IT'S FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION, NOT A RECOVERY.

In the recently concluded Democratic presidential debate, the hopefuls, who didn't disagree on much, concurred with the proposition that life is difficult for what they referred to as the middle class.  The Arts Mechanical has done well aggregating Federal Reserve charts that suggest ordinary people have, in fact, been hammered during the Era of Hope and Change.

Here's Arts Mechanical's interpretation.

The cold fact is that it seems like the entire country has broken down.  It’s been this way for almost ten years now and somehow the country just doesn’t know how to right itself. The big issue is that the political class, The People In Charge don’t really seem to understand that all they are doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  The problem is that there is one party that not only wants to ignore the gap in the hull, they actually want to pump water into the hold.  Now counterflooding is a valid damage control technique, but not into the hold that is already being flooded.

That's likely to be a Republican talking point, and there will be limits to how well the Democrats can make the case that the painful recovery is a consequence of the seriously crippled economy they inherited.  Not to say that Democrats won't try, here's spokesman Luis Miranda explaining to Sean Hannity that it's the empty candy store.

SUNSET.

Brown County, Wisconsin, levied a sales tax to help finance improvements at Lambeau Field.  The improvements are in place, and the Green Bay Packers and the City of Green Bay are doing well, thank you.  Thus, the tax is kaput.

"It was passed for a specific purpose and that purpose was accomplished and it ended as it was required to end according to state statute," said Patrick Webb, executive director of the Green Bay/Brown County Professional Football Stadium District, which administered tax proceeds. "It is a tax that ended, even though a lot of people said it might not."

The money was used to pay for $160 million in bonding for the $295 million renovation of Lambeau Field in 2003, and to provide the Green Bay Packers with a capped amount of maintenance and operations reimbursement annually through the end of the lease in 2031. The stadium is owned by the city of Green Bay and the stadium district. The Packers own some of the improvements.

The Packers, despite having perhaps a stronger case for viewing a stadium subsidy as a business incubator than teams located in larger communities, have financed improvements to the stadium and the environs out of revenues.

All of the recent Lambeau renovations were paid for by the Packers. The Titletown District will be paid for by the Packers and tenants, though it is possible tax-increment finance district assistance for infrastructure improvements will be requested. Sales tax support was not considered.

Murphy said the margin of victory for the sales tax was not large in 2000 and it would be more difficult to get such a tax passed in today's political environment, even in Green Bay. He said the NFL's stadium loan program, enacted at the same time of the last collective bargaining agreement in 2011, has helped the Packers with their newer projects, the most recent of which is $55 million in upgrades to suites.

Suites often come bundled with a seat license, and beneficiaries are often willing to bear the burden.  But taxpayers are a little better off.

EMERGENCE.

It's long been a theme of mine that institutions of higher education ought think of themselves as in the same business as the Ivies and the hundred other institutions all claiming to be in the top twenty according to whatever rankings are popular at the time.  I'm not alone in this: there's a term of art, Spielberg Effect, referring to accomplished graduates of less-highly-regarded institutions who qualified for admission to the high-status institutions yet didn't attend.

I must have been otherwise busy in the late fall of 2011, when Via Media suggested that, as a matter of public policy, ditching the Ivy League might be desirable.

Top-tier schools like Harvard and Yale provide great opportunities, but they can be prohibitively expensive for many families, and there is no guarantee that graduates from a more prestigious school are smarter or more hard-working than those who chose a cheaper alternative.

More work needs to be done to ensure that students from less-known schools are able to compete with their name-school peers. A national baccalaureate test, which would make passage of a standardized test a prerequisite for a college degree, would be a good start, allowing students from lesser-known schools to compete based on mastery of their subject. Knowledge base, experience, and work ethic are the most important lessons of a college education, and these can be acquired anywhere. We should work harder to make sure opportunity is equally available. Kids who can’t afford “name brand” schools should not be penalized in the quest for good jobs.

That sounds like a dual proposition to the Spielberg Effect, which involves students who qualified for the Ivies but enrolled elsewhere.  (Now, as far as work ethic being a college lesson, no, that starts in kindergarten, or the scouts, but let's stay on topic.)

In fairness to individuals, to promote social mobility, and to make it easier for true talent and accomplishment to be rewarded and put to use, government should be working to undercut the ‘snobbery premium’ for expensive colleges.  Offering good students from less expensive, less well known institutions and opportunity to demonstrate their accomplishments in head to head competition with the Ivies is simple justice and sound national policy.

In a way, government -- at the state level -- is doing some of this, with the flagship state institutions aggressively going after full-fare-paying international and out-of-state students.  That's a change on four years ago.

Public universities, which educate nearly 70 percent of our college graduates, have declining graduation rates, rising costs of access, and higher rates of dissatisfaction from families and public investors such as state legislatures. Universities, both public and private, have generally reacted to the economic slump and escalating costs of the past few years with retrenchment rather than even minimal expansion. Their lack of creativity in adjusting to the reduction of resources has shocked governors and business leaders alike who want to see universities innovate in order to educate more students better, faster and cheaper.

There are limits to doing more with less, something that the railroads have been discovering, the hard way, for the past thirty years.  The author of the quote, Arizona State president Michael Crow, can be excused for simply parroting the company line.  Arizona State was messed up back then, and it's messed up still.  But, by recognizing that they are in the same business as the Ivies, and offering a value proposition (sorry, that will be the last business-speak for the week) to ambitious students, the flagship campuses are, contra this Atlantic lament, offering an opportunity to the regional comprehensives and converted teachers' colleges.

The idea behind public colleges is to provide students with a quality education for a reasonable price. They often provide opportunities for middle-class students who wouldn't qualify for need-based aid to attend private colleges or for first-generation college-goers who prefer to attend school close to home. These students feel the squeeze when institutional priorities shift toward their out-of-state peers.

Yes, if the faculty and administration of the state campuses other than the flagship continue with business as usual. There's no reason for those campuses to continue with business as usual.  The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee now enrolls more Wisconsin residents than the Madison campus.  And Milwaukee has long offered place-bound students a chance to broaden their horizons.  But I see no reason to change a single word of a recommendation I offered about the same time the Via Media post first appeared. "What matters, though, to the citizens of Wisconsin is that Milwaukee, despite having neither high-visibility football nor royalties from rat poison, now has more Wisconsin residents enrolled than Madison, and Milwaukee's part of the social contract is to make sure that its brainiacs and strivers get the intellectual challenge they might have hoped to get at Madison, had Madison provided a slot for them. The incentive to the former teachers' colleges ought to be to lift their academic profiles as well."  Yeah, I've used that quote several times before, but in the words of the Distinguished Professor, even the brightest among you could benefit from a modicum of repetition.

IT'S THE RENT-SEEKING, STUPID.

Chris Matthews signed off his Hillary Clinton infomercial last night with another gripe about too much money in (Republican) politics.

Key takeaway: Mr Matthews mentions the tax code, and energy, and foreign policy.  Simplify the tax code, provide clear and simple regulations on energy use, and avoid complicated trade pacts, and there will be fewer rents generated for rent-seekers to seek.

But to do so might be the end of the preceding 45 minutes of "Hardball" during which the punditry extol the virtues of Expertise Improving Lives, which keeps the punditry employed and generates all sorts of rents for K Street types to dissipate.  That's all they understand governing to be.

Just go read and understand Ronald Bailey's evaluation of economist Angus Deaton's fears.

Deaton observes that growth has from time to time taken off in various societies around the world only to be “snuffed out by powerful rulers or priests who either appropriated the innovations for themselves or banned the activity altogether because it threatened their own positions.” His chief concern is that the super-rich will capture our political system and seek to choke off the sources of Schumpeterian creative destruction that threaten to undermine their fortunes. Will a rising class of crony capitalists kill off economic growth here? Good question.

That makes Mr Matthews's sputtering about the Koch Brothers precious. If anything, the Koch Brothers are attempting to prevent other rent seekers from undermining their fortunes.  The generalization to trade, immigration, and patent policies is left to the reader as an exercise.

HALTING STEPS TOWARD A CORRIDOR.

For some time, I've been following the efforts of a private company to build a fast railroad linking Houston with Dallas.  Promoters report favorable conditions.

A new study says a Japanese-style bullet train in Texas would generate $36 billion extra in benefits for the region over a 25-year period.

According to Texas Central, the company that would build a high-speed rail line between Houston and Dallas, a report by Insight Research Corp. shows the benefits of a high-speed railroad would come from increased employment, taxes paid, and direct spending associated with the railroad.

The service proposes a 90 minute train, Houston to or from Dallas.  In September, I reported on a ride from New Orleans to San Antonio, including four hours, nonstop, Houston to San Antonio (with an hour of unused make-up time.)  After a few days in San Antonio, it was time to go home.  Thus, a Throwback Thursday trip report.

Amtrak 22 Texas Eagle, San Antonio to Chicago, 29 October 2014:  Diesels 66, transition sleeper 39036, sleeper 32084 Kansas, diner 37009, lounge 33044, coaches 31014 - 34087 - 34018.  Train originates at San Antonio this day, at 6.45 the conductor says, "Let's go for a train ride."  Leave San Antonio 7 am, on time.  First stop San Marcos, 52 miles away, 8.32, double stop, away 8.39.  Texas Central wishes to get from Houston to Dallas in 90 minutes.  I'm enjoying a good breakfast and conversation in the diner, yet have flashbacks to those German trains of two months previous.  Train held south of Austin account a trespasser on a river bridge.

The view of Austin from the bridge is of a somewhat larger city than that of Köln from the Hohenzollern Bridge.

But our Texas Eagle will be the only northbound intercity train until tomorrow.  Austin have local rail rapid transit, but good luck catching a regional train to Waco or New Braunfels.  Arrive 9.24.  Smoke stop for those as wish to indulge.  Chance to examine the train, and the infrastructure.

Motor 66 is one of the Amtrak at 40 diesels in a retro paint scheme.  The station would be respectable in a midwestern town.

But for only one train a day each way, a city with Frankfurt's population doesn't require a station that looks like Frankfurt's.  Leave Austin 9.36, stop Round Rock 9.58 - 10.02 for light engines, conductor advises passengers of a freight train ahead and signal troubles near Taylor, stop, go, Taylor 10.40 - 10.46, get new track warrant, near Granger conductor advises passengers that the house in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (actually based on a real Wisconsin serial killer, but that's entertainment), clear freight 11.04, go 11.12, arrive Temple 11.54.  There is a small railroad museum with an amusement park-like miniature train in the station.

There's nothing that symbolizes Amtrak's status like a station hidden under an expressway bridge, which is depressingly common wherever there are expressways.

The museum has full-sized rolling stock as well, including 8 section 5 bedroom Pullman Clover Glade.

We're looking at the corridor side of the car.  The museum tracks are closest to the station building.  The fencing is to keep visitors away mostly from the freight trains.  There's time for a self-portrait.

I'm old school.  As long as cameras come with countdown timers, no awkward selfie poses for me.  Doing some light reading, have the scanner, although it's obsolete with the new digital frequencies.  In the background, a bit of propaganda.  During the Second World War, one of our propaganda points was that all troop movements in excess of 500 or so miles would be by Pullman.
But for most G.I. movements, that meant 50 foot express box cars fitted with three-high bunks and rifle racks, lettered P U L L M A N and referred to as troop sleepers.

Leave Temple 12.05, maintenance of way in progress near Pendleton, stop 12.20, go 12.44; McGregor double stop 1.02 - 1.08; Cleburne, still signs of the old Santa Fe shops, 2.18 - 2.20, meet 21 at 2.38, 21 on time or close to time; south of Fort Worth is the Sycamore Strip, one of those developments anticipating the days everyone would own an airplane.

Pass famous Tower 55 inbound to Fort Worth 2.55, arrive Fort Worth 3 pm (due 1.58), conductor apologizes for delays account maintenance and freight congestion.  Add a second unit, 50, for the trip north.  The Fort Worth station is the most impressive railroad station I've seen since Washington's, almost two weeks previously.

Trinity Rail Express offer commuter trains for and from Dallas, and a number of bus routes call at the station.  I did not inspect the passenger facilities, which were a few tracks away, and the crew advised continuing passengers that the train would attempt to get away quickly.  In the distance is the stock of the connecting Heartland Flyer.  All Aboard at 3.26, away at 3.28.  At the time of my ride, the Eagle used the Union Pacific line to Dallas, something that Amtrak and Trinity Rail were negotiating to change.

Amtrak, the nation’s only coast-to-coast passenger rail company, will begin using the Trinity Railway Express line between downtown Fort Worth and Dallas in February, Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo said. Amtrak’s Texas Eagle runs daily from Chicago to San Antonio, with stops in Dallas and Fort Worth.

The Union Pacific line has lots of freight traffic on it.

The Texas Eagle has traditionally used a Union Pacific Railroad freight line between Dallas and Fort Worth, but the tracks are frequently crammed with freight traffic and Amtrak trains are often delayed, sometimes for an hour or more. The TRE line, on the other hand, is mostly a commuter rail route.

“This is a significant improvement for the long-distance route,” said Peter LeCody, president of Texas Rail Advocates, which pushes for better passenger rail service.

There was freight traffic, but this day the additional delays will be by passenger trains.  The new routing, however, will eliminate a reverse move at Fort Worth.  That's Tower 55 again, the photography lines were better before the expressway came, but because terrorism, there isn't much railfanning at towers any more.

We run alongside a stack train, and overtake it near Arlington.

This is the Texas of parvenus, obnoxious pickup trucks, and the Dallas Cowboys.

To the east, a roller coaster at the original Six Flags amusement park.  New Texas Rangers stadium is nearby.

Looks like an airport re-purposed as a staging area for the obnoxious pickup trucks.

Approaching Dallas, the commuter train gets to use the throat tracks first.  That's proper, commuters are a more time-sensitive clientele than long-distance riders.  The route into the station is across the notorious triple underpass.

Dealy Plaza and the grassy knoll are on the other side of the train.  I had moved from the lounge to my room in order to meet the steward for dinner reservations.  Arrive Dallas 4.27.

Here's another properly configured railway station.  The light-rail line uses tracks closest to the headhouse.  Trinity suburban trains use the next tracks over.

The Texas Central high-speed line promoters are thinking about connectivity with the suburban trains and the light rail.

Texas Central officials say they want to pick a spot that connects passengers with public transit. A downtown station could put the line’s terminus within walking distance of Union Station. That station serves two DART [rapid transit] lines, the TRE [Trinity] to Fort Worth, Amtrak, existing bus routes, the under-construction streetcar line to Oak Cliff and taxis.

But if the company goes with one of the I-45 spots, such infrastructure and transit routes would have to be built or moved.

“To relocate all of that would just be financially infeasible,” said Stephen Salin, DART’s vice president of capital planning.

Officials and residents who attended a meeting about the high-speed rail project last month unanimously favored a downtown terminus. That included City Council member Vonciel Jones Hill, who chairs the transportation committee.

“We strongly urge that the train comes into downtown Dallas, and more specifically, Union Station,” she said at the meeting.

Indeed. But that's for posts yet to be written. Leave Dallas 4.38.  Suppertime.  Stop for freight ahead 5.36 - 5.38, slow running, freight gets out of the way, fast running.  Near Mineola, a high school football stadium with sky-boxes???  Make of that what you will.

Mineola 6.46 - 6.48; Longview stop for conflicting freight movement 7.32 - 7.35, station 7.37 - 7.44 (did better on my re-route ride a few years ago).  Marshall stop to re-crew 8.10 - 8.16, passenger stop 8.17 - 8.20, fifty minutes late.

A Texan and a Rhode Islander were in a bragging contest once, and the Texan said, "Texas is so big, that the Missouri Pacific Railroad Texas Eagle leaves San Antonio at 7 am and it's still in Texas at 10 pm."  The Rhode Islander said, "We have the New Haven Railroad ..."

Texarkana will come and go about bedtime.  The Eagle is a decent train, but ought not be viewed as any kind of a corridor train.  The light-rail and suburban train projects of Texas show some promise.  The 90 Minute Train for and from Houston?  We'll see.

In the morning, the Eagle will enter another emerging corridor.  That's for another #ThrowbackThursday.

DO THE RESEARCH.

The political season is upon us, with one spat being whether "comprehensive immigration reform" is a fancy way of saying "amnesty."  That's a topic that has been tackled by a number of researchers over the years (look who's still high in the hit parade!)  The most contested part appears to be the so-called "welfare immigration" (and "anchor babies" and all the rest.)  Donald Boudreaux suggests, pace Milton Friedman, that there's more to the topic than the welfare migration.

The fact that some, or even many, immigrants come to America to bilk U.S. taxpayers does not, standing alone, argue against more-open immigration. Working immigrants' extra private-sector output and contributions to tax revenues might well outweigh the burdens created by other immigrants' use of America's welfare state.

Closely related is the heavy emphasis in U.S. immigration law on preventing immigrants from working.

But that emphasis, and the underground economy that accompanies the policy constraints, can be a coherent policy for managing the welfare migration. "We suggest that border patrols, the apprehension of illegal aliens, and the offering of immigration amnesties may be viewed as different facets of the same policy. A rich country can use this policy mix to attract cheap foreign workers while avoiding low ability migrants, who, once amnestied, become a burden on the public purse."  In fact, a policy that appears internally inconsistent might in fact encourage the more ambitious migrants to self-identify. "Encouraging self-selection is optimal under some, but not all, circumstances, because there are mixes of potential immigrants for which the cost of welfare migration is more than offset by the gains from productive workers enticed by a more lenient immigration policy. Furthermore, under plausible assumptions, the rich country's optimum may require a probabilistic rather than a certain amnesty to fine-tune the mix of migrants. Numerical examples illustrate that probabilistic or certain amnesties, addressed to different partitions of the migrant population, are each optimal as the mix of potential migrants changes." But there are challenges to policy-makers, including what economists refer to as a time-consistency problem, in which amnesty today raises hopes of a future amnesty.  That's a sub-text in a recent Victor Hanson column criticizing sanctuary cities.

Many Americans support a pathway to legal residence for undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States -- if the border is first closed to further illegal immigration, if legal immigration is made ethnically blind and predicated on merit such as education and skills, if undocumented immigrants pay a fine and meet residency requirements, if applicants for legal residence are neither on public assistance nor have committed crimes, and if those with criminal records and without work records are sent back to their countries of origin.

An amnesty concurrent with tighter border enforcement might be allocatively efficient, as well as a way of addressing the time-consistency problem.  There's some heavy mathematics to this point in Arye Hillman and Avi Weiss, "A Theory of Permissible Illegal Immigration."

Under initial conditions where no immigrants are present, the median voter opposes immigration. When, however, a population of illegal immigrants has accumulated, ongoing illegal immigration becomes an endogenous equilibrium policy, at the same time that a majority of voters opposes legal immigration and opposes amnesty that would legalize the immigrants' presence.

In "The Why, When, and How of Immigration Amnesties," Gil Epstein and Avi Weiss take up the resource allocation challenge.

We consider government behavior with respect to allocations on limiting infiltration (border control) and apprehending infiltrators (internal control) and with respect to the granting of amnesties, the timing of amnesties, and limitations on eligibility for those amnesties. We demonstrate the effects of government actions on allocations and the flow of immigrants, and how the interactions between these factors combine to yield an optimal amnesty policy.

Note in all of the research cited that immigration amnesty is not evidence of a failed immigration policy, it is a policy instrument that can be used improperly.  There are still research opportunities in modeling immigration policies where legal and illegal labor force flows coexist, as in the issuance of H-2B visas to circus roustabouts from many of the same countries whose residents board trains for the border.

NOT THE ONION. OR THE PEPPERONI.

When you think Wisconsin's minimum markup law is crazy, remember that it could only be worse in Finland.  Finlanders can deal with four hours of daylight in November, but not with cheap pizza.

"Unless a pizza is on temporary sale there is no way a legitimate establishment can offer pizza for less than six euros," Det Insp Minna Immonen of the Uusimaa police department is quoted as saying. Police are trying to crack down on the "grey economy", which costs the country millions of euros in lost tax revenue each year. They also want people to make sure they get a receipt for their pizzas, regardless of value.

What kind of a pizza can you put together for less than six euros?  But where there is taxation, there is an underground economy.

Others are sceptical that the campaign will have any effect, with many blaming Finland's relatively high tax rates for the problem. "As long as the state 'steals' legitimately with high taxation, then companies will also steal from the government," says one user. Another complains that people are being used as "spies for the criminal investigators", writing: "Isn't it the police's responsibility to investigate this?"

Maybe that's why Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel is taxing entertainments other than pizza first, all we need is the vice squad on the lookout for contraband deep-dish.

IT'S NOT A NEW PROBLEM.

Vic Brown of Phi Beta Cons does not like the vibe of entrepreneurial students selling class notes.

We are constantly told that university classrooms are arenas for debate, airing of differing points of view, and learning from the diversity of viewpoints that the schools so carefully cultivate through their recruiting. It seems that, in these courses at least, none of these wonderful things are happening, and the students are throwing tuition money down the drain.

My suggestion to Florida State and other universities is to find out which courses are supporting the growing notes-selling business, terminate the instructors for non-performance, and hire from the legions of available would-be professors who just want the opportunity to teach effectively and whose courses students will want to attend.

Bloomberg characterize the emergent business as something new, but it's the presence of information technologies that allow the entrepreneurs to scale up and serve multiple colleges.  There were note-taking services operated by individuals, and organized by the Wisconsin Student Association, during my undergraduate days in Madison, which means back while there still was a Penn Central Railroad.

NOT JUST THE GUNS.

University of Texas economist Daniel Hamermesh, who has published a lot of intriguing research on the labor market value of inter alia attractiveness, recently resigned from a contract to meet a large economics class.  He did so in protest of a Texas law allowing the concealed carry of weapons on campus.  At least 170 faculty members have signed a letter protesting the implementation of the law.  Some fear that the possible presence of guns will inhibit spirited discussion in class.  In a recent television interview, Professor Hamermesh specifically feared a grade dispute getting out of hand.  In elaboration, he mentioned that disputatious students had become more confrontational in recent years.

There's more at work here than the presence or absence of guns, people.  Yes, there are sub-prime party schools, and the "toxic campus brew" there is not likely to be more civilized with more legal weapons.  But Texas is not a sub-prime party school.  Consider, though, that some of my graduate school classmates, still on the payrolls of economics departments at universities you might have heard of -- in a good way -- have groused to me about "entitled little snots" over the past few years.  Perhaps a learning environment in which students are less inclined to engage in aggressive grade-grubbing or noisy and disrespectful "discussions" (the usual student term for "I want to make the case for an evaluation I didn't earn") in the first place will be a learning environment in which conducting negotiations at the point of a gun Will.  Not.  Happen.

NO RUNNING FROM THE LOTKE-VOLTERRA EQUATIONS.

Lake Michigan used to be somewhat isolated from the predator-prey cycle elsewhere, with no easy access by Mississippi River or European fish.  Then came the St. Lawrence Seaway, with sea lampreys and alewives.  (And the latter had the usual fish habit of spawning, then dying, all over all the beaches.)  Thus did the fisheries managers introduce Pacific salmon to dine on the alewives.  But now there are ominous signs of a collapse of the alewife population.  But now come some particularly messy predator-prey cycles.

The collapse of alewives on Lake Huron had one surprising consequence — it opened the door to a surge in native species like lake trout and walleye. A likely reason is the alewives prey on the young of native fish. Alewives also aren't a good food source for lake trout because they carry an enzyme that makes it difficult for lake trout to produce healthy offspring.

The cause of the alewife crash on Huron has long been a subject of debate among biologists. Some believe it was a function of too many stocked and naturally reproducing salmon for the alewife population to survive. Others say it was triggered by the invasive mussel population that stripped away the food that alewives depend on. Others believe it is a combination of the two. Some biologists have blamed the cold winter of 2003 for the Huron alewife crash.

In Lake Michigan, the complication is that quagga mussels (just another hitchhiker on the few ships plying the spectacularly unproductive St. Lawrence Seaway) are filtering out the plankton that alewife fry (and many other young fish) eat.  I've been following that dynamic for some time, and the same question remains.

The likely outcome will be a collapse of the whitefish population. But when the quaggas exhaust their food supply, the quagga population collapses? The article mentions a seaweed called cladophora that prefers clearer water. What is cladophora's food supply? What fish use cladophora for food?

At the time the whitefish were attempting to eat the quagga, shells and all.

Although the researchers can quantify the various fish and mussel populations in the Lakes, they ought be careful about modulating the cycles.

HINTS OF A PRO FOOTBALL BUBBLE?

The back story during coverage of an exciting Pittsburgh Steelers invading San Diego (the Chargers next appearing at Lambeau Field late Sunday afternoon, thus I would have stayed up late scouting even in the event of a less compelling finish) included the possibility of the Los Angeles Chargers (back to the old American Football League) or Los Angeles Rams (back to the even older All-America Conference first time a Cleveland team left town, see comments) or Los Angeles Raiders (that worked so well that Al Davis's successors moved them back to Oakland.)

Mayor Kevin Faulconer met for 45 minutes on Monday with Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II, the fourth member of a six-owner NFL special committee focused on Los Angeles franchise relocations that Faulconer has met with since late September.

The goal, as it was with the first three meetings, was making the case for keeping the Chargers in San Diego directly to the NFL owners with the greatest influence over the league’s decision about whether the Chargers, Rams or Raiders move to L.A., Faulconer said.

Apparently the 31 owners in the league would like to have a presence in Los Angeles, and there are at least three teams either not doing as well at the box office as the owners would like, or at least three owners who would like to hold up the taxpayers for a new stadium subsidy.  But in the comments to the article, there is some push-back from San Diegans about crumbling public capital that ought be fixed first.

PASSENGERS HAVE NOTICED, AND THEY DON'T LIKE IT.

Right, but portion expenses and crew wages are easy to measure, goodwill and the going-concern value of a business, not so much.  Until the customers get discouraged.

THE TYRANNY OF THE MINIMUM PUBLISHABLE UNIT.

Academic prestige is a high-risk, high-reward environment.  But deans count, although many can't read.  Sometimes, though, there is value in doing research about research.

“Pursuing innovation is a gamble, without enough payoff, on average, to justify the risk,” the study says. “Nevertheless, science benefits when individuals overcome the dispositions that orient them toward established islands of knowledge … in the expanding ocean of possible topics.”

Indeed. There is no shortage of interesting questions. Tractable and interesting, that's another matter. Tractable and fungible, that's where a lot of the publication action is.

THE CASE FOR ROUNDABOUTS.

Illinois, are you listening?

With roundabouts, vehicle idle time is significantly reduced. Even when there is traffic in a roundabout (which isn’t uncommon during rush hour), they are still less damaging than stoplight intersections, which almost perennially have a queue of cars idling at any given moment. At most times of the day, roundabouts keep cars in constant motion, and eliminate the need to come to a full stop.

In fact, the design cycle of Illinois traffic lights, which rely on sensors to decide when to change the lights (guaranteeing that you'll get the green at one crossing and face a red at the next one) and how long to hold the left arrow at green (which stacks up traffic in all the other directions) guarantees maximum frustration and maximum energy waste in idling vehicles and vehicles re-starting.  Throw in a few 53 foot trailers and watch the aggravation level rise.  As it appears to be the fleet operators who are behind a Wisconsin legislator pushing to reduce the construction of roundabouts (or Massachusetts rotaries, the yield convention is the same) perhaps that's one more reason to require special movement permits for any 53 foot trailer, anywhere.

GOVERNMENT FAILURES?

Secure borders, sound money, and a tax code the citizens respect.  But with the Third World invading Europe, Germany's closure of the border to trains from Austria illustrates the absence of two of the three.  (The Eurozone is going to come apart over the different fiscal and monetary policies of the member countries, just wait.)

In [Salzburg, Austria] the suspension of trains into neighboring Germany has been a boon to taxi drivers. Taha, who asked to use only his first name lest local tax collectors hound him about his earnings, makes 300 euros every time he drives a stranded traveler the 143 kilometers (about 90 miles) to Munich.

Since Germany stopped trains here in mid-September as a way to slow the tide of refugees pouring northward, Taha has made 18 such trips.

“Normally in a month I would go to Munich one time,” he said last week at the taxi stand outside Salzburg Station. “People don’t know what to do without the trains. Some of them will spend anything.”

Germany closes the immigrant routes from Austria, Austria occasionally closes immigrant routes from Hungary, Hungary, which first tore down the Iron Curtain, understands that fences to keep people out are different from fences to keep people in.  But the well-to-do and the clever find work-arounds.

None of the train and border disruptions have had a widespread economic impact, observers said, because the restrictions are limited to a few crossings. And at those, the borders have not been completely sealed. Drivers are enduring the waits or going out of their way to find alternate crossings.

“You have to find a workaround,” said a railway ticket agent in Salzburg station. He has handed out dozens of photocopied instructions on how two local buses (take the No. 2, change at Esshaverstrasse) will deposit them at Freilassing, the closest station on the German side of the border.

Immigrants are also finding work-arounds, but tax-avoiding shoppers (Germany is to Austria as New Hampshire is to Massachusetts) and recreational travelers are being inconvenienced. And the Fretful are fretting about the consequences of borders leading back toward tribal identities.  Yes, the previous merger of Austria with Germany didn't turn out so well, did it?

ANGUS DEATON.

Another empirical economist recognized with the Nobel Memorial.  Tyler Cowen recognises Professor Deaton's work as "understanding what economic progress really means."  Alex Tabarrok describes the work on world poverty "as a tour de force."

HIGHER EDUCATION SINKS ITSELF.

Some students at Pitzer College, part of the Claremont conglomerate, thought a campus sailing club might be a worthwhile activity, and applied for $5000 in segregated fee money to hire sailing instructors and rent boats.  (Apparently Pitzer is too far from water to have their own fleet the way the Wisconsin Hoofers do.)  But the request did not sit well with the kind of Perpetually Aggrieved that tend to dominate student government.

“Student Senate voted against this club instatement last night, as the majority of Senators found the name ‘Yacht Club’ to have a particularly offensive association with Yacht Clubs and a recreation known for being exclusive,” wrote Taylor Novick-Finder (PZ ’17), an Environmental Senator, in an email on Pitzer’s Student Talk thread.

But there was more at work than the choice of a name.

Never mind that providing students with cultural capital that might serve well in Silicon Valley or Chicago or much of the East Coast is a worthy goal of higher education, to the derivative and tendentious drones in the student senate, it's freakazoids über alles.

“It doesn’t matter what it is called, the club itself is a classist and inaccessible activity for people who are not wealthy,” wrote one Pitzer student. “Pitzer’s money would be going towards a luxurious classist, elitist yachting activity (alienating students on campus who are lower income) instead of going to support for example queer and trans people of color, disabled students, working class students, indigenous/Native American students, etc.”

What's next, a student from modest circumstances gets accused of "cultural appropriation" (more wordnoise, people) when he joins the sailing club?  Fortunately, not everyone at Pitzer is an idiot.

“I think you are missing the point that this club would open up access to sailing for people who have never been able to experience it, like myself,” wrote Kyle Dalrymple (PZ ’17), a member of the Senate’s Faculty Executive Committee. “Additionally, I will stress again the approval of a club has nothing to do with the budget allocated to it.”

On the other hand, student government did allocate $5000 to a tattoo club, thus enabling low status individuals to acquire additional markers of low status.  Campus Reform suggests the story is "almost a satire."  Perhaps.  But in the absence of aesthetic standards, there is no satire, only absurdity.

RECLAIMING THE CULTURE.

Push back against the self-despising capons.  Mitch Berg's Rules for the Paleo Man gets gentlemen started.  Go.  Read and understand.

John Kass suggests that the gun violence is not about High Policy or Abnormal Psychology. "Because for all the talk of gun control and rights and politics, the one thing I don't hear enough about is that our culture is ill."  Indeed not. "Give the toxins an opportunity to leach out, and the common culture will improve."

And here's today's encouraging development.  Washington Post columnist Danielle Larkins has been mugged by reality.

Larkins likes to throw around labels like “conservative” and scary concepts like “family values” without knowing what those terms actually mean. Because unlike the caricatures so common in the entertainment industry and in the mainstream media, these monikers really refer to people committed to raising children with a healthy respect for authority, their country, for duty and honor, discipline, sacrifice, and friendship. In other words, the very concepts endorsed by Ms. Larkins and whose disappearance she laments.

It took years to deconstruct the institutions that worked. It will take years to rebuild them. But the task of rebuilding will be easier, the more familiar people are with why those institutions worked, and the ways what took their place failed.

THE REVERSE PAWN-SHOP.

A Detroit entrepreneur helps the destitute supplement their income by shoplifting.

His business? Running a large-scale fencing operation, using a team of prostitutes, heroin users, parolees and panhandlers to steal high-priced items from local Home Depots. He would then recruit homeless people from shelters to return the stolen merchandise to a different store. Since homeless people often have legitimate identification, as required by the store for any returns, they were given store debit cards, akin to gift cards, which they handed over to [former used-car dealer Adelbert] Ackerman.

He paid the prostitutes and drug users 20% of the value of the stolen goods and the homeless people $15-$20 for each successful return. He in turn sold the cards to contractors and customers he recruited in Home Depot parking lots at a 70% discount.

Like every other hustler, he expected to be able to get away with it.  But the authorities took their time rolling up his network.

Oakland County’s Narcotics Enforcement Team was noticing a peculiar trend. While conducting drug raids on homes, they were finding Home Depot gift cards that were apparently being used as currency for drug trafficking. They contacted Home Depot and joined the investigation. It appeared that Ackerman was sometimes awarding his best workers with both cash and store cards.

Mr Ackerman now faces charges for running a criminal enterprise. That's distinct from running a used-car dealership.

TIME TO STUDY EMERSON?

Margaret Soltan of University Diaries notes that on occasion, perpetrators of school massacres have (divorced or separated) gun-collecting moms.  A commenter points readers to "Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms" in American Journal of Public Health.  The authors consider a number of the pat (and sometimes not-so-pat) explanations and find them wanting.  Yes, it's an academic article, and yes, the authors pay due homage to the obligatory post-Enlightenment hobby-horses.  But pay close attention to the closing sentence. "Ultimately, the ways our society frames these connections reveal as much about our particular cultural politics, biases, and blind spots as it does about the acts of lone, and obviously troubled, individuals."  Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.  Understand what behaviors confer evolutionary advantage, and what institutions work against evolutionary advantage.

THE NEGLECTED ACTOR.

The Daily Beast tells the saga of The Crash of Trump Air.  Not that there's any surprise to the transport cognoscenti.  Mr Trump is another in a long line of hopefuls who made a small fortune in aviation by starting with a large fortune.  Somebody with aviation experience even warned him.  But nowhere in the story, which is about the developer's adventures with the former Eastern Air Shuttle (anybody remember "The Wings of Man?") beginning with his acquisition of the route and some clapped-out 727s (the Constellations and Electras long gone to the desert) is there any mention of what really made life difficult for the shuttles in the Official Region.  The article claims "business travel was slowing in the Northeast."

Not at all.  Here's what the winner looked like in March, 1988.

That's the time-honored ritual of the engine change at New Haven, Connecticut.  Motor 938 at right has brought a Northeast Regional train in from Washington, D.C., and F40 216 (which, if it's still around, is cabbage car 90216) is about to take over for Boston.  The motors are allowed speeds of up to 125 mph south of Newark, and the diesels can cruise at 105 or 110 on some stretches of track in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Electrification onward to Boston and the Acela Expresses hitting 150 to the north and airport security going from annoying to aggravating are more than a decade away.  And yet the incremental improvements to Amtrak service commencing on the Northeast Corridor in the late 1970s were enough to change the economics of air transportation, deregulation or not.

RENDER UNTO CAESAR.

Townhall's Mark Davis notes that "public service" implies an obligation to serve.

The definition of a government job is: it ain’t about you so much when you walk through the door. In our eagerness to show support for a woman whose faith we admire, we have obliterated the obvious line between a private sector job like wedding photographer and cake-baker, where business owners make the rules, and government servants, who are there, to, well, serve.

That service means the tee-totaling government employee has to issue a liquor license for the sports bar. The Muslim health inspector has to walk into the pork barbecue joint. The pacifist Quaker has to issue the gun license.

And the Bible-believing Christian, who properly objects to the Biblical disconnect of gay marriage has a choice: compartmentalize and realize what is God’s and what is Caesar’s and issue the license, or leave a the job that requires it.

Otherwise institutions evolve in a way that increases transaction costs, which is in the direction of greater inefficiency and evolutionary instability.

If I am the sports bar owner, I want my liquor license. If I am the hunter, I want my gun license. If I am the owner of Mark’s BBQ, I want my inspection done on time. I don’t need one moment of delay while someone paid by my tax dollars wrestles with inner conflicts.

And, as is the case with any bright-line rule, religious accommodations do not favor good beliefs and disfavor questionable beliefs, they apply universally.

When the rules are the same for everybody, there is no discrimination. When the rules are leapfrogged for some and not for others, it is a nightmare.

This road of religious accommodations is pockmarked with unacceptable potholes. One day we offer one to someone whose faith we admire or even share, the next day we have to dole one out to an adherent whose beliefs create absurd inconveniences for taxpayers.

Who convenes the panel to rule on which religious hesitations are okay and which are not? And while we can cheer one for the home team when a gay couple is turned away, wait until it’s you looking for a license for that second marriage, in violation of the thoroughly Biblical concept of one marriage for life, period. Is the clerk refusing that paperwork going to be showered with Kim Davis- caliber hero worship?

The religious accommodation fallacy says “no problem, we’ll just find someone who does not have that objection.” Just what we need: something to make interaction with government more inconvenient.

Yes. The work of rolling back intrusive or one-size-fits-all governance is a task better tackled, as Mr Davis argues, at the state level.

ROUTINE.

So, in a sputtering rant, does Our President speak of the latest mass shooting (not counting any summer weekend in Chicago) and the continued politicization of policy that follows.  And Bill Sternberg at Gannett contributes a routine fill-in-the-blanks chin-pulling response.  But it is the section that doesn't have any blanks to fill in that matters.

Acquaintances described the gunman as a loner who showed signs of depression, had trouble relating to women and spent many hours playing violent video games. Although he was prone to vicious outbursts, the acquaintances said they didn’t think he’d really do anything, so they didn’t bother to alert authorities. Authorities said they were trying to verify the authenticity of threatening rants the gunman posted on social media sites against blacks/whites/Christians/Muslims/Jews/people.

No blanks to fill in in that paragraph.  Unfortunately, as a New York Times analysis concludes, “You can’t go out and round up all the alienated angry young men.”  Nor, as Reason's Jacob Sullum elaborates, can more stringent screening of people be done in a way consistent with Constitutional principles.  And if kicking eleven million illegal aliens out of the country is not feasible, confiscating firearms is likely to aggravate the rebellion.

Perhaps, instead, the difficulty is in the environment within which the angry young men stew in their alienation.  Several years and distressingly many mass shootings ago, I suggested that Ralph Waldo Emerson had a better understanding of the tensions among individuality and community than the more trendy recent speculations. "Put [the recent social theories] together, and we have a flimsy, ad-hoc set of explanations why some disaffected people behave badly, and when it's all said and done, nothing available to make it better."  Nor has anything changed since, although the shooting at a California sorority house brought the destructive consequences of the so-called sexual revolution to light. (I've been repeating this for twelve years.  Now will you listen?)

Today the only victors in the sexual revolution are those men and women who are good-looking and clever enough to enjoy multiple partners with a minimum of emotional and financial commitment. The dowdy and the not-so-clever (or not-so-unscrupulous) are used by the well-endowed and find loneliness and frustration where, in a previous generation, they would probably have been able to start families.

Sometimes the frustration boils over, and people, often young women, die. There's a trenchant observation from a different context that strikes me as relevant. "This is the bed Third Wave feminism has made."

But that's not the only possibility, nor even the strongest possibility.  Rather, what we have is a cascade of error.  The first of the public mass shootings, in most chronicles, is the 1966 Texas Tower event.  That's early in the live television era, and early in the Consciousness Revolution.  And what has that Consciousness Revolution brought us?  There's more than "if it feels good, do it" and "do your own thing, man."  Couple the Consciousness Revolution with post-Enlightenment social theory and what do you see?

A freakazoid is now transgressive, and that's something to affirm.  Thus freakazoids get away with behaving badly.

A street thug is now authentic, and that's something to celebrate.  Thus street thugs get away with behaving badly.

A nebbish is still a nebbish.  But the post-Enlightenment social theorists offer no special affirmation.

And nowhere are there institutions or conventions strong enough to give the nebbish something to constructively push against (as Emerson would have it) or to encourage the nebbish to interact constructively with other people.

But it took a long march through the institutions to create the toxic common culture.  Give the toxins an opportunity to leach out, and the common culture will improve.  And perhaps there will be fewer angry nebbishes lashing out.

IT WAS NOT GIVEN TO ME TO FINISH THE TASK.

For years, I have publicized the objections students and faculty, arguing from a variety of perspectives, have raised to Northern Illinois University's unconstitutional free speech zone policy.  The policy remained in place after my retirement, but the objections continue.

“I’m a big believer of the constitution,” said sophomore finance major Jeremy Watson, president of the NIU Young Americans for Liberty. “It should be respected. My main problem with it is that you have to go through a process of being approved and are limited to one area. You’re in competition with other organizations also. Organizations want that spot because it’s the only free speech area on campus.”

Mark Cordes, interim dean and law professor of the College of Law, said the policy could be argued as infringement on students’ constitutional rights because of the limitations against two forms of speech.

“Leafleting is considered a traditional form of communication in America,” Cordes said. “Courts do protect the ability to hand out information. It’s essential to be able to hand out literature. So, yes, you can put reasonable regulations for people to do that. But is it reasonable? There’s a good chance the court will say no.”

Students have full First Amendment rights, but the government can impose content neutral time, place and matter restrictions within reason, Cordes said. The gray area comes with defining reason, Cordes said.

The policy is “out of respect for individual privacy and peoples’ right to engage or not engage as they see fit,” according to a statement by the Division of Marketing and Communications. “The university has designated an area within MLK Commons as a central location for organized events. We see no conflict between establishing this area for organized discussion and respect for the principle of free speech.”

People should expect to endure some interference in order for others to exercise free speech, as this enables each individual to have a say, Cordes said. Free speech becomes unreasonable when it restricts the movement of others or is harassment, Cordes said.

“I believe freedom of speech should be everywhere,” said Le’Jera Payton, freshman political science major. “They [people who exhibit offensive speech] have their rights too.”

To make the policy less subject to constitutional challenge, Cordes said the policy should be changed to allow leafleting and soliciting throughout a majority of the campus while restricting harassment and interference of movement to protect students’ rights.

The NIU Young Americans for Liberty plans on continuing to petition until the group attains 500 signatures. Watson said the group wants the administration to take the petition seriously.

“My goal is to get rid of the free speech zone and make the entire campus a free speech zone,” Watson said. “There should be no policy.”

Perhaps the university's expensive new chief diversity officer can help encourage intellectual diversity by lending whatever influence she holds to removing unconstitutional limitations on free speech.

HANDIWORK FROM THE ORIGINAL COLD SPRING SHOPS.

The Milwaukee streetcar at left was built in St. Louis, but maintained at Cold Spring Shops.

The line car at right was first built as an open-bed work motor, then converted at Cold Spring Shops to a line car.  It's over 100 years old and still used by the East Troy railroad to service the catenary.

AS OKTOBERFEST SEASON WINDS DOWN.

One of the oddities of the fall festive season is that Oktoberfest is generally in September.

In Wisconsin, it kicks off in July, with Milwaukee's German Fest.

The scrolling board to the right mentioned the beginning of Oktoberfest season.  I don't make this stuff up.

German style Maypole, with participating organizations.

Spanferkel.

Why not continue the festivities at home?

Preparing Spanferkel is a major project, and I have enough of those already.  But it's easy enough to approximate a Nürnberg 3 im Weggla.

I just use "breakfast brats" as a reasonable facsimile of the Approved Nürnberg Bratwurst, which must be small enough to slip through an old-style key-hole.  Bar-time munchies are not a modern phenomenon, people.

Sometimes, though, the traditional Sheboygan double is in order.

But there's still more Oktoberfest season to enjoy.  Can't get enough Spanferkel.

When it's gone, it's gone.  The rotisserie chickens can be cooked up more quickly, and inventory control is simpler.

Music by The Freistadt Alte Kameraden Band.

Polkas, schottisches, waltzes, the occasional march.  Plus, for Wisconsin events, On! Wisconsin! and the Bud Song.

Prosit!

AN UNCLE TIM IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

The New York Times picks up an essay by one Brian Lombardi, located in DeKalb, on approved metrofexual behavior.  James Lileks characterizes it as "humorless humor."  Mitch Berg is proud to be a paleomale.  Stephen Miller fisks it.

Put me in the paleomale category.  I cut the wood myself, and improvise jigs to assemble the components.  Then it's time for a liter of beer.

MORE OF A NIGHT ON THE TOWN.

Commencing this weekend, Amtrak will operate Saturday only late evening Hiawatha trips.

No. 344 will depart Milwaukee at 10:40 p.m. with No. 343 leaving Chicago at 11:10 p.m.

Trains 329 and 330, the early morning departures, will not operate on Saturdays during this schedule. Ridership results will be evaluated after the holidays.

Amtrak said the late night service will serve those who have plans for a late dinner, attending a show, going shopping or engaging in some other activity on a Saturday night.

Improve by increments. Those departure times will serve most concert and opera schedules, and hockey or basketball absent multiple overtimes. No tavern-lounge cars yet.

FIRST WE SURVIVE.

Our President has successfully fundamentally transformed the United States.  Nearly a quarter of the population is not participating in the labor force, and a Russian general apparently advised the U.S. military attache in Baghdad that "we commence bombing in an hour."  Well done.

Perhaps, though, it is beyond Our President's, or anybody else's, competence.  Complex adaptive systems tend to do what they d##n well please, and all that.

Here's Richard Fernandez, taking stock.

What no politician has yet nerved himself to tell the public yet is that normalcy itself may be ending and the actual facts of physical life soon depend on actions and virtues our elites have long deemed obsolete or worthy of extinction.  If historical discontinuities mean anything it is that “business as usual” is over.

The Western world had a extraordinarily good run in the years since 1945, so good that it was easy to imagine that constant progress was a permanent condition; that tomorrow would always be better than today; that there was some unstoppable march through history our politicians had only to get in spangled tights to lead.

Ironically the basis of that incredible prosperity may not have complacency but on the contrary, a constant vigilance over its fragile existence.  Business as usual looked easy because the Old Ones had the habit of putting another log upon the fire to keep the dark things away.  Now that our new leaders have said ”let the last ember go out.  Those needless fires put out too much CO2. There is nothing to fear out there”, we are beginning to have our doubts and yet aware it’s too late to go back now.

Now we get to find out the truth about whether there are wolves out there.  The answer will alter us.  History tells us that events always transform men.  They never leave them unchanged.  William Halsey recorded the effect of the 40s on his generation when he said “there are no extraordinary men… just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.”

He's optimistic, despite the challenges.

The years since the fall of the Berlin Wall have been characterized by a futile attempt to buy stability through risk sharing.  There was no crisis, which if sufficiently enlarged, could not be solved. Yet it failed. In an era of rapid change emergent risks can no longer be spread.  Survival will depend not upon building a bigger boat but making the right choices.

This breaks politics, especially redistributive and identity politics and hence the politicians have not accepted that yet.  But they will, and relatively soon.  The next decade will be hard; and our only consolation will be that if we win through we will be better men and freer too.

But Arts Mechanical suggests winning through is not assured.  Marginalize the productive people, don't be surprised when the productive people opt out.

And they don’t see their part in the future.  There is a general malaise throughout the culture.  People are not cattle.  They will change their behavior in response to conditions they cannot change.  They can’t save money and start families. Women have to work to maintain the standard of living that they are used to.  They are forced to live week to week and prospects for improvement don’t seem to exist.  So by and large people don’t have kids.

Which in essence is the entire culture going Galt.  Which is what’s happening to the Blue model all over the planet.  If you really look at how things are going, it’s not hard to understand why.  In the end you can’t give away happiness.  Happiness is something that everybody pursues with their own efforts. Misery, on the other hand is all too easy to create.  A little oppression here, a little tax farming there, and some income redistribution and shortly thereafter, you get just unending tons of it.  Talk to somebody from the former Soviet Union.  The people that came up with the Blue Model don’t understand that they are just creating misery and the rest of us are just stuck with it.

That "women have to work" isn't accurate; rather, increased labor force participation by women plus the Say Aggregation Principle have something to do with it.  But the Blue Model is a burdensome bad idea, and one of the dubious victory dividends since 1945 has been the diffusion of bad ideas, many of which became Trendy Research in Prestigious Universities.  Fortunately, notes Michael Walsh, there is a corrective.

The way back from this brink, I argue, is through the rediscovery of the things that have made Western civilization great: its heroic, individualistic culture. Its art, literature, music and classically liberal political philosophy, which had found a way to accommodate both God and man until relatively recently.

And in deconstructing the technocratic impulse and the celebration of the odd simply because it is odd, perhaps we can see off the cult of expertise. Give S. E. Cupp the last word. "Complex problems are best sorted out by markets or confronted locally, not through one distant official's decree." She's addressing the pernicious cult of the presidency, but that, dear reader, is the Trenchant Observation of the Season.

So mote it be.

WHEN THE TRAINS STOP.

The trunk line railroads, still working to install positive train control, have threatened to embargo hazardous cargoes in case Congress does not extend the deadline for installation of the hardware beyond the end of the year.

This is not just something for the usual talking heads to pontificate about on the Sunday shows.  The embargo means troubles at the water works.  "Completely avoidable," notes Representative John Thune.  Thus, increasingly likely.

UMPQUA.

Condolences.

I'll let others do the analyses and the recriminations.