Quotulatiousness

November 15, 2018

“… like watching a spontaneous Humanitarian Olympics rise up out of the town itself”

Filed under: Business, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Gerard Vanderleun is one of the refugees from the Camp fire that burned out all of the town of Paradise, California. He’s staying in Chico, fortunately with a roof over his head, unlike many of his fellow Paradisians who lost literally everything but what they were wearing:

In the 24-Hour Walgreens Pharmacy on East Avenue, the pharmacists have been working overlapping shifts since the fire swept over Paradise last Thursday. These people and their back up staff work seemingly rock solid for hours on end. They fill and file and dispense medications which people from Paradise do not have with them. This is a demanding and thankless and exhausting task. And yet — I am the witness — they have been doing this without letup. Many have come in from surrounding towns, from Redding, to help and to keep the medications needed by a town of 30,000 displaced into a city of 80,000. Yes, the Walgreens pharmacists are leaving it all on the field.

Today, after the banking holiday of Monday, there was what can only be described as a run on the banks. Not a hostile or panicked run on the banks but just an overwhelming number of people needing to get their money straight in one way or another… such as “My ATM Card and My ID were melted in my wallet when my pants burst into flame.” Please understand that today in Chico that is a reasonable statement. And the bankers all showed up looking cool and formal and professional and competent and moved the vast lines of people through with all hands on deck and cleared up a myriad of money crises. One banker I spoke with came up from Santa Rosa on his day off to help the team. He was a sharp dressed man. He and the other bankers were leaving it all on the field.

They all were leaving it all on the field everywhere in Chico. From Penny’s in the Mall to the Birkenstocks Store downtown on Broadway. In big jobs, and in small jobs, there was a long train of people working at the top of their game no matter what their game was. It has been days of this now in Chico; days of there being no big jobs or small jobs but only the unremitting effort the people to help their fellow citizens no matter what.

And since none of the Acronym Agencies have really shown up yet, this has all been done without any real government organization. Instead, it has been like watching a spontaneous Humanitarian Olympics rise up out of the town itself; and once started it has become as self-organizing and self-sustaining as the fire itself. Today as I moved around Chico I saw a town, untouched itself by the flames, rise up to restore and rebuild the lives of their fellow citizens of Paradise; lives that the fire had stolen. And by the end of the day, you could feel, palpably feel, that Chico knew it would win. Chico was leaving it all on the field.

Tomorrow? Chico will do the same.

The Romance of the Rails

Filed under: Cancon, History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Randal O’Toole’s new book on North American railways goes straight to my “wish list”. He’s also a long-time fan of railways, but has been forced to admit that attempts to bring back the golden age of rail are wasted effort because railways — especially US and Canadian lines — are built to carry bulk freight efficiently and economically but attempts to also carry large numbers of passengers quickly cannot be successful without building entirely separate (high-speed) lines. This is from the introduction to The Romance of the Rails [PDF]:

Amtrak’s
Eastbound Empire Builder crossing Two Medicine Trestle at East Glacier MT on 20 July 2011.
Photo by Steve Wilson via Wikimedia Commons.

Early in my career, I joined the National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP) and supported more funding for Amtrak. Later, I realized Amtrak was poorly managed and supported Amtrak reform. More recently, along with NARP founder Anthony Haswell — who is sometimes called the Father of Amtrak — I became completely disillusioned with the idea of government-run trains and have argued for abolishing the heavily subsidized federal passenger rail corporation.

My attitudes toward urban transit have also undergone a transition. In 1972, as an undergraduate student, I wrote a paper for the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG) advocating low-cost transit improvements in Portland aimed at attracting people out of their automobiles and reducing air pollution. When the director of OSPIRG later became general manager of TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, he implemented some of those improvements, and transit ridership surged. To be honest, I didn’t propose rail transit reform in 1972 simply because I didn’t think there was much chance of that happening. However, I later became more skeptical of rail transit when Portland built an expensive light-rail line, followed by more lines that were even more expensive.

That skepticism has led some people to call me “anti-transit” and “anti-passenger train.” But I’m not. If someone could design a rail system that attracted riders and efficiently moved them from place to place, I’d be the first to endorse it. As this book will show, however, this is no more likely to happen than the freight railroads converting back to steam power. The next technology replacement will not be people trading in their cars for high-speed trains and light rail. Rather, it will be people trading in their human-driven cars for increasingly autonomous cars that drive themselves.

The short answer to the question of why passenger trains and streetcars have been replaced by planes, cars, and buses is that rails are more expensive and less flexible than the alternatives. To understand why, the first 10 chapters of this book will delve deep into the history of rail to show how passenger rail transportation once worked, who it worked for, and what has changed so that it no longer works today. This history demonstrates why statements such as, “High-speed trains have faster downtown-to-downtown times than flying” or “Light rail provides an alternative to congested roads going to work” are not relevant. Chapter 11 discusses the question of why passenger rail seems to work in Europe and Asia but not in North America.

Chapters 12 through 17 will each focus on a different kind of passenger rail, from streetcars to high-speed rail. Finally, Chapter 18 will demonstrate why we love trains, but also why we can’t expect them to do for us what they did in the 19th century.

Passenger rail was once an important part of our history, but today it represents a drag on our economy. I still love passenger trains, but I don’t think other people should have to subsidize my hobby.

Amazon’s HQ$2Bn decision

Filed under: Business, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

If you had any doubt that the Amazon HQ2 competition was about anything other than trolling for economic bribes, this should banish the thought:

Amazon is getting some prime real estate.

In exchange for more than $2 billion in economic incentives, the online shopping giant will locate a pair of new corporate headquarters just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., and just across the East River from Manhattan. Tuesday’s much-anticipated announcement of the locations for Amazon’s “HQ2” also included details — which had previously been kept from the public — about the economic incentives that successfully lured the Seattle-based firm to the east coast’s political and economic hubs.

Amazon says it will invest $5 billion and create more than 50,000 jobs across the two new locations, with at least 25,000 employees at each of its new corporate campuses, to be located in Virginia’s Crystal City and New York’s Long Island City. Nashville wins a consolation prize: a new supply chain and logistics center that promises 5,000 jobs in exchange for $102 million in economic incentives.

In New York, Amazon will receive $1.2 billion in refundable tax credits through a state-level economic development program and a cash grant of $325 million that’s tied to the construction of new buildings at the Long Island City location over the next 10 years. In Virginia, the state is ponying up $573 million in tax breaks tied to the creation of 25,000 jobs, and the city of Arlington will provide a cash grant of $23 million over 15 years funded by an existing tax on hotel rooms.

Yes, the numbers are staggering — New York state’s pledge of $1.52 billion for 25,000 jobs works out to more than $60,000 in taxpayer support per new job created — but Amazon appears to have selected New York and the D.C. area based on more than just how many zeroes local officials agreed to put on the giant cardboard check.

After all, New Jersey offered Amazon $5 billion (with another $2 billion from Newark), and Maryland offered $8.5 billion. Yet Amazon passed them both over to pick their neighbors.

Colt Model 639: MACVSOG’s Vietnam Carbine

Filed under: Asia, History, Military, Technology, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 24 Oct 2018

http://www.forgottenweapons.com/colt-…

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

The Colt Model 639 was the export version of the Colt Model 629, which was type classified by the US military as the XM177E2 and issued to MACVSOG special operations units in 1967 and 1968. Improved from the Model 609 carbine, the 629/639 has an 11.5 inch barrel and an interesting small muzzle device (“moderator”) which served to change the signature of its firing to sound much more like an AK-type rifle than an M16. The device does that job well – at least until it had been fired extensively, which slowly fills up the (non-disassemblable) unit with carbon and powder residue, substantially reducing its effectiveness. It has a full-fence lower, standard carbine buffer and spring, and a two position aluminum collapsing stock. It is the iconic weapon of US special forces in Vietnam.

Only about 100 of the Model 639 were made in the early 1970s, and many of those were sent back to Colt in 1975 under a recall. At that time, the ATF decided to classify the muzzle device as a silencer, prompting Colt to recall the guns and remove and destroy the devices. Some owners, however, kept their carbines and instead registered the muzzle devices, allowing them legally remain on the guns.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754

If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

QotD: The French language in Quebec

Filed under: Cancon, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

To follow Quebec politics, to read a French-language Quebec newspaper, is to regularly come across trumped-up or bewildering linguistic angst. A new study or census will show French is in pretty good shape, and the language hawks will immediately start slicing and dicing the data to paint the most dire possible picture. The Habs will appoint a captain who doesn’t speak French. A newspaper columnist will hear a friendly “bonjour-hi” one too many times shopping in downtown Montreal and blow his stack. While First World parents around the world strive to have their children learn as many languages as possible, you still encounter the odd Quebec voice wondering if francophone children learning English represents an existential threat to their society.

Chris Selley, “Oh no… It really looks like Justin Trudeau truly, deeply believes all those silly Liberal myths”, National Post, 2017-01-19.

Powered by WordPress