n8han archive rss twitter coderspiel

Blocking parallel imports ensures only a select number of vendors can bid, driving up prices. Usually there’s a small sop to American labor, well-publicized in the media with photo-ops of people in hard hats – e.g. the 250 jobs heralded for the Sprinter order – but the bulk of the extra money goes elsewhere. It creates makework for consultants and lobbyists.

And even if it were more effective. it would have a cost. It is not smart to burden your preferred transportation with extra costs. If you want to advocate for labor, advocate for it universally. Because if railroad operators are burdened with half-baked American liberalism while auto consumers are free to Buy Japan, Buy Korea, and very soon Buy China, you end up with the epic fail that is Amtrak.

Sadly, new generations seem determined to make the same mistakes. California’s HSR advocates wanted a requirement that their trains receive 100% of their power from renewable sources. That sounds great, but it’s really very stupid. It is hard enough to actually get HSR built without decimating its potential profitability in order to make it even greener than it naturally friggin’ is. Go ahead and sign a paper saying that all energy use must be 100% renewable, if it’s as easy as that.

Unless you want your favorite projects to fail and your favorite policies to be discredited along with them, please do not load every possible noble passion into one advocacy basket.

Frelinghuysen sponsored an amendment to reallocate high-speed rail funds for Midwest flood relief.

Talk about treating the symptoms.

Police brass are now reconsidering changing the penalty to three days for the first offense, five for a second and eight for a third — under a plan devised due to a widening ticket-fixing scandal in the department.

The ticket slowdown has prompted some bosses to threaten to ride along with cops so that they’ll be pressured to issue more tickets, sources said.

Last night on Adams I was stopped at a light next to a crossover SUV, that Nissan or Infiniti trophy model you still see a lot of. After all the pedestrians had crossed, its driver blithely proceeded through red light just as I was planning to do. I shrugged and followed on my bicycle.

Our roads are over-engineered for speed and under-designed for safety. Our traffic laws mostly protect the strong from the weak and the fast from the slow. But police refuse to enforce them anyway, if they must also enforce them against friends.

Something has got to give.