One of the great George Carlin’s routines was about “stuff”. Of course, it was really about materialism, a commentary on our penchant for accumulating … uh … stuff. We don’t really need a house, he said, it’s just “a pile of stuff with a cover on it.” I know I’ve written about this before,…
I sat next to a very nice lady from Texas on my recent flight back to Maui from Los Angeles and, unlike most flights, we actually had some conversation. She and her husband were going to be here for a week and it was her first visit to Maui. She wanted to do all the…
Everyone knows there’s gridlock in Washington. Much of it has to do with proposals and projects that are in conflict with political ideologies … with a philosophy of governance. Amtrak’s annual visits to Congress offer a good example. Someone from our struggling national passenger rail system appears before an appropriations committee hat in hand,…
It would be nice if the anti-passenger-rail people in Congress and in state governments would show a little consistency. For example, if their philosophy of governance dictates that Amtrak should get no government subsidies, then shouldn’t that concept also apply to other transportation modes? To highways or bike lanes, for example? Or to the airlines?…