Civility Update- Massachusetts Congressman Politicizes Aftermath of Springfield Tornadoes

At a press conference in Springfield, MA last week, Congressman Richard Neal (MA-2) bravely tore his way through an army of strawmen before declaring that nobody had said 'Too much government' in the wake of this month's tornadoes that struck Western Massachusetts.

U.S. Rep. Richard Neal made the case for prioritizing disaster relief spending at a press conference in downtown Springfield Thursday, appearing alongside Gov. Deval Patrick and Mayor Domenic Sarno to outline the federal response to tornado devastation in Massachusetts.

"Nobody said when this tornado hit, "Too much government,'" Neal said.

Truth be told, if my home was hit by a tornado and I survived, my first thought would probably be along the lines of 'Holy shit! Somebody just ran over my house with a huge lawnmower' as opposed to the national debt or spending cuts.

However, I would not the least bit surprised if people would say "too much government" when purchasing cereal, light bulbs or Happy meals (among other things), whether or not you can keep your insurance or when one tries moving their business from one state to another.

To say that others are complaining Fed overreach about disaster response when local officials are overwhelmed or a state of emergency declaration is dishonestly putting words into the mouths of others to say the least and likely a further justification for expanding the government into venues it has no business expanding into (see cap & trade, Card Check or 0bamcare).

Union Pacific, BNSF Threatened With Nuisance Suits From Environmental Extremist Organization 'Natural Resources Defence Council'

Union Pacific's North Yard, Denver, CO: Photo- Chicago Super Chief

A so-called environmental group operating under the moniker of the Natural Resources Defense Council has sent letters threatening a federal lawsuit to two of the Wests largest railroads on Tuesday.

The Natural Resources Defense Council sent letters to Union Pacific Corp. and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, saying it will file a lawsuit within 90 days under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which regulates hazardous solid waste disposal. The letter cited rail yards across California from Oakland to San Bernardino.

In what could be a precedent-setting lawsuit, the council argues that minute particles in diesel air pollution, which include lead, cadmium, nickel and other toxic elements, are solid waste. If successful, such a suit could open the door for legal action against similar air pollution sources such as ports, airports or anywhere with a lot of diesel equipment, [emphasis mine- NANESB!] said David Pettit, a senior attorney with the council.

"I think the reason why other people haven't tried it is on first glance you would think that the emissions are a gas and RCRA doesn't apply to gases," Pettit said. "The fallacy with that is the exhaust has two components: one is a gas and the other component is a solid and those solids will kill you if you inhale enough of them."

The railroads carry cargo throughout the country after it's imported from Asia. Millions of cargo containers on trucks and trains travel by freeway and railway through Southern California.

Southern California air quality regulators recently announced a major study focusing on a San Bernardino rail yard that has been found to pose the greatest health risk of any rail yard in the state. The two-year study will cost an estimated $846,000, and researchers are hoping it will determine if there is a higher asthma and fatal cancer rate in the surrounding community.

The letter recommends a series of remedies for the pollution including the use of cleaner locomotives, electrifying rail lines in urban areas and reduced idling

That last sentence sort of gives away the fact that this threatened lawsuit won't be about the harmful particulates in diesel exhaust, since their suggestion to electrify railroads in urban area would require that a power plant be constructed to provide the lines with electricity. So if they had their way per this threatened lawsuit, they would electrify urban rail lines to prevent diesel exhaust, but what about the air quality around the power source?

And as you can imagine, electrification isn't cheap. Couple that with the upcoming $13 billion PTC mandate that is supposed to be implemented by 2015, and the railroads will inevitably have to to pass the cost along to the consumer.

According to a 2008 American Association of Railroads study, rail freight fuel efficiency had improved 3.1% since 2006 and nearly 85% since 1980, with a ton of freight moving as far as 436 miles per gallon of fuel (as impressive as that is, barges are reportedly even more fuel efficient). Both the Union Pacific [NYSE: UNP] and BNSF have been using genset locomotives in yards and in local service in compliance with local clean air regulations in places like Texas and California.

Also, the railroad industry is one of the few sectors of the economy that seems to be hiring right now. Yet despite all the apparent pluses the rail industry has going for it in this down economy, the NRDC decided to undertake a series of frivolous lawsuits as a trial balloon to go after airports, trucking and shipping- by their own admission.

At face value, if the NRDC chooses to bring this suit to trial it should be laughed out of the courtroom by the presiding judge. However, I would not put it past this cabal of latter-day luddites to effectively shop around for a sympathetic judge to bring the suit before.

The NRDC has also mounted an opposition campaign to TransCanada's [NYSE: TRP] Keystone XL pipeline that would carry oil sands from Alberta to refineries in Texas.

It's probably worth noting that one of the founders of the NRDC, John Bryson, is the current Obama Administration nominee to head the Commerce Department. Bryson left the group in the mid 1970s and after time with Edison International [NYSE: EIX], he became CEO of Brightsource Energy and described by the Wall Street Journal as 'somebody with a talent for scoring government subsidies'.

Report: Fugitive Octagenarian Irish Mobster Whitey Bulger Arrested in California

Reports are circulating on the Wednesday night that 81 year old fugitive Winter Hill Gang leader James 'Whitey' Bulger was arrested in the Los Angeles area with his 60 year old girlfriend, Catherine Greig.

The two were arrested without incident, the FBI said. The FBI had been conducting a surveillance operation in the area where the arrest was made, Santa Monica police Sgt. Rudy Flores said.

Bulger- or "the guy who's picture is up at the Post Office" as he's been referred to for most of my adult life- was the leader of the Winter Hill Gang when he fled in January 1995 after being tipped by a former Boston FBI agent that he was about to be indicted. Bulger was a top-echelon FBI informant.

Over the years, the FBI battled a public perception that it had not tried very hard to find Bulger, who became a huge source of embarrassment for the agency after the extent of his crimes and the FBI's role in overlooking them became public.

Prosecutors said he went on the run after being warned by John Connolly Jr., an FBI agent who had made Bulger an FBI informant 20 years earlier. Connolly was convicted of racketeering in May 2002 for protecting Bulger and his cohort, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, also an FBI informant.

As head of the Winter Hill gang, Bulger would provide information to the FBI about the rival Patriarcha family out of Providence, RI while enjoying a degree of protection from the Boston office of the FBI thanks to former Agent Connolly.

Bulger had been on the run for the last 16 years and was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for his suspected role in at least 19 murders. Since then, there has been sporadic reports of Bulger browsing bookstores in western Canada or dying of natural causes and being cremated in Central America. The last reliable sighting of Whitey Bulger was reportedly in London in 2002 when a British businessman who had met Bulger a few years prior saw the fugitive in a hotel gym.

Most recently, the FBI manhunt focused on Bulger's girlfriend, with TV bulletins showing Greig and Bulger together.

Bulger's younger brother William was elected to the state senate and President of UMass, while the FBI suspected he might've been aware of his older brother's criminal activities and may have sporadically been in contact with him.

Cardinals sign Kolton Wong!

                      Kolten Wong will receive a $1.5 million signing bonus and is headed to Quad CitiesHere is the rest of the story:

Former University of Hawaii baseball player Kolten Wong agreed to his first professional baseball contract with the team that drafted him, the St. Louis Cardinals.The Cardinals drafted Wong in the first round two weeks ago as the 22nd overall selection.Wong is leaving Hilo for St. Louis to sign his contract. The full terms of the contract have not been released, but KITV4 Sports has learned that Wong will receive a $1.5 million signing bonus.After signing his contract, Wong will head to Quad City, Iowa, for his assignment with the River Bandits, a minor league team in the Cardinals' farm system.The Kamehameha School Hawaii graduate was named to the Western Athletic Conference's All-WAC team three times.

Source: KITV.com

Mark Cuban Intrested in buying the Dodgers, maybe?

ESPN is reporting that Mark Cuban has an interest in buying the Dodgers. Cuban also knows that the team is in a financial mess and might be hard to fix.
This week MLB rejected a proposed $3 billion television deal between the Dodgers and Fox. Cash from that deal was fundamental to the divorce settlement between owner Frank McCourt and his ex-wife, Jamie. The settlement is now scuttled, putting the future of the franchise in limbo.
Whenever any team is about to go up for sale, Cuban's name comes up. He says that he "looked at the Rangers. I looked at the Cubs." But to him, the Dodgers' financial woes are more of a hurdle.

  Cuban still has a desire to own an MLB franchise might be too strong to resist owning even a financially troubled outfit like the Dodgers.
"If the deal is right and they're fixable, then I'm very interested," he said.
One of the issues that Cuban sees with the team is how McCourt has structured the franchise.
"He's got his parking lots and he's got this and that -- all these sub-corporations. So who knows what's included," Cuban said.
For now, he just waits like everyone else to see what MLB does to deal with the situation. He believes the wait could last awhile.
"They (MLB) might just take it back and decide not to sell it for a while, right, because they're not stupid, either," Cuban said. "They might say we'll take it back, we'll fix it up some, and clean up some of the mess and then we'll sell it then.         Source: ESPN

Cards Release Batista

I saw this coming but didn't know when it will exactly happen. Last night after the blow out I had a bad feeling his days are numbered. This afternoon the Cardinals released Miguel and brought up Lance Lynn.
Batista, 40, made 26 appearances for the Cardinals after making the team as a non-roster invitee to Spring Training. He allowed 27 hits in 29 1/3 innings, striking out 16 against 19 walks. He has struggled mightily in recent weeks, allowing 14 runs and 11 walks in 13 1/3 innings over his past 12 appearances since mid-May.I had high hopes for him, but now is the time to deal with our bullpen before things get even worse. I believe some trades or moves will be made in the next two weeks.

Today's Train of Thought- The Farm Team, June 21st 2011

Today's train of thought brings us to America's heartland and the aptly named Farmrail shortline. With a name like Farmrail (and it's affiliate, Grainbelt) it should come as no surprise that the primary source of traffic in its 30 year history has been wheat, fertilizer, grain and feed. However, there is much more to Farmrail than moving agricultural goods.

Started in 1981 with the dissolution of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, Farmrail began operations on a pair of former Rock Island lines between Elmer, OK and Westhom, OK (running north-south) and Erick to Weatherford, OK (running east-west) with the two lines intersecting in Clinton, OK. A few years later, shortly after the Burlington Northern had acquired the St Louis-San Francisco Railway (Frisco), the BN decided to divest itself of the former Frisco line between Enid, OK and Fredrick, OK which roughly paralleled Farmrail's Westhom-Elmer line. Both the former Rock Island and Frisco lines actually wound up going to the state of Oklahoma, but Oklahoma named Farmrail/Grainbelt designated operators after agreeing to a long-term lease.

Of course, with the recent drought conditions throughout Western Oklahoma affecting the wheat harvest, Farmrail and Grainbelt have shown themselves to be fairly adaptable in hauling other commodities and goods. Most of the railway operates atop the Anadarko Basin, and new drilling techniques have revived activity on some of the dormant rigs in western Oklahoma. Traffic also includes crude oil, frac sand, heavy machinery, crushed stone, freight cars coming in for repairs and gypsum. In fact, with the poor growing conditions, Farmrail recently announced that this would be the second consecutive year that wheat was NOT the primary commodity handled by Farmrail/Grainbelt.

There are about 2 dozen locomotives rostered between thw two railways, just about all of them 4-axle EMD roadswitchers. During some harvest season, both railways would find themselves short on motive power and borrow locomotives from BNSF or Arkansas & Missouri. The railroad started out with rebuilt GP9s purchased secondhand from the Milwaukee Road before adding some former Illinois Central GP10s, a byproduct of IC's Paducah shops. The most recent acquisiton has been a trio or former Iowa interstate GP38ACs.

Here, railpictures.net contributor Steve Bakos caught GP10 #1981 leading Farmrail GP9 #3648 eastbound with an Altus, OK to Snyder, OK-bound mixed freight excercising trackage rights over the BNSF line through Headrick, OK towards the end of September 2010. The #1981 is painted in a special 25th anniversary scheme while it's road number reflects the year that Farmrail began operations, while the trailing unit is painted in the traditional Farmrail scheme that has adorned some of the locomotives for 30 years now.