One of the little realized resources of many regions is the underused/unused rail network. Many areas have turned rails to trails, and have created narrow parks that are miles in length. However, each path taken out of rail service and turned into a trail makes it virtually impossible to reuse these paths for commuter transit when population density justifies new railroad lines be established.
New York City has a surfeit of transit options, compared to what we could have had with proper planning. If we had preserved the 3rd Avenue el until an underground line was built along 2nd Avenue, I'd have an easy commute to Lower Manhattan. And if you think I have a hard time, think of the people who have to transit the boroughs without having Manhattan as a destination or starting point. With the exception of one subway line (the G line), there is nothing that facilitates interborough (non-Manhattan) transit.
Of course, we still have a lot of options, but the NIMBYs would kill them all before anything came to fruition. For example, we have an abandoned right of way that could connect the Rockaways to Kew Gardens (with a minor/short tunnel for a connection to the Queens Boulevard line). But the people who live adjacent to this right of way want it turned into a park - even though we need greater amounts of non-street running mass transit in this region.
I live near a rail trail on which passenger service was halted in the late 1950's. The above picture was taken on this trail - and I would miss this rail trail if it were gone. The New York Central railroad killed the line because it couldn't take non-electric trains into Grand Central. Today, I take a diesel train into Grand Central, and the engine is running in electric mode from Croton into Grand Central. The same could be done with a reactivated Putnam Division - if rail were to be relaid along that path.
On the other side of the Hudson lies the West Shore Line. The New York Central first killed off ferry service from Weehawken to Manhattan, so that it could eliminate the demand for passenger trains along the line. Once the passengers abandoned the line, the railroad killed passenger service with government permission. 50 years later, the ferries are back, and there is no passenger service from the North to feed them.
There comes a point where a city starts to fail because of a lack of mass transit options. And I think that New York is perilously close to that point. There are sections of Manhattan that I absolutely refuse to visit, simply because I can't reach them with convenient mass transit. Yet, the outer boroughs are even worse. In Brooklyn, many of the els were removed - one of them being the Myrtle Avenue line. If that el was there today, it'd be packed!
It's about time that we start to tell the NIMBYs of the world to screw themselves. The successful cities of the future will be even more densely populated than the ones we have today, and they will have planned for (and built) enough off-street running lines to get even larger numbers of people to where they need to go in a reasonable amount of time and comfort.
Recently, retired Speaker of the House, John Boehner, said that Ted Cruz was Lucifer Incarnate. Well, as I write this, Lucifer (Cruz) has just been defeated by Donald Trump.
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We're seeing rebellions around the world from people disgusted with the status quo. In the Muslim World, ISIS is the latest metathesis of the plague from which Al Qaeda originated - people who want to impose a extremist view of their faith on the rest of the world. Before anyone says this problem is unique to Islam, the Christian and Jewish peoples also have this same problem.
In the United States, we've seen a string of states enacting bathroom bills to harass transgender people. In one state, they have effectively made it illegal for a trans person to go to the bathroom in a public facility. This is ludicrous - and people like Cruz should be ashamed of themselves. But then, these people think that their morality trumps both common sense and the rule of law.
As much as I dislike what Donald Trump stood for in this election season, I must respect him for one thing. He respected the rights of transgender people to go to the bathroom and be unmolested.
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Now it looks like it will be a Trump vs. Clinton general election. (Of course, California has yet to vote, and Sanders could receive a miracle.) Will Trump tack to the middle and start saying things that make sense? Stranger things have happened.
The other day, Hillary went to West Virginia and told idled coal workers that their jobs will never be coming back. Although that's true, it's not the message these people want to hear. Yet, Hillary doesn't have a clue about how to bring these people into the workforce, as she's still thinking of bringing dead-end jobs to rural areas. The typical employment problem "solved" by politicians is to bring low skilled work to rural and inner city areas. This doesn't address the real problem. Most non manufacturing work can be done anywhere that one has access to the internet. Why aren't we looking to bring small scale businesses which require internet connections to these people, and tax the hell out of "American" businesses who serve the American market with labor from overseas? If Discover Card is advertising "All American" call centers to service its customers, why can't we bring this kind of work back to the USA to be done by American citizens?
The tech industry says that it needs people, and uses a "lack of qualified American workers" as a reason to use overseas help. Why not train people in "low rent" areas of the country, and use them for grunt technology jobs? This would not be a complete or quick solution - it would take time to build up the skill sets to service our nation's needs using American labor, and we'd have to narrowly focus on which jobs we claw back, so that we don't completely disrupt business being done in this country.
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Of course, structural unemployment will be the idea whose name shall not be spoken in this election cycle. If more people were working, no one would mind the rich getting richer. But as long as people are being left behind, we'll continue to see the Trumps of this world dupe people who have lied to for years by our ruling elite of both parties....
As I write this, it looks like it will be Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump in the general election. This is a shame. Both are very flawed candidates. But the alternatives from the Republican party are much worse than these two people. (I'm in favor of Bernie Sanders, but I also recognize that he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell anymore.)
Most people feel very upset about these candidates. I do. But I also have to admit - Trump has been very effective in the use of his celebrity in his successes this year. Earlier in the morning, Joe Scarborough (of MSNBC's "Morning Joe") noted that Trump has had 15 years of celebrity exposure on TV, and that the working class (not the Beltway class or any of the elites) felt comfortable with someone who speaks their language on their terms.
Trump has been bringing attention to the issues that the elites have ignored, addressing the concerns of the working class, and being the one person who could force the Republican party to take a hard look at itself. In a speech he made today (I'm writing this on 4/26), Trump notes that Bernie Sanders is saying a lot of good things, and that he should run as a third party candidate. (Although I think this would be a disaster for Bernie and the Democratic party, Trump should be careful of what he suggests - he may just get it in ways he never expects....)
Thinking of Bernie Sanders and a third party run.... I feel that Bernie and the Democratic party made a deal to allow him to run as a Democrat. Neither Bernie nor Hillary wants to have the progressive voting bloc split. Splitting the bloc would likely result in a GOP victory. This is the likely reason that Michael Bloomberg didn't run this year. So I am left to wonder - what will happen to the people who supported Bernie? They have no love for Hillary, and they have no love for the Democratic party elite. If Bernie doesn't support Hillary with all his might, she will likely lose the election, and we'll see "TRUMP" in bold, flashing letters over the West wing of the White House.
What are we likely to see happen? As I see it, Bernie will extract one hell of a pound of flesh from Hillary. He will make sure to control a couple of cabinet positions (indirectly, of course), and make sure that Hillary can't give away the store. The Democrats desperately need the votes his supporters bring to the party, and Bernie is smart enough to play the long game - even if he only visits the White House on a tour. If this election plays out as I think it will, Hillary will win by a handful of votes (remember Bush vs. Gore?) and Bernie will likely be able to reshape the Democrats back into a true progressive party - which it hasn't been in years....
In short - Bernie has likely just earned his place in the history books, and people don't yet realize it for what it is....
It now looks like we're likely to see a Clinton vs. Trump general election. And given the choice between the two, I'd like to be able to say "None of the Above".
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Of all the candidates still running for office, Hillary is the only one with Federal Executive branch experience. Kasich was a governor of a state, Sanders and Cruz are Senators, and Trump.... He's a great big bag of wind. Yet, people like that breeze. No, it's not a breath of fresh air. Instead, it's a storm which his supporters hope blows the old regime out of office.
As much as I want the old regimes from both parties thrown out of power, I still wonder - will their replacements do any better? From what I can tell, Trump will likely become much more reasonable in what he says the closer election day comes. Hillary will likely attack Trump for the stupid things he said in his run up to getting the GOP nomination.
Hillary has a big problem - if she doesn't take care of the needs of the Sanders supporters, she will only be a one term president. She is not the type to stomach that. She needs the people that are loyal to Sanders, and he has not extracted his price for his support. No doubt, he does not trust Hillary to support the things he campaigned for, and he will be a tough negotiator - especially when he got so many delegates in a campaign season in which Hillary was expected to have an easy march to the nomination.
What happens if Sanders is able to extract his price from Hillary? Can Trump exploit a leftward turn from the Democrats' presumptive nominee? I'm not sure. Trump is already to the left of much of the GOP, and many in the GOP like things he has supported before primary season. Could we see a Trump run to election day as a person more moderate than Hillary?
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As they say - Only time will tell....
