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Too often in our ever more polarized world, any announcement is followed by an immediate response from someone denouncing the original position.

It was gratifying to see someone with a really big soap box — CBS News’ “60 Minutes” — speaking so clearly about infrastructure needs.

The Washington, D.C., region that Transport Topics calls home does have its perks.

Since its proposal in 2008, the Keystone XL pipeline project has been a good idea hindered excessively by well-intentioned but unrealistic opponents. Now, though, as the crowning ornament to an absurd election season, it may actually come to pass.

Describing the present accurately can often be difficult work. As for predicting the future . . . well, that way madness lies, but sometimes, it’s impossible not to take notice.

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Although it may be a self-serving thought, we believe if anyone should vote Nov. 4, it should be readers of Transport Topics. You’re the people who understand trucking, and if the industry is going to be heard from in state capitals and on Capitol Hill, then you’re the people who will have to cast ballots.

Puritans, it has been said, live under the constant, nagging fear that someone somewhere may be having a good time.

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Back in the 1970s and ’80s there was a band called Devo, a bunch of New Wave rockers from Ohio who wore yellow rubber suits and proclaimed, with great panache, that we as a species were devolving.

A total of 9,090 trucks were taken off the road due to fleet bankruptcies in the third quarter, a slight decline from the second quarter, as rising freight rates and falling fuel prices helped keep some marginal fleets afloat, Avondale Partners analyst Donald Broughton said.

Trucking’s leaders did not come up with any new policy directives at this year’s Management Conference & Exhibition, but considering the inability of the House, Senate and White House to agree on just about anything, there was probably no need.