so few commuters using the electric cars, the additional exhaust fumes from automobiles would for the most part be offset from the reduced exhaust fumes from power plants supplying the electricity.

OPPORTUNITY COSTS.

College Sports, Incorporated granted players extra years of eligibility during the coronavirus shutdowns, with limited and restricted provision for additional athletic scholarships.  Thus, players on successful teams find themselves in the transfer protocols, retaining eligibility but putting their coaches in a bind.  Five Ohio State volleyball players opted to transfer, for example.  "Basically, the Buckeye seniors were caught in a roster crunch caused by the NCAA granting an extra year of eligibility to athletes affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but ending an amnesty for programs over scholarship limits after this season."  

It seems odd, unless you understand the economic way of thinking.  "'If I make a choice to keep all five on my roster, on scholarship, then I'm telling incoming freshman or players in my program, 'Hey, sorry. Not yours anymore,'' [coach Jen Oldenberg] said. 'You can do that, and I had a choice to do that, and I chose not to do that – not because I don't want these five. I want them forever.'" They can be friends for life, but eligibility runs out, and it helps to have the next player up in the program and prepared.

THERE IS SOMETHING ABSURD ABOUT A POLITY GOVERNED BY A VANGUARD.

That's an observation I made a year ago, in a meditation that concluded, "Put another way, when the relatively disengaged voters are paying more attention to politics, that's when you have a problem."  Study your history, dear reader.

MAKE HIGHER EDUCATION HIGHER AGAIN.

Maybe it's the continuing intrusion of special education, not the corona tyranny or the Diversity Weenies, that's wrecking faculty morale.  One administrator has thoughts.  "The reasons cited for the departures include burnout, low compensation, lack of remote or hybrid work options, and recent racial and political unrest—which places pressure on workplace relationships and complicates people’s sense of belonging. In addition, employees are being lured away by more competitive packages from rival colleges or organizations in other fields."  Now might not be the time to apologize for being too selective.  You won't find that in his essay, which deteriorates into a jumble of the usual buzzwords of culture studies and diversity indoctrination.  You might find some answers in working the problem.

There are plenty of reasons to worry about the future of academe. Paul Musgrave, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, captures many of them in an essay titled “The Season of Our Professorial Discontent.” He imagines a prolonged state of “Eternal Covid” in which he spends “decades delivering indifferent lectures to indifferent classes as the price of submitting little-read articles to niche journals.” If he can’t kindle the same enthusiasm in students that he brings to his teaching, Musgrave fears he will become “just a dispenser of grades.”

Indeed, the drop in student performance during the pandemic’s Zoom era has only continued after the return to in-person teaching. Faculty members often feel pressure from administrators to lower expectations for students who are struggling to meet deadlines and sometimes skipping class altogether. Earlier this year, New York University fired Maitland Jones Jr., a respected researcher and teacher, in part because students had filed a petition protesting the rigor of his organic-chemistry course. The story resonated nationally because many faculty members feel similarly trapped between disengaged students and provosts preoccupied with retention.

Eternal corona tyranny with eternal protest. Looks like a good time for academicians to think about model railroading.

THE POLITICAL AGGREGATION PROBLEM ALMOST RESULTS IN FISTICUFFS.

The past week or so has offered a salutary reproach to people who will see in the so-called two party system of the United States a stability missing from parliamentary nations, where it's bad form to bring up the Italians, the Israelis seem bent on confirming the wheeze about four congregations and six political parties being present at the minyan, and Queen Elizabeth's last official act was to ask Liz Truss to form a government only to put King Charles in the position of asking Rishi Sunak to form a government.

In the United States, in part, I submit, because the political bundles are too big, the two major parties exist to paper over differences, often under a "lesser of two evils" sort of rubric.  "That elections tend to devolve to a binary choice, and disaffected voters are often reluctant to reject a binary choice between bundles that are each horrible in their own way makes the [re-election of incumbents] more likely to be bad."  I predicted that the slim Democratic majorities taking office in 2021 in Washington would devolve into faction fighting, and the allegedly transformative legislation that came out of the 117th Congress was at the margin of one or two Democrat senators from contested states, and probably filled with earmarks and carve-outs to hold that House coalition together.

A Washington Post contributor, Perry Bacon, contends that there are "four political parties stuffed into a two-party system."  There's nothing magical about there being four coalitions, and the way in which they align themselves can change over time.  In the past two weeks, though, we might have seen that forming a government isn't as easy as past experience suggests.  I know that our civics-books view of governance is one in which the president is the head of government, but the president cannot sign any bills into law until both houses of Congress agree on what to send to the White House, and Congress can't pass anything until the House convenes, and the House can't be sworn in until they name a speaker.  Might we think of the Speaker of the House as the true head of government?

ADVANTAGE, COLD SPRING SHOPS.

The Principle of Parsimony wins again.  "Russian Twitter Trolls Did Not Throw the 2016 Election to Trump."  Recall, dear reader, there were only twelve Russian spies.

Yes, [Donald Trump] did outwork all the Republican establishment hopefuls during the primary, and he did outwork Hillary Clinton, and it didn't take a Russian operative to put "basket of deplorables" and the other hectoring, condescending material into Mrs Clinton's fundraising and campaigning.

But is anyone really surprised, let alone scandalized, that foreign intelligence services do what foreign intelligence services do, which is to say, steal secrets and plant stories?  If the Soviets, er, Russians, didn't do that, that would be reason to send generals to gulag and bust colonels back to sergeants.  And there are likely more than twelve spies, er, intelligence officers, working that project.  And if Democrats were careless with their internet security, relative to Republicans, well, that's business.

Further, does anybody believe that Bernie Sanders supporters wouldn't have figured out that the Democratic National Committee was rigging things for the Dowager Empress, even without John Podesta's leaked e-mails, no matter who got them, or how they got them?  Cripes, I had the story in August 2015, before a single caucus took a vote.

Taken together, I evaluate the situation as intelligence services doing what intelligence services do, voters doing what voters do, and Mr Trump outworked Mrs Clinton.  Never attribute to malice what can be more easily ascribed to overconfidence.

Reason's Robby Soave offers a supporting argument.

This observation is well-supported by a few key findings. Just 1 percent of Twitter users absorbed about 70 percent of the so-called Russian disinformation, meaning that a tiny fraction of overall users encountered actual Russian trolls. These users were overwhelmingly partisan Republicans; there is no reason to think that masses of gullible swing voters who might have voted for Hillary Clinton were hoodwinked by Russia and opted for Trump instead.

Again, dear reader, you saw it here first.

Doesn't make it right: doesn't excuse the GRU, or whatever they call it these days, that CIA does it better; doesn't even make a case for moral equivalence. [Attempting to influence elections is] what intelligence services do. At the margin, it's probably not easily-influenced voters that carry the day.

I know I repeat myself: Stalin would have purged those twelve spies for their ineffectiveness. Robby Soave, again: "[T]he amount of time, money, and effort Russia spent on influencing social media users was a drop in the bucket compared with the work being done by the Trump and Clinton campaigns themselves, as well as the attention being paid to the candidates by U.S. media outlets."  If anything, the confirmations from these recent studies suggest a lack of intellectual curiosity among the pundit class.  "The news probably came as a surprise to many readers; unfortunately, mainstream and liberal consumers of political news have been conditioned to believe that misinformation—often of foreign and Russian origin—is the source of countless modern maladies. But time and time again, data tell a different story."

THE VAPIDITY OF CULTURAL STUDIES.

Scientific American recently published an editorial by a Duke anthropologist who is only the most recent academic to suggest there's a racialized gladiator economy in football.  That essay has come in for the mockery it deserves, including from former professional football coach Tony Dungy, who, alone amongst NBC's panel of football pundits, correctly picked the Detroit Lions to win in Green Bay and keep the Packers out of the playoffs.  "As a black man and former NFL player I can say this article is absolutely ridiculous."

It's against my better judgement, but let me take the essay seriously, starting with the author's credentials.  "Tracie Canada is an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University. Her research uses sport to theorize race, kinship, care, gender and the performing body, and she is currently working on a book project about the experiences of Black college football players. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia."  That's a misuse of the term "theorize".  It's possible to have theories about the evolution of race, or kinship ties, or sex roles, or performance, and to look for confirming evidence in sports, using rules of inference that are part of your discipline's discourse practice.  Theory first, then evidence.

XENOPHOBIA IN WOODLAWN?

Chicago's rookie mayor Lori Lightfoot would like money from Springfield or Washington or a magic helicopter to provide shelter for the illegal immigrants being sent by governors, Republican and Democrat alike, to sanctuary cities run by Democrats.

Declaring yourself a sanctuary city costs nothing, as long as you have a national government that is protecting its borders. Let the national government change its policies, and all of a sudden, accusing state governors who are bearing the brunt of the illegal crossings as "racist" doesn't do anything for the material or moral condition of the people who request transportation to Chicago.

It gets more interesting.  Decades of flight of productive people of all callings, colors, and creeds from Illinois, including Chicago, mean there are idle public buildings including schools that might serve as temporary shelter until the new arrivals connect with their local sponsors.

HOT TIME, SUMMER IN THE CITY.

Heat, plus humidity, plus crowding, might lead to the distemper The Lovin' Spoonful alluded to in their song.  "All around, people looking half-dead / Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head."  That is, unless you're Julia Conley at Common Dreams, where despite the heat, it will not be alright at night, because hotter temperatures lead to less impulse control, or something.

Researchers in the U.S. have linked the climate crisis and the extreme weather patterns it causes to the country's epidemic of gun violence in a first-of-its-kind analysis, showing that thousands of shootings in the U.S. in recent years were attributable to higher-than-average temperatures.

As Environment Journal reported Tuesday, experts at Boston University School of Public Health and University of Washington School of Social Work analyzed 116,000 shootings in 100 of the country's most populous cities between 2015 and 2020 and found that 7,973 took place during periods of unseasonable heat, concluding that about 7% of shootings could be attributed to extreme heat.

The research, which was originally published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open in December, found that the Northeast and Midwest saw the greatest increases in gun violence on days that were unseasonably hot, but the trend was observed across the country.

Predictably, women and minorities are hardest hit.

"It could be that heat causes stress, which makes people more likely to use aggression," said Dr. Jonathan Jay, a co-author of the study and faculty member of Boston University's Center for Climate and Health. "Or it could be that people are more likely to get out on warmer days and have more interactions, which creates more opportunities for conflict and violence. Most likely, it's a combination of both."

While it is the first analysis of the correlation between the climate crisis and gun violence in the U.S., the study offers the latest evidence of a dynamic that has been previously reported: violent incidents, including domestic and gender-based violence, increase during and after extreme weather events driven by the climate emergency.

As The Washington Post reported Tuesday, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2022 identified a link between extreme weather and domestic violence, while The Lancet published an analysis of more than 40 studies showing "an increase in one or several [gender-based violence] forms during or after extreme events, often related to economic instability, food insecurity, mental stress, disrupted infrastructure, increased exposure to men, tradition, and exacerbated gender inequality."

It's difficult to capture the effect of deconstructing mediating institutions on changing behavior, although that's not something I'm going to rule out based on what those studies are reporting.  It's easier, if you write for Common Dreams, to assert that people lack agency when it's convenient.

Researchers at Boston University and Washington University said their new study makes the case both for lawmakers to pass gun control and climate action measures and for local investment in heat mitigation strategies, such as increasing tree cover in "urban heat islands."

When introducing the Saving Hazardous and Declining Environments (SHADE) Act in 2021, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) noted that many formerly redlined urban neighborhoods are on average 4.68°F hotter than non-redlined areas, "due to reduced tree cover and increased asphalt or concrete surfaces."

"We know that segregation and disinvestment lead communities of color, especially Black communities, to have greater exposure to adverse environmental conditions that contribute to gun violence risk, such as abandoned buildings, liquor stores, lack of green space, and more intense urban heat islands," Jay said in a statement in December.

Heat mitigation strategies could be a crucial part of an effort that is "part racial justice, part climate change mitigation, and part gun violence prevention," he added.

I can't help but wonder, though, whether Common Dreams writers turn agency on or off as it suits them. Consider a recent lament from Thom Hartmann. "When will Republican voters figure out how badly they’re getting screwed by Republican politicians?"  Nowhere in his column, or in Julia Conley's, though, do we see mention of poor white guys behaving badly in the summer.  It's easier for him to slag on those voters for having reactionary attitudes.  "My bet is that as long as Democrats continue to welcome racial and gender minorities into their party, Republican voters will stay with their nearly-all-white politicians."  Perhaps, as long as people who argue with, but vote for Democrats, continue to look for external causes for the behavior of people protected as racial and gender minorities, whilst scolding people not-so-protected, Republican voters will avoid voting for Democrats.  "What do you think happens when you encourage dysfunction for some people and mau-mau others? How many experiments against reality can you run?"  No matter how uncomfortable the heat, or the cold might be.

THE END OF JAPAN'S INTERURBAN ERA.

Once upon a time, electric interurban railroads offered cheap, frequent service linking hamlets, small towns, cities, and stopping at rural crossroads to pick up passengers or parcels, including milk cans and nursery stock.  A number of those companies also offered city streetcar service in communities that these days are lucky to have a ride-share provider or two.  Hicks Car Works devotes a section to such companies just in Illinois.  City cars in Dixon or Belvidere or Peoria?  Yes.

So, too, are there interurban railroads in Japan, for now.

Like many small railway lines across Japan's countryside, the 60-year-old trains that ply this route are a loss-maker, but [Katsunori] Takemoto has found a way to keep the business afloat.

With a combination of savvy marketing partnerships with pop stars and branded souvenirs, the president of the Choshi Electric Railway navigated the firm into the black in 2021, while helping promote the local region.

"I feel strongly that this is the mission of all local trains. We want to serve as advertising vehicles for communities," Takemoto told AFP.

The same sorts of internal migration and infrastructure spending that appeared in the United States a century ago, when the interurban network began to decline, manifested themselves more recently in Japan.

The rural lines are legacies of Japan's economic boom through the 1970s but failed to adapt to rural depopulation, as younger people left for cities and some villages emptied altogether.

Infrastructure like city halls and hospitals is increasingly built along main roads, with visitors expected to drive rather than take trains.

Did you think those Japanese companies built those Toyotas and the like solely for export? Or that town plans would forever be a central business district on an electric line?  On the other hand, as we noted a few years ago, the Japanese interurbans are able to invest in real estate and deal in services unrelated to their railroad business, which is contrary to several national policies in the United States.

For now though, lines like Takemoto's are turning to alternatives to stay afloat.

His Choshi Electric Railway makes 80 percent of its revenue from non-train operations, including baking and selling its popular soy sauce-soaked crackers.

The company has sold everything from corn puffs to slices of railway track, and Takemoto aggressively promotes the line on television, joking about his cash-strapped firm with well-rehearsed self-deprecating puns.

Choshi Electric have even run haunted trains, in the fashion of our preservation railways. They're not yet ready to quit.  Meanwhile, it's possible our transportation policy poobahs will rediscover the interurbans.

IS THE MIDDLE CLASS VANISHING UPWARD?

You can weigh the evidence, dear reader, and draw your own conclusions.  Or you can read between the lines in a recent lament, "People Are Sharing Things That Rich People Have 'Ruined' For Everyone Else."

Color me skeptical, when the first entry in that list is ""Thrift shopping. I used to thrift a lot, but it's been ruined. I used to be able to go thrifting and come back with three new work shirts and a pair of pants for around $15 (and they were good clothes, too, some with the tags still on them). Now, good luck finding my size at all. Plus, the clothes that are left are all shit, and they want $10 for a shirt now."  That observation might be evidence for that growing immiserisation anticipated by Marxists of all stripes and seized upon by whatever political party doesn't currently hold the presidency.  That is, the thrift shops are being shopped more intensively by that larger cohort of poorer people, particularly if the prices stay at those historical levels.  The new stuff, including that name-label stuff that was never worn?  Perhaps it's gone to upscale resale shops of the sort dealing in furnishings in Wisconsin's Lake District.

Read on:  "Formerly cool towns around the country. Think: places like Denver, Austin, Asheville, and more."  Pray that people fleeing the (salt-or-fresh-water) coastal tax hells do not bring the sort of coastal politics that rendered their former neighborhoods uninhabitable.  If the income and wealth is being hoarded by fewer people, which is how that inequality narrative usually goes, where are these migrants getting their money?

Now comes the kicker.  "Coastal property. My grandfather bought a house on Cape Cod when he retired from being an airline mechanic in the late '60s. He wasn't poor, but he sure as hell wasn't rich. Today, a normal middle-class person wouldn't be able to do that. Even if you inherit a house free and clear, the property taxes will eat you alive if you aren't made of money."  That, by itself, refutes any notion of ever-concentrated wealth.  Let's review the doomsday paragraph in Das Kapital.  "Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself, The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production."  So that might be, but if there are fewer people getting richer, that beachfront property might even get cheaper.  Under a dynamic of growing immiserisation and fewer rich people, all a Bill Gates has to do is outbid an Elon Musk for that beach house, but if Bill Gates is bidding against more rich people, those additional rich people bid up the prices for the beach houses of the very rich as well as for the beach houses that used to belong to the near-rich.

Let's finish with an obvious one.  "Lobster. At one point, this shellfish was considered to be the 'cockroach of the sea.'"  There's probably a research paper on fisheries management to be written, but, again, the simplest explanation might be that there's more disposable income to spend on lobster, or on coastal holidays to lobster country.

THERE SHE IS, MISS AMERICA.

Years ago, Labor Day weekend came to an end with Jerry Lewis's telethon to raise money for muscular dystrophy research, and the weekend after that came the Miss America pageant from Atlantic City, whose live shows gave Jerry Lewis his start.  That pageant signalled the beginning of off-season rates at a resort town that started to lose its appeal shortly after it lent its street names to Monopoly.

Fifty years ago, the women of the fevered brow began to protest the pageant under the general rubric of "objectification of women."  I can respect the sentiment, to the extent that Beauty Contest World might preclude the intellectual or the athletic in its criteria for talent or appearance, although I can't help but think that one of those undeniable truths might have been behind some of the support for that protest.

The same sort of intersectional victimization thinking that sought to end the Miss America competitions hailed the end of Jerry Lewis's telethons, with or without Mr Lewis.

What people with [muscular dystrophy] need is help with their symptoms and with mobility. Their quality of life can be improved, their symptoms can be reduced. They also need “accessible public transportation and housing, employment opportunities and other civil rights that a democratic society should ensure for all its citizens.”

There still is a Miss America pageant, although it's no longer on Labor Day, nor nationally televised, nor held in Atlantic City, not even at a Trump property, if there still is one.  My Chicago Boyz colleague called attention to the outcome of the most recent pageant.

First, the nice nuclear news–the newly-crowned Miss America, Grace Stanke, is an aspiring nuclear engineer and a promoter of nuclear power.

She is a nuclear engineering major at the University of Wisconsin, worked as a co-op at a nuclear fuels vendor (Exelon), and does promotional work for the American Nuclear Society.  Here’s a piece she wrote on breaking down misconceptions about nuclear power.

She is also a classical violinist and water skier, and won the talent competition on that instrument.  She has what might be an unusual cause to promote.  "My social impact initiative, 'Clean Energy, Cleaner Future,' promotes America’s transition to zero-carbon energy with an emphasis on nuclear power, because I believe it is the best path forward as our major power source."

Good.  Years ago, when I did some work with the Department of Energy that involved reducing acid rain and greenhouse gases, nuclear energy was still an option.  I'm not sure, after ten of the last fourteen years under the rubric of hope and change, whether that's still possible.  "The real rewards will go to the people who develop backstop technologies, possibly using renewable energy sources, including breeder reactors. Reversion to the world of Pieter Bruegel the Elder is a second-best choice."

GLOBAL WARMING IN THE GILDED AGE.

It's fitting and proper for a church service at Epiphany or Three Kings to include Adeste Fideles or We Three Kings in the order of worship.  The external decorations are down and packed away, as are the vintage trains, come Three Kings; and the seasonal music rotations change to some other holiday.

Is that right, though, for some of the tunes that accompany the Festive Season to go away?  Let's start with Over the River and Through the Wood.  Yes, there is a contemporary version invoking a sleigh ride to the grandparents for Christmas, but the original setting, in antebellum New England at the close of the Little Ice Age, is about celebrating Thanksgiving, which was primarily a New England event at the opening of winter.  I have heard that Jingle Bells (first released as One Horse Sleigh in 1857) is a sort of sequel to Over The River, and a few of those verses might be racy by the standards of a century-plus ago.  Consider:

Now the ground is white
Go it while you're young
Take the girls tonight
And sing this sleighing song
Just get a bobtailed bay
Two forty as his speed
Hitch him to an open sleigh
And crack, you'll take the lead

The later lyrics of Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride also suggest any time during the winter.  Yes, there are current versions that refer to a "Christmas party" rather than that birthday party at Farmer Gray's; and that coffee and pumpkin pie suggests something closer to Thanksgiving, whilst the allusion to Currier and Ives suggests any time during a northern winter, and snuggling up together like birds of a feather pushes that courtship envelope, doesn't it? Likewise, doesn't Winter Wonderland make sense any time there is snow on the ground, particularly in that stretch between New Year's and Valentine's Day, when people see if the connections they made during the Festive Season have any staying power?  Goodness, we've had several weeks of pop tarts lamenting their unrequited love, were all of them on Santa's naughty list?

It goes without saying, dear reader, that Let It Snow, in its understated way, and Baby, It's Cold Outside, less subtly, also reinforce that theme of pair bonding.  Consider any of those five songs, Jingle Bells, Sleigh Ride, Winter Wonderland, Let It Snow, or Baby, It's Cold Outside as part of the winter rotation, perhaps up to Valentine's Day or Groundhog Day, or as part of your Karneval rotation.

For Karneval, which begins on 11 November in the Rheinland, commences along our Gulf Coast at Three Kings, and this year will run to mid-February.  In more northern climes, conspiring-by-the-fire is still in order.  Let it snow, indeed.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

When Queen Elizabeth, the retired Pope, Pelé, or Barbara Walters departed this life, were they spared even further insanities to come, or will they miss the beginning of a return to sanity?  The early returns are not encouraging if we're hoping for a return to sanity.

The weekly roundup of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes resumes.  We'll concentrate on follies in education and the vulgar culture and resume a more general menu next week.

WERE CAIRENES MORE CHARITABLE THAN CHICAGOANS?

During the Festive Season, a non-profit organization opened its message with "We were warned that soldiers were coming to kill us, and we had to leave our homes in haste."  Ukrainians fleeing Russians?  Central Americans fleeing drug gangs?  No.  That message invoked the Flight into Egypt, and it appeared to be from an organization seeking to reclaim of the Social Gospel.

Those people fleeing into the United States?  No room at the inn, and the money is running out.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is asking Illinois state legislators for $54 million to help fund emergency services to asylum-seeking individuals and migrants.

Lightfoot made the request in a letter to state legislators from Chicago, obtained by the Tribune. She noted that Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration sent a letter to the city saying the state is “out of funds and will no longer be able to support city migrant services efforts as of February 1, 2023.”

“The city is grateful to the state of Illinois for its partnership and collaboration on this mission to date, but we are simply unable to provide migrant services at today’s levels after February 1, 2023 if the state withdraws its financial support,” Lightfoot wrote in the letter, dated Thursday.

Declaring yourself a sanctuary city costs nothing, as long as you have a national government that is protecting its borders.  Let the national government change its policies, and all of a sudden, accusing state governors who are bearing the brunt of the illegal crossings as "racist" doesn't do anything for the material or moral condition of the people who request transportation to Chicago.

YE WHO NOW WILL BLESS THE POOR, SHALL YOURSELF FIND BLESSING.

The Canadian Pacific Holiday Trains resumed their circuits across North America.  "CP Holiday Train Raises More Than C$1.3MM."

“We are overjoyed with the support we received from people across the CP network who came together to celebrate the season while braving the elements in support of their community and those in need,” said CP President and CEO Keith Creel. “We are reminded how important the CP Holiday Train program is for communities and we were thrilled to be back in support of the critical work that local food banks do across Canada and the U.S.”

The Clinchfield's Santa Train continued its eighty year tradition, rating a mention from Glenn "Insta Pundit" Reynolds himself.

The Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio (CC&O) Railway launched the “world’s longest Christmas parade” in November of 1943. With World War II raging, Kentucky coal miners and their counterparts in Virginia and Tennessee worked long, hard hours to power the war machine, and yet, many families experienced deep material need. Enter Santa on a passenger rail, specially designed to share the spirit of Christmas across the coalfields.

Now in its 80th year, the tradition lives on as the CSX Santa Train brings the joy and wonder of Christmas to every child along its 110-mile route from Eastern Kentucky, through Southwest Virginia, and arriving finally in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Coal country railroading makes for spectacular train watching through hardscrabble territory.  "For some children, what they can gather by the train tracks will be the summation of their Christmas trinkets."

Preservation railroads often operate Christmas trains, although many of those are a way to entertain children of all ages.  California's Sierra Northern Railroad, however, operates in the Clinchfield or Canadian Pacific tradition.

The employees began preparing the rolling stock: a baggage car fitted with a generator, another one used as a collection point for the unwrapped gifts the children would bring so that Santa — in this case various online civic organizations and fire departments — could make sure everyone had something for Christmas. The crowning touch would be a former Santa Fe Railway Division Manager’s business car complete with an open-air observation deck, borrowed from the equipment company.

The Christmas train concept aligns well with the latest messaging from midnight Masses.  In Chicago, the message reminded congregants that the point of going to church is to be there for the neighbor who has hit a rough patch, in order that those neighbors will be there when it's your turn to hit a rough patch.  That sounds a little like some people's concept of paying taxes, but there's a difference between emergent cooperation and coerced cooperation.

Once again, the message focused on the shepherds as outsiders.  Let me be skeptical, in three ways.  First, consider the common etymologies of capital, cattle, and chattel.  That livestock was wealth, and Luke refers to shepherds watching their flocks: note, not Caesar's nor Herod's nor Pharaoh's.  Second, the shepherd-sheep metaphor echoes throughout both testaments, and not in the best way.  The sheep go astray without the shepherds; and the people go astray without divine intervention.  Institutionally, that metaphor means more authority for the shepherds, contrary to the notion of shepherds as outsiders, as well as more authority for the holy men, although following that line of thinking might get people questioning the structure of their church.  Third, are there any references in either testament to a sheep-dog?  In the same way that Divine Inspiration might accompany a vision of a famine with the concept of a futures contract, mightn't Divine Inspiration provide the vision of a wolf domesticated to guard the fold?

Theological quibbles aside, the Holiday Trains facilitating acts of mercy are a welcome corrective to the continuing reign of technocratic failures.  As long as there are people in trouble, may they roll.

THE PERILS OF RAILWAY PRESERVATION.

There might be more ferroequinologically significant rolling stock extant than there are resources to conserve them, as we have learned watching local preservation railways having to choose among projects.  But when the first successful mainline electric locomotive in the United States is still extant, if endangered, an all-hands effort to conserve it might be in order.

The units are NYC Class S-1 (2-D-2 configuration) No. 100, built in 1904, and Class T-3a (B-B+B-B configuration) No. 278, built in 1926. Built by a consortium of American Locomotive Co. of Schenectady, N.Y., and General Electric Co., they are among the last of their kind.

No. 100, built as No. 6000, is especially historic, with the museum calling it “the world’s first mainline electric locomotive.” It was the prototype of a 47-unit fleet that made possible NYC’s 600-volt DC third-rail electrification, including the opening of the 1913 Grand Central Terminal complex. That project was prompted by passage of laws that mandated electrification after smoky conditions from steam locomotives caused a Jan. 8, 1902, collision in NYC’s Park Avenue Tunnel. Fifteen people died and many were injured in what became New York City’s worst train accident.

The other electric, No. 278, is the sole survivor of a 36-unit fleet in a second generation of locomotives used on NYC commuter and freight lines around New York City.

There are production model S motors in preservation but not operable outside St. Louis, and at the Illinois Railway Museum.  The design lives on in several series of tinplate electric trains by Lionel and other manufacturers, and one occasionally appears in Cold Spring Shops Festive Season videos.  The sole T-3 motor survived thanks to a decision by Penn Central or Conrail to replace an even older Pennsylvania Railroad DD-1 motor on the wire train working the East River tunnels.  A third-rail motor could use Long Island's third rail, and the overhead wire de-energized for work.  That DD-1 therefore made it into preservation at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.

The preservationists that first acquired the two New York Central motors, however, had trouble raising money to keep a railroad museum going, and the site where they were stored had other possible uses.

The future is looking increasingly grim for a pair of rare New York Central electrics stranded at an old power plant near Albany, N.Y.

Earlier this year, it looked as if the owner of the electric motors, the Danbury Railway Museum, was going to be able to move them in a matter of weeks. But since then the costs have increased dramatically and the president of the group said if they’re not moved in a month, they could be lost for good.

The Danbury Railway Museum acquired S-1 6000, built by Alco/GE in 1904, and T-3a 278, built in 1926, back in 2013, but had been unable to move them until this year when a developer told them they needed to move. The land the electrics are sitting on is supposed to be turned into a wind turbine tower factory. Earlier this year, Danbury was able to raise some funds for the move that at the time was expected to cost upwards of $160,000. The museum had even secured R.J. Corman to break the electrics apart and move them out in pieces because the route they need to travel is soft and may not be able to handle the weight.

But then work on the site came to a halt, in part because of a lawsuit from local residents trying to fight the construction of the windmill farm and because the contractor needed additional permits. Work resumed on the property on November 15 and when it did, the contractor told the museum that the time to move the electrics had come. But now, the cost of such a move has increased dramatically. In hopes of getting more time to raise money, the museum asked if the electrics could be moved to another spot on the property temporarily. But the contractor said that was not feasible.

The previous preservation effort also involved some diesel locomotives and coaching stock, which were scrapped at that location.

The two motors have been moved to more solid ground for future trucking to Danbury.  The museum estimates the cost of disassembly and movement at around $200,000.  Consider a contribution to that effort.