You're letting the emotion of the situation cloud your thinking.  Yes, it's a shame a young person died but his young age doesn't mean we have to find the cop guilty.  

How the police treated his sister or anything else they did after the shooting doesn't change the facts of the shooting itself.  They might help the civil case.  

"Should the department that hired him be responsible for accepting him even though he had failed at every previous level of police work?"

That's the problem with monopoly industries. Oil has more money to bribe Congress with than alternative energy. That's why alternate energy won't thrive until the last drop of oil is depleted. (or earth burns up first)

You might want to consider the connection between safety equipment and upgraded technology and investment in our significant rail transport system AND accident & loss prevention.  

Hmmmm, let's see, how does "My Saucy Wench" sound? Oh, hi, Anne and Tracy! What's up with the crow bar and bat?

I'll ask again.

Where did all the money go?? We've spent trillions in the past 6 years.

Where did it go??

Not all of  it went to the military.

Some of it went to Pakistan and Egypt and Hamas and ....

Some of it went to pay for the subsidy for Obamacare....

etc. etc. etc,

In the meantime Obama said this in his speech at Georgetown U...

We're going to have to change how our body politic thinks, which means we're going to have to change how the media reports on these issues

Provisions in the ARRA required Amtrak to spend  $850 million of its stimulus funds for capital expenditures, of which no more than 60% could be spent on the Northeast Corridor (Washington-New York-Boston).

The bill also required Amtrak to expend the remaining $450 million on security. Further, Amtrak had to spend all these funds by Feb. 17, 2011, with any remaining amounts at that date to lapse back to the U.S. Treasury.

From what I've been able to ascertain from Amtrak's report to Congress, here's a rough breakdown of its capital expenditures from those funds:

• $100 million to replace the Niantic River Bridge in Connecticut, a project Amtrak has delayed for more than a decade because it didn't have the funds;
  
• $65 million to upgrade 10 other bridges in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New York;
  
• $90.8 million to refurbish out-of-service rail cars and locomotives for reintroduction into service;
  
• $35 million to construct a maintenance facility in Seattle;
  
• $25 million to build a maintenance facility in Los Angeles;
  
• $47.5 million to improve existing maintenance facilities in Chicago;
  
• $25 million to upgrade Miami's Hialeah maintenance facility;
  
• $40 million in stimulus proceeds to upgrade and improve accessibility at more than 200 stations in 40 states;
  
• $20 million to renovate the Wilmington, Del., station;
  
• $10 million to replace the Auto Train station in Sanford, FL;
  
• $50 million to expand positive train-control (PTC) systems on the Northeast Corridor;
  
• $10 million to upgrade PTC in Michigan;
  
• $85 million to install fire detection and suppression systems in all train cars;
  
• $50 million to improve emergency egress from buildings and tunnels; and
  
• $75 million to improve track and railbed conditions.

kdog: "And what my brother tells me about the USPS and the tens of millions they pay consultants for info any letter carrier could tell ya for free about how the USPS could be improved."

Because quite honestly, that's the sort of unsubstantiated claim about government spending which usually runs in tandem with shopworn demands that departments and agencies purge themselves of always-unidentified "waste, fraud and abuse."

Presently, most USPS consultant contracts are actually for professional and technical services regarding the ongoing maintenance and requisite upgrades of the Postal Service's technological capacity.

Further, and I'm speaking for myself only, I think the U.S. Postal Service does an outstanding job with delivery of service, which I generally find to be both considerably cheaper and far more reliable than the same offered by either FedEx or UPS.

Here's what's happened to USPS, as best as I can understand and explain it. In 2002, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) found that the Postal Service had overpaid into the federal Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) by approximately $50 billion between the years 1972 and 2000 -- an amount which has since increased to $75 billion, were we to extend it out to 2009.

Now, those overpayments could have been easily corrected by a relatively simple accounting offset, which would have allowed USPS to reduce future payments into CSRS for a defined period, and tap into the existing fund surplus to pay for its current retirement expenses. Only it wasn't so simple, once the Bush administration and the GOP-controlled Congress got involved.

In 2003, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that such a proposed short-term change in the retirement contribution formula from USPS could cause a reduction in federal revenues to the CSRS, and thus increase deficits in the unified federal budget by as much as about $3.5 billion annually. This assumed, of course, that USPS' contributions to CSRS came directly from federal revenues, rather than income generated by USPS, which was actually the case.

And this is where things started to go badly askew for the Postal Service, because as a result of the CBO's finding, congressional Republicans subsequently required USPS to place any and all such prior and future overpayments to CSRS into a separate escrow account, which would heretofore be unavailable to the Postal Service until Congress itself determined how those funds would be expended. (Emphasis provided for reasons subsequently expounded upon below.)

Further, USPS was required to assume the retirement payments of those employees who had accrued retirement benefits as a result of the time they spent in prior military service. This was an expense which was formerly paid to the military retiree directly by the U.S. Treasury, and had absolutely nothing to do with that retiree's present duties as a USPS employee. It's since been estimated that the $50 billion in overpayments to CSRS by USPS were almost completely consumed by that additional fiscal burden.

Then in 2006, the GOP-controlled Congress further mandated that USPS make ten (10) annual payments of between $5.4 billion and $5.8 billion to the newly created USPS Retiree Health Benefits Fund, which could not be used to pay actual retiree health benefits during those 10 years.

Additionally, it prohibited USPS from offering to its customers any and all services which Congress deemed to be "non-postal," such as contracting with state and local agencies to provide licensing services to various communities, or operating a nationwide postal savings bank, which the former U.S. Post Office actually once did with considerable success from 1911 to 1967.

It should be noted here that the level of those annual payments to the newly-authorized USPS Retiree Health Benefits Fund was not based upon any independent actuarial determination. Rather, those numbers had been produced by CBO as the amounts necessary to offset the loss of escrow account payments by USPS, due primarily to the previously mandated congressional transfer of military retirement expenses to the USPS retirement fund within CSRS.

(Incidentally, those military retirement costs have since been re-transferred back to the U.S. Treasury, now that $50 billion in overpayments to the USPS retirement fund in CSRS have been effectively exhausted as a result of the first transfer.)

It's these particular annual payments to the USPS Retiree Health Benefits Fund which are placing USPS at serious immediate risk of default, because they've essentially become a congressionally-imposed unfunded liability. The corresponding budget pressures placed upon the Postal Service by that liability are what led to, among other things, the recent proposals to stop Saturday mail deliveries and close selected post offices, which have since been dropped due to the resultant public outcry.

Now, remember that all this began because OMB had initially found that USPS had nearly three decades of surplus overpayments in its employee retirement fund within CSRS. Because rather than allow USPS to draw down that surplus by using the escrow account monies to fund current retirement expenses, Congress decided instead to prohibit USPS from accessing those monies at all, unless the Postal Service immediately assumed a corresponding liability of an equal magnitude.

In short, the present losses suffered by USPS are not due to any perceived inefficiencies on the Postal Service's part, but instead likely due to rank intent on the part of congressional Republicans, whose far-right zanies have long sought to drive USPS into default and bankruptcy in the service of heaven knows whatever ideological falderol they're pimping about "market-based" solutions.

So, to recount, USPS has overpaid into its health and retirement funds. But it's prohibited from tapping these surplus funds because: (1) the CBO first -- and mistakenly, IMHO -- deemed that surplus to be part of part of the existing unified federal budget; and (2) Congress then accordingly required that these surplus overpayments be set aside in an escrow account, and then prohibited USPS from using those funds unless it first undertook a corresponding liability.

Thus, according to Congress, any use of those surplus CSRS funds for actual USPS retirement expenses, without that corresponding offset, would therefore increase the federal budget deficit by a similar amount. The end result has been a congressional skimming of $75 billion from USPS, followed by its imposition of a $60 billion unfunded liability, which has now placed the Postal Service at considerable risk of financial ruin.

Can you say "shell game," boys and girls? Clearly, Republicans in Congress are intentionally trying to hamstring the Postal Service. And they are very close to succeeding, because USPS has since defaulted on its 2013 and 2014 payments to its Retiree Health Benefits Fund.

This is an absolutely insane fiscal policy which has imposed upon our U.S. Postal Service by Congress. And further, it's ultimately and purposefully self-destructive to that quasi-public organization, because were it not for all these aforementioned congressional budgetary machinations, USPS would otherwise be entirely self-sufficient and -supporting, and very likely running in the black.

Thus, USPS's present fiscal woes are a wholly manufactured and contrived crisis which could be resolved rather quickly, were Congress to instead return to USPS all those funds which were diverted from its coffers in the first place due to its nonsensical mandates, and repeal its 2006 prohibition on USPS's ability to offer so-called "non-postal" services to consumers.

We should all remember Rubio is a protege of Bush. He is a quite an acceptable plan "B" for the neo-cons and the money boys even to Bush himself.

If and when the "sensible" wing of the GOP figures that the Bush name is too much of an albatross all their money and energy will flow to Rubio, probably making him a strong favorite in my book.

What does "integrity of the game" mean?  I guess it means less and less to more and more people, who just want their team to win and don't care how that happens.  I mean, look at Tom Brady.  Here's someone who clearly has phenomenal talent, who's usually surrounded by other extremely talented players, who has excellent coaches year after year.  Why does he have to go outside the rules to gain more advantage - using underinflated footballs - than he already has?  

Is it ego, years and years of being treated like a god, such that he can't bear the thought of being viewed as ordinary?

It had everything to do with the integrity of the game, it was an adjustment to the apex of all games, the ball.

Brady pressured others to do his bidding, then refused to cooperate, then left them out to hang and lose their source of income.  Two people don't work for the Patriots because of Brady's cheating.

Using examples outside of football that are decades old isn't really dealing with the reality of the sports today, namely the NFL which has been increasing penalties fairly steadily for years.  

Brady's punishment is inline with Rice, Hardy, Smith, Peterson, and the numerous substance and performance enhancing cases in 2014 IMO.  HERE is the list of NFL suspensions, 4 weeks is pretty much the standard in 2014, which suspended around 60 people. 6 already suspended before the season starts this year not including Brady, 2 for the entire season.

The objection to granting this authority is in part related to the extreme secrecy that surrounds the TPP itself; Congress is being asked to just trust that the president makes the right decisions.

Another - and just as important - objection is to the ceding of constitutional authority that passing such legislation will represent.

You raise the matter of unions.  You should go here, and take a look at the organizations and unions that oppose fast-track and the TPP.  It might give you pause.  The AFL-CIO, the International Association of Machinists, Communications Workers of America, the ACLU, among many.

You're talking about the TPP as if you know what's in it.  You don't - you can't, because as has been widely publicized, it is being treated with all the protections and secrecy of a classified, national security document, with members of Congress only having the right to read in the confines of a highly secure area - they can't even take notes for later reference.  Nor can it be discussed - and the penalties for doing so are severe.  The small section that got leaked made the hair stand up on the backs of people's necks, and not in a good way.

So, the big decision here is, does the Congress give the president this kind of authority?  It hasn't been done in over 40 years, so that ought to tell you something.

IMO, the last thing we "need" is "wait-and-see". It is likely to skate right past the waiter-to-see.

This vote was about fast tracking a far-reaching bill that has classified contents.

If you're a member who wants to read the text, you've got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving.

By the time anything is seen it may be because implementation of a done deal brings it out into the open.