Washington DC

Washington’s Metrorail has sometimes been called “America’s Subway.” The first segment opened in 1976 (see photo above) and now extends over about 115 miles (185 kilometers), with 91 stations in the District of Columbia as well as suburban areas in the states of Virginia and Maryland. Metrorail has generally boasted the second strongest ridership of any urban rail system in the nation, following the New York City subway  read more »

Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine will be remembered as one of the great crimes of the 21st century. The ensuing humanitarian crisis has already caused more than two million refugees to flee their homeland.  read more »

The labouring masses are restless, as evidenced by the Canadian trucker strike, union drives in Amazon warehouses in the US and in demonstrations throughout the developing world. More revealing still may be the turmoil in the labour markets, where workers are changing jobs, creating their own and, overall, refusing to return to the structures of the pre-pandemic order.  read more »

In 1930, John Dos Passos wrote that America is many things: it is a “slice of a continent”, “the world’s greatest river valley”, and “a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bank accounts”. “But mostly,” he wrote in The 42^nd Parallel, America “is the speech of the people”.  read more »

While Americans drove their cars only 84 percent as many miles in 2020 as in 2019, according to data recently published by the Federal Highway Administration, they drove semi-trucks 101 percent as many miles.  read more »

Demographic transitions present political opportunities, but do not protect politicians from their own folly. The shift in most Western countries to a more racially and ethnically diverse demographic has been widely seen by left-wingers as an opportunity to cement their ascendancy.  read more »

There is a hypocrisy at the heart of the West’s attitude to China: although we’re constantly warned about the threat from Beijing, our political and corporate elites seem intent on making this century a Chinese one. Unlike in the Thirties, this appeasement isn’t driven by fear and ignorance; it is motivated largely by greed.  read more »

The Covid-19 pandemic brought tragedy and disruption to America. But it has also provided another stark warning concern­ing the country’s disastrous overreliance on overseas production. It has demon­strated that without a strong, self-reliant industrial base, this country’s ability to forge a healthy, prosperous future—and even its ability to defend itself against foreign enemies—will be severely compromised.  read more »

Joe Biden’s beleaguered presidency has fueled criticism of the man himself — his history of policy missteps, mental incapacity, and  read more »

A Maryland circuit court judge >ruled last week that the Baltimore-Washington Rapid Rail Company did not have the >power of eminent domain and could not stop a development on land that the maglev promoter needed to use for its proposed line.  read more »