Hyping The Hyperloop

The last time I addressed the hyperloop drama I noted that Maryland Governor Larry Hogan has allowed Elon Musk and his Boring Company to dig a 10.3-mile tunnel beneath the state-owned portion of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. The Maryland Attorney General later nixed that deal.

Oh well, even Robert Fulton had his off days but hyperloop movement is gaining momentum! While we are warned that we may be lagging behind Russia in the great hyperloop race and Musk and his Boring Company have spawned at least two copy cat competitors, Virgin Hyperloop One and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies.The privately funded X Prize Foundation whose membership includes such scientific heavy weights as Arianna Huffington and film maker James Cameron has come aboard. Lastly, the aptly named Clive Burrows will lend his expertise to the tunneling venture. If only they could find an insurance underwriter named Justin Case.
Suddenly Cleveland appeared on the front lines of the transportation revolution with the announcement that it had inked a deal with HTT to put it on the fast track to become part of the first interstate hyperloop connection. Yup, going to Chicago will soon be as quick and easy as driving through a car wash. One may even want to select a private kindergarten in the Windy City for that wunderkind in the nest.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies announced it has signed agreements with the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency and the Illinois Department of Transportation to study several high-speed routes that would zoom between Cleveland and Chicago in as little as 28 minutes. First envisioned by inventor and business magnate Elon Musk, Hyperloop is a technology that could speed passengers or cargo in specially designed capsules or "pods" through a steel tube maintained at a partial vacuum.

The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency or NOACA, the sugar daddy for current outbreak of hyperloop hysteria seem to have much more to do than making the trains run on time. It is fighting the good fight for transportation equity and bike paths.

"Northeast Ohio's top transportation planning agency is preparing a new, 20-year vision for the region that will focus on improving social equity, particularly for households without cars.

and

The interstate highway system, conceived under President Dwight Eisenhower in the late 1950s, has had consequences for Northeast Ohio that need to be addressed, says Grace Gallucci, director of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, NOACA.

HTT notes that Ohio’s legislature passed a resolution supporting the initiative in January of this year, and that it’s also worked with congressional representatives from multiple states to jointly send a formal letter to the Trump administration asking for federal funding support for building out a Hyperloop network. Has anyone asked Indiana? Inasmuch as most of the route runs through the Hoosier state Indiana residents, especially those who will endure the inconveniences of the construction may be forgiven for asking what's in it for them. HHT, Ohio and Chicago want to build the project on the cheap which means burrowing under existing highways rather than buying right of way. Part of the Interstate 80 / 90 route is the Indiana Toll road which has been leased to an Australian firm. A privately owned concern will cheerfully endure hardships and declining toll revenues to keep Cleveland and Chicago happy? Without power of eminent domain no one can lay a 1 inch PVC pipe across Indiana or any other state.

I have been critical of the hyperloop from the beginning because:
1. No mode of mass transportation makes money hence creation of the hyperloop will simply drive public spending. Call it Amtrak 2.
2. It will siphon off funding for roads and bridges and probably use gasoline tax dollars.
3. The Boring Company, Hyperloop One and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies are the last people we want building anything. We don't ask Boeing to build airports. There are at least a dozen tunneling companies, some in their fourth generation of management, that could do the job safer and cheaper.
4. The aforementioned companies have no interest in participating in a competitive bidding process, a process that demands the submission of sealed bid with the job going to the cheapest and best bid.
5. There should be no hyperloop construction permitted until the federal government creates an agency to regulate interstate underground construction as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regulates pipeline construction.
6. It is simply stupid to tunnel across a plane such as Northern Indiana. Cut and cover is far cheaper than tunneling. Only tunnel if going under an existing right of way.

The Cumberland Colony

News that a congressional candidate would be hosting a discussion on opioid addiction caught my attention because of the location, Cumberland, Maryland. Cumberland is the county seat of Allegheny County where I lived the first 9 years of my life. My father's family had lived there since the early 1800's but most have moved on. The coal, rail and paper industries have also moved on. The 2010 census showed the median household income for the Cumberland, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area was $30,916 and the average household income was $39,021. It is one of the poorest in the United States, ranking 305th out of 318 metropolitan areas in per capita income.

In Cumberland today with another all-star panel and packed house to discuss solutions to the Opioid Crisis. This is the most urgent issue facing our district and our nation. pic.twitter.com/roAoJgbIa8

— David Trone (@davidjtrone) February 11, 2018

And who pray thee tell is David Trone I wondered?
He is the billionaire co-owner of Total Wine & More.
Awesome! And he lives in Cumberland?
No, not really. In fact he doesn't even live in the 6th congressional district. He lives in the 8th congressional district.
So why doesn't he run in the 8th?
Been there and done that and lost.
Lost to whom?
A dork named Jamie Raskin.

OMG!

Candidate	Vote%	Votes
Jamie Raskin	33.6%	43,776
David Trone	27.1%	35,400

No only did Trone lose; he lost big! Running second in a nine horse field would be nothing to be ashamed of except he spent $13.4 million dollars to do it. Trone out spent Raskin roughly 6 to 1. The almost constant media messaging cost him an astounding $329 per vote or about one tenth the average annual family income in this district. Not even Hillary Clinton could spend at that rate. If she had spent $13.4 million in 435 congressional districts she would have spent over $5.8 billion.
To add further context, Meg Whitman spent $178.5 million on her losing campaign for California governor — $144.2 million of it her own money, according to 2010 campaign finance reports. The campaign’s overall spending broke down to $43.25 for each vote she received in November’s general election. From her own pocket, it was $34.93 per vote.
On the economical side of the ledger, Ted Cruz would win his 2012 senate seat in Texas by spending just $3.16 per vote in the general election but Kesha Rogers set the mark for campaign expenditure efficiency in 2014 in the Texas senatorial primary. Even while being out spent by a ratio of 124 to 1 the Lyndon LaRouche Democrat was able to force Texas' richest dentist, David Alameel into a run off in the Democratic primary by spending just $24,139. Alameel spent $3,512,912. His per vote cost was $12.93 while Ms Rogers spent $.22 per vote.
Campaign ineptitude aside, is Trone a good fit for Western Maryland? While keeping in mind the dismal economic milieu in Cumberland with it opioid addictions and the ne'er-do-well former coal miners, peruse the Wikipedia entry for Trone's hometown, Potomac,Maryland.

In 2013, CNNMoney listed Potomac as the most affluent town in all the United States based on median household income.[1] Potomac is also the seventh most top-educated American small town according to Forbes.[2] Bloomberg Businessweek labeled Potomac as the twenty-ninth richest zip code in the United States in 2011, stating that it had the largest population of any U.S. town with a median income of more than $240,000.[3] In 2012, The Higley Elite 100 published a list of highest-income neighborhoods by mean household income, which included four neighborhoods in Potomac; one of these neighborhoods, "Carderock-The Palisades" was ranked the highest-income neighborhood in the United States, followed by "Beverly Hills-North of Sunset" in Beverly Hills, CA, and "Swinks Mill-Dominion Reserve" of McLean, VA.[4] More recently, two Potomac neighborhoods were ranked among the ten wealthiest neighborhoods in the country by CNBC in 2014.[5] In 2018, data from the American Community Survey revealed that Potomac was the 6th wealthiest city in the United States.[6] Many Potomac residents work in nearby Washington, D.C.

Obviously it's a great place to live, so good that the incumbent Congressman  John Delaney lives there too. Parenthetically NBA greats Patrick Ewing and Alonzo Mourning also live there. In 2011 the district was gerrymandered to oust long time Republican Congressman Roscoe G. Bartlett. This was done by adding part of Montgomery County. The demarcation is so arcane that the state provides a website with a zip code look up just so voters know what district to vote in. The redistricting process is being challenged in the Supreme Court. It's impossible to overstate the outcome of the Court's decision. It will determine whether the forgotten men and women in Western Maryland can once again be masters of their own destiny or remain a colony of the Potomac elites who can outspend any of them by hundreds of dollars per vote.

General Flynn's Sentencing Has Been Delayed-Maybe Permanently

Well, this is a hell of a note. A few days ago it looked as if General Michael Flynn would soon be special prosecutor Robert Mueller's first trophy. What could possibly go wrong? Flynn had pleaded guilty and it seemed that the sentencing would be a simple formality. How could one possibly fumble a guilty plea? Mueller may have found a way.
First, Judge Rudolph Contreras, an appointee of former President Obama, recused himself without an explanation. Some speculate that Judge Contreras was aware of the faulty FISA warrant. Whatever the reason Judge Emmet Sullivan was randomly chosen as a replacement. Sullivan was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton but before that he was appointed to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by Ronald Reagan. Sullivan has presided over several high profile cases including the corruption trial of the late Senator Ted Stevens and he has become Judicial Watch's favorite judge in their many FOIA lawsuits.
Recently, Mueller asked for a delay in Gen. Flynn’s sentencing because both defense and prosecution were not ready. Mueller supposedly also wants to talk with Flynn again. Why? Possibly because two investigations produced two outcomes. When Flynn was first questioned or if would, interviewed, it was by FBI agents who worked for Comey and they did not think he lied. In their opinion he may have become confused during the course of the interview but did not willfully attempt to deceive them. When he was interviewed the second time it was under Mueller's supervision and the agent doing the interview was Peter Strzok. Strzok was the guy who interviewed Clinton’s longtime aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, about their boss’s private, unsecured server she illegally used during her tenure as secretary of state and could find no wrong doing. He even arranged for the FBI to destroy evidence, namely a laptop that contained classified emails. Eventually he was booted from Team Mueller and assigned to the bureau's human resources department.



So now Mueller must defend the finding of an agent he fired and in light of recent events it is very probable that Flynn's lawyers may withdraw the guilty plea. Worse yet this all goes down in front of Judge Emmet Sullivan who has some old fashion ideas relative to prosecutorial misconduct. The New York Times reported on the dismissal of all charges against Senator Stevens.

A federal judge dismissed the ethics conviction of former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska on Tuesday after taking the extraordinary step of naming a special prosecutor to investigate whether the government lawyers who ran the Stevens case should themselves be prosecuted for criminal wrongdoing.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, speaking in a slow and deliberate manner that failed to conceal his anger, said that in 25 years on the bench, he had “never seen mishandling and misconduct like what I have seen” by the Justice Department prosecutors who tried the Stevens case.

Judge Sullivan’s lacerating 14-minute speech, focusing on disclosures that prosecutors had improperly withheld evidence in the case, virtually guaranteed reverberations beyond the morning’s dismissal of the verdict that helped end Mr. Stevens’s Senate career.

The judge, who was named to the Federal District Court here by President Bill Clinton, delivered a broad warning about what he said was a “troubling tendency” he had observed among prosecutors to stretch the boundaries of ethics restrictions and conceal evidence to win cases. He named Henry F. Schuelke 3rd, a prominent Washington lawyer, to investigate six career Justice Department prosecutors, including the chief and deputy chief of the Public Integrity Section, an elite unit charged with dealing with official corruption, to see if they should face criminal charges.

Mueller's case is dependent on the judgment of a dirty cop. Would he care to sit through a 14 minute lecture from a judge who fails to conceal his anger and who is apt to appoint his own special prosecutor to help Team Mueller sort out its ethical deficiencies?
Probably not.