Word: railings
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Since then, public spats with Israel have been the third rail of U.S. foreign policy. If Obama loses his current showdown with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they could well remain so for a generation. But luckily for Obama - and unluckily for the supporters of the political status quo in Washington and Jerusalem - he's not likely to lose...
...bullet-train idea is back, as it is throughout the rest of the country, thanks to $13 billion for high-speed rail (HSR) that was tucked into President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package. The application process for bullet-train bucks ($8 billion this year and $1 billion in each of the next five years) began this week. States like Florida are vying for big chunks of it - not only as free funding for a traffic decongestant they thought they couldn't afford, but also as a high-tech pump primer for the kind of higher-wage jobs that...
...country of cities and suburbs to what urban-studies expert Richard Florida calls "mega-regions." Central Florida's I-4 Corridor, between Orlando and Tampa, is a prime example. Mega-regions "are natural economic agglomerations whose market potential can be harnessed if they're linked up by high-speed rail," says Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto. "If there's any place in the world right now where this makes sense, it's the U.S. Cars and jets won't do it; high-speed rail will...
...Even the Orlando Sentinel, which covers a city that would absorb a large share of the $1.5 billion Florida will seek to help fund a $2.5 billion Orlando-Tampa HSR line, warned in a recent editorial that the Sunshine State is "really not a strong candidate for high-speed rail." The reason: its local commuter-train lines - which HSR would need to link up with to make it truly practical - are virtually nonexistent because of the peninsula's car-obsessed culture...
Still, despite the questions about Florida's long-term commitment to HSR, Vice President Joe Biden this month assured the state that it's "in play" for the stimulus money. Either way, Florida is a strong reminder that the passenger-rail debate isn't likely to go away. Liberals tend to romanticize trains (because the French use them) and conservatives tend to disparage them (because the French use them). But while the U.S. probably can't re-create the charming ride from Paris to Lyon, it also can't keep treating rail like a loathsome relic. Since World...