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Post by casimira on Jan 25, 2021 1:26:26 GMT
Thank you for the links Bixa. I imagine that the argument will be that it is up to each individual state to decide what their policy re education will entail.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 25, 2021 2:11:29 GMT
Well, as Htmb pointed out, some of it is out of the hands of the federal government.
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Post by casimira on Jan 25, 2021 14:47:36 GMT
I see that now after reviewing the previous posts. Thanks for pointing me in that direction HTMB.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 25, 2021 19:52:28 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 18, 2021 4:40:31 GMT
I know that President Biden is not responsible for the weather in Texas (and elsewhere), although I suppose he could call in the National Guard or whatever to set up some heated tent cities. But I am finding it remarkably ironic to read reports of American refugees fleeing to Mexico, a country which has electricity and heat.
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Post by bjd on Feb 18, 2021 7:56:16 GMT
I heard an interview with an American engineer in Austin, Texas, the other day. He said that Texas has its own grid and doesn't share with neighbours. Hence, it cannot rely on power from outside the state.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 13, 2021 20:06:53 GMT
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Post by Kimby on Mar 14, 2021 1:19:23 GMT
Bixa, there is a great deal of excitement and organizing efforts to bring passenger rail service to the southern rail line across Montana, which would bring it through Missoula, my town.
The Hi-Line is the northern tier of counties which does have rail service between Chicago and Seattle, though during the pandemic it has been reduced by more than half. It connects many small towns in the Northeast corner of the state, but misses the larger cities. Many people use that route to travel to Glacier Park and Whitefish from the eastern US. There’s also a really cool railroad hotel at Essex called Isaac Walton Inn, which has miles of cross-country skiing in the winter.
The Southern route would hit many of the bigger Montana cities (towns by many standards), Billings, Bozeman, Butte , and Missoula, and has been on our wish list for decades. There used to be TWO railroads through Missoula, the Northern Pacific north of the river and the Milwaukee Road on the south bank. We still have the train stations to prove it, though they now house offices instead of passengers.
IF we get passenger rail service it will use the north tracks now used for freight (coal, oil, wheat, lumber, cars, and containers). The Milwaukee Road rail bed is now used as trails for much of its length, including the fabulous Route of the Hiawatha, that crosses the Montana Idaho state line and has 7 tunnels and 10 high trestles. A scenic and exciting recreational ride.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 14, 2021 3:02:49 GMT
Kimby, that is genuinely exciting! Truly, there is nothing quite like rolling through grand vistas which are inaccessible to anything but trains. And how civilized and fun if you could get on a train in your town in order to visit a friend two or three towns away. It seems imperative to the whole vision of America to re-institute rails running through the great West.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 14, 2021 4:25:39 GMT
However, American trains will never be like European or Asian rail systems. Our tracks can’t handle high speeds, so combined with the great distances in America, train journeys can be very long, of several days duration. Who has time for that?
Plus passenger rail needs to be heavily subsidized, and loses bucketloads of money, except for a few commuter routes.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 14, 2021 15:21:51 GMT
Not sure where this is coming from, but wouldn’t this be nice? Even though I’m in the high speed desert of the Northern Rockies.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 22, 2021 14:03:46 GMT
Because I know so little about the railroad system in general, I am unsure if this merger involves passenger traffic. Nevertheless, it is interesting on any number of levels ~ $29 Billion Railroad Merger to Connect U.S., Mexico and CanadaIn case the article is paywalled: {Spoiler}By Lauren Hirsch March 21, 2021 Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern announced plans on Sunday to combine in a $29 billion deal that would create the first railroad network connecting the United States, Mexico and Canada.
It is an effort to capitalize on the trade flows expected to run through the three countries after President Donald J. Trump signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement into law last year. It’s also a bet on the strength of the industrial economy as the United States rebounds from the pandemic.
Canadian Pacific links major ports on the East and West Coasts between the United States and Canada, while Kansas City Southern connects the United States, Mexico and Panama. The two connect on a single point: a joint facility in Kansas City, Mo., where Kansas City Southern is based.
“This deal just has so many longer-term strategic advantages,” Kansas City Southern’s chief executive, Patrick J. Ottensmeyer, said in an interview. “Our board really saw the value in putting these two companies together right now.”
The combined company, Canadian Pacific Kansas City, will have its global headquarters in Calgary, Alberta, while Kansas City will serve as its U.S. headquarters. It will operate roughly 20,000 miles of rail and generate sales of about $8.7 billion. Canadian Pacific’s chief executive, Keith Creel, will oversee the new entity.
The deal values Kansas City Southern at $275 per share, representing a 23 percent premium to its closing price on Friday. Investors will receive 0.489 of a Canadian Pacific share and $90 in cash for each Kansas City common share.
It is also a significant increase from the reported $208 a share offer from the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, that Kansas City Southern rebuffed last year. Shares of Kansas City are up 12 percent year-to-date, while shares of Canadian Pacific have climbed almost 10 percent.
The boards of both companies have unanimously approved the cash-and-stock deal, which is expected to close by the middle of 2022, subject to customary approvals.
The railroad industry can be viewed as a bellwether of industrial activity; it expects to benefit from a growing U.S. economy as it emerges from the pandemic. The Federal Reserve has signaled optimism for the nation’s economic outlook, and President Biden signed a $1.9 trillion spending bill into law this month.
Investors in Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern are not alone in their optimism for the industry’s outlook. Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway owns BNSF Railway, recently extolled the value he saw in the U.S. railroad industry in his annual letter.
The railroad executives on Sunday highlighted other opportunities they see in the deal. Mr. Creel called the merger a “compelling opportunity to take trucks off the road” at a time when the United States is focused on a transition to a greener economy. It also reduces risks in the global supply chain after a pandemic that highlighted its weaknesses, Mr. Ottensmeyer said.
The deal needs approval from the Surface Transportation Board, a division of the Department of Transportation, which has previously acknowledged concerns that railroad consolidation has led to service issues for shippers. Canadian Pacific’s past efforts to acquire U.S. railroads have failed, in part because of such concerns. That includes talks with CSX Corporation in 2014 and Norfolk Southern in 2016. And the Biden administration has already signaled a tougher stance on antitrust scrutiny.
Because of its size, Kansas City Southern is exempt from guidelines put in place in 2001 to tighten deal scrutiny in the industry. The combined company would still be the smallest of the remaining six largest freight railroads operating in the United States. The two railroads have no overlap, Mr. Creel and Mr. Ottensmeyer said — and, in some cases, the transaction will create new markets.
“There’s zero other deals that represent the uniqueness of this deal,” Mr. Creel said.
Lauren Hirsch joined the New York Times from CNBC in 2020, covering business, policy and mergers and acquisitions. Ms. Hirsch studied comparative literature at Cornell University and has an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. @laurenshirsch
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Post by htmb on Mar 22, 2021 14:11:41 GMT
Sounds like it’s only freight traffic, but interesting all the same.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 22, 2021 16:08:15 GMT
I can't imagine many passengers wanting to take a train between Canada and Mexico. (Of course I would be an exception.)
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 22, 2021 16:22:40 GMT
I would certainly be onboard for that!
My very first trip to Mexico started in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas and ended in Mérida, Yucatán. I would do it again.
I think anyone who ever read The Great Railway Bazaar always dreams of taking an epic train journey.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 22, 2021 20:39:29 GMT
Well, that certainly whets the appetite for a good, vista-packed train journey. I am moving that post to this thread, where I wrote: I stubbornly cling to the hope that train travel will return to Mexico ...Let's keep our fingers crossed that one day the video will have to be moved yet again to a fat, full thread entitled "train travel in Mexico".
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Post by mickthecactus on Mar 22, 2021 21:14:25 GMT
TraIn is my favourite method of travel by some distance.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 23, 2021 19:35:57 GMT
Note the lovely link between Mtl and Boston, through the hills and (low) mountains of l'Estrie southeast of here, and Northern New England... Not just hockey fans, also academics.
Throughout North and South America, admirable railway networks have been dismantled. I remember their importance in the public art of many American countries, in mid-century.
I'm not a great Biden fan - obviously he is head and shoulders above the fascist turd before him - but his rail buff credentials are most admirable.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 14, 2021 9:22:59 GMT
The United States is finally leaving Afghanistan (maybe -- too soon to be sure) with absolutely nothing to show for it. Yet it spent more than 2 trillion dollars there in 20 years and lost 2300 soldiers. Think of all of the infrastructure that could have been rebuilt in America during that period with no loss of life.
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Post by mickthecactus on Apr 14, 2021 10:02:53 GMT
History shows that country after country has fought in Afghanistan. None of them has won.
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Post by Kimby on Apr 14, 2021 10:34:14 GMT
Kerouac, nothing to show for it? Our military-industrial complex is doing quite well from it. War machine jobs, and CEO fat bank accounts. Sad, that I can tell you.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 14, 2021 10:40:33 GMT
History shows that country after country has fought in Afghanistan. None of them has won. It is said, you can't buy an Afghani. You can only rent one.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 20, 2021 6:23:36 GMT
It was already being put in place before the current president came into office, but it looks like the administration is perpetuating the Guantanamo for children at the Mexican border. The BBC has been filing particularly alarming reports about it, but even the American media find the time to report on it every now and then.
It appears that American public opinion is totally indifferent, except maybe for those who live near the border and see it every day. Naturally, news crews are not permitted to film inside the camps because they might find out that things are even worse than the information filtering out.
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Post by bjd on Apr 20, 2021 6:39:50 GMT
The "Honor First" motto on the door seems particularly apt.
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Post by fumobici on Apr 20, 2021 15:26:04 GMT
There's no satisfactory solution to thousands of cynical and unfit parents dumping their children at the US-Mexico border and hoping for the best. They should be treated humanely and sent back to Mexico to staunch the flux.
The real solutions are economic and social justice in Central America to deal with the problem at the source, but that won't be easy and might involve supporting leftist and indigenous movements that American conservatives love to hate.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 20, 2021 15:59:19 GMT
At last we see the right wing side of fumobici! "Not my problem! Send them back!" I was watching a long report on the BBC this morning where a Central American mother was saying that her husband and her brother had been killed by the drug cartels, and she was trying to escape. She filed a request for asylum in the United States but received no reply after six months. Her children were taken from her at the border.
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Post by fumobici on Apr 20, 2021 17:14:33 GMT
They've escaped the immediate danger once they've crossed north into Mexico. At that point on, they are ordinary economic migrants.
On immigration, yeah, it has to be controlled and orderly rather than chaotic and crisis-driven. Any attempts at compassionate measures that shortcut the process will instantly be cynically exploited by and flooded with economic migrants not wanting to go through the necessarily slow and bureaucratic legal process of orderly immigration. Nations have every right to control who enters their countries in any way they see fit. If borders were opened, literal billions of people would simply pour from the poorest countries to the wealthiest until all countries were poor ones with no social welfare systems at all.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 20, 2021 17:22:00 GMT
Anyway, the entire world has basically seen just two images of "abandoned" children -- the two little girls being dropped over the wall captured by an infrared camera and the little boy crying because he had lost the people that he was with. And we have seen them dozens of times to ensure that the commentary makes us understand that their parents must be horrible people. These two images were enough for the media to construct an image of "cynical and unfit" parents dumping their children. Since fumobici says that "thousands" of parents did this, he must have data to which I am not privy.
It is so easy to manipulate public opinion, especially when reporters are prevented from entering the children's concentration camps. All we really know is that they were designed for adults and therefore look like prison cells. Not a problem -- children don't know the difference and they are just foreign scum. Everybody knows that immigrants do not at all contribute to the American economy.
I'm just waiting to see what Biden does. Probably nothing.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 21, 2021 12:26:13 GMT
American public opinion is totally indifferent That is not at all true, which I imagine you know, but choose to ignore in order to continue your incessant, peevish, pointless US bashing. I have no solid statistics, but most people have been and remain appalled by the situation on the border, especially as it pertains to children. There are ongoing volunteer efforts by groups and individuals, regardless of their political leanings, to relieve the plight of the immigrants on the US side. As far as the video, it is illuminating and just a shame that it led off with the rantings of that Flores woman, rather than with the balanced reporting further on in the report. thousands of cynical and unfit parents dumping their children at the US-Mexico border and hoping for the best. They should be treated humanely and sent back to Mexico to staunch the flux. That is such bullshit. These "cynical and unfit" parents are overwhelmingly poor, under-educated, and often tragically naïve people who are so desperate over conditions in Central America that they have struggled across at least one country in order to reach the border of the US. Trump's policy was in fact to send them back to Mexico, even though people in recent waves are overwhelmingly not Mexican. Mexico is in fact rather harsh about rounding up undocumented foreigners, but we have all seen the masses of people rushing the Guatemala-Mexico border to the point they could not be held back. Just as there are inadequate facilities for them on the US side, Mexico cannot deal with the influx either. If I were a parent in a tent encampment on the Mexican side, you can bet your ass I would drop a child over the border in the hopes that the child would have a real roof over his/her head and would get some decent nutrition. Yes, of course all countries want to control who enters, but the US is on particularly shaky ground in that sense, considering that it's a stolen country to begin with and over 98% of its citizens are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. It's also a country which does not adequately share its resources with all its citizens, freaking out over the very suggestion that universal health care and education might make for a better country. Biden claims he wants a fairer shake for all citizens. He is talking a good game right now, although lags way behind most of the quite practical but "too Progressive" ideals which are still in the wind. The looming influx of immigrants and the existing crisis at the border is a good place to start showing that he might be able to turn a bad situation around.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 21, 2021 13:39:04 GMT
This needs to be removed from the Statue of Liberty.
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