Negative Railroad A Collection of Breaks in the Line

The decades before and after the dawn of the 20th century were the golden age of US railroading. The biggest of corporate bigshots traveled in luxurious personal railcars, the equivalent of today’s corporate jets.

Now the corporate jet is popularly held as an object of scorn. Yet, the Federal government granted $400,000 toward restoring one example of last century’s wealth at work:

1) Re: Guantanamo Terrorist Transfers

The media chatter seems focused on the inconveniences and perceived threats to US communities should the detainees be transferred to US prisons. No, they’re not going to escape and become some kind of TV action series bad guy fugitives. And, no, they’re not going to be able to command terrorist activities from within SuperMax confinement. As prisoners, they would represent no credible threat.

If they were brought onto US territory, however, their legal status changes. They would get the full benefit of legal rights and due process. And since they’re being held without charge and on sketchy evidence, US law would compel their release.

This morning in Minneapolis a bicycle commuter was crushed to death by a semi. The local bike nuts’ reaction was to blame the truck driver.

Semis dont belong on city streets. period.
…
If what the Star Trib is reporting -- that the truck driver turned into the bike lane -- is true, then it needs to be prosecuted as a negligent homicide. Period.

Later in the thread, cooler and more-reasoned voices tempered the calls for vengeance.

The current President cracked some jokes at last week’s White House Correspondents Dinner. The evening’s entertainment was comedienne Wanda Sykes, who targeted Barry with some zingers:

"The first black president. That's unless you screw up. Then it's going to be 'What's up with the half-white guy?'"

The bits I watched made it feel like a lame, tame version of a celebrity roast. Media types and comedians talk about finding it hard to poke fun at Barry. He’s so popular, and so smooth, they’re afraid to make him the butt of jokes.

There’s really no logical argument buttressed by this story, but I think it fits the traditional definition of irony:

An expedition team which set sail from Plymouth on a 5,000-mile carbon emission-free trip to Greenland have been rescued by an oil tanker.
…

The expedition was followed by up to 40 schools across the UK to promote climate change awareness.

Pretty much every media outlet ran a story about yesterday’s national food drive. Letter carriers were lauded for their work collecting donations to food shelves. But were the letter carriers being charitable? Or were they just doing their job?

A brief search of the net offered no evidence that postal workers were doing anything for free. Sure, they carried some extra weight, but should that count as “charity”?

Since they’re in uniform, in addition to all their pay and benefits, the public was also covering any additional risks the workers faced. Strained back from too many cans? Not charity, but a gateway to a compensation claim.

I have reasons to mock Cinco de Mayo. Personal reasons. Nothing against Mexico, or whoever needs to be offended by me not worshipping Mexicans today.

But since President Klink showed his intellect and cultural sensitivity once again, I was inspired to become more informed than the President of the United States. That my info comes from Wikipedia will not deter me. Wikipedia is at least as accurate as anything coming out of the White House.

We’re all idiots. Me, Barry, and pretty much all y’all:

I was at last month’s local Tea Party on the Capitol lawn. By now, most have probably settled on believing the media’s truth of the day’s events. What I saw was not that story.

The crowd numbered in the thousands. They weren’t mad about taxes. Or, not just about taxes. Most of the signs seemed to reference big government and big government debt.

And the crowd was civil. Disappointingly so. I wanted pitchforks.

Thanks to technology and the internet, the truth is available, should this day become recognized as the start of anything Important. I don’t have much to add.

Even the tortured are asked to talk.

Quoted from: Cobb

The world we make today is better than the world we made yesterday. In general and in aggregate, products are relentlessly improved. Sure, there are spectacular failures, like New Coke or the Yugo. We notice those biggies, but overlook routine tiny stuff that does work.

Consider the perforations added to the plastic wrapper around a stack of paper napkins. The package now doubles as a dispenser. Neato! My napkins now stay clean until I make them dirty, and they don’t scatter around the kitchen on windy days.

Most cheese seems to be sold in zipper bags these days. The zipper is cheap and fails more than I would like, but usually it outlasts the cheese, which now lasts longer thanks to better packaging.

I have lamented that none of the popular advocates for limited government make a moral argument. Libertarians, Limbaugh, or even Ron Paul, focus on efficiency and effectiveness, or how the state causes waste or violence. These are all, I think, sufficient justifications for minimizing state power. But they’re not the most important.

By settling into a debate over the most efficient or effective form and balance of government, they concede a necessity of government. This is pragmatic. To fetishize un-governed anarchy removes one from participation in our political society. Anarchists are self-disenfranchised. So, I accept the efficiency arguments must be made, to move us to greater liberty. Or at least to resist encroaching tyranny.

Neighborhood activists like to trumpet how they engage and empower communities. Quite often, in my experience, it’s a lie. The organizers hoard whatever power they can collect, shut out dissent, and still claim to be selfless representatives of the broader population. Over in Dinkytown, landlords have called the organizers’ bluff:

Dr. Sanity admonishes those who try not to think too hard:

For those of you who think all this philosophy business is too abstract and irrelevant to your life; you are very very wrong. Catastrophically wrong.

Egypt is slaughtering hogs to prevent a swine flu outbreak:

The cull was going ahead despite there being no cases of swine flu in Egypt. However, neighbouring Israel has two confirmed cases in humans.

"It is decided to slaughter all swine herds present in Egypt, starting from today," said Health Minister Hatem el-Gabali, according to Mena news agency.

Maybe the target is not a virus:

The pigs in Egypt, a largely Muslim country, are raised by the Coptic Christian community.

Reducing price is the most direct path to making anything more affordable. Some colleges are remembering their mission is education, not young-adult daycare and sports entertainment:

Via Maggie’s Farm comes this performance:

Interestingly, it sounds to me much like the music encountered by the Starship Enterprise about 500 years hence.

Yes. Yes. Oh. My. God. YES!

In The Case for a Federalism Amendment, in today's Wall Street Journal, I suggest that that states petition for a convention to propose an amendment repealing the 16th Amendment authorizing an income tax. Such a repeal would result in the Congress imposing a national uniform "excise" or sales tax as authorized by Article I, Sec. 8.

Alternatively, states could include the repeal of the 16th Amendment in a more comprehensive "Federalism Amendment" such as this:

…Morality is ambiguous, difficult, and requires thought.

Quoted from: Commenter Gloria at ShrinkWrapped.

Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano is in the headlines today for her seemingly lazy understanding of how 9-11 terrorists entered the United States. She heard a story that fit her preconceptions, and closed her mind. The truth is what she believes, not what the facts support. I might use this to launch into a rant about the Klink Administration’s narrative-driven policy, and how that method is inferior to reason-driven policy. Instead, it reminds me of something I wanted to bring up last week.

It’s Earth Day, and many outlets are picking up some version of this story:

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that overweight people were likely to be more responsible for carbon emissions than slim people because they consume more food and fuel.
…
‘Staying slim is good for health and for the environment. We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness, and recognise it as a key factor in the battle to reduce emissions and slow climate change.’