THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE SOCIAL GOSPEL.

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

CAN THE MONEY REALLY PUT RACE RELATIONS RIGHT?

Jeff Jacoby has long been critical of paying reparations for slavery, segregation, and snob zoning, and he continues the argument in a recent column.  "Present-day advocates of reparations cite redlining and other 20th-century harms. But the heart of the argument has always been that Black Americans should be repaid for the 240 years that their forebears were enslaved in this land. That’s far from a new idea. But it is also far from a sound idea."  His argument has generally been along the lines of there being a lot of restitution in existing public policies.  "In short, there has been for years in America a considerable, well-funded attempt to make amends for the legacy of slavery and segregation. Those today who wish to argue that an outstanding debt is owed to Black America have an obligation to account for all that has been done, in good faith and at great expense, to pay down that debt."

A few paragraphs later, he asks, "As the clamor for racial reparations grows more aggressive, will it lead to healing and closure and reconciliation?"  Would that the money could really put everything right.  Former president Lyndon Johnson, as quoted in that column, made the case for something more than simple procedural equality long ago.  “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race, and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”  In like manner, the person maimed in a car crash or an industrial accident receives monetary compensation, and yet, he's got to go through life in a wheelchair or with a limp or missing limbs.  So too might it be with, take your pick, people still hobbled by that legacy of slavery and lingering hostile attitudes, or people who would hope that whatever monetary payments a local, state, or national government makes squares the accounts, and means an end to any further accusations of implicit bias or privilege.  The money well might make some peoples' lives better.  The healing, closure, and reconciliation?  I fear that the people who would most hope the money makes the scolding go away might also be the first people called out as reason for the scolding to continue.

TREAT THE ROADS LIKE PRODUCTIVE ASSETS.

A Hot Air contributor called Beege Welborn would prefer you didn't.  In San Diego, a regional plan that might ... for the first time in forever ... ensure that the infrastructure doesn't crumble is horrible.  "A new plan from San Diego County's Regional Transportation Agency wants to make driving so expensive that you'll be forced to take the bus or the train."  The horror!  Here are the details.  "The plan adds three new half-cent sales tax increases, over 800 miles of San Diego County freeway lanes converted to toll lanes, and a mileage tax for every mile driven to pay for their $165 billion public mass transit plan."  Apparently money collected from motorists can only be used for road projects, even though that money is never enough; while money collected by other taxes must be used to make up the shortfall.  "It’s a bait and switch -- freeway dollars, gas tax dollars, and registration fees promised for road improvements instead pay for costly public mass transit projects that less than 3% of the public uses."  That leads Ms Welborn to conclude, "They have no intention of fixing the roads."  Well, no.  Somebody will write a federal appropriation into some future infrastructure porkulus.

Why should road socialism be any different from any other socialism, and why do conservative populists think road socialism is fine?

SO MUCH DIMINUTION GOING AWAY.

Does anybody pay any attention to Ralph Nader any more? "The New York Times Is Rapidly Diminishing Itself."  Clearly, he couldn't write "failing" for fear of sounding like Donald Trump.  But how large an E-T-T-S moment is it?

Unfortunately, their changes to the print edition—which produces important content—have exhibited an accelerating stupefaction.

Huge photos replace what was serious content on its Sunday Business and Opinion Pages, formerly the Weekly Review. Repeatedly, the entire valuable front pages of those Sections are filled with photographs or graphic artwork. That space used to contain great investigative columnists like Gretchen Morgenson. The inside of these sections is not much better—with too many photos and soft articles replacing first-rate columnists on consumer rip-off cases and the abuses of airline passengers.

As one long-time reader, about to cancel his subscription, just told me—parts of the supposedly serious sections (apart from the vast entertainment sections) come across like People Magazine.

The Times has really gone overboard in diluting its storied editorial and op-ed pages. From as many as nearly 20 concise, meaty editorials, the Editorial Page is down to about three a week. This space is being occupied by often mediocre columns such as the lengthy superficial exchanges between "liberal" Gail Collins and "conservative" war hawk Bret Stephens who are supposed to disagree with one another but often engage in not so witty repartee.

As for the Editorial Page, the kinds of enlightening op-eds which were submitted by outsiders over the years now are preceded by the Time's regular columnists—ok—but also by a stable of countless designated "contributing opinion writers."

And -- the horror -- there aren't baseball box scores in the print edition either.

IT CAME TO THIS WHEN THE FACULTY ABDICATED ITS STEWARDSHIP.

Washington Examiner contributor Jay P. Greene looks at Florida governor Ron DeSantis's efforts to uproot the Diversity Weenies.

Public universities were thought to be outside of political control, and academic culture was thought to be too committed to DEI [diversity, inclusion, and equity -- Ed.] goals. But DeSantis is proving that something can be done. His plan is likely to make significant progress in dismantling DEI in higher education.

DeSantis is showing that DEI is not beyond the reach of elected officials, at least not at public universities. In most states, public universities are state agencies, just like the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Game and Fish Commission. They may have their own boards of trustees, but those boards were created, and can be modified, by legislation, and their activities are governed by state laws and regulations. States can reorganize how public universities are structured to achieve public purposes better, just as they can reorganize the DMV. Lawmakers may alter the size and composition of the Game and Fish Commission, as well as the process for appointing those officials, and they can do the same with the boards of public universities.

Yes, legislators can do that, but should they?  "Years ago, pioneer economist Richard T. Ely engaged in some scholarship the legislators didn't like.  The regents responded, in a statement that has long been cast in bronze on Bascom Hall."

DON MCLEAN'S E-T-T-S DECADE.

Cold Spring Shops posts have taken the view that the end of the American High came with three shots in Dallas.  Singer Don McLean saw the ominous signs even before the day the news was on the doorstep.  "It seemed clear from the beginning that McLean was referring to a defining moment in music, with the lyrics pointing to something that has been lost and can’t be retrieved."  American Pie is free-verse poetry, and as such, it can be parsed, analyzed, scanned for hidden meanings.  "The sense of disillusion and loss that the song transmits isn’t just about deaths in the world of music, but also about a generation that could no longer believe in the utopian dreams of the 1950s."  Yes, and in a more tragic way than the sorts who thought it so groovy now that people are finally getting together could ever comprehend.

IF YOU CAN TRADE IT, YOU CAN ALLOCATE IT EFFICIENTLY.

Years ago, environmentalist wackos had a gripe that ran something like "We'll have abundant solar energy when Standard Oil can make money off it."  That's cathartic populist froth, but it misses the major point, that making money means engaging in mutually beneficial trade, a reality that is too often ignored by self-styled progressives.

Predictably, the opportunity to allocate Western waters efficiently sets off the current generation of environmentalist wackos.

Financial speculators are buying and selling rights to the Colorado River's dwindling water resources in a bid to profit as historic drought conditions intensified by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis lead to worsening scarcity.

Wall Street investment firms "have identified the drought as an opportunity to make money," Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, told CBS News on Tuesday. "I view these drought profiteers as vultures. They're looking to make a lot of money off this public resource."

Matthew Diserio, the co-founder and president of a Manhattan-based hedge fund called Water Asset Management (WAM), makes no secret of his intentions, having described water in the United States as "the biggest emerging market on Earth" and "a trillion-dollar market opportunity." The company's website declares that "scarce clean water is the resource defining this century, much like plentiful oil defined the last."

A newly published joint investigation by CBS News and The Weather Channel found that WAM has purchased at least $20 million worth of land in Western Colorado over the past five years, making it one of the biggest landowners in a farming and ranching region known as the Grand Valley.

According to Mueller, WAM has bought more than 2,500 acres of farmland in the area. But "it's the water"—not the land—that investors are really interested in, he said, observing that the farmland comes with water rights.

To Kenny Stancil, it's apparently sufficient to use "making money" as an epithet, never mind the dynamic his very next paragraph reveals.

Notably, WAM has "hired Colorado's former top water official as one of its lawyers," CBS News reported. Diserio previously stated that "one of his firm's strategies is to profit from water in part by making the farms it buys more efficient and then selling parts of its water rights to other farmers and cities increasingly desperate for the natural resource."

It's not as if using the water more efficiently is some sort of superexploitative plot, the way precision scheduled railroading or adjunctification might be.  Or that the strings the national government attaches will be helpful.

As the long-brewing crisis surrounding the Colorado River grows more acute, the federal government has taken steps to compel state-level policymakers to improve how they manage water resources in the increasingly arid region.

For instance, "Congress recently allocated $4 billion in drought funding that can be used to pay farmers to fallow their land and not use their water," CBS News reported. "Some Western states, including Colorado, are also considering paying some farmers to keep their lands fallow." Agriculture accounts for 70% of withdrawals from the Colorado River.

The Jarrett regency, however, is full of self-styled progressives with lots of sentimentality and no common sense. Is it more sensible to figure out how to raise crops using less water, or to not raise crops at all?

The Future of Water Act, as the congressional Democrats' bicameral legislation is titled, would amend the Commodity Exchange Act to affirm that water is a human right to be managed for public benefit—not a commodity to be bought and sold by investment firms. The bill would also prohibit the trading of water rights on futures markets—a recently invented financial ploy widely condemned as "dystopian."

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said at the time of the bill's introduction that "with the climate crisis delivering historically devastating droughts across the West, it is clearer than ever that water should be treated as a scarce, essential resource, not a commodity for Wall Street and financial speculators."

"This groundbreaking legislation would put a lid on dangerous water futures trading before it creates a crisis," said Hauter, "and it reinforces the fact that water must be managed as a public resource, not a corporate profit center."

As if the existing regime of public resource management has performed so well for us.

The costs of the water and power projects are great, but those Yuma growers see low prices for the Colorado River water they use because they are living at the expense of somebody else.  I also recall, in the middle 1970s, something called "flood watering" being a thing in Phoenix.  Yup, cover your lawn with water.  We had water meters, and even in Milwaukee there was odd-even sprinkling days, even with new water intake cribs being built as the city grew, as it still was back then.

But nobody wants to get into the implications either of understanding that water is a commodity and ought be priced accordingly, or that those fresh vegetables (and Californian cheese, for Elsie's sake!) coming to the Twin Cities in the winter look cheaper because taxpayers in the Great Lakes are helping pay for those southwestern water projects, and they might be on the hook for even more water projects.

On the other hand, perhaps the environmentalist wackos would just as soon there be no water projects.  Has the recent Californian flooding been worse for the absence of any new flood control projects?

JOE BIDEN, HAVE YOU HEARD OF FREDERIC BASTIAT?

I sensed, a few years ago, that Donald Trump might have.

Our [then] President might be toying with changing the way in which the federal government pays for internal improvements.  The Interstate Highway system, for instance, required the states to put up ten percent of the money for construction, while the other ninety percent went through Washington.  The states remained on the hook for policing and snow removal, as well as maintenance, and, not surprisingly, we ended up with potentially more mileage than the states could maintain, and, from time to time, new federal appropriations to make good on the repairs.  That's not the only way in which states get inefficiently much road capacity.

Propose, though, that the states take more ownership of their roads, and let the cries rise up to Heaven.

The current president might have no knowledge of political economy, but in his speech from the throne he surely understands politicians and their posturing.

These projects will put hundreds of thousands of people to work rebuilding our highways, bridges, railroads, tunnels, ports and airports, clean water, and high-speed internet across America.

Urban. Suburban. Rural. Tribal.

And we’re just getting started. I sincerely thank my Republican friends who voted for the law.

And to my Republican friends who voted against it but still ask to fund projects in their districts, don’t worry.

I promised to be the president for all Americans.

We’ll fund your projects. And I’ll see you at the ground-breaking.

More precisely, printed money from Uncle Sugar will pay to build the projects, and Washington politicians will turn up at the photo opportunities, but it will be local public officials, years on, who will have to maintain them.  "I wonder if there's a way to sell more widespread road tolling as a way to provide property tax relief, since in much of the country that old Monopoly hazard, being assessed for street repairs, is still part of the town budget."  Predictably, the speech acknowledged those workers who would soon be drawing paychecks building the  projects that were in the appropriations.  People in neighborhoods not favored thus?  "The alternative to assessing the residents for street repairs is hoping that there will be another transportation porkulus and that your Member of Congress has enough juice to put your broken road into the list of projects.  'All that the periodic porkulus bills do is prolong the fiction that somehow we can rob from Peoria to fix Pittsburgh, while we rob Pittsburgh to fix Peoria.'"

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Did anybody notice there was a Speech from the Throne last Tuesday?  "What our politics lacks most is a sober insistence on reality."  The contradictions aren't to the heightening stage yet.  "Raising the debt ceiling without either cutting spending or raising more revenue simply ensures that we kick this can down the road."  Just wait.  "Existing spending commitments are rapidly shrinking the share of the budget that politicians have control over as their appetite for spending expands."

Official Washington offers us a choice between normal and crazy, for arbitrary values of crazy, which "touches on many Americans' sense that things have gone weirdly wrong in recent years."  We see it.  Official Washington does not.  "What you saw during Tuesday night's speech was a bipartisan suicide pact."  It's a suicide pact among the Correct Thinkers.  "This classist separation is often an intentional part of what drives the left, who has always believed, despite airy protestations to the contrary, in the necessity of an especially enlightened politburo to run the State for the good of a dull proletariat. Sadly, many on the right think the same way — though they tend to want less regulation and lower taxes."  Would a larger House of Representatives have more True Believers?

Look up in the sky.

Fasching will soon give way to Lent.  Oktoberfest will be here as summer gives way to fall.  The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

UNDOING MULTIPLE MISTAKES.

Passenger Rail service in Ohio, which has a number of large cities close enough together that they would have rated Trans Europ Express service fifty years ago, probably upgraded to electric fast trains of the ICE or TGV class by now, was just before Amtrak rudimentary and grubby, in part because the principal carriers of the Official Region were still thinking in terms of Chicago or St. Louis to the coasts through trains, never mind what that meant for the Ohio service, and what remained of the through trains was mostly for carrying mail and express, when it couldn't be chopped up into inconvenient and non-connecting short haul runs.

Early in the Obama administration, an appropriation of money for faster passenger trains included provisions for California (still bogged down) and three states, Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin, subsequently elected Republican governors who ran in part on not committing the states to bear the expense of operating the trains the federal money bought.  If only we saw that sort of common sense when it came to federal matching funds generally. Florida's Brightline is a privately funded intending to use an expressway median that might have been in those 2009-2010 appropriations.

There are stirrings of interest in a Passenger Rail network in Wisconsin.  I'll be more confident once I see that second train between Chicago and the Cities running: if they can't make that happen any sort of service to Madison or the Fox Cities or Eau Claire might as well be wishful thinking.

In Ohio, people have given thought to a proper regional rail service connecting the major cities, and, notably, a Republican governor appears to be supporting the effort.

Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday his administration has decided to apply for federal money to study the feasibility of expanding Amtrak service in Ohio for the first time in decades.

The acceptance, DeWine told The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com editorial board, marks the “first step” toward possibly adding new Amtrak along existing lines in Cleveland and Cincinnati, as well as potentially creating an entirely new route connecting those cities with Columbus, Dayton and other cities in between.

The Ohio Rail Development Commission is still deciding how many potentially new or expanded routes it wants to ask the federal government to provide study money for by the March 27 application deadline, according to commission spokeswoman Wende Jourdan.

As is always the case with these projects, there will be years of study and comment before a single spike is driven.  The lesson, a hundred years from now, might be that it is easier to keep an existing Passenger Rail network running than it will be to replace it in the name of progress only to have to put it back later, also in the name of progress.

THE PRICE OF SUCCESS.

Last night's Special Forces featured an instructive debriefing of Carli Lloyd, who holds all sorts of awards in women's footie. but has not been able to complete, successfully, any of the tasks the training staff have put the cast through.  A clip of the debriefing is not yet available, although the full episode is available if you re properly paid up.  People has part of that debriefing, although, it being People, it doesn't get to the serious stuff.

In an exclusive clip from Wednesday's episode, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and retired soccer star, 40, reveals that the experience of being estranged from her family was the impetus behind her joining the show's ranks.

"It was like being taught to become numb, emotionless, which then led into my life off the field and pushed my family out," she opens up to the Directing Staff. "We didn't speak for about 12 years."

She continues, "They suffered, I suffered. I missed out on weddings, birthdays, holidays — literally everything."

She hired a life coach of some kind, the better to be able to get to the highest levels of women's footie, and that might have contributed to the rift with her kin. "Lloyd has since cut ties with the man at the center of the conflict, James Galanis, who was her personal coach of 17 years."

So it always is with ambition, there are tradeoffs, whether it's going for Olympic gold, or a doctoral degree, or qualifying for the special services, and the trainers, in their role as Masonic masters, surely know something about being on long deployments and doing things they can never talk about, and possibly hearing well-meaning advice to "lighten up" or grousing from people who care but don't care about being "inside a wall".  There was a lot in that short clip for a unit psychologist or people who have a better understanding of human interaction to dip into.  One excerpt:

"They've missed out on my wedding," she says. "I didn't feel anything. The plan was for me to become the best in the world and accomplish everything I wanted to accomplish in the soccer world but it's freakin' hard though."

Yes. In the course of being the best in the world at something, or some set of things, one chooses, explicitly or implicitly, not to be the best, or even mediocre, at an infinity of other things.  Don't any of us who get good at something sometimes muse about how if it were easy enough that anyone could do it, it wouldn't be a goal worth pursuing?

FIND YOUR VERSION OF A MODEL RAILROAD AND BUILD IT.

Retirement Planning for Professors.  Author Susan Shaw has the order of action items wrong.  "Start figuring out what you want to do when you're not a professor" ought to come first, even before "stay engaged" as it should go without saying that remaining responsible while still employed is right and proper.  Next up, buy (or have somebody buy you) the equivalent of that train set.

I already know I want to hike more, garden more, read all the British murder mysteries that have come out in the last decade that I’ve missed, learn to bake like they do on The Great British Bake-Off, keep traveling and learn to do mosaic tile. I want my brain to have a rest and not be worrying about the next article, the next class, the next deadline, the next strategic plan.

Exactly. Be reminded, dear academic reader, that "'Emeritus' is not Latin for 'doing for free that which I used to be paid to do.'"

By all means, if your colleagues want to schedule a retirement party, go for it.  Speak up.  And don't delude yourself that the administration will allocate your salary to hire two assistant professors.

LET'S DISCUSS A DIFFERENT CAREER.

The current vice president's infectious laugh is made for an amusement park.

When New York Times types think she's better suited for Coney Island:  "Even her allies are tired of waiting."

She has made history as the first woman, the first African American and the first Asian American ever to serve as vice president, but she has still struggled to define her role much beyond that legacy.

Her staff notes that she has made strides, emerging as a strong voice in the administration on abortion rights. She has positioned herself as a more visible advocate for the administration, giving a speech last week at the funeral for Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old who was beaten by Memphis police officers. And her critics and detractors alike acknowledge that the vice presidency is intended to be a supporting role, and many of her predecessors have labored to make themselves relevant, as well.

But the painful reality for Harris is that in private conversations over the past few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill and around the nation — including some who helped put her on the party’s 2020 ticket — said she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country.

Is there anything in the first few sentences of that excerpt that indicates a future leader?  Put another token in the arcade and hope a prize falls out.

Given that Biden at 80 is the oldest president in American history, Republicans would most likely make Harris, who is 58, a prime attack line, arguing that a vote for Biden may in fact be a vote to put her in the Oval Office.

“That will be in my opinion one of the most hard-hitting arguments against Biden,” said John Morgan, a prominent fundraiser for Democrats, including Biden, and a former Florida finance chair for President Bill Clinton. “It doesn’t take a genius to say, ‘Look, with his age, we have to really think about this.’”

So far, he said, she has not distinguished herself.

“I can’t think of one thing she’s done except stay out of the way and stand beside him at certain ceremonies,” he said.

So it often is with tokens, and even party elders recognize the problem.

Harris’ allies said she was trapped in a damned-if-she-does, damned-if-she-doesn’t conundrum — she is expected to not do anything to overshadow Biden while navigating intractable issues he has assigned her such as voting rights and illegal immigration. And some see a double standard applied to a prominent woman of color.

“That’s what being a first is all about,” said Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., one of the nation’s most prominent Black lawmakers, who has been an outspoken supporter. “She’s got to work every day to make sure she’s not the last.”

Can you think of a clearer concession that there is an affirmative action asterisk than that last sentence?

POORLY PREDICATED, BADLY ARTICULATED.

Yes, I'm making fun of the stilted language common on political panels, where it would be bad form to accuse somebody of using talking points in support of tight priors that cannot long survive an encounter with reality.  That Dementia Joe becomes a foil for more direct mockery is a bonus.

"MAKE NO MISTAKE! If you try anything to raise the cost of frisizhnjubs I will veto it." pic.twitter.com/DaJIvDiRy2

— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 8, 2023

That mumbling is close enough to "prescription drugs" to just cut the old guy some slack for the inarticulate enunciation.  The threat, though, is precisely a talking point in support of a foolish tight prior.  Among the "legislative accomplishments" the doddering ficus and his Morale Conditioners love to point to, as if they've done any good, is a law capping the retail price of a dose of insulin at $35, and the veto threat is aimed at any Congressional attempt to repeal the law.

But a retail price of $35 by force of law is no different from a streetcar fare of a nickel (or perhaps, as was the case with the Pernambuco Tramway, five centavos) and sooner or later the opportunity cost of a dose of insulin will exceed $35, which will have to be made up somehow, or else there will be no more insulin on offer.

It's telling, I suppose, that more people made fun of the "frisizhnjubs" than they did of the economic ignorance that a president, or any other secular or sacred official, can dictate what the cost of anything is.  In Official Washington, though, the fantasy is the policy.  "While you reap the consequences of their failures, the Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day."  Never mind the woke fantasies, dear reader, contemplate the belief that the president can command the price of prescription drugs, er, frisizhnjubs, to stay stable.

I confess to skipping the speech to see the approval of a provincial permit to build a proper mine shaft on Oak Island, and then to tune up some switch motors with a disappointing hockey game for background entertainment.  But people did watch the speech to catch misleading claims, notable claims lacking crucial context, and incomplete claims behind the rhetoric.  So it always is in Official Washington.  "Lots of partisan fanfare, some surface-level appeals to bipartisanship, and a whole lot of misleading spin."  Poorly predicated, badly articulated, and at the end of the day, the switch motors were working down cellar.

TREATING THE ROADS LIKE PRODUCTIVE ASSETS.

There are ways to tax fossil fuels at the point of sale, which is one way states raise money to maintain the roads they build.  Electric cars skip the pump, which leads to some reactions that might ... not have the desired effect of inducing more use of them.

The latest foolishness, raising the registration fee on electric and hybrid cars and trucks to collect in one lump sum what they're not collecting at the pump.  Kea Wilson for Strong Towns goes after Missouri, but the same foolishness is infecting Wisconsin lawmakers.  I can't make this stuff up.  "If what we want are safe roads that we can afford to repair, why on earth would we incentivize drivers to buy gas guzzling vehicles—which skew towards the heaviest vehicles most capable of causing extensive road damage—rather than light, fuel efficient vehicles that might help keep that pavement intact for longer?"

The reality:  registration fees and excise taxes don't even come close to covering the full cost of roads, and a reality-based accounting might lead to the highway commissioners choosing to close some roads, or let them revert to cattle paths.

In Iowa, it occurred to somebody that motorists use recharging stations, which have electric meters, and that in the same way all the motor fuel tax comes bundled with the price, the battery recharging tax could come bundled with the price.

While state lawmakers are currently debating new taxes for charging electric vehicles, Iowa is set to collect those taxes starting in July. Four years ago, when EVs were still rare on Iowa roads, legislators approved a law that taxes kilowatt hours sold.

Apparently -- the article does not provide details -- there are ways to charge residents a lower recharging tax than nonresidents.  The highway commissioners are focused more on having the resources to keep the roads in a state of good repair.

Some advocates questioned the creation of a new tax for EV users, arguing that it would discourage people from buying the cleaner vehicles. But lawmakers ultimately agreed to focus on how to keep road fund revenues steady.

“Iowa is very much a pay-as-you-go, user-fee-based system for roads and bridges. We don’t bond for it,” [Iowa transportation staffer Stuart] Anderson explained. He said the discussion centered on how to make sure electric vehicle owners were paying their “fair share” for the upkeep and construction of the road network.

“We did not make our recommendations and establish those rates to generate new money. This was solely based on how we could capture what we’re losing in fuel tax revenue,” he said.

For all the talk about "user fees" and "pay-as-you-go" apparently tolling is not yet an option.

The increased registration fee is intended to capture most, but not all, of the lost fuel taxes from Iowa residents. The kilowatt-hour charge, however, would ensure that out-of-state EV drivers contributed to Iowa’s roads.

That’s especially important for large commercial trucks, which pass through the state on Interstate 80 and other major highways. Electric trucks are far less common than electric passenger vehicles, but they will likely become a bigger factor in coming years, Anderson said.

There's no reason Interstate 80 couldn't be a turnpike, is there?

CAPTAIN AHAB COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT.

Never change your unintentionally funny style, Common Dreams.  "Oil Lobby Prompts Right-Wing Media to Save Whales—From Wind Power."  No, the Beautiful Transition does not yet involve going back to whale oil in our lanterns, in order to keep the lights on when the wind isn't blowing.  Nor, the article argues, does the deprivation implied by greater use of solar and wind power provide a chain of causation by which offshore construction of wind farms (as long as they're out of sight of the nomenklatura) is driving the whales out of their minds.

Before the sudden concern for whales, opposition to wind farms off the coast of the Jersey Shore was based on a not-in-my-backyard attitude from residents who didn’t want their ocean views altered, and who were concerned about the subsequent effect on tourism (Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/15/21).

“They will not be able to look out on the horizon and dream,” one woman was quoted.

“Enjoy the View While It Lasts,” declared an NBC 10 Philadelphia headline (6/17/22) last summer. Note that the wind farm in question will be approximately 15 miles out to sea.

That's OK, recreational travel to the seashore is one more unsustainable thing Our Progressive Betters would just as soon we do without.

SHODDY SERVICE, PART OF THE GLORIOUS TRANSITION?

Apparently I can't be too pessimistic.  Remember? "Some of Our Intellectual Betters would like to shame us into not flying or driving; the air traffic control system and the security theater do nothing to enhance the experience, and the airway infrastructure joins the highway infrastructure as markers of government failure: and Amtrak's failure to offer a serious choice to even the small number of travellers who aren't driving or flying is almost enough to make me think Our Intellectual Betters would prefer that we stay home."

That's occurred to Free Beacon contributor Collin Anderson.

The COVID-19 pandemic wasn't all bad, a new Biden administration plan to fight climate change argues: It at least "highlighted major opportunities" to reduce travel demand and lower carbon emissions through "remote work and virtual interactions."

The plan — which President Joe Biden's Environmental Protection Agency and Energy, Transportation, and Housing departments released in January—aims to "eliminate nearly all greenhouse gas emissions" from the transportation sector by 2050, mostly through a transition to electric vehicles. Also included in the plan, however, is a controversial call to reduce "commuting miles" through "an increase in remote work and virtual engagements," including in education.

"Telework and other components of a digital economy … can improve convenience by reducing travel demand, especially for work commuting," the plan states. "The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted major opportunities for telework, with some studies showing the possibility of 10 percent long-term reduction in annual vehicle miles traveled." The plan goes on to identify "remote access to services like health care and education" as one of the "key determinants of future travel demand."

Recreational travel, on the other hand, is less appealing thanks to the unreliability that has become common of late.  The limited range of those electric cars is a feature.

THESE GIRLS CAN'T HANDLE BIG BALLS.

Get your mind out of the gutter, already.

The coach of the Duke University women's basketball team expressed her disdain for how an alleged ball mix-up was handled after a Thursday game.

Coach Kara Lawson ended her news conference after Duke's win against the University of Pittsburgh by calling out her issues during a previous game against Florida State. According to Lawson, the Blue Devils and Seminoles spent the first half of Sunday's game playing with a men's basketball. Duke went on to lose the matchup by 13 points, 57-70.

"This would never happen in a men's game. This would never happen," she said at the postgame conference. "It's embarrassing for our sport."

Lawson said her players complained about the ball, making seven shots out of 34 attempts in the first 20 minutes of the game. Their opponents made 10 of their 30 shots in the first half, ESPN reported.

Sometimes the shots just don't fall. Deal with it.

Basketballs used by men in the NBA and at the college-level have a circumference of about 29.5 inches while balls used by the WNBA and women's college teams are 28.5 inches, according to digital sports publication Stack.com. Lawson and her team allege the correct balls were swapped in after Duke assistant coach Winston Gandy alerted officials at halftime.

"To have a game that, at the end of the season, could be the difference between a seed, between a title, my players don't deserve that and neither do their players," she said in the news conference.

Despite her outrage, Atlantic Coast Conference and Florida State officials concluded the ball used during the first half of Sunday's game, which was played in Florida, wasn't a men's basketball.

At least everybody agrees it was a basketball, not a beach ball, not a Chinese weather balloon.

Somebody should tell the coach to check her privilege.  How many teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference are going to be playing into March?  As opposed to teams from the Mid-American Conference, where one oopsie in the conference tournament means a team with a solid regular season record doesn't rate an at-large bid.

THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL.

The train ride is not delightful.  "Lack of standby equipment and the inability of Amtrak mechanical forces to sufficiently prepare cars and locomotives for service led to the cancellation of one pair of Chicago-based trains and departure delays to 11 others on Thursday, Feb. 2."  The network is so tightly coupled (management-speak concealing the folly that is doing more with less) that a failure early in the day disrupts workings all day, and in the case of the overnight trains, well into the week.

Occurring at the beginning of the work day, pervasive delays like these can have a significant impact on repeat business. In addition, a 45-minute late arrival of the first Hiawatha from Milwaukee caused the next departure, No. 331, to leave 44 minutes late at 9:09 a.m. The same equipment that left the Windy City on No. 329 returned to Chicago more than 2 hours late, so train No. 333, a scheduled 11:05 a.m. departure, was cancelled.

Putting additional strain on mechanical forces was the overnight arrival of two trains from the West Coast that should have come in the previous afternoon: the California Zephyr,11 hours, 28 minutes late at 2:18 a.m., and the Empire Builder, 12 hours, 45 minutes late at 5:30 a.m.

Both trains had to contend with a late departure from their originating terminal, inclement weather, and freight congestion on their way to Chicago, but the major source of delays were “mechanical issues.” The Zephyr and the Builder each lost four hours —the Zephyr at Denver, and the Builder between Milwaukee and Glenview, Ill., to equipment failures.

These problems, including disrupted workings on the Milwaukee service, are nothing new, although it appears that the new coaching stock and motive power is not up to the rigors of winter.

Amtrak does not routinely disclose the nature of its trains’ mechanical problems. Sources tell Trains News Wire cold weather has adversely affected both the state-owned SC44 and long-distance ALC42 Siemens Charger locomotives and caused inoperable toilets on Horizon coaches and cafe cars.

There have been repeated instances during the last three weeks of trains returning to Chicago Union Station after leaving on time, an indication that all necessary maintenance may not have been completed.

Some of Our Intellectual Betters would like to shame us into not flying or driving; the air traffic control system and the security theater do nothing to enhance the experience, and the airway infrastructure joins the highway infrastructure as markers of government failure: and Amtrak's failure to offer a serious choice to even the small number of travellers who aren't driving or flying is almost enough to make me think Our Intellectual Betters would prefer that we stay home.

THERE MIGHT BE A SIMPLER EXPLANATION.

Hot Air contributor David Strom sounds the alarm about a National Institutes of Health research project that appears to have vanished.  "NIH quashed study because it wouldn't show what they wanted."

The study announcement involves a delay in participants getting their corona shots.

The open-label randomized trial, which began on Thursday, will test whether vaccine prevents both infection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 among college students, and will "help inform science-based decisions about mask use and about social distancing post-vaccination," [Anthony "Schnickel Fritz] Fauci added.

The NIH-funded study will include 12,000 college students ages 18 to 26 from more than 20 universities, and is expected to last 5 months, Fauci said. One group of 6,000 students will receive their first dose of the Moderna vaccine immediately. The others will serve as controls and will receive their vaccine 4 months later.

All participants will ultimately receive the usual two doses.

Participants will swab their noses daily for SARS-CoV-2 infection, provide blood samples periodically, and complete surveys through an electronic diary app. They will also be asked to follow their university's SARS-CoV-2 protocols and get tested twice each week, according to the study's website.

Anyone who tests positive will be asked to follow additional protocols.

Another 25,000 individuals whom participants name as "close contacts" -- for example, roommates or co-workers -- will also provide blood samples to the researchers, take daily nose swabs for 2 weeks, and answer weekly questionnaires (if they agree to participate, of course).

Right there in that "asked to follow their university's protocols" might be a clue to what came next, even before we get into those close contacts who are invited to participate.  The study, however, went away before the data analysts could fill out a single spreadsheet.  "We are no longer enrolling new participants in the study and are ending the study earlier than anticipated. This is because of the success of COVID-19 vaccination programs across the US! This may mean that your study participation will be shorter than expected."

Did nobody at Hot Air or any of the other Town Hall or Pajamas Media services recall how much bandwidth has gone to slagging on universities for their corona tyranny?  Does anybody recall Schnickel Fritz raising a stink about superspreading events at college football games?  A student who contemplated postponing the course of corona shots into July or August of 2021 might as well be contemplating not enrolling for the fall semester.  Yes, dear reader, Our Political Masters have told us all sorts of misleading things; and somebody disposed to not trust the Wise Experts might suspect that the study discovered the vaccines weren't effective.  I submit, though, that "success of vaccination programs" combined with university inoculation requirements quickly depleted whatever pool the investigators were hoping to set up as a control group.