Free Republic

What the L? Gov. Cuomo rocked the regional transportation world this week when he cheered a report suggesting that the existing cross-Hudson tunnels between New Jersey and New York don’t need a full shutdown to rebuild them, potentially throwing yet another wrench into the plan to build a new pair of tunnels to boost interstate rail capacity, a $13-billion piece of the Gateway Project. It’s the latest baffling twist in the decade-plus-long saga. On Sunday, the governor suggested that a report done for the Port Authority by consultants London Bridge Associates showed that the existing century-old tunnels could be fixed...

It’s a done deal. Tolls on the states three major toll highways are going up in September, after Gov. Phil Murphy gave a final approval of the increases and the multi-billion dollar construction plans they fund. Murphy signed the meeting minutes on May 27 and sent confirmation letters to the New Jersey Turnpike Authority and South Jersey Transportation Authority, said Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for the governor. The approvals came on the same day boards of both agencies met, held lengthy public hearings and approved the toll increases. Governors have the option to approve authority board minutes, or not to...

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Tuesday that electricity consumption will double if the world’s car fleets are electrified, increasing the need to expand nuclear, solar, geothermal and wind energy generating sources. Increasing the availability of sustainable energy is a major challenge as cars move from combustion engines to battery-driven electric motors, a shift which will take two decades, Musk said in a talk hosted by Berlin-based publisher Axel Springer. There’s no unicorn energy source or free lunch. Currently, electric cars are primarily powered by coal, natural gas, and nuclear. Those are the sources we use to generate electricity,...

What could they possibly have been planning? No doubt they just wanted to do the jobs that Americans refuse to take, right? While Leftists continue to deny that border control is a national security issue, recently a Muslim migrant from Jordan named Moayad Heider Mohammad Aldairi was sentenced to three years in prison for sneaking at least six Yemeni Muslims into the United States across the border from Mexico. Their intentions were unlikely to have been benign. Judicial Watch reported back in 2016 that police in a New Mexico border town arrested a woman they described as an “Islamic refugee”...

Unseasonal ice storms hit many parts of Russia on November 18 and 19, 2020, causing power outages, traffic chaos, and the collapse of key infrastructure systems in the Far East. An overnight storm accompanied by strong northerly winds and ice rain -- described by The Siberian Times as 'weather apocalypse' -- caused the collapse of key systems in the Russian Far East on November 19, 2020, leaving at least 120 000 people without electricity. Vladivostok and most of the Primorye region were turned into frozen land, the paper reported, adding that hundreds of power lines were cut by wet snow...

We have another major bombshell for you here, regarding the 2020 election. Despite the intense, malicious censorship of Big Tech, we're really becoming known for in-depth analysis and research of current events, so thank you for your support as we continue to fight for the very survival of America, our constitutional republic. This story begins with the little-known executive order signed into existence on September 12, 2018, by President Donald J. Trump. That order, available at Whitehouse.gov, is entitled, "Executive Order on Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election." In that executive order,...

When Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine rolls off production lines, Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Company will be waiting to distribute it through a complex and costly system of deep-freeze airport warehouses, refrigerated vehicles and inoculation points across China. After they reach vaccination centres, the shots must be thawed from minus 70 degrees Celsius and injected within five days, if not they go bad. Then the Herculean journey from warehouse freezer to rolled-up sleeve must be undertaken all over again – to deliver the second booster shot a month later. The road map sketched out by the company, which has licensed...

I searched and found no hits. I am placing this in chit chat because who knows the validity of it, but I did find it interesting enough for us to chat about it.

Summary This joint cybersecurity advisory uses the MITRE Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge (ATT&CK®) framework. See the ATT&CK for Enterprise framework for all referenced threat actor techniques. Note: the analysis in this joint cybersecurity advisory is ongoing, and the information provided should not be considered comprehensive. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) will update this advisory as new information is available. This joint cybersecurity advisory was written by CISA with contributions from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). CISA has recently observed advanced persistent threat (APT) actors exploiting multiple legacy vulnerabilities in combination with a newer privilege escalation...

Imagine if we could put every area of America on an even playing field when it comes to high-speed internet. https://t.co/JqdSWsJDgY— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) October 2, 2020 Today’s internet is as critical—if not more so—to our nation’s economy and security as roads and highways were in Eisenhower’s time. https://t.co/Md4sjHXowB— Slate (@Slate) October 2, 2020

Cloudflare, a web infrastructure provider and content delivery network, is reportedly suffering outages resulting in major websites crashing across the internet. Multiple websites crashed worldwide today as one of the web’s most important infrastructure providers and content delivery networks, Cloudflare, suffered an outage. Cloudflare provides DNS and CDN services and powers approximately “40% of the internet.” The Cloudflare system status page stated that “the issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.” The issue is reportedly related to the Cloudflare Resolver in the company’s edge network in certain locations. The outage struck at quite a few Cloudflare data...

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a massive $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill packed with Democrats’ climate wish-list items. Democrats passed the bill 233-188 on a mostly party-line vote. Much of the funding tied to actual transportation measures — $500 billion — is tied to green measures requiring states to set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for mitigation as if an unspecified climate catastrophe were on the immediate horizon. President Donald Trump slammed the bill, H.R. 2, as “full of wasteful ‘Green New Deal’ initiatives.” “Naturally this nonsense is not going anywhere in the Senate,” Senate Majority...

U.S. equity markets soared Tuesday after a report that President Trump is considering a $1 trillion infrastructure plan and retail sales gained the most on record after a sharp drop in April. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 818 points, or 3.2 percent, in the opening minutes of trading while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 2.78 percent and 2.33 percent, respectively. The president’s proposal would allocate most of the money for projects like roads and bridges, but would also provide funding for 5G wireless infrastructure and rural broadband, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the plan.

We’ve been down this road before: Washington seems to agree broadly on legislation to revamp the nation’s infrastructure, only to get hung up on pesky details. An example was the recent exchange between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Peter DeFazio (D-OR). McConnell reiterated his reservations – already in clear view after President Trump called for a $2 trillion package last month – about huge deficit-financed federal spending on infrastructure. DeFazio responded by doubling down on a “massive investment” in public works “[j]ust like the New Deal of the 1930s”. Unfortunately, there is...

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) will travel to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday for a meeting with President Trump to discuss economic revival efforts. The governor said during a news conference on Tuesday that he hoped to discuss how infrastructure projects could be leveraged to kickstart the economy, which has cratered due to the coronavirus pandemic. "You want to restart the economy, you want to reopen the economy, let’s do something creative, let’s do it fast, let’s put Americans back to work, and let’s make America better," Cuomo said. "It is common sense." "You have an infrastructure that’s crumbling, you...

President Trump on Friday signed an executive order prohibiting bulk power system equipment from foreign companies that his administration believes could put the U.S. electricity system at risk. The Executive Order on Securing the United States Bulk Power System authorizes Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette to prohibit federal agencies and U.S. entities from acquiring, transferring or installing bulk power system equipment in “which any foreign country or foreign nation has any interest and the transaction poses an unacceptable risk to national security.” The order does not single out any country but many have interpreted the new rule o imply that equipment...

If a railroad locomotive is an iron horse, then a vast herd of them has been put out to pasture in Salt Lake City. They’re lined up, nose to tail, waiting to go nowhere — at least for now. By some estimates as many as 200 railroad engines — each one costing about $3 million — have been sidelined over the last year or so in a Union Pacific rail yard just north of downtown Salt Lake City. And it has nothing at all to do with the new coronavirus. A company spokeswoman for Union Pacific refused to answer detailed...

There are now over 850,000 coronavirus cases and counting in the United States. Experts estimate that over a million Americans could soon carry it—but working together we can prevent that projection from becoming a reality. The spread can be curbed, and the curve flattened, with sound policies that prevent exposure to coronavirus while also ensuring that Americans have access to the supplies they need. Most states have ordered their residents to stay home and only travel when necessary. This prevents millions of Americans from encountering the virus. But as more Americans shelter in place hoping to flatten the curve, consumption...

COVID-19: It’s all we talk about, on the cable news, and in our 6-foot socially-distanced prison walks around our silent neighborhoods. And in nearly every conversation comes the intellectual shrug, “who could have seen this coming?” A single phrase that neatly absolves governments and experts alike of any responsibility of predicting the pandemic and, if not being able to stop it, at least cushioning its blow........ But is it unfair to engage in so much 20-20 hindsight? After all, who could see COVID coming? Well, we did. We — as in nodes within the U.S. Government tasked with tracking critical...

It's time to stop throwing money at an obsolete form of travel and focus on the transportation system that is already moving more than 80 percent of passenger travel in the U.S. When most of the nation’s governors shut down nonessential businesses and directed people to stay at home, they made the mistake of keeping urban transit systems running despite a 2018 study showing that mass public transportation systems expedite the spread of infectious diseases in communities. Further, a 2011 study found that people who ride urban transit are nearly six times more likely to suffer from upper respiratory infections...