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One of the effects of turning something into a culture war is it tends to undermine support for the idea in question by sending the more timid elements in search of a compromise solution. Some people seek compromise over the best, smartest, most sensible solution, and it is these people who are the true target [...]
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko may or may not have been a good scientist. (According to the agricultural scientists, he probably wasn’t.) But he was a good scientist in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, where ideological correctness, toeing the party line, was far more important than whether your conclusions were actually valid or not. Lysenko was [...]
The 2012 election can’t come quickly enough. The House Transportation Committee, headed by Florida Republican John Mica, has proposed privatizing the Amtrak Northeast Corridor: “We plan introduce legislation to separate the Northeast Corridor from Amtrak, transfer it to a separate entity, and begin a competitive bidding process that would allow for a public-private partnership to [...]
I wanted to like this editorial in today’s New York Times. It starts off so well: The agreement between Congress and the White House to virtually eliminate money for high-speed rail is harebrained. France, China, Brazil, even Russia, understand that high-speed rail is central to future development. Not Washington. It’s a great defense of high [...]
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