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October 12, 2012

Randall Brassell, Director of Communications Telephone: 615-521-4097 (Fax) 615-824-2164 Email: rbrassell1@aol.com

10/9/2012 12:00:00 PM

UP acquires Oklahoma-owned rail line

Yesterday, Union Pacific Railroad and the Oklahoma Department of Transportation announced the Class I acquired full ownership of a 351-mile, state-owned rail line that Oklahoma officials had saved decades ago by drafting a unique purchase agreement with a predecessor railroad. The pact originally was drafted 30 years ago, when the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Co. filed for bankruptcy, potentially eliminating a key rail connection that linked Texas and Kansas through Oklahoma. The state purchased 351 miles of track running through Enid, El Reno, Oklahoma City, Chickasha, Duncan and Lawton that was operated by the Oklahoma-Kansas-Texas Railroad Co. through a 30-year-lease signed in November 1982. UP acquired the tracks after several mergers and finished paying $35 million, plus accrued interest, for the line last year. "This type of agreement was unique, but we felt it was critical that we preserve the rail corridors and work towards getting them back in the hands of private industry," said Oklahoma Transportation Secretary Gary Ridley in a prepared statement. UP maintains the line and operates trains carrying mixed goods through the area. The north-south line is favored by oil and gas companies operating in the Anadarko Basin that take delivery of trains carrying frac sand and pipe used in the hydraulic fracturing process, UP officials said. The Class I operates 1,173 miles of track in Oklahoma, which serve as a vital link between the Midwest and Gulf Coast, they said.

Right-wingers’ hilarious excuses for the jobs report An uptick for the country, and a time of creative thinking for the GOP By Adele M. Stan Altenrnet

This month’s jobs numbers are out, showing the unemployment rate to have fallen to 7.8 percent, robbing Republicans of a favorite talking point. That number is a 44-month low, according to the Associated Press , which reports the unemployment number fell from 8.1 percent because “the number of people who said they were employed soared by 873,000.” Predictably, right-wing Republicans are crying foul , insisting, based on nothing, that the career civil servants at the Bureau of Labor Statistics must be cooking the books. The report comes is very good news for President Barack Obama, coming on the heels of his lackluster debate performance Wednesday night against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. It also puts a dent in a favorite GOP talking point that is based on a lie, one that Romney doesn’t mind repeating – that Obama purportedly promised that the stimulus would bring unemployment to below 8 percent. (That was a projection — not a promise — in a report authored by Christine Romer, then director of the the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.) Obama

never made that promise , but since when did the truth matter in Romney’s campaign strategy? His is, after all, a campaign that would not be “dictated by fact-checkers,” in the words of Romney pollster Neil Newhouse. In fact, the news is so good for Obama that a number of Republican eminences have stepped forward to say it just can’t be true. And just like the poll numbers that show Obama outpacing Romney in the swing states, they’re chalking it up to a grand conspiracy. ThinkProgress has collected the reactions of some prominent Republicans, beginning with a tweet from Jack Welch, the former GE CEO, who, TP notes, famously cooked the conglomerate’s books during his tenure: “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.” That led Rep. Allen West, the Tea Party locked in a tough congressional race in Florida, to second Welch’s claim, via Twitter. “In regards to today’s Jobs report—I agree with former GE CEO Jack Welch,” West tweeted. “Chicago style politics is at work here…” Of course, West also alleges the the congress is populated by communists, so you may want to consider the source. The “experts” at Fox News weighed in, also, natch, seeing nefarious forces at work. Fox’s Stuart Varney dubbed the numbers too “convenient,” while Eric Bolling tweeted about something “insideous” (sic) at work. Also on Fox, ThinkProgress reports, “Charles Payne ‘guarantees’ that unemployment rate will be revised back up to above 8 percent after the election. ” Then there’s Washington Examiner colunmnist Conn Carroll, who tweets he doesn’t think that BLS cooked the books, but rather that a lot of unemployed Democrats lied to BLS researchers, saying that they had gotten jobs. But wait — there’s more. The most ridiculous assertion may come in a statement from Americans for Limited Government, which sees an even grander conspiracy, one that has the Federal Reserve in cahoots with BLS: Either the Federal Reserve, which has its fingers on the pulse of every element of the economy, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics manufacturing survey report are grievously wrong or the number used to calculate the unemployment rate are wrong, or worse manipulated. Given that these numbers conveniently meet Obama’s campaign promises one month before the election, the conclusions are obvious. Since Obama took office, Republicans have sought to game the unemployment numbers at the state and local levels by forcing layoffs of public employees through anti-union austerity measures. According to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics (reported by the New York Times in June), unemployment figures would be a percentage point lower were it not for all the public-sector layoffs.

Secret ballot amendment part of years-long labor battle

Oct 08, 2012

MONTGOMERY -- When they go to the polls on Nov. 6, Alabamians will vote on a state constitutional amendment that declares the secret ballot is fundamental to democracy. But what seems like a simple affirmation of the voting process is actually another volley in a years-long battle, between business leaders and labor unions, over how unions are created. "It's not anti-union, it's about the way unions do what they do," said Rep. Kurt Wallace, R-Maplesville, who sponsored the amendment in the Legislature. Amendment 7 would "provide that the right of individuals to vote for public office, public votes on referenda or votes of employee representation" should be by secret vote, according to the wording on the November ballot. Votes for public office and state amendments are already secret, and have been for some time. But for the last item on that list -- employee representation -- things are more complicated. Under federal labor law, employees can start the process of unionizing a workplace through a procedure known as "card check," in which employees sign cards acknowledging they want to unionize. A successful card check vote can lead to a secret ballot in which employees vote on whether or not to unionize -- or, under some circumstances, it can lead directly to unionization. Card check has been a flash point in the debate between unions and business leaders for several years. That's partly because of the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill promoted by union leaders that would have expanded the powers and protections of the card-check vote. The bill has been proposed three times in Congress, but has never passed. In recent years, conservatives have struck back. Four states have passed secret-ballot laws that require secret ballots -- blocking card-check-only union elections. Wallace said he opposes card check because the secret ballot is the standard for democratic decision-making in most other areas of life. He said the lack of secrecy allows union leaders to intimidate co-workers into signing. But Wallace is also frank about the fact that he doesn't want to see more unionization in Alabama's workplaces -- particularly the auto industry. He said the prospect of a union-free workplace is one of the things that attracted foreign carmakers to the state. "We don't want to see happen to us what happened to Detroit," he said. It's not clear that all local labor leaders even know about the amendment. Shane Mitchell, a spokesman for Steelworkers Local 12 in Gadsden, said Monday that he had not heard of the

measure. After consulting with union officials, Mitchell, whose local union represents workers at Gadsden's Goodyear tire plant, said the union was "100 percent against" the amendment. "The way it's worded, it sounds like you're saying everybody should have the right to vote," he said. Instead, Mitchell said, the amendment would take away a voting method long used by unions. Like many Southern states, Alabama is a right-to-work state, which means that employees can't be required to join a union even when one exists. The 4,000 workers at Honda's auto plan in Lincoln are not unionized, though a group called Honda Workers United has advocated for unionization in recent years. Attempts to reach Honda executives and representatives of Honda Workers United were unsuccessful Monday. If passed, the amendment could put Alabama at odds with federal labor law. When Arizona passed a secret-ballot law in 2010, critics said it would curtail the card-check votes already allowed under federal law. The National Labor Relations Board took Arizona to court, arguing that it blocked alternate routes to unionization protected by the National Labor Relations Act. U.S. District Judge Frederick Martone ruled against the NLRB in a decision handed down in September, but noted that his opinion should not foreclose future challenges as the law begins being applied by the state. Attempts to reach regional officials of the National Labor Relations Board were unsuccessful Monday.

Editor's Note: The Alabama Provision would likely be deemed by the Courts to

be Pre-empted by federal law and the NLRA

Highly Debatable: The Big Liar’s Biggest Lies

By Joe Conason

October 9, 2012

“It's not easy to debate a liar,” complained an email from one observer of the first presidential debate — and there was no question about which candidate he meant. Prevarication, falsification, fabrication are all familiar tactics that have been employed by Mitt Romney without much consequence to him ever since he entered public life, thanks to the inviolable taboo in the mainstream media against calling out a liar (unless, of course, he lies about sex).

Yes, President Obama ought to have been better prepared for Romney's barrage of blather and bull. The Republican's own chief advisor, Eric Fehrnstrom, had glibly described the “Etch-a-Sketch” strategy they would deploy in the general election, to make swing voters forget the “severe conservative” of the

primaries. Romney executed that pivot on Wednesday night, but he could do so only by spouting literally dozens of provably fraudulent assertions — which various diligent fact-checkers proceeded to debunk.

Knowing that he is vulnerable on taxation and the budget for many reasons, including his own peculiar and secretive tax history, Romney made several contradictory claims regarding his economic plan. He has no plan to lavish $5 trillion in tax breaks on the wealthy. He won't cut taxes for the rich at all. He vowed to provide tax relief to the middle class and won't increase their tax burden. He swore that his tax cuts would not increase the deficit.

Finally, he said that with all of that, he would grow the economy enough to shrink and eventually eliminate the deficit — without raising taxes on anyone. And he claimed that there are several studies proving he can fulfill all of these conflicting promises — even though he refuses to provide any specific tax proposals beyond a broad tax cut.

There is no study proving that Romney can do what he promised, and among his lies is his description of editorials in the Wall Street Journal as "studies" of his plan. The most complete and unrefuted study of his claims remains the Tax Policy Center's bipartisan report on the Romney plan, which shows that there is simply no way to pay for his $5 trillion, across-the-board tax cut without raising taxes on the middle class. None of the alternative studies he has cited proves otherwise — and some of them actually amass additional evidence that he is wrong.

Undoubtedly he knows all that. He knows that eliminating the estate tax, a mainstay of his plan, will benefit the rich enormously and almost nobody else.

He also knows that when he claims economic growth alone will erase the deficit, without raising taxes, he is inventing impossible numbers. As The National Memo's Howard Hill demonstrated yesterday, the assumptions behind his claims are ridiculous.

For the numbers to work, he would have to create not 12 million jobs, as he promised to do by 2016, but 162 million — more than the total current U.S. workforce. Or else the jobs created would have to pay more than $443,000 per year on average, which is even less likely than Rafalca winning the dressage medal at the next Summer Olympics.

At the same time, Romney accused the president of increasing the federal debt by an amount that is "almost as much … as all prior presidents combined." This charge, which he leveled before, is patently false and by now Romney must know it. The prior debt, mostly run up by George W. Bush and his Republican congressional cronies, stood above $10 trillion when Obama took office. The debt is now just over $16 trillion, mostly due to costs incurred by Bush and by Obama's successful effort to prevent a Depression.

Having essentially disavowed the health care reforms that were his sole significant achievement in his single term in elected office, the former Massachusetts governor suddenly claimed ownership of Romneycare. Presumably, this will make him more appealing to swing voters, too. But he still wants to do away with Obamacare, except for the parts that are popular.

For this maneuver, he must misrepresent his own proposed federal health care overhaul. He says there will be no change to Medicare for current beneficiaries, but repealing the Affordable Care Act will deprive them of free preventive care, increase their costs for prescription drugs and do irreparable harm to Medicaid, which provides assisted care for nine million destitute Medicare patients.

But Romney has been lying about the Affordable Care Act for years, according to his own former advisor Jonathan Gruber, the chief intellectual architect of Romneycare. Nearly a year ago, Gruber complained that Romney's attempt to draw a sharp distinction between the Massachusetts legislation and Obamacare was phony. He told Capital New York in November 2011 that "they're the same fucking bill. He just can't have his cake and eat it too. Basically, you know, it's the same bill. He can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he's just lying."

Lying again? Indeed, the falsehoods flowed on every conceivable subject. Concerning energy, Romney claimed that "about half" of the renewable energy firms that received federal assistance under Obama administration programs went bankrupt — a claim that cannot be justified by any measure. Of the 28 firms that got federal loans or loan guarantees, three went under, representing less than 11 percent — and less than 5 percent of the funds committed. (This assertion was so blatantly untrue that the Romney campaign withdrew it the next day.)

The examples cited above hardly exhaust the deep well of dishonesty in the Republican campaign. What Romney has done presents a fundamental challenge to the American political media. Will news outlets hold him accountable for baldly misleading voters? Are they capable of confronting his continuous mendacity with basic facts? Some have made a beginning, while others have scarcely tried. If that isn't their responsibility, then they no longer have any purpose at all.

October 9, 2012

As Romney Repeats Trade Message, Bain Maintains China Ties By SHARON LaFRANIERE and MIKE McINTIRE

The tale of Asimco Technologies, an auto parts manufacturer whose plants dot eastern China, would seem to underscore Mitt Romney’s campaign-trail complaint that China’s manufacturing juggernaut is costing America jobs.

Nine years ago, the company bought two camshaft factories that employed about 500 people in Michigan. By 2007 both were shut down. Now Asimco manufactures the same components in China on government-donated land in a coastal region that China has designated an export base, where companies are eligible for the sort of subsidies Mr. Romney says create an unfair trade imbalance.

But there is a twist to the Asimco story that would not fit neatly into a Romney stump speech: Since 2010, it has been owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mr. Romney, who has as much as $2.25 million invested in three Bain funds with large stakes in Asimco and at least seven other Chinese businesses, according to his 2012 candidate financial disclosure and other documents.

That and other China-related holdings by Bain funds in which Mr. Romney has invested are a reminder of how he inhabits two worlds that at times have come into conflict during his campaign for the White House.

As a candidate, Mr. Romney uses China as a punching bag. He accuses Beijing of unfairly subsidizing Chinese exports, artificially holding down the value of its currency to keep exports cheap, stealing American technology and hacking into corporate and government computers.

“How is it China’s been so successful in taking away our jobs?” he asked recently. “Well, let me tell you how: by cheating.”

But his private equity dealings, both while he headed Bain and since, complicate that message.

Mr. Romney’s campaign insists he has no control over his investments since they are held in a blind trust. That said, a confidential prospectus for one of the Bain funds, obtained by The New York Times, promotes China as a good investment for some of the same reasons that Mr. Romney has said concern him: “Strong fundamentals” like manufacturing wages 85 percent lower than what Americans earn, vast foreign exchange reserves and the likelihood that China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy.

“Accordingly, Bain Capital expects to see an increasing array of high-growth companies available for investment,” the prospectus says, noting the relative dearth of private equity in China.

Among the companies in which the Bain funds have invested is a global auto parts maker that is in the process of closing a factory in Illinois and moving most of the equipment and jobs to Jiangsu Province, where the Chinese government has built it a new plant; a Chinese electronics retailer accused by Microsoft of selling computers with pirated software; and a Hong Kong-based Chinese appliance maker that was sued for copying another company’s design for a deep-fat fryer.

Asked if Mr. Romney sees any conflict between his Bain investments in China and his policy positions, the campaign said: “Only the president has the power to level the playing field with China. No private citizen can do that alone.”

The campaign said Mr. Romney put his fortune, estimated at $250 million, in a “blind trust” when he became Massachusetts governor in 2003. “The trustee of the blind trust has said publicly that he will endeavor to make the investments in the blind trust conform to Governor Romney’s positions, and whenever it comes to his attention that there is something inconsistent, he ends the investment,” the statement said.

Should Mr. Romney become president, however, the structure of the trust would most likely not meet the federal requirements for independent management. It is managed by a Boston-based law firm, Ropes & Gray, that has a long history of doing legal work for both Mr. Romney and Bain Capital, including representing some of the same Bain funds in which it invested Mr. Romney’s money.

Mr. Romney’s trustee, R. Bradford Malt, who is chairman of Ropes & Gray, declined to comment.

Bain Capital declined to comment on specific investments, but said in a statement that its Chinese holdings “are consistent with the widely accepted principle that the private sector has a critical role to play in the continuing interdependence of the world’s economies.”

For many sophisticated and wealthy investors, as well as for ordinary workers invested in pension funds, China is a part of any diversified investment strategy. President Obama, a former Illinois state senator, has as much as $100,000 in a state retirement plan that contains shares of Sensata Technologies, the same auto parts company controlled by Bain that is closing its Illinois factory.

Last year, Mr. Romney’s trust sold its stake in an array of foreign holdings, including two Chinese state-owned companies: an oil company and a bank that have done business in Iran. But Mr. Romney continues to have money in Bain funds with sizable holdings in China.

He has as much as $250,000 in the Bain Capital Asia Fund and as much as $1 million each in Bain Capital Funds IX and X, all Cayman Islands entities used by Bain to make sizable investments in China, according to the 2012 candidate financial disclosures and confidential Bain prospectuses obtained by The Times through a public records request.

Among those funds’ holdings is $234 million that Bain invested in 2009 in Gome Electrical Appliances, a major Chinese retailer that was accused by Microsoft this year of selling computers with pirated software. In 2007, Bain’s Asia fund also invested $39 million in Feixiang Group, a Chinese producer and exporter of chemicals that is a designated “state high-tech enterprise,” making it eligible for tax breaks and other government incentives. Ropes & Gray represented Bain in the partial sale of Feixiang three years later for a 53 percent return on the fund’s investment.

The Asia fund withdrew from another deal in 2008 that could have proved politically embarrassing to Mr. Romney. After the Bush administration objected, Bain dropped plans to team up with a Chinese technology giant, Huawei, to buy 3Com, a network equipment maker that supplies software and equipment to the Pentagon and other federal agencies.

The administration said intelligence reports indicated that Huawei, which was founded by a former People’s Liberation Army officer, posed “national security problems,” according to a lawsuit stemming from the deal’s collapse. A House Intelligence Committee report released Monday said Huawei continued to have troubling connections to the Chinese government, something the company denies.

Bain’s interest in China dates to when Mr. Romney ran the firm. During a panel discussion at the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston in February 1998, he told of touring an appliance factory in China where 5,000 employees “were working, working, working, as hard as they could, at rates of roughly 50 cents an hour.”

Not long afterward, a Bain affiliate, Brookside Capital Partners, acquired about 6 percent of Global-Tech Appliances, whose factory in many ways matched Mr. Romney’s description. The next year, Brookside and another Bain-related entity increased their stake to 9 percent, before selling their shares in 2000.

Just before Bain bought shares, a French firm accused Global-Tech of stealing its deep-fat fryer design. In a decision affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2011, the company was found to have willfully violated the French firm’s United States patent, selling the knockoffs even after it was sued.

Mr. Romney also has millions invested in a series of Bain funds that have a controlling stake in Sensata Technologies, a manufacturer of sensors and controls for vehicles, aircraft and electric motors that employs 4,000 workers in China. Since Bain took over the operation in 2006, its investment has quadrupled in value. Bain continues to own $2.6 billion worth of Sensata’s shares.

Two years ago, Sensata bought an operation that made automobile sensors in Freeport, Ill. At the first meeting with the plant’s 170 workers, Sensata managers announced that by the end of 2012 all the equipment and jobs would be relocated, mostly to Jiangsu Province. Workers have staged demonstrations, pleading for Mr. Romney to intervene on their behalf.

Chinese engineers, flown to Freeport for training on the equipment, described their salaries as a pittance compared with Freeport wages. Tom Gaulrapp, who has operated machines at the

factory for 33 years, said he fears he will go bankrupt after he loses his job on Nov. 5.

“This goes to show the unbelievable hypocrisy of this man,” he said of Mr. Romney. “He talks about how we need to get tough on China and stop China from taking our jobs, and then he is making money off shipping our jobs there.”

It is often difficult to determine precisely how much Mr. Romney benefits from specific investments by Bain funds, since his money goes into a pool used to buy stakes in companies. In the case of Sensata, however, it is clearer because he reported a charitable donation of $405,000 in Sensata stock that he received as “partnership distributions” in 2010 and 2011, according to his tax returns.

Jiangsu Province, where most of the Freeport jobs are moving, is one of China’s designated “export bases” for auto parts. Asimco, the other auto parts manufacturer in Bain’s portfolio, also has factories in Jiangsu Province and three other regions designated as export bases.

The Chinese government incentives offered to companies in those “bases” set off a complaint from the United States to the World Trade Organization last month. The United States asserted that in 2011, China spent $1 billion on grants, tax preferences, lowered interest rates and other subsidies to increase exports of auto parts in violation of fair trade rules.

Mr. Romney has been critical of these types of Chinese incentives to bolster exports.

The state-controlled Chinese Academy of Sciences has provided free research and development to Asimco, which exports at least 15 percent of its products, primarily to the United States. The authorities also gave the company land to build the factory that replaced the plants in Grand Haven, Mich.

Asimco’s China operations became a point of contention in bankruptcy proceedings that accompanied the closing of the Michigan plants. The bankruptcy trustee said that internal Asimco e-mails showed the company had transferred money to China to qualify for a Chinese tax rebate available only to manufacturers of exported products.

Jack Perkowski, the former longtime chairman of Asimco who now advises Western companies seeking to enter the Chinese market, said Asimco never benefited from export-related subsidies because most of its customers are in China. “I honestly can’t think of anything we could have gotten that was tied to the fact we were exporting,” he said.

But the company is striving for more overseas buyers. Last year Zhang Dejiang, the Chinese vice prime minister in charge of transportation, visited an Asimco assembly line and offered encouragement to workers. According to a statement on the company’s Web site, Mr. Zhang was particularly impressed that “the company’s products can rival their Western counterparts.”

10/10/2012 9:30:00 AM

Amtrak posts ridership record in FY2012

In fiscal-year 2012, Amtrak ridership totaled 31.2 million passengers — a 3.5 percent increase compared with FY2011 and the highest passenger count in the railroad's history and ninth ridership record in the past 10 years, according to a press release. For the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, ridership on the Northeast Corridor rose 4.8 percent to a record 11.4 million, state-supported and other short-distance routes increased 2.1 percent to a record 15.1 million and long-distance routes grew 4.7 percent to 4.7 million. Twenty-five of Amtrak's 44 services posted ridership records, according to a prepared statement. For the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, ticket revenue rose 6.8 percent to a best-ever $2.02 billion and system-wide on-time performance jumped from 78.1 percent in FY2011 to 83 percent in FY2012, the highest figure in 12 years, Amtrak officials said. Northeast Regional service ridership rose 6.6 percent to a record 8 million passengers and Acela Express ridership increased 0.5 percent to nearly 3.4 million. Ridership gains on other Northeast services included: Keystone Corridor, up 5.8 percent to a record 1.4 million; Downeaster, up 4.3 percent to 541,000; Adirondack, up 5.3 percent to 132,000; Ethan Allen, up 10 percent to 54,000; Vermonter, up 5.5 percent to 82,000; Empire Service, up 3.8 percent to 1.06 million; and Pennsylvanian, 2.2 percent to 212,000. Virginia's Washington, D.C.-to-Lynchburg service posted a ridership spike of 14.1 percent to a new record of 185,000, and the Washington, D.C.-to-Newport News service jumped 11.9 percent to a record 624,000. In North Carolina, the Piedmont service set a record of 162,00 passengers, up 16.2 percent year over year. In the Midwest, ridership on the Chicago-St. Louis corridor, which accommodates Lincoln Service and Texas Eagle trains, jumped 11 percent to a record 675,000 passengers. Other Midwestern routes that set records were: Hiawatha, up 2.3 percent to 838,000; Missouri River Runner, up 5.3 percent to 196,000; and Blue Water, up 1.1 percent to 189,000. Ridership on California's San Joaquin route increased 7.2 percent to a record 1.1 million passengers and Capital Corridor passenger counts rose 2.2 percent to a record 1.75 million riders. Meanwhile, all of Amtrak's 15 long-distance routes posted gains, resulting in their best combined ridership performance in 19 years, according to Amtrak. The Lake Shore Limited, Texas Eagle and City of New Orleans registered ridership records, while the Empire Builder, Coast Starlight and Cardinal services posted "significant percentage growth," according to Amtrak. Amtrak officials expect ridership growth to continue into FY2013. Ridership numbers will get an early boost when the expanded Downeaster service to Freeport and Brunswick launches Nov. 1, and the Amtrak Virginia Northeast Regional service is extended to Norfolk starting Dec. 12. Long-term factors that will contribute to continued ridership growth include improved services such as Wi-Fi and eTicketing, high gasoline prices, business travel growth on the Northeast Corridor, growing highway congestion and air travel delays, Amtrak said.

Since 2000, Amtrak ridership has jumped 49 percent.

Associated Press Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Amtrak ridership hits record high even as Republicans call for eliminating federal subsidies

WASHINGTON — Amtrak trains carried 31.2 million passengers in the fiscal year ending in September, the highest annual ridership since the railroad was formed in 1971, the nation’s intercity passenger railroad said Wednesday. Ridership grew 3.5 percent over the past 12 months compared with the previous budget year, and ticket revenue jumped 6.8 percent to a best-ever $2.02 billion, Amtrak said. Ridership has increased every year but one over the past decade, and is up almost 50 percent from 2000. “People are riding Amtrak trains in record numbers across the country because there is an undeniable demand to travel by rail,” Amtrak President and CEO Joe Boardman said in a statement. “Ridership will continue to grow because of key investments made by Amtrak and our federal and state partners to improve on-time performance, reliability, capacity and train speeds.” At the same time ridership has been increasing, Republicans have stepped up their campaign to end federal subsidies to Amtrak. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has accused Amtrak of “Soviet-style” inefficiency and held several hearings devoted to criticism of the railroad. The GOP platform adopted at the Republican National Convention in August calls for “the federal government to get out of way and allow private ventures to provide passenger service” in the lucrative northeast corridor between Washington and Boston — the heart of Amtrak’s operations. Critics have complained that the railroad’s trains are slow compared to high-speed passenger trains in Europe and Asia. Last month, Amtrak began testing trains in the Northeast capable of reach speeds as high as 165 mph.

10/11/2012 11:00:00 AM

Union Pacific improving Nebraska rail line

Union Pacific Railroad is spending more than $29 million to upgrade a rail line between Grand Island and Havens, Neb. Scheduled to be complete by the end of November, the project calls for replacing 88,400 concrete ties, installing more than 33 miles of new rail, spreading 115,500 tons of ballast,

renewing surfaces at 16 road crossings and replacing six switches. The Class I is investing $3.6 billion in its rail network this year, according to a press release.

10/11/2012 12:00:00 PM

UTU, EJ&E ratify new agreement for yardmasters and hostlers

Elgin, Joliet and Eastern yardmasters and hostlers represented by the United Transportation Union recently ratified new six-year agreements. The contracts include annual wage increases and back pay, 401(k) retirement plans, and disability insurance and prior rights. The agreements also increase life insurance and place members under the national railroad health and welfare program, which includes dental and vision coverage, as well as early retirement major medical coverage. In September, UTU-represented brakemen, conductors and yardmen employed by the CN subsidiary also ratified a new agreement.

Romney: ‘We Don’t Have People Who Die Because They Don’t Have

Insurance’

By Rebecca Leber

10/11/2012

Mitt Romney doubled down on his suggestion that uninsured Americans can find the care they need in

emergency rooms, telling The Dispatch that people will always receive the treatment they need, and do

not die or suffer because they can not pay for care. He pointed to federal law that requires hospitals to

admit emergency patients, repeating his advice that patients rely on the most expensive form of care

reserved strictly for emergencies. Romney told the Columbus Dispatch:

“We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you,

‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’  ” he said as he offered more hints

as to what he would put in place of “Obamacare,” which he has pledged to repeal.

“No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the

government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment

because they don’t have insurance.”

He pointed out that federal law requires hospitals to treat those without health insurance — although

hospital officials frequently say that drives up health-care costs.

Emergency rooms serve as a place of last resort, but 45,000 Americans still die every year because they

lack health insurance, or one every 12 minutes. Uninsured adults under age 65 are also at a 40 percent

higher death risk. Hospitals may treat patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of legal

status or ability to pay, but patients with chronic conditions that don’t require emergency interference

are often unable to access needed care.

Romney’s health care proposal would leave 72 million Americans without health insurance and wouldn’t

provide all uninsured Americans with a stable source of insurance.

10/12/2012 10:30:00 AM

AAR: Intermodal still up, carloads still down for U.S. railroads in week 40

U.S. rail traffic maintained a year-long trend in October's first week. For the period ending Oct. 6, carloads totaled 283,440 units, down 6.3 percent, while intermodal volume totaled 251,113 units, up 3.8 percent compared with volumes from the same week last year, according to the Association of American Railroads. Ten of 20 carload commodity groups posted gains, led by petroleum products (46.1 percent), farm products excluding grain (30 percent), and lumber and wood products (11.2 percent). Coal volume fell 18.1 percent, iron and steel scrap loads declined 17.9 percent, and waste and nonferrous scrap traffic dropped 11.5 percent. After rebounding early in the third quarter, absolute coal volumes have continued to deteriorate into the fourth quarter as inventories at utilities remain high, Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc. analysts said in their latest weekly "Rail Flash" report. "Week 40 coal carloads contracted 17 percent in the second-largest weekly year-over-year decline of 2012; volumes contracted 6 percent in the third quarter after a 9 percent first-half contraction, and have trended below [seasonal averages] since the beginning of September," they said. For the week ending Oct. 6, Canadian railroads reported 80,156 carloads, down 0.2 percent, and 574,206 containers and trailers, up 11.3 percent year over year. Mexican railroads' weekly carloads increased 3.4 percent to 15,122 units and intermodal volume jumped 17.5 percent to 11,626 units. Through 2012's first 40 weeks, 13 reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads originated 14,985,237 carloads, down 1.5 percent, and 11,923,046 containers and trailers, up 4.7 percent compared with the same 2011 period.