Many people are excited about the prospect of having a self-driven car. They envision sitting comfortably in the vehicle, reading their paper, or catching up on work.
Experts are telling us that there will be millions of fewer road deaths and, once the technology is developed, probably big financial savings.
At first glance, it sounds great, and after a long period of adjustment, it no doubt will mean big gains for us all.
The dangerous underfunding of US infrastructure was underscored by a fatal train derailment on May 12th. The tragedy did not deter the House Appropriations Committee from voting to slash Amtrak funding the very next day. There are ways Congress could fund its massive infrastructure bill without raising taxes. But the conservative-controlled Congress seems to have other plans for the nation’s profitable public assets.
Wednesday at the very moment when President Obama was signing the clean bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security-- a bill that had been opposed by 167 Republicans and only backed by 75 Republicans-- Boehner passed another bill through the House that has his far right flank flipping out. This one, HR 749, was to reauthorize federal support for passenger rail programs.
As European flights lay freezing in airports across the capitals, with various de-icing procedures being implemented, the news about missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 began to makes its own way through the various channels. That sent a different sort of chill through discussions about air safety. The flight in question, with its 162 passengers, lost contact with air traffic control after take off on Saturday over the Java Sea heading to Singapore from Surabaya.
November 18, 2014: it’s a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China’s Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading for Madrid. It arrived on December 9.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has officially banned Palestinians from traveling on Israeli-run public transportation in the West Bank, according to a new report by Haaretz, Israel’s most prominent newspaper.
The new apartheid law dictates that Palestinians cannot take buses that go from central Israel to the West Bank. They must go out of their way, to the Eyal Crossing, near the city Qalqilyah, “far from populated settler areas.”
I suppose if a major bridge collapses-- 63,522 of them are obsolete or in need of crucial structural repair-- the Republicans will snap to and stop obstructing the transportation bill. Short of that… they'll give the president some crumbs to avoid a fuss in the media.
how do we stop the bleed in higher education which is the bleed of participatory governance?
One of the key line-in-the-sand differences between Republicans and Democrats is how the two parties spend tax dollars and from who they collect tax dollars. That line has been blurring, first under Clinton and now under Obama. Republicans conveniently want to lessen the tax burden on their wealthy campaign contributors at the expense of the middle class.
Working people around the world are in worse straits than they have been for decades. Unemployment is rampant and real wages are stagnant. Young people entering the job market face an uncertain future and a lack of understanding on how to change that. In the most capitalist nation of them all – the United States — the future only looks bright if one is a member of the shrinking but ever-richer ruling elite. Education is being attacked on all levels by the privateers and those who invest in their economy built on destruction and despair. Claiming to be held hostage by right-wing pro-cor
