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For Awhile I lived in the DC area and one of the best things about living there was the commuter trains.  I lived in Sterling a suburb of DC, but within minutes I could get to the city by hopping on a commuter train, the same was true when I briefly lived in Yonkers New York, get on a train and a few minutes later I was in the city.

Sounds like other people are starting to appreciate trains as much as I did:

Last week, the Senate passed a measure that would provide $10 billion for Amtrak over the next six years. The legislation, if passed, would not only go a long way towards helping Amtrak get out of its financial hole, but the infusion of cash would provide a major boost of investment in our rail infrastructure at a time when demand for passenger trains is growing.

Contrary to popular opinion, since the mid 1990s, we have seen an explosion in rail demand and service, primarily focused among commuter and short to medium intercity routes. From 1995 to 2005, commuter rail usage grew over 20 percent, from 352 to 423 million passenger trips. Over the same period, 421 miles of new commuter and light rail track has been built.

Public transportation where I live now primarily uses busses and as much as I want to use them I cannot stand taking the bus. Trains are nice in that they don’t stop every other block and for the most part it is very relaxing to take a train a bus not so much; plus trains generally run on time. Not to mention that if you are out drinking or something you probably will not get a DUI for taking the train.

The article mentions that trains are very efficient:

But the demand for passenger rail is only part of the story. An investment in a national rail system makes economic sense as well. A single railroad track, just 6 feet across, has the capacity of a superhighway 10 times wider. And just like highway spending, the jobs created by rail construction will more than pay for the original investment. As for energy savings, even the most conservative studies give trains an advantage of 4 to 1 over cars and airplanes

See the entire article here.

If this is true it seems like he is trying to be the victim hoping people will come to his defense. 

Former Bay State Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign furiously denied rumors yesterday that his own supporters were involved in calls placed to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire that spread anti-Romney smears under the guise of conducting a poll.
Political strategists and bloggers slung accusations at Romney’s camp yesterday after a scathing article appeared in the National Review titled “Did Mitt Romney Push Poll Himself?” which identified several Romney supporters at Western Wats, a Utah-based firm believed to have made the calls. The practice of using phony polls to plant a negative message is commonly known as push-polling.

It is interesting that the “talk tough” party spends a lot of time complaining about how mean everyone is to them.

See the article here

Josh Marshall who is much smarter than me weighs in here

Here’s a review of Hunter’s biography: (JOE KLEIN – NYTimes) On July 2, 1974, I started work as deputy Washington bureau chief for Rolling Stone magazine. My unlikely boss was Richard Goodwin, the former Kennedy speechwriter, who invited me to join him in temporary residence at Ethel Kennedy’s home in McLean, Va. (the owner was in Hyannis for the summer). On July 3, Hunter Thompson joined us. Much of what ensued that holiday weekend is lost in the mists of history and a fog of controlled substances. There were extensive conversations about the viability of renting a truck, filling it with rats and dumping them on the White House lawn. There was also an effort to remove all the Andy Williams songs from the Kennedy jukebox and replace them with Otis Redding. But mostly I remember having a marathon conversation with Hunter about books and writers, settling finally on Joseph Conrad’s exhortation in “Lord Jim”: “In the destructive element immerse!”

This was, no surprise, one of Hunter’s favorite lines, and it led him into an astonishingly candid assessment of his own career, which was then at its peak. He had published his two brilliant “Fear and Loathing” books, and he was worried about what came next. He didn’t want to become a dull parody of himself but feared he lacked the gumption to jump the gravy train. I asked if he’d ever thought about stowing the psychedelic pyrotechnics — his “gonzo” journalism — and sitting down and writing a serious, straight-ahead novel. Well, of course he had. But, he said, “Without that,” and he glanced over at the satchel in which he carried his array of vegetation and chemicals, “I’d have the brain of a second-rate accountant.”

Hunter Thompson was always much more, and sometimes a bit less, than the sum of his ribald public persona. In compiling this oral history, Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour could easily have succumbed to the same temptation that Hunter did: to celebrate the myth, to recount a numbing parade of hilarious, drug-addled Hunter stories, and to miss the man. Continue reading →

Some people(and you know who you are) argue that any government intervention in the free market produces bad results.  One place where these people may be right is in the case of farm subsidies.

It may surprise you to learn that the federal government buys up millions of dollars worth of bacon, burgers, and fatty meat and dairy products and dumps them in our schools and food assistance programs. This practice persists, in part, because companies making these unhealthy products give millions of dollars to members of Congress through political action committees. Until these practices end, stopping childhood obesity will remain a difficult challenge.

The sad part about this farm policy is that it seems to turn the “heartland” into a welfare state that depends on government subsidies to survive, while at the same time harming the health of the rest of the country.

See the entire article here

Jonathan Cohn has this to say about universal health coverage:

Of course, the idea of involving the government in these decisions is anathema to many conservatives–since, they argue, the private sector is bound to make better decisions than a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington. But, while that’s frequently true in economics, health care may be an exception. One feature of the U.S. insurance system is its relentless focus on short-term good. Private insurers have little incentive to pay for interventions that don’t yield immediate benefits, because they are gaining and losing members all the time. As a result, money invested on patient health may very well help a competitor’s bottom line. What’s more, the for-profit insurance industry–like the pharmaceutical and device industries–responds to Wall Street, which cares more about quarterly filings than long-term financial health. So there’s relatively little incentive to spend money on the kinds of innovations that yield long-term, diffuse benefits–such as the creation of a better information infrastructure that would help both doctors and consumers judge what treatments are necessary when.

Health care may be one of thise areas that the market is not the best judge of what should be produced and how much of it should be consumed. I would add that to an extent health care is also a “blind item” in that you are depending on an expert in the form of a doctor to tell you what is the best course of treatment. Most of us do not possess the expertise to diagnose are own illnesses and certainly cannot treat most of them ourselves. For this we depend on an expert and if that expert is guided by a profit motive the advice may not always be the best.

The entire article is here and well worth reading

Passed with much fan fair the health care plan in Massachusetts does not seem to be working out.

With just seven weeks left until 2008, tens of thousands of Massachusetts residents — up to 100,000 or more by some estimates — have yet to sign up for insurance plans created as part of the state’s historic health care reform law.

This has left insurers falling far short of expectations for signing up new customers, as countless people — intentionally or otherwise — come perilously close to risking fines and escalating penalties if they don’t obtain insurance by the end of the year.

As near as I can tell the entire health care “plan” was a law that told people “you will buy insurance” and did not seem to make any provision for making that insurance affordable. 

These plans cost as little as $200 per month in monthly premiums and carry annual deductibles as high as $5,000, depending on age or plan purchase.

$200 per month with a $5000 deductile is not a bargain, in fact sme people might argue that once they passed a law that people had to purchase insurance some, companies may have increased their prices knowing that people had to buy their product.  The penalties are also rather severe for not purchasing health insurance.

Individuals who don’t obtain insurance by the end of the year lose the state’s $219 individual tax exemption. Fines in future years escalate to up to half the cost of an average health plan.

Great, lets take people that are already facing financial hardships and make it even harder for them to comply with the law by fining them. Certain people who read this blog are probably going to point out that government interference is always bad and this is just one more example, and they would have a point. I would counterthat argument with the idea that half-assed government interference is the problem here. The state is going to great lengths to regulate indavidual conduct without regulating corporate conduct. The end result is a very uneven playing field where the insurance companies have a bad product that they know people have to buy.  Sounds like almost any company under a communist dictatership. 

In order to fix this problem all of the indaviduals involved in health care need to act responsibly, that includes the patient, the insurance company and the doctor.  The Massachusetts law trys to make people act responsibly, hopefully now regulators will start looking at the other groups involved.

See the whole article here

Seems like every conservative project be it the war on drugs or the war on sex creates more problems, without fixing whatever it was they thought was broken in the first place.

A study suggests the earlier you lose your virginity, the less likely you are to become a delinquent. Old finding: Kids who have early sex become delinquents. New findings: 1) When you eliminate genetic differences by comparing twins, those who have sex earlier don’t become more delinquent. 2) Compared with fraternal twins, identical twins lose their virginity at relatively similar ages, which implies that the age at which you lose your virginity is genetically influenced. 3) In fact, “adolescents who had sex at younger ages were less likely to end up delinquent than those who lost their virginity later.” Researchers’ conclusions: 1) Early sex and delinquency share a genetic basis, probably in propensity to take risks. 2) For teens with risk-taking genes, “sexual relationships may offer an alternative to trouble.” Old advice: Pet your dog, not your date. New advice: Pop a cherry, not a cap. Bonus report: Kids who smoke pot (but not cigarettes) are “significantly more likely to practice sports and they have a better relationship with their peers” than kids who smoke neither

See the whole article here

UPDATE:

Another abstinence only success story:

More than 1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the United States last year — the most ever reported for a sexually transmitted disease, federal health officials said Tuesday.

“A new U.S. record,” said Dr. John M. Douglas Jr. of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More bad news: Gonorrhea rates are jumping again after hitting a record low, and an increasing number of cases are caused by a “superbug” version resistant to common antibiotics, federal officials said Tuesday.

See the articel here
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I am not sure that single payer is the way to go, but hopefully the government can step in with some regulations that can prevent things like this:

Internal company documents made public in the suit “provided an unprecedented peek at a company’s internal operations and marked the first time an insurer had revealed how it linked cancellations to employee performance goals and to its bottom line,” reported Lisa Girion in the LA newspaper.

The documents outline the role played by Barbara Fowler, Health Net’s senior analyst overseeing rescission reviews. The company set out to cut millions of dollars in costs by denying customer’s care, and Fowler was in charge of that effort, cutting around 300 policies per year.

this is one of those issues that could be fixed with a little government intervention, maybe a regulation that prevents an insurance company from dropping someone after they have made a certain number of payments.  It seems that cases like this become the basis for many people suggesting a single payer system and eliminating insurance companies altogether.  Hopefully insurance companies will realize that if they don’t start behaving in a more responsible manner the industry may not survive into the next decade.

See the entire article here 

I got this from the free preview section of the Wallstreet journal

Ben Bernanke is a married man. But if he weren’t, there’s at least one woman who wouldn’t want anything to do with the Federal Reserve Chairman’s policy charms: Gisele Bundchen. The Brazilian supermodel is reportedly now insisting that she be paid in a currency other than the U.S. dollar.

“Contracts starting now are more attractive in euros …

From the little bit offered it sounds like the Wallstreet Journal is trying to lay the blame for the falling dollar at the feet of the federal reserve chairman, the Dollar was falling long before he was appointed, in fact it seemed like the fall of the Dollar may have started about the same time that conservatives took over the whitehouse.  Some of the hate America crowd, like the guy here,have pointed out that soon Americans will be sneaking into Canada so that they can send Canadian Dollars home to the US.  I wonder if part of the reason certan people are so against mexican immigrants is that they know soon they will be competing for the same jobs in Canada.  A better solution to the xenophobia in some circles might be to get the US off its current path to third world obscurity.