“The 53-car freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last year was operated by a crew of three men, none of whom were able to prevent the cascade of mechanical and communication failures that led to the unfortunate accident.
In response to that crash, the federal Department of Transportation announced on Tuesday a new policy requiring freight trains to operate with at least two-person crews—a mandate that the Biden administration says will enhance rail safety.
If you’ve passed first grade, you might now find yourself asking a rather basic question: Isn’t three more than two?
Rest assured that it is. However, in Washington, the policy-making calculus often relies on fuzzy math that is heavily influenced by the pull of special interests and the strong sense of do-something-ism.
Both are on display in the new freight railroad mandate. The derailment in East Palestine was bad, and something must be done. This is something, so now it is being done—and bonus points can be scored because doing this specific thing will please the Biden administration’s labor union allies, which have been lobbying the government for years to impose exactly this two-person crew mandate.
On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said it should be “common sense” that “large freight trains, some of which can be over three miles long, should have at least two crew members on board.”
The length of the train has absolutely nothing to do with it, but Buttigieg is gesturing toward the idea that a second person on board could bring the train to a halt if the driver is somehow incapacitated. And, indeed, it was longstanding railroading practice to have multiple people in the cab of freight trains for exactly this reason.
These days, however, it is automation and not a backup engineer that is responsible for a dramatic decline in railway accidents and injuries. Thanks to positive train control (PTC)—essentially a computer-based override system that monitors speed and track signals to avert collisions, and which railroads have been mandated by Congress to use since 2008—rail accidents have fallen by 30 percent while employee injuries are down 40 percent since 2000, according to data from the Association of American Railroads (AAR), an industry group.
Additionally, Buttigieg’s claim about “common sense” comports with neither the specifics of the East Palestine accident nor recent governmental reviews of the two-person crew mandate.
The Federal Railroad Administration spent three years investigating a proposed two-person crew mandate before concluding in 2019 that the rule was not “necessary or appropriate for railroad operations to be conducted safely,” largely because of the safety gains already made by automation. More recently, Congress considered—but, notably, did not enact—a two-member crew mandate in the wake of the East Palestine derailment.
As for the the East Palestine incident, having a crew of 10 people driving the train likely wouldn’t have made any difference. The crash was caused by an overheated wheel bearing, which failed and derailed the train as the crew was attempting to bring it to a stop. The three-person crew should have been alerted to the problem sooner, but at least one track-side detector meant to spot the wheel issue was not working properly.”
https://reason.com/2024/04/02/no-bidens-new-rail-crew-mandate-doesnt-make-common-sense/
“trade doesn’t need to balance. I have a trade deficit with my supermarket. They get more of my money every year. So, what? I don’t “lose.” I get food without having to grow it myself.
That’s a win for me and the food producer regardless of whether the food was grown locally or came from Mexico.
“Imports are great,” says Lincicome. “It means I can focus on what I want to do for a living and not go make my own food or make my own clothes. I can use those savings and buy other things that makes me better off.”
As long as trade is voluntary, trade is a win for both parties. It has to be; neither side would agree to it unless they think they get something out of the deal.”
…
“Manufacturing output in the U.S. is near its all-time high. We make more than Japan, Germany, India, and South Korea combined.”
https://reason.com/2024/04/03/trump-and-biden-both-get-globalization-wrong/
“”Households who buy government debt reduce their savings in productive private investments,” Kent Smetters and Marcos Dinerstein wrote in 2021 for the Penn Wharton Budget Model. “As the spending is unproductive, the economy is poorer and total savings is lower due to capital crowd out.”
“Government spending redirects real resources in the economy and can crowd out private capital formation,” they add. “An additional $1 trillion debt this year could decrease GDP by as much as 0.28 percent in 2050.”
If you take that insight and apply it to a world of governments on a collective borrowing spree, you end up with a hobbled global economy where prosperity becomes increasingly elusive.
“Medium-term growth rates are projected to continue declining on the back of mediocre productivity growth, weaker demographics, feeble investment and continued scarring from the pandemic,” note IMF’s Adrian, Gaspar, and Gourinchas. “Projections for growth five years ahead have fallen to the lowest level in decades.”
Heavy government borrowing also creates risk for the financial sector by putting banks at the mercy of massive debtors of uncertain creditworthiness. “The more banks hold of their countries’ sovereign debt, the more exposed their balance sheet is to the sovereign’s fiscal fragility,” note the IMF analysts.
Heavily indebted governments also reduce their ability to act as backstops in case of financial crisis as they become the likeliest causes of crises of the future. As they continue to borrow, they reduce the likelihood that productive private economic activity will grow them out of their financial problems.
“Higher government debt implies more state interference in the economy and higher taxes in the future,” The Economist points out in its interactive overview of global government debt. Also, add the editors, rising debt “creates a recurring popularity test for individual governments” which often goes poorly in terms of fiscal responsibility because paying outstanding bills isn’t popular with voters.”
https://reason.com/2024/04/03/with-rising-debt-the-u-s-federal-government-is-in-bad-company/
“Even if these subsidies were to create a manufacturing boom, it probably wouldn’t lead to an employment boom because most manufacturing output today is produced by robots.”
https://reason.com/2024/04/04/politicians-are-showering-manufacturing-companies-with-crony-subsidies-for-job-creation-it-wont-work/
“Washington is spending another $61 billion to help Ukraine. But most of the money will flow through the US economy first.
The new law will allow the Pentagon to send existing weapons — everything from bullets to missiles to tank parts — to Kyiv and then simultaneously backfill that inventory with new manufacturing efforts for US armories.
There are 117 production lines in about 71 US cities that are set to produce those weapons systems, according to research from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/biden-is-sending-61-billion-to-ukraine-much-of-it-will-pass-through-the-us-economy-first-162914531.html
“At a press conference, the Kentucky Republican pinpointed two men responsible for that delay: former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and former President Donald Trump.
“The demonization of Ukraine began by Tucker Carlson, who in my opinion ended up where he should have been all along, which is interviewing Vladimir Putin,” McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters. “And so he had an enormous audience, which convinced a lot of rank and file Republicans that maybe this was a mistake.”
“I think the former president had sort of mixed views on” Ukraine aid, he added, before alluding to the failed attempt to add border security provisions to the bill, “which requires you to deal with Democrats, and then a number of our members thought it wasn’t good enough.”
“And then our nominee for president didn’t seem to want us to do anything at all,” McConnell said. “That took months to work our way through it.”
The top Senate Republican has been an ardent supporter of Ukraine aid and battled a slew of conservative voices who have sought to block it. He called the expected passage of the bill “an important day for America, and a very important day of freedom-loving countries around the world.””
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mcconnell-says-tucker-carlson-trumps-223340768.html
“This noise was not produced by some kind of sonic weapon, however. It turned out to be crickets. Literal crickets.
And yet, this did not put Havana syndrome panic to rest, even though subsequent analysis by medical experts and U.S. intelligence suggests that the condition is not real. In 2022, the CIA concluded that the symptoms described by various officials were not caused by “a sustained global campaign by a hostile power.” The FBI’s analysis was that Havana syndrome is a “mass sociogenic illness,” which sounds pretty scary, but actually means that the symptoms are essentially caused by social contagion, under conditions of extreme stress, paranoia, and among members of an insular community. Writer Natalie Shure likened it to the “demonic fits” experienced by girls during the Salem witch trials.
“It means that the perceived diagnosis spreads socially, almost like an infectious pathogen would, with symptoms either triggered, exacerbated or wrongly ascribed to a phony cause,” she wrote in a November 2021 piece for Slow Boring. “People experience various maladies all the time and the cause is not always clear.””
https://reason.com/2024/04/04/be-skeptical-of-that-60-minutes-report-on-havana-syndrome/
“When school districts get rid of advanced offerings in a bid to reduce racial inequality, they end up doing to opposite of what they claim to intend. While wealthier families can move to better school districts or enroll their children in private schools, smart—yet poor—kids end up getting stuck in “equitable” classrooms that leave them under-stimulated and ignored.”
https://reason.com/2024/04/04/seattle-is-getting-rid-of-gifted-schools-in-a-bid-to-increase-equity/
How McConnell and Schumer beat hardline conservatives on Ukraine
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mcconnell-schumer-beat-hardline-conservatives-090000343.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVs2y-YeiFM