By now, it is well known that Amtrak is bleeding money and not even coming close to breaking even on the majority of its routes—with one notable exception being the popular northeast corridor routes between Boston and DC. But running profitable train lines isn’t Amtrak’s only problem; it is equally bad at the much simpler task of […]

The figures for July are in, and they’re a mixed bag: Continuing a long slog upward from the depths of the recession, the American economy added 163,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in July, the Labor Department said on Friday. That compares to a revised 64,000 jobs added in June.July’s job growth was higher than economists had been expecting, […]

I’m on the board of the housing cooperative (for those of you outside NYC, it’s a condo-like housing system where you own shares in a corporation rather than an actual apartment), and we do something unusual every month when our fuel bill comes in.We gloat.Our buildings are heated by natural gas, and the crash in […]

The Tea Party is back in the news again after its favored candidate scored an upset victory in the Republican primary for a Senate seat in Texas. Barring some sort of major surprise, Tea Party-backed Ted Cruz looks likely to join the ranks of the Tea Party’s Senate best friends.And he won’t be the only […]

For 400 of the past 500 years, Turkey has dominated Mesopotamia and struggled for power and riches with Iran, which could never quite push the Ottomans out of the Fertile Crescent. This same struggle continues today: Turkey opposed the U.S.-led invasion[of Iraq], and then paid the price when the occupation government hamstrung Turkish trade and favored […]

As the lights slowly flickered back to life across India, the heated argument over who is to blame for the massive blackouts was already underway, the New York Times reports: The nation’s new power minister distanced himself from assertions by his predecessor that state officials were responsible for Monday and Tuesday’s blackouts by drawing more power […]

Europe failed again today. It’s hardly news when this happens anymore, but the latest ballyhooed European plan to put the euro crisis behind it has now fallen apart. Markets have realized that yet again they were being sold a hope instead of a plan, and the more ECB president Mario Draghi tried to explain what […]

Could America’s oil and gas reserves make it an energy producer on par with Saudi Arabia? That depends on whether we can extract oil cheaply and easily, and whether these reserves will turn out to be as large as we hope.There are already promising signs. A new report issued by the Energy Information Administration shows that America’s […]

War is no picnic—and civil war is worse.A disturbing video circulating on the web appears to show Syrian rebels executing unarmed prisoners who appear to have been members of the Barri family, an Aleppo clan accused of backing the regime and frequently attacking anti-Assad demonstrators. An agreement between rebel forces and the Barri clan, which is […]

Sometimes the only way to build is to destroy. In Detroit, population flight over the past decade has left tens of thousands of vacant buildings that have become crime dens and serious hazards for neighborhood schoolchildren. The Governor of Michigan—who, due to a unique power-sharing agreement, has a powerful role in the city—is set on […]