Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha route: Four round trips are scheduled to operate: trains 330, 331, 334, 335, 338, 339, and 341, 342. Three round trips (trains 329 and 332, 333 and 336, 337 and 340) are cancelled Jan. 29-31.That's the Chicago-originating train, with 329 offering the early-morning trip to Milwaukee, turning as 332, then becoming the midday 333-336 turn and the early evening 337-340 turn that ties up in Chicago. If the one rake that lays over in Milwaukee overnight breaks down, they have a problem.
Chicago-Carbondale route: Chicago to Carbondale Illini No. 393 is cancelled Jan. 28-30; Carbondale-Chicago Saluki No. 390 is cancelled Jan. 29-31. Both directions of the City of New Orleans are scheduled to operate, as are corridor trains 391 and 392.The City runs a few hours ahead of the cancelled trains, and the 391-392 pair is the morning departure for Carbondale, turning to return to Chicago the same day. The January 31 departure of 393 from Chicago will become the February 1 consist of 390.
Chicago-Detroit/Pontiac Wolverine route: Trains 351, 352, 353 and 354 are scheduled to operate; trains 350 and 355 are cancelled on Jan. 29-31.The cancelled train is the morning turn out of Chicago that returns the same day. The other two consists stay in Pontiac overnight, and if those are delayed heading to Chicago, there should be spare consists available in Chicago to protect the outbound schedules.
Chicago-St. Louis corridor: Trains 301 and 304 are cancelled Jan. 29-31. All others, including the north and southbound Texas Eagle, are scheduled to operate.In like manner to the Michigan service, 301 is the first departure for St. Louis, returning that day as 304. It appears that Amtrak are hoping for 303 to get to St. Louis in time to return as 306.
All trains are scheduled to operate on the Chicago-Quincy Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr route; the Chicago-Port Huron Blue Water route, and the Chicago-Grand Rapids Pere Marquette route.
Progressive taxation should work as a corrective tax, like tobacco taxes or a carbon tax. Sure, tobacco taxes raise some revenue for the states. But their primary purpose is to curb smoking. While a carbon tax could produce a lot of government revenue, the real point is to limit global warming pollution. In essence, corrective taxes try to put themselves out of business; if tobacco tax revenues decline because people quit smoking, or if carbon taxes stop rolling in because the economy becomes fossil-free, that is victory, not defeat.Doesn't that depend on what the revenue objective of the tax is? Municipalities that tax pop don't see the revenues they'd counted upon. "Curbing obesity suggests a relatively elastic demand. Raising significant tax revenue suggests a relatively inelastic demand. Ramsey-optimality means raising that revenue with the least excess burden (deadweight loss, for the traditionalist.)" It works the same way for tobacco taxes or carbon taxes or any other sort of taxes.
Imagine if you are a CEO, already making enough to be in the top income tax bracket. If the marginal tax rate in that bracket is 70 percent, any increase you get in pay is going to cost your company a little over three times what you’ll actually take home. The rest will go to Uncle Sam. No wonder company boards become more discerning in approving executive pay increases. High tax rates make it a lot more costly for wealthy people to fling money at one another for no reason.Popular, perhaps. Intellectually coherent, not so much.
This has an implication for public budgets; to the extent that individuals’ fortunes are reduced from the obscene to the merely very large, top marginal tax rates collect less revenue.
It would be an error, then, to use revenue as the sole justification for progressive taxation. This is not to say that Democrats are making a strategic mistake in pairing, rhetorically or even legislatively, big spending programs with progressive taxes. Both proposals are popular, after all.
Economics is often like that, the policy-maker has to make trade-offs. It might be more productive to say "We will find this much reduction in obesity accompanied with that much additional expenditure by our poor on food a successful policy. The same reduction in obesity with more than that expenditure will not be in the public interest."Perhaps Ms Williamson can close her eyes and chant, "Wisconsin is not a tax haven. Indiana is not a tax haven. The Cayman Islands are not a tax haven." But wishing it's so doesn't make it so. "What is the revenue yield of a privilege tax when there are no businesses subject to the tax?"
Community college already is dirt cheap, at $46 a credit. Making it free will only assure that people who aren't particularly serious about getting an education will take up space in sought-after classes, thus making it tougher for others to get into their preferred classes. This sounds harsh, but people unwilling to invest $1,100 a year in their own education perhaps ought to find something else to do. There is nothing like spending one's own money to force people to take the coursework seriously.Let's walk that cat backwards. The state already mandates attendance in the common schools, up to the age of sixteen or eighteen or through the tenth or eleventh grade, depending on the jurisdiction, and that benefit is sometimes ill thought of by disengaged or disruptive students, who perform poorly and wreck teacher morale. (Teachers, like non-commissioned officers, spend eighty percent of their time on twenty percent of their charges, most of that attempting to straighten out the screw-ups.)
There are many ways to come up with that relatively small amount and the state already waives fees for the poorest students. And adding additional student aid through Cal Grants will help some people pay for four-year universities, but one of the reasons that college tuition has soared well beyond inflation – and beyond the prices of most consumer goods—is that the aid itself is inflationary.
With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, nobody would know who she is outside of New York City if it weren’t for the national Drive-By Media.Perhaps so, and yet, to borrow from Thomas Kuhn, paradigms shift one election, and sometimes, one funeral at a time.
So the day’s gonna come. The day is gonna come when somebody is gonna tell somebody to take her out, and this is why so many people have been paying attention to the Democrat dinosaur leadership in the House reacting to her and this new band of Millennial freshmen that she’s leading around. Do not misunderstand something. The Democrats are thought to be unified, and they are when it comes to agenda items and objectives and their collective hatred for us.
But they’re like any other organization. There’s a pecking order, there’s a leadership, and it takes a lot of time and work and devotion and trust to get into that small leadership circle. This is one of the things that’s always amazed me about the left and journalists. The journalists have always pushed communist leaders and dictators. They’re somehow enamored of them. They envy their power. They would be the first people sent to jail in a legitimate communist takeover!
They would not be invited to all the cocktail parties and the policy discussions. They’d be packed off to jail along with their computers, typewriters, phones, and whatever else they use to report the news. They would be silenced and shut up. They’re the first to go, and they do not realize this. Well, in the Democrat Party leadership, Nancy Pelosi… I don’t care what you think of her. You may think she’s out to lunch. She may be turning a little out of it and so forth.
But make no mistake about something: She runs that place, and there’s no upstart little crumb cruncher that’s gonna come along and change that. If these upstarts go too far in challenging her, they are gonna be taught a lesson. As is the case with all young upstarts, they are fearless and think that the old people are just a bunch of old people that don’t get it anymore. Their time has come and passed, and it’s just a matter of time before they wield control of the baton from these aging dinosaurs.
I am prompted to issue my own ethics reminders for The New York Times. Here they are: You were partly responsible for the election of Trump because you are the most influential newspaper in the country, and you are not fair or impartial. Millions of Americans believe you hate them and that you will causally harm them. Two years ago, they fought back against you, and they won. If Trump wins again, you will once again have played a small but important role in that victory.Indeed.
Drew Brees' third-down pass to Tommylee Lewis fell incomplete with less than two minutes remaining in regulation, but only because Nickell Robey-Coleman committed obvious pass interference. However, the officials did not throw a flag, and the Saints were forced to settle for a field goal.In the afterwards, defensive back Robey-Coleman noted that he was looking around in fear for a penalty flag, and the National Football League office advised Saints head coach Sean Payton that the referees missed the call.
If you’re a faculty member, you’ve spent the last few weeks preparing your syllabus for the spring semester. You’ve updated the document and added a little to it. This latest round of edits may have pushed your syllabus another page longer — most now run about five pages, though nearly every campus has lore of some that exceed 20.I would hope it is "especially" the high achievers. Conditions of carriage are for ships at sea in times of war and unimaginative process worshippers.
Lamentations about syllabus bloat started emerging about seven years ago in moods ranging from nostalgia to bemusement to curiosity to irritation to full-blown ideological critique. Based on 20 years of serving on curriculum committees and working with academics across the disciplines on teaching, I agree that, yes, the typical syllabus has now become a too-long list of policies, learning outcomes, grading formulas, defensive maneuvers, recommendations, cautions, and referrals. As a writing-center director who has encouraged instructors to add a pitch for tutoring services, I’m complicit.
About a year ago I started asking students how much they typically read of a multipage syllabus. Most told me they simply stop reading on Page 2. Even the high achievers rolled their eyes at long syllabi.
My preference for a shorter syllabus started inching in this direction about six years ago when a cluster of faculty members who regularly teach the same course in my department shared their course materials with me. I found all of their syllabi to be smart and dutiful — but one stood out because it read like an invitation to a party, even as it promised just as much intellectual rigor as the others and articulated clear ground rules.Multiple pages apparently have led to a new convention, syllabus week, and perhaps faculty recovering some of their classroom time for, oh, teaching and learning, might be a favorable development.
My syllabus, by contrast, read more like a mortgage. I was trying to cover every contingency. The core problem, I realized, was that I was thinking of the syllabus as a contract. Indeed, that seems to be the default metaphor of syllabus design, and multiple pages amplify the effect.
I’ve noticed a pleasantly jarring effect when I hand out my own syllabus on a single sheet of paper (with information on the back and front). Students flip it over a few times, as if looking for hidden pages. They look up, expecting more. When we review it together, there are no faces behind screens, and we move through it pretty swiftly. (For me, syllabus review is never the centerpiece of the first day of class — I give it about 10 minutes and then move on to the reading assignment I have sent students in advance … but that’s a topic for another column.)The balance of the essay anticipates most of the objections the process-worshippers will raise; if you are still facing the classroom, read and understand and trim your course outline, and make constructive use of your course management platform.
The two-pager still includes my major readings, themes, and assignments. It is akin to the abbreviated table of contents we find in some books. This approach allows students to see the basic shape of the semester and for me to explain why I do what I do much better than a detailed grid of weekly readings and assignments does. The more simplified initial approach takes us closer to the etymology of "syllabus," which came from a misreading of Latin sittybas, from Greek sittuba for parchment label, title slip, or table of contents.Bingo.
It’s an important read as the 2020 campaign begins because it offers unvarnished insight into the evolution of Warren’s thinking as she moved from being a Republican in the mid-1990s to the left-wing Democrat we know today. The policy ideas she espoused 15 years ago are considerably smaller-scale than the platform she’s developed over the past decade, but the diagnosis that's led her to her current positions are all right there in the book — a book that argues that the fundamental structure of the American economy has shifted in a way that loads the dice against middle-class families.Hm, once upon a time we lived that world (sort of) as the American High just after the War. But one part of the economic agenda fifty years ago came into conflict with family life.
She also frames the issue in some unusual and provocative ways that could end up hurting her with feminists or, more optimistically, broadening her political appeal to reach swaths of working-class America that are open to a progressive economic agenda but more inclined toward traditional views on family life.
Warren’s central argument in the book is that this rise in household income was almost entirely driven by the increase in the number of two-earner families. And adding income by adding a second worker, she argues, has very different economic implications than rising pay for a single worker. In practice, the book says, the increasing ubiquity of two-earner households leaves families in more precarious financial circumstances with more brittle budgets that were more prone to tip over into insolvency if a problem cropped up.Indeed it did. Mr Yglesias's summary of the Warren and Tyagi argument is instructive.
The basic thesis that middle-class Americans need help is a lot less controversial today than it was when Warren wrote the book, but the fact that she was thinking along these lines in the mid-aughts is crucial to understanding her worldview: To her, America’s economic problems have roots that far predate the Great Recession and that require something much more fundamental than a macroeconomic recovery.
Third-party payers such as insurers and government-guaranteed lenders attenuate the pressure to discover prices. It's that phenomenon that causes me to cringe whenever somebody speaks of containing health care "costs." I still have no idea why a passive stretching device rents for $120 a month out of network but $40 in network, or what determines the network, but I sure got familiar with those terms and those bills, and a nice refund of a copay once the insurers sorted it out.Matt "Dean Dad" Reed gives me occasion to repeat it.
Folks who follow higher ed policy debates know that price and cost are not the same thing. But most people don’t. So, a brief foray into “explainer” blogging follows.To a first approximation, yes, although in the absence of price discovery, both in the quoting of tuitions and in the hiring of deanlets, it's incomplete.
Price is what a college charges. Cost is what a college spends.
[At state-supported colleges and universities] price is a fraction of cost by design. The point of charging less than the cost of provision is to provide access for people of modest means, and to encourage people more generally to go to college. It’s based on a judgment that higher education is enough of a social good that it’s worth discounting at the individual level. Given the way that income tends to track over the life cycle, discounting during the early low-income years is a practical necessity for many.In addition, there's an information problem: there is no capital market that will underwrite borrowing against future lifetime earnings, as nobody knows who the high earners will be fifteen to thirty years hence, which precludes creating a portfolio of contingent claims to underwrite student loans. On the upside, that makes it difficult for universities to quote tuitions in such a way as to extract the present value of future earnings of the high earners, although the scramble to get into the Ivies might be creating conditions under which that's possible. Sometimes, the legislators who fund the state colleges and universities toy with latter-day indentures, the better to capture in the form of future taxes the current tuition subsidies inherent in those discounts.
I bring this up because I periodically hear that tuition increases are signs of out-of-control spending. They can be, but frequently, they’re efforts to compensate for losses in other kinds of support. Put differently, they’re attempts to save the quality of the institution from an austerity-driven death spiral. Contrary to popular belief, they may not be signs of bad management; depending on circumstances, they may represent responsible stewardship.Perhaps that's true in the community college and regional comprehensive universe, where the out-migration of population and the continuing deterioration of the common schools are concentrating the minds of legislators and state boards of higher education, who might have to close entire campuses as a consequence of their counties or districts or states losing out in the competition among jurisdictions.
The Covington case was such a blatant rush to judgment — it was powered by such crude prejudice and social stereotyping — I’m hoping it will be an important pivot point. I’m hoping that at least a few people start thinking about norms of how decent people should behave on these platforms.It probably came to this years ago, when the Ruling Class's enablers first in the academy, later in journalism, and finally in entertainment, figured out that they could dress up their hectoring, condescending, and deplorable-shaming as Respectable Opinion. No sooner did the humorless, joyless, and grim Hillary Clinton concede the presidential election than did all of her fans on social media decide it wasn't enough to be upset, no, they started scolding or otherwise being nasty to anybody who wasn't fully in on the wake. As the social media platforms are property of Hillary fans, the owners were less careful about enforcing any sort of decorum than, oh, any owner of a sports bar is whenever the tournament of the current season is under way.
It’s hard to believe that people are going to continue forever on platforms where they are so cruel to one another. It’s hard to believe that people are going to be content, year after year, to distort their own personalities in service to a platform, making themselves humorless, semi-blind, joyless and grim.
I’ve been so busy here that I’ve not been able to follow the continuing fallout over the Covington Catholic boys and the terrifying thing that has happened to them. We now know that Nathan Phillips, the elderly Native American guy, flat-out lied about what happened — and the media fell for it. The Covington boys became international hate figures instantly (I say “international” because people here in Dublin were talking about it).I suspect Kurt Schlichter is going to be in fine form Thursday, and not because of the Formerly and Yet Again Los Angeles Rams playing in the Super Bowl. Mr Dreher isn't quite yet in Schlichter territory. But wait.
They were not guilty. At all. And yet, the moral insanity of this story continues to astonish.
I was telling my Irish friends last night that it’s impossible to overstate how powerful this event is going to be for right-of-center Americans. It’s even more powerful than the Kavanaugh debacle, in terms of showing how so many progressive elites are driven by vicious contempt for those not like themselves — especially white male Christians. It’s not a crime to dislike preppy white Catholic boys in MAGA hats. But to attempt to destroy them, on the basis of faked “evidence”?That's the same left that would like to attenuate or repeal the Second Amendment, but I digress.
I would like to remind our left-wing friends that when Trump is re-elected in 2020 on the strength of votes by people who have been frightened by the prospects of liberals and progressives in power, think of the Covington boys, and what was done to them. As in the Kavanagh mob action, the left tried to destroy because the hate figures symbolized people they loathe: white, male, Christian conservatives. At least in the Kavanaugh case, there was a chance that he was actually guilty. It took almost no time to prove that these boys were not guilty. And yet, even after evidence vindicated them, many on the left continue the hatred. Because it feels so good.
In the cab from the hotel to the airport, I got in touch with my inner Thomas Friedman, and talked to the cab driver, an older white Irishman. He told me that he thinks Donald Trump is “a dangerous man,” but “I’ll tell you, political correctness has gone too far. He’s right about that.” Get this: an Irish cab driver doesn’t like Trump at all, but thinks he’s necessary, because the forces lined up against him are too powerful and malign. This morning, at least, I have come around to his way of thinking. Yesterday, someone made the point in my hearing that Trump has no regard at all for the truth, but the Buzzfeed report the other day, and now the national left-wing freakout over the Fake News of the Covington Catholic boys shows that despite its pretensions, many liberal elites don’t care for the truth either.It could be worse. Much worse. Dov Fischer notes it might not be the Angry Left that's on the side of the angels, either.
The cab driver talked about the Yellow Vests protests in France. He said they’re starting in Ireland, but he doesn’t know how far they’ll go. “We’ve got to do something in this country,” he said. “The people who run it are ruining the place. The inequality is something. They’re only out for themselves.” He denounced the ruling class bitterly.
Because conservatives — social conservatives, theological conservatives, political conservatives — slept for the past half-century, we ceded too much of value to the Left. That which makes America great continues to be the values associated with conservatism. People from all over the world who try to enter our country, whether legally or otherwise, are not marching in caravans because they seek the life of Ferguson, Missouri or Detroit, Michigan. They want the America of wealth, of safety and low crime, of economic prosperity and limited governmental interference.That's encouraging, as it might be the case that the Democrat strategy -- if that is in fact the Democrat strategy -- of importing pliable voters to keep voting for soak-the-rich taxes and expanded public assistance -- might backfire.
Likable people are people we might enjoy having fun with. Unlikable people ruin other people’s fun.What, only a year now until the Iowa caucus?
Elizabeth Warren has a likability problem because it’s hard to imagine her liking anyone. It’s all too easy to imagine her turning that look, which owes nothing to the Cherokee, but much to some dour Swedish ancestors hardened by centuries of exposure to freezing winds and colorless skies, upon us.
Warren, like the authentic hard-core progressive, doesn’t like people. She sees them as problems to be solved. Unlike Hillary, she isn’t animated by a free-floating bitterness and resentment. And probably doesn’t have a flow chart of enemies or voodoo dolls of everyone who ever thwarted her on a shelf.
But hating the human race less than your 2016 candidate does not a 2020 candidate make.
Lefties succeed when they pretend to like people. The best of them, like Obama and Hillary’s better half, are narcissists who thrived on the adulation of the campaign trail. But Warren doesn’t like people. Until recently, she avoided doing interviews. Her campaign debut had the frenzied desperation of careful planning. Unlike her rivals, she avoided people, until she had to grit her teeth and dive in all the way.
The legislation would provide up to $3.25 million in biennial appropriations through 2021 to establish the authority in partnership with the State of Oregon and Province of British Columbia. The move takes Seattle a step closer to one-hour train trips to Portland and Vancouver, British Columbia.It's an ambitious map, with a north-south line from Vancouver, B.C. to Eugene, Ore.; and an east-west line following the old Northern Pacific route from Spokane via Pasco and Yakima to Seattle. At least the legislators are making no little plans.
“Feasibility studies show that our region has the critical mass of a growing population, the muscle mass of a great economy and the traffic problems to justify a system like this,” the Governor’s Office said. “The development of a new ultra high-speed corridor authority will take this project to the next level.”
The legislation specifies that the interstate high-speed rail authority would be charged with developing an organizational structure that operates harmoniously across two states, a province, and an international boundary. The structure would need to address issues like governance, operations, contracting requirements, jurisdictional laws and regulations, and the powers of the authority.
Recommendations from the authority would need to be submitted to the governor and state legislature no later than June 30, 2020 on any laws, regulations, or agreements necessary to achieve corridor development. As a basic framework to deliver a regional high-speed corridor, the authority would need to build upon results from a business case study, which is currently in development, and ensure that whatever high-speed rail technology is ultimately chosen will be capable of reaching at least 250 miles per hour at top speed.When the Germans built their fast passenger train lines, they tunnelled through a lot of hilly country. The existing north-south service has some curvy stretches at sea level, and skirts a number of volcanic ridges on the inland sections.
We often think of “law” and “legislation” as being synonyms, but F.A. Hayek famously argued that there are important differences. If we start with individual habits, or patterns of behavior that have become so commonplace that we act almost without thinking, we can understand much of the daily lives of individuals.After much struggle, I came up with a working definition of "institutions" as those informal or formal conventions by which people would structure their interactions. Professor Munger's essay fills in some of the missing steps, by which the informal conventions become codified. That's easier to write down than it is to implement.
Habits that are shared might be called “customs,” informal rules that might be written down nowhere. These are agreements, in the sense that we all agree that is the way we do things, even though we never actually sat down and signed anything.
Those customs, if they consistently lead to useful outcomes, are “laws.” They are discoverable by experience and emerge in the form of traditions. But it is useful to write them down so that they can be enforced more effectively and can be easily learned by new generations. Laws that are written down are rules, commands, and prohibitions we call “legislation.”There, dear reader, things get more difficult, as we are only recently thinking about the logic of institutional emergence, whilst the governance structures we inherit date to the emergence of civilization, which is to say codifying the relationship between the hunters, farmers, and craftsmen who make stuff and the soldiers who defend the operatives and the thinkers who forecast the eclipses and the bad weather. Somewhere, there is a line between the warlord partially constrained and the government deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed, but that's not a bright line. The will to power of the warlord, or the will to power of the astrologer, is still there. "The reason this is important is that Hayek was rightly concerned about the conceit common in 'experts' and legislators that they know what is best for everyone else."
The problem is that legislation need not arise from law at all. Legislation is any procedures that a set of political actors use to command citizens or restrict their actions. The idea of a speed limit (although see Germany’s autobahns!) is probably both a law and legislation. A rule that protects a company from the scolding winds of competition just because government actors own stock in that company is legislation, but it violates the obvious law against artificial privileges in capitalism.
The “rule of law,” for Hayek at least, is a situation where all legislation simply codifies and illuminates the law. There may be many laws that are not legislation (some are just “manners,” and needn’t be legislated), but in an ideal rule-of-law system there is no legislation that is not also a law.
Yes, in addition to the new menu, apparently the dining cars are back on these two trains. This time, however, they are for the exclusive use of people in the sleepers. Coach passengers will not be allowed in the diner, but welcomed to the Cafe car where they can purchase—well, you know, the same-old-same-old.That train left the station a long time ago, probably about the same time the business school types figured that Wise Experts with the Current Buzzwords could manage anything, whether it was a railroad or a steel company or a machine tool works.
As to the new arrangement, I confess I don’t know what to think. As appetizing as the new entrées appear to be, these meals are still prepared off-site and heated on board. And barring coach passengers from the dining car? What kind of message does that send?
It’s hard to believe, but it does appear that Amtrak’s top management (i.e.: Anderson, Gardener, et al) did not expect such a universally hostile reaction to their “contemporary dining” venture.. which means they still do not understand why people like me choose to travel on long-distance trains. Shouldn’t that be a prerequisite for those key jobs?
In your city, the number of options for good food and booze has likely increased significantly over the last 10 years. But since our median incomes haven’t doubled, or even close, the amount of money we allocate for eating and drinking out has obviously not increased enough to support them all. Instead, we will likely see a virtual “survival of the shiniest” as the new and hip trends overtake the old standbys.That doesn't change just because tax money is being used to pick winners, or, more frequently these days, to keep the current sports team from leaving.
And this is nothing new in urban commerce, especially with regard to the restaurant and bar scene. Evolution has always been a part of this dynamic. It is, however, something we often take for granted. As our options for a night out grow and increase, be it a sporting event, a bar crawl or an incredible Farm-To-Table dinner, our budgets to enjoy all that our cities have to offer likely do not. The more plausible reality is that we simply take our money that we used to spend in a few places and we spend it in a few others, a scenario that will obviously lead to the untimely end for many of our longstanding options.
This concept is especially important to understand when we talk about casinos, large scale entertainment districts, and the subsidizing of entertainment options. Ultimately, these new and shiny things will simply split our budgets further, putting a greater hurt on other local business owners. When we talk about growth, or an increase in “vibrancy,” we have to be very conscious about where the energy (in this case, patrons) is coming from. There is only so much financial and temporal fuel for growth and change in our communities, so when talking about growth, we must be cognizant of what is growing and what is just being redistributed.
If Afghanistan collapses into chaos, so be it. If nearly 10 years of nation building at the cost of thousands of U.S. casualties and billions of dollars hasn't put it on the path to modern nationhood, how will the sacrifice of more American lives and financial treasure do the job?His concluding paragraph, however, ought be sobering.
If Afghanistan collapses in ruins, it might be an object lesson for other nations harboring terrorists: This is what happens to your country if it's used as a base to attack and kill Americans. If fact, that might do more to protect American lives than all the nation building taxpayers can no longer afford.That presupposes Afghanistan is a country. I like the description somebody -- was it Richard "Belmont Club" Fernandez -- made of Afghanistan as the space on the map where there are no countries.
The paradox of preventive war is that military success is distinct from strategic success. You can best your opponent in battle, but that doesn’t mean you have reached a political solution that creates the conditions for lasting security and peace. Instead, engaging in preventive conflict can incentivize the very behavior it seeks to prevent, creating the conditions for less security in the future.Indeed so. I make no claims to even armchair strategist status, and yet, could we treat relatively recent events as making a case for the continued garrisoning of Charlottesville with a regiment of Sheridan's cavalry, seven score and fourteen years after the liberation of Richmond and the surrenders of Lee and Johnston to respectively Grant and Sherman?
Thanks to sharing the line with freight, that almost always means a 20-90 minute delay in leaving. Then there's the nearly eight-hour trip, twice what it takes me to drive there. Flying would only take an hour.Where, sometimes you see the ruination of smokestack America, and sometimes you see the resurgence.
So why ride the rails? For starters, there's the joy of looking out your window to swaths of the countryside you’d never see if you were flying over them or cruising along the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
The post office in Meyersdale, Pa., is charming. The decay of the old brewery in Smithton, Pa., is hauntingly beautiful. The rapids of the Youghiogheny at Ohiopyle, Pa., are breathtaking. So are the sleepy little towns like Hyndman, Pa., and Paw Paw, W.Va., where the "long, long, short, long” warning whistle of the train at each crossing echoes off the mountains that surround these valley towns.Gone, too, were the passengers to converse with: her essay includes a photograph of a vast, empty Cross Country Cafe. Like this.
What happens inside the train matters as well. One of the true charming parts of the ride is the dining car experience. It isn’t just the warm, buttery grits and the crisp bacon. It is the people you meet because of the communal dining.
It was there on the Friday before former President Barack Obama’s first inauguration that I met African-Americans traveling from as far as California by train to attend his inauguration. From veterans of the civil rights movement to young people caught up in his aspirational rhetoric, we were all sitting, conversing, sharing stories, and experiences.
Last Monday, when I boarded the train for the first time this winter, I discovered the warm, buttery grits were no longer an option, replaced by a tub of yogurt and granola. In a box. Dinner now came in a box. So did lunch. Gone were the crisp, white tablecloths, and gone were the people who always cheerfully made whatever meal you wanted.
My first reaction was: If I wanted to be treated the way I am on an airline, I would take one. I took to Twitter and Facebook to express my disappointment in my best mom tone.Yes, and the mind-set that trains are planes extends to the pre-emptive cancellation of train service in the Official Region in advance of an incoming snowstorm.
A call to Amtrak at first met deflection. As is the norm with spokesmen these days, they declined to talk and tried to insist I put my questions in email.
Persistence, however, done courteously, sometimes does prevail. Apparently I wasn't the only objector. Amtrak returned to hot meals by this past Wednesday.
The crisp, white tablecloths and the jobs have not returned. In fact, a month ago, employees held a small rally in D.C. to protest the dining service changes and the threat of outsourcing the 1,700 union food and beverage jobs.
Change is inevitable. Change is important. But it is often spurred by erroneous assumptions.
As Peggy Noonan commented on Twitter, “Amtrak’s new management thinks trains are planes. A lot of us are on the train because we don’t want to be on the plane.”
The corporate media has long failed miserably to cover the climate crisis with the urgency, accuracy, and frequency that the science demands, so green groups and scientists cautiously applauded after NBC's "Meet the Press" devoted its entire hour-long Sunday show to climate change and its devastating consequences.Well, the interventionist claque offered their qualified approval.
"Great that 'Meet the Press' devoted a whole hour to climate change! But why not bring on a Green New Deal advocate like [new member of Congress Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez or [Sunrise Movement founder] Varshini Prakash rather than (or even in addition to!) billionaires and a one-term outgoing congressman who presided over a defunct, ineffective caucus?" Aronoff wrote, referring to former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Rep. Carlos Curbelo (D-Fla.), who both made appearances during the segment.It's generally prudent to walk the other way whenever somebody pops off about "a better world." That is the leper's bell of an approaching tyrant. As, for that matter, is a prior restraint on important parts of the debate, such as the baseline, the causation, and the policy implications.
"The kind of enraging thing about this is that because climate change gets talked about so little on Sunday talk shows, there's not much appetite for evaluating the quality of this conversation. The bar is literally: 'discuss climate change without debating physical realities,'" Aronoff noted, alluding to NBC host Chuck Todd's pronouncement during the show that he is "not going to debate climate change, the existence of it."
As meteorologist and Grist staff writer Eric Holthaus put it, segments that purport to accurately convey the urgency of confronting the climate crisis must feature "guests who acknowledge the scientific imperative of radical decarbonization over the next 12 years."
"Talking about climate change (and the fact that a better world is possible) is the most important thing any of us can do," Holthaus added.
After [new Green Bay Packer head coach Matt] LaFleur’s introductory news conference, I wondered if he fully appreciated the standards of success to which he'll be held in Green Bay. The Packers have the most NFL titles in league history (13) and for the last quarter century have been one of the league’s premier franchises.The standard is still five championships in six championship games in eight seasons.
Since 1992 they have the NFL’s third-best winning percentage (.620), behind only New England (.662) and Pittsburgh (.637), and in that time they’ve been to three Super Bowls and won two. But it’s eight years and counting since their last Super Bowl, which helped get [head coach Mike] McCarthy fired even though he won a title.
At his news conference, LaFleur didn’t talk about championships and Super Bowls nearly as much as McCarthy did when he was introduced as coach 13 years earlier.
“I do think (LaFleur) completely understands,” [general manager Brian] Gutekunst said. “That was one of the things that definitely came across in the interview process and talking to people (who said) how driven he is and how hard he works and how important it is not just to succeed and win, but I think he’s one of those guys even in wins can get frustrated because they didn’t play as well as they could have. That definitely came across not only in the research but in the interview process.”
What Amtrak is now calling “Contemporary Dining Improvements” includes three hot entrées and “deluxe breakfast choices,” up from one hot-meal choice brought back in July 2018.You'd think that after a quarter century of businesses attempting to disguise a reduction of offerings as an improvement, people would be wise to it, and yet Amtrak persists.
Sleeping car customers can now choose the following, with meals delivered to their Bedrooms or Roomettes, “or eaten in their private dining car,” Amtrak said. Lunch and Dinner hot items are Chicken Penne Alfredo, Beef Provencal and Asian Noodle Bowl (there is a chilled item, an Antipasto Plate). Deluxe Continental Breakfast hot items are Oatmeal and a Breakfast Sandwich. (Chilled items are Muffins, Yogurt, Fresh Fruit, Hard-boiled Eggs and Cereals. Customers are also offered unlimited soft beverages, a complimentary serving of beer, wine or a mixed-drink during their trip and an amenity kit, all included in their fares.
In its report on the latest food service changes, Trains magazine said it obtained an internal Amtrak company memo outlining the changes.That Trains report also notes that for now, coach passengers will not have the opportunity to obtain a reservation and be seated in the dining car, something that was still the practice until that airline gang running Amtrak decided that they could curtain off first class in a more forceful way than is possible on a jet.
One sentence in the memo may be illustrative of management’s view of dining car service: “but customers should still bus and clean the tables they have used.”
In other words, food service aboard Amtrak is more akin to a school cafeteria than a sit-down restaurant.
Passengers will even use trays or plates to take their chosen continental breakfast choices to their table or sleeping car room.
This is designed to cut down on waste, including packaging waste and uneaten food. However, passengers will be able to take as many items as they like within reason.
Of course they can also ask their sleeping car attendant to fetch their meal and bring it to the passenger’s room.
Now, although coach passengers still are only allowed to purchase food from the cafe car that operates in the Boston section (no snack or beverage service is available between New York and Albany-Rensselaer, N.Y), a “Deluxe Continental Breakfast” is being offered to sleeping car passengers that includes hot oatmeal and breakfast sandwich options, as well as cold hard boiled eggs, cereal, fresh fruit, yogurt, and muffins.Perhaps they'll also pay attention to the foolishness of sustainably sourcing balsa wood for those lunch boxes only to have all that packaging thrown away.
On board passenger interviews last year revealed that there was a lot of packaging waste and unwanted food not eaten, especially at breakfast. Instead of being presented altogether in a balsa wood box, some Deluxe Continental Breakfast offerings will be displayed on two tables and others items stocked behind a counter manned by the car’s lead service attendant.And here the raison d'etre for Amtrak included discontent with automat cars on Southern Pacific (and some Burlington trains) and Buffeteria cars replacing the full dining cars on the Hiawatha.
There are countless reasons why Bernie Sanders should run for president in the 2020 election.Seriously?
But perhaps the threshold question is what if he does not run? What policy issues would be off the table? What demands for transformation would be watered down? The answer is that most progressive initiatives Sanders and his supporters have championed will never see the light of day.
Many of us have waited a lifetime for a leader with so deep a commitment to fundamental change to come along and galvanize our existing movements. While there will be a large and diverse field of candidates, the opportunity to elect someone who has dedicated his life to economic and social justice also gives us the chance to bring forth a more perfect union – one genuinely of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Small dairy farms have been disappearing from the rural landscape for decades, but the problem has been compounded by a sharp decline in farm-milk prices that's now in its third year and has spread across the country.In markets as understood in introductory price theory, lower prices are inducements for producers to produce less. Introduce price supports, and you have a way to keep up the production even if the lower prices are not encouraging consumption. Consumers end up holding the cheese.
Farm cooperatives have urged members to think twice about adding more cows to their operations when the marketplace is awash in milk. Some have even offered incentives for members to quit farming altogether.
Data from the Department of Agriculture show that between 2008 and 2017, milk production in the U.S. climbed 13%.Much of that cheese stockpile is the mild cheddar that's a feed-stock for American cheese. That makes the consequences of the dairy subsidies the quintessence of a first-world problem, which is to say, a self-inflicted first world problem.
Over those same years, however, consumption has sagged — with per capita milk consumption down 14%, USDA data show.
The surplus milk gets stored as cheese. If formed into one giant wheel, the current 1.39-billion-pound cheese surplus would be about as big as the U.S. Capitol Building.
Two years ago, the Obama administration effectively bailed out the industry, when it bought up $20 million worth — 11 million pounds — of cheese, which it then used for food assistance programs. But the stockpile has grown 16% since then.
American diets are moving away from processed cheeses like Velveeta and Kraft, and many of the nation’s leading fast and casual restaurants are trying new things. Panera, like others, has replaced American cheese in their sandwiches with a four-cheese combo made up of fontina, cheddar, monteau and smoked gouda.Make that a first-world problem with privileged foodies, who get to posture and preen for the benefit of their woke brethren.
In part, that’s because many Americans now think processed cheese is gross, but also because they’re au fait with quality cheese from around the world. It’s hard to turn back to an indestructible fluorescent orange mess once you’ve tried brie de meaux.The simpler explanation is that the opportunity set is now bigger for privileged foodies. Even those who are obnoxious about their posturing and preening.
“We’re seeing increased sales of more exotic, specialty, European-style cheeses. Some of those are made in the US; a lot of them aren’t,” Andrew Novakovic, a professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University told NPR this week. Since imported cheese costs more than domestic, a few blocks of the good stuff might not leave much left in the old cheese budget for anything else.
