Last night—and I mean between 2:16 and 6:32 in the wee hours—I received a half dozen calls on my cel phone: two from Belarus; one each from Latvia, Estonia and the British Virgin Islands; and one from some unidentified location in the U.S. No messages were left on my voicemail. A few days ago, while…
There was a time when George Will wrote columns that were entertaining and made sense. Of course, those were the ones about baseball, a subject of which he has considerable knowledge. After a Will column that appeared a week ago, cleverly called “Off the Rails at Amtrak”, it’s quite clear that George Will knows next…
Every so often, something pops up out of government and you have to say, “Where the hell did that come from!” A recent example: when the Surface Transportation Board proposed a rule change that could turn the world of passenger rail on its head. How and why requires a little background. In 1970,…
Back in 1970, when the private railroads were all desperate to get out of the money-losing passenger business, the federal government put together a deal: Amtrak was created to operate the passenger trains in the country and the freight railroads would be paid to accommodate Amtrak trains on their systems. In addition, the freight railroads…