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Well, here's your first clue - "The hearings were largely one-sided affairs in which opponents to market-based rail services were provided a platform to advance their pro-regulation, special-interest agendas." Market-based rail services?!?!  Are you kidding us? First of all, those stating their case at the aforementioned hearing are most likely captive shippers, and as we all know captive shippers are not afforded market-based rail services.  Funny, the hack writer makes no mention of captive shippers.  None at all.  This fact discredits his whole flawed premise, because it is the captive shippers who are pushing for greater federal oversight of monopolistic rates. Funny, the hack writer makes no mention of differential pricing.  Rather, he seems hell bent on blurring any such distinction by making it appear rates are even across the board. There's more dishonesty in this piece.  Productivity increases are a result of technology, not of the so-called deregulation.  The loss of branchline services means the carload portion of rates have not disappeared but have transfered to the highways.  Truck rates tend to be higher than carload rates, so there hasn't been any overall rate reductions in the supply chain for those who are complaining. But wait.  There's more outright lying in this hack piece.  "Some of these utilities recently found themselves in a bind when the railroads couldn't jump through hoops for them in a capacity-constrained marketplace."  Since when is meeting contractual obligations akin to "jumping through hoops"?  The railroads contracted for certain guarantees of coal deliveries, and when their collective incompetence brought forth the predictable shortfalls, they blamed it on an Act of God.  No mention of the contractual shortfalls in the hack piece. If Vaninetti had at least mentioned such things as captive shippers, differential rates, loss of rail service to rural customers, contractual shortfalls of promised coal deliveries, et al, maybe one could contend with the allegation that this article is pure tripe.  He didn't, so it is.
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