Free Republic

Georgia Republican Rep. Austin Scott, a new member on the House Intelligence Committee, hopes the panel will investigate efforts by unfriendly foreign powers to insert themselves into U.S. food and technology supply chains. "One of the things that I expect us to look into, and hopefully look into, is where our adversaries have embedded themselves in the supply chain of basic necessities for Americans," Scott said on the John Solomon Reports podcast. "I talk about food a lot, because it's one of the things that we have to have to get through the day," Scott explained. "What are our adversaries...

San Diego County’s Regional Transportation Agency’s (SANDAG) latest transportation plan is designed to make driving so expensive that you succumb to public transportation. In addition to the current gas tax and registration fees, SANDAG’s plan adds three new half-cent sales tax increases, over 800 miles of San Diego County freeway lanes converted to toll lanes, and a mileage tax for every mile driven to pay for their $165 billion public mass transit plan. SANDAG’s new plan refuses to build the road improvements promised in their last plan but will continue to tax us until 2048 to pay for them. SANDAG’s...

United Airlines’ CEO said airlines are selling seats for flights they can’t staff — but Buttigieg hasn’t acted on state officials’ demand that he crack down. The recent holiday travel meltdown wasn’t a fluke or a one-off — cancellations will continue because airlines routinely sell tickets for flights they know they may not be able to staff and operate, the chief executive of United Airlines told investors yesterday. The stunning admission from the highest reaches of the airline industry confirms a warning sent by state attorneys general to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg prior to the December travel meltdown. However, Buttigieg...

Following yet another failure of government control of transportation -- the FAA system debacle -- Pete Buttigieg has been soundly thrashed again for his incompetence. The FAA failure is only one of many fiascos over the past year laid at the feet of the erstwhile secretary of Transportation. Recall when he and his “husband” were on paternity leave for nearly two months while the maritime shipping supply chain crisis was going on last fall. Next, he was AWOL during the railroad strike negotiations and really played no role in brokering a deal. As a matter of fact, he was on...

The White House said Wednesday that President Joe Biden stands by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg just hours after a Federal Aviation Administration computer system crashed and created havoc for air travelers. “He respects the Secretary in the work that he has been doing. You have seen the secretary on TV,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during the daily briefing when asked why the president supported him.

The Biden administration on Tuesday unveiled a road map for bringing down emissions from the transportation sector to net-zero by 2050. The new road map, from several federal agencies, has both shorter- and longer-term policies, including selling more electric vehicles, investing in rail and other public transportation and making walking and biking safer and more convenient options. The blueprint also includes the use of several “levers” to help the transportation sector reach net-zero, including federal, state and local regulations, investment in infrastructure and new research and development. President Biden has said he hopes that the entire country will become carbon...

Almost 15 years ago, California’s Air Resources Board, known as “CARB”, passed a set of clean air regulations with assigned dates for implementation. Of those emissions rulings, the last to go into effect hits the trucking and bus industry the hardest, going into effect on January 1, 2023. It bans large trucks and buses built before 2010 from California roads. At the end of December 2022, CARB estimated that there are 200,000 trucks and busses that it applies to. These are 14,000 lb and heavier vehicles that can no longer be driven in California. It estimates that number represents 10%...

VIDEOA couple of months ago my Cousin Jerry who flew down here to South Florida and told me that his airport experience was absolute HELL. I thought that he might be exaggerating until I reviewed a number of airport scenes of recent holiday travel. When I was a kid, airports were places of glamor and welcome respites from the everyday hum-drum world. Unfortunately they now seem to have turned into overcrowded combative hellholes as you can see. And they are at their worst during what is supposed to be a festive Christmas and New Years holiday season.p.s. Be sure to...

Eleven months after a catastrophic collapse into a Frick Park ravine, a new Fern Hollow Bridge was celebrated Wednesday as a model of unprecedented intergovernmental cooperation and an engineering marvel, completed in the fraction of the time needed for similar projects. Final railing installation work continued as Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and other elected officials gathered in the cold sunshine for a ceremonial ribbon-cutting at the four-lane Forbes Avenue span, which links Regent Square and surrounding neighborhoods to Squirrel Hill. The bridge could be open for traffic as early as Thursday, but the completion date PennDOT...

Line painting and other finishing touches continued Tuesday at the new Fern Hollow Bridge in the city’s East End, with a dedication ceremony planned Wednesday and completion of bridge reconstruction work anticipated Thursday, officials said. A date for reopening the bridge to traffic has not been set, according to Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokesman Steve Cowan, but it was anticipated it would be within a week. The busy, 500-foot Forbes Avenue bridge, which connected Squirrel Hill to Point Breeze and Park Place, collapsed onto a popular hiking trail about 100 feet below the road in Frick Park in January. Ten...

It didn't have to be this way. But it is...and Secretary Mayor Pete Buttigieg is nowhere to be found. We've all heard of the game "Where's Waldo?" Well, I've got a better question. As we look upon the hordes of federal parasites dedicated public servants, where's Pete? We're seeing the convergence of some dangerous circumstances — a perfect storm, if you will. But it's not a convergence of weather patterns, but problems with the transportation infrastructure. Yet Pete (Buttigieg) is nowhere to be found — at least not anywhere near the problems he's supposed to prevent. Loaded ships are still...

Bright orange scooters now share — and sometimes command — Pittsburgh’s sidewalks. They’re an integral part of the Move PGH pilot project, the city’s plan to bundle transit options to help residents get around without owning a car, whether by bus, bike, scooter, zip car or more. Statistics reported by Move PGH, a year into its two-year pilot, are encouraging: People have taken more than 576,000 scooter trips for a total of hundreds of thousands of miles. They have biked tens of thousands of miles, and ridden Scoobi mopeds for more than 14,000 miles. Experience has dispelled Initial fears about...

VIDEOIs there any doubt that Pete Buttigieg is the WORST Transportation Secretary ever? Yet this walking, talking BS artist was recently BRAGGING in New Hampshire. Perhaps instead of not very subtly running for President he should try RUNNING his own Transportation Department. Or does he know he is waaaay too incompetent to perform that task so avoids that by going out on the campaign trail to brag, brag, BRAG.

The council two weeks ago approved a $2 million on-call bus services contract, which is proving insufficient as the city already shelled out $1.8 million for 81 charter bus departures as of September 21. The bus money, just like the $17,790 the city is spending every night in hotel rooms and the 22,245 meals served to migrants so far, is coming from the city's general fund. In addition, the city has committed 125 municipal employees to address the crisis, including 50 who are “embedded” at immigrant advocacy nonprofits that cannot find enough volunteers. The city’s total expenses on migrants stand...

Some drivers may be confused or intimidated by roundabouts, those circular intersections where all traffic circles to the left until motorists find their exit to the right. But drivers better get used to them — the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is sold on the improved safety and traffic flow roundabouts provide and expects to install more of them to replace traditional intersections that use traffic signals or stop signs. The department last week released a study that reviewed 36 roundabouts that had replaced traditional intersections for at least three years. It found that deaths at those locations dropped to just...

A version of the above image was published in the April 19, 1884 issue of the National Police Gazzette. The publisher was located at Franklin Square and Dover Street, New York. The location is in Manhattan, New York City.The probably earlier version, shown above, is found in The Remington Historical Treasury of American Guns, published in 1966, taken from the New York Public Library Picture Collection.Harper’s publishing house is shown at the Franklin Square location in this map from January of 1885. In 1884, cable car lines were just starting to be considered in New York City, and electric trolleys...

FedEx FDX stock was tumbling after the company doubly disappointed investors Thursday announcing weak quarterly results earlier than expected while withdrawing its full-year financial guidance. The stock was down more the 12% in after-hours trading after FedEx (ticker: FDX) said it earned $3.44 a share from $23.2 billion in sales in its fiscal 2023 first quarter which ended in August. Wall Street was looking for $5.10 in per-share earnings from $23.5 billion in sales.

For months, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has been saying that $5.6 billion in additional federal funds through the Biden administration’s stimulus program won’t come close to addressing all of the state’s road and bridge needs. Now, a national online research organization agrees, at least on money for needed bridge work. InMyArea Research released a report last week that claims the $26.2 billion in stimulus funds for bridges nationwide over the next five years falls an estimated $7.3 billion short of the amount needed just to upgrade bridges rated in poor condition. Pennsylvania’s allocation of $1.63 billion for bridges is...

Dicastal North America makes wheels for Ford, GM, Stellantis and others The FBI raided western Michigan wheel manufacturing outfit Dicastal North America on Monday. The Chinese-owned manufacturer is a major supplier of automotive wheels and has been operating in Greenville, Mich., since 2015, the local Daily News newspaper reported. The FBI has not released any information about the raid apart from acknowledging that it was executing a warrant at the company's Michigan location. According to the Detroit Free Press, agents sent employees home and seized office

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is on a mission. He’s looking for highways with a racist past and is aiming to “help reconnect cities and neighborhoods racially segregated or divided by road projects.” Buttigieg is examining interstate highways, built with federal dollars, “where a piece of infrastructure cuts off a neighborhood or a community because of how it was built,” said Buttigieg in a speech announcing the $1 billion “Reconnecting Communities” program. “How it was built”? What does that mean? Does that statement refer to the racial makeup of businesses and residents? This is just more of the “disparate racial results”...