Three Neglected Political Issues

India-Pakistan Peace
My odd and obscure high school in Wales was founded on the principal that if you brought future leaders of the world together in one place, they would meet people from other countries and later be much less likely to bomb those countries.

The most important thing I found out at school was that people from all over the world are pretty much the same. The people you went to high school with are the same as the people someone living on the other side of the world went to high school with.

One group of people at my school were "Subconties," i.e. of subcontinental Asia, i.e. Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshies.

For

those not attuned to foreign affairs, let me give you a quick version of 60-odd years of history: India and Pakistan fight a lot. They both claim ownership of Kashmir, both countries' politicians blame everything on the other country's politicians, blah blah blah, they fight.

Thing is, we are talking about two groups of people who are basically the same group of people. I would be talking to subconties hanging out together in the dorm, conversation would turn to the 60-odd years of fighting thing, and they would say "Yeah. We're the same." Once you take out the politicians on both sides saying "they started it and we'll make them pay," you get two peoples who really ought to be getting along.

Know what that is? An opportunity for peace. A GOOD opportunity for peace. I'd go so far as to say there's a better chance of India and Pakistan working out their differences than of Israel and Palestine working out their differences. Get some of those Israel / Palestine people in there, they'll have a Subconties' Cricket League organized within a year.

Tariffs on Imported Sugar
I think all my information here is based on a single article in The New Yorker, but here goes:

Ethanol is a fuel supplement not made from dinosaur bones. In the States, most ethanol is made from corn because Iowa, an important early voting state in Presidential elections, grows a lot of corn and has made ethanol a litmus test for presidential candidates.

Thing is, you could make ethanol a lot more efficiently by using sugar instead of corn. However, most sugar is grown outside the United Staes, and the small-big problem is that sugar from outside the country is heavily tariffed.

Get rid of the tariffs and you're one step closer to a green economy. Problem is it takes a lot of balls to stand up to a highly motivated lobby like the one aiming to keep sugar tariffs in place.

Amtrak
Amtrak is perpetually kept alive by federal subsidies, but, outside of D.C. to New York, it sucks. Why is there only one train a day to Vermont? Why does the train from New Mexico to L.A. have three hours of "padding" in the schedule between the penultimate and final stop? Why is Amtrak always slow, expensive and uncomfortable?

I can't quite decide if Amtrak sucks because it's grown lazy due to federal subsidies and a lack of competition, or if it just doesn't have the resources to do better, but I am HEAVILY leaning towards "lazy."

What, is America the only country IN THE WORLD that can't figure out how to have proper passenger rail system? Europe does it. India does it. Japan does it. Shit, they've got trains in SIBERIA. We can't do better than Siberia?!

I see functioning train systems running out of New York - Metro-North, Acela (the functioning part of Amtrak), etc. Why can't the national Amtrak system get its act together and become a serious alternative transport for traveling the country?

I know Biden is a big Acela guy, but I'm hoping it'll be a Nixon in China thing - no one could accuse Dick of being a commie, so he had the leeway to open up relations with the mainland. Biden is an Acela guy - he'd be in a perfect position to get Amtrak to stop sucking on threat of an end of subsidies.