This past Sunday, the New York Times had an interesting editorial which was based on a report appearing a week ago in the Washington Post. The editorial pointed out that the Internal Revenue Service has had its budget cut by 14 percent and, as a direct consequence, the agency’s ability to audit taxpayers has been…
John Mica, a Republican congressman from Florida, has made a political career out of denigrating Amtrak. And he does it with a sneer. For instance, he always – and I mean always– refers to Amtrak as “America’s soviet-style railroad”. He delivers the line, then pauses … waiting, with a smirk, for his audience to react….
It’s no secret that Republicans in Congress, egged on by conservative pundits like Michael Barone and libertarian “think tanks” like the Cato Institute, have been critical of Amtrak for years. Their hot button is the annual subsidy Amtrak gets from the federal government. (They’re agin it.) Among transportation experts, however, it’s accepted as a certainty…
It really does appear that California will get its high-speed train! The California Assembly – first the House and now the Senate – has given final approval to the project in final do-or-die, put-up-or-shut-up votes. Mostly, with only a couple of exceptions, the votes were along party lines: Democrats in favor, Republicans opposed. Hardly a…