CSG Midwest

If the plans of a group of investors called Great Lakes Basin Transportation get the go-ahead, the Midwest could soon be home to the nation’s largest new railroad project in more than a century.

The idea behind this proposed 278-mile rail line is to allow some freight traffic to bypass the Chicago rail yards, where congestion caused by the greatest density of rail lines in the world can tie up freight for 30 hours. Current projections show traffic in this rail hub...

Baby boomers will think of “The Jetsons” while Gen-Xers may remember the creepy “Johnny Cab” from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Total Recall.” Millennials and their children will probably take automated vehicles as a matter of course.

Legislators must think about them with, and without, that dash of Hollywood: Automated vehicles are coming, so how will they merge into states’ traffic flows? What can the technology do today, what changes will it make tomorrow, and how to draft laws taking all that into account?

Perhaps not...

To understand just how different the environment for daily fantasy sports operators and participants can be from one U.S. state to the next, the Midwest is a good place to start.

After some bumps along the way, the Iowa Medicaid program — and some 560,000 Iowans — transitioned to a managed-care model of care in April. Iowa now joins the majority of U.S. states nationally, and within the Midwest, that depend on private entities called managed-care organizations — or MCOs — to deliver Medicaid services to most enrollees in their public insurance programs for low-income families and individuals.

The nation’s leader in wind energy and use has hit yet another milestone. Iowa is now getting more than 30 percent of its electricity from this renewable source — the only U.S. state that has reached this threshold. According to Gov. Terry Branstad, the state has the potential to reach 40 percent within the next five years....