The Donald's Friends.

Here it is the first week of July, 2020, and the day after the American national holiday, The Fourth of July.  It was a difficult weekend.  Unsurprisingly it is scorching hot.  CSX chose to contribute to the Fourth of July festivities by manufacturing a large percentage of this heat.  For citizens of America it was not helpful.  When I began paying attention to CSX twenty-three years ago, its parent was John Snow.  Briefly Mr. Snow was appointed the Secretary of the Treasury in Washington, DC, but that did not last.  CSX-T was his creation.  It is a railroad conglomerate which merged the Chesapeake Bay system with Seaboard Coastline.  In short it gobbled up rights to the east coast north/south rail corridor which runs parallel to Interstate 95.  This best can be understood if one thinks about the "Juice Train," Tropicana's shining animal which transports freshly picked Florida oranges to its processing facility in New Jersey.  Once it ran four times a week, and it was easy to spot.  It was a dedicated train with only refrigerated railroad cars carrying the bountiful harvest of freshly grown Florida oranges.  Is it ironic that their processing facility is in New Jersey?  There are Youtube videos showing the actual journey through the eyes of a train engineer.  I have no beef with Tropicana, but a continually running freight train which dominates the eastern seaboard of the United States...  That is something to which to pay attention.  Add Amtrack passenger trains, which in most probability have been lessened because of the Covid 19 outbreak and CSX normal freight operations.  The reason why America does not have a high speed rail passenger network, is because this nearly century old rail infrastructure is owned and controlled by CSX.  John Snow long ago passed the torch and sold his creation for great profit.  Recently Hunter Harrison, a Canadian railroad magnate was brought in further to monetize CSX earnings.  Evidently his track record at reforming Canadian railroads was substantial enough to merit his lucrative contract.  Stock prices soared, CSX futures, and the company made a lot of money from the sale of their stocks.  All of this came from the hiring of Hunter Harrison.  Ironically he died on the job.  While his methodology of "Precision Railroading" did get transplanted to CSX and America, his ace in the hole was short lived.  Now a majority stake in CSX is owned by a Hedge Fund, the same high risk financial instrument which brought down Wall Street in the financial crisis of 2008.  Hedge Funds are not good things for the country.  They are get rich quick schemes for their owners.  They pool mortgages and sell them to investors.  It all began when past president Bill Clinton ran under a campaign slogan, "I feel everyone should be able to own their own home."  Rapidly not vetted high risk loans were divvied out to everyone who decided they could and should own a $250,000.00 house.  One Wall Street physician saw fit to read these mortgages and discovered that over time most of the owners of these mortgages would default and be forced into bankruptcy. Written into the risky loans were provisions that would hike the payments after a certain number of years unbeknownst to their holders.  Their payments doubled and tripled, and many were forced into foreclosure.  Happy times.  Still these Hedge Funds are operating with impunity.  Certainly a Hedge Fund owner is qualified to oversee the operations of one of the nation's larges Class A railroads.  Their offering for the national holiday celebrating the freedom of the colonies from oppressive British rule is railroading in full force.  Why not?  Affluent people visit their beach properties on weekends and holidays.  No ones hangs around Fayettenam.  Certainly it felt like that a virtual ghost town of eerie, foreboding, evil intent.  Oh, that was our President spewing lies, inciting racial rhetoric, and otherwise sealing the fate of his re-election campaign in the fall.  My question is:  Why did CSX choose to use the holiday weekend for itself?  Not unlike Christmas several years ago when for two weeks straight the Milan Yard on North Street was host to two idling Dash 8 locomotives.  Merry Christmas to you!  Shall we assemble a bevy of diesel transfer trucks, park them in the same lot, and let them run unabated to cool their drivers?  "My what a conscientious effort." Let's only think about our own well-being.  On the 4th magically both ES44ACH locomotives were perched running in a high notch at the CSX Milan Yard.  Glory.  It sure was hot this past weekend.  I wonder why?  Is it because vegetable oil likes its heat?  Of course that is more important than celebrating American independence.  Perhaps CSX feels this is what independence is, the freedom to use our country's ammenities for its own monetary profit.  Surely as American citizens were are to believe that somehow this revenue makes its way back into our American economy?  I think not.  Like the rest of it it is distrubuted to Donald's friends.