"All Aboard, (Northeastern United States of) America, All Aboard Amtrak..."

It makes me smile when I read about how Amtrak is carrying more passengers and making better financial decisions.

Although, I won't really be happy until I'm traveling inter-city on high-speed rail is connecting every major city so you don't have to worry about snow or bad weather cancelling your flight or making roads unsafe to drive. Kind of like how the Acela proves here:

Weekly Address: Let's Get Back to the Work of the American People

It's amazing how free a President is to speak when he doesn't face a re-election.

FactChecking ‘Pernicious’ Obamacare Claims | FactCheck.org

FactCheck.org wades through a number of the Obamacare Claims made by Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Rand Paul, and President Barack Obama.

They also fact-checked a number of Obamacare Myths last week that are worth reading.

Become a Mentor | iMentor

This is a great program mentoring high school kids. I participate in it and have had a great experience (and I also have a great mentee too!)

iMentor is specifically looking for 300 more male mentors (mentor pairings are same gender) and they start matching their students with their new mentors in two weeks so please volunteer. As I said, I'm in the program myself and in addition to being a great program with a great mission, the support from iMentor and the school makes it very easy to focus on mentoring while iMentor handles the logistical and administrative details.

An eye-opening view into demographics and politics

Columbia University School of Journalism professor and New York Times op-ed contributor Tom Edsall has a very interesting piece citing a number of studies about the correlation between demographic changes and political ideology. Of particular note is the following passage:

"In 1988, the Democratic presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis, carried 26 percent of the nation’s counties, 819 of 3,144, on his way to losing the Electoral College 426-111 and the popular vote by seven percentage points. In 2012, President Obama won fewer counties, 690, but he won the popular vote by four points and the Electoral College in a landslide, 332-206."

While the title of the op-ed piece is misleading, the content is very interesting and worth reading.

Today is the 50th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" Speech

Apparently the King family owns the copyright on the text and the video of the entire speech. However, there is a PDF version available at the National Archives that you can download and read.

Why Don't More U.S. Airports Connect to Amtrak? | The Atlantic Cities

Anyone that knows me knows my infatuation with high-speed rail. However, Eric Jaffe of The Atlantic Cities asks a more basic question: Why Don't More U.S. Airports Connect to Amtrak?

This is a good question and worth answering (and I'm more optimistic of the chances of success than the writer is). The airlines' biggest gripe with intercity and high speed rail is it would take away passengers from them. However, rail is more suited for shorter distances to be traveled, which are not well served by airlines nor are they big money makers for the airlines.

However, rail working in conjunction with air travel would go a long way towards making connections easier (like when I was in college and flew from New York to Chicago to catch a mini-jet to Des Moines to take a van to Iowa City) or bringing people from nearby, but not drivable, distances to the airport (like if I had the option to take a train from Iowa City directly to O'Hare to catch a flight to LGA.)