AHC: Bigger Ameriwank than OTL?

i thought of some of that the US getting all of Oregon county/BC seams very plausible leading to a northern boarder like in The Story Of A Party but this is after 1900.

I had assumed that, since the OP didn't require a particular POD, that it would be open to either before or after, and those seemed like a couple of good ones
 
Transportation

Railroads
- The same law that creates the Interstate Highway System also provides a pile of money for railroads in recognition of their superhuman efforts during World War II. This is enough to begin the massive improvements of the 1960s to 1980s field, as the development of first computer tracking systems, airplane-style cargo boxes and aluminum-and-fiberglass shipping skids in the 1960s, container-on-flat-car, trailer-on-flat-car and newer types of freight cars (including hi-cube boxcars, tri-level autoracks, larger tank cars and large covered hoppers) in the 1970s and the Iron Highway and RoadRailer systems and double-stacked container trains of the 1980s. Many railroads (including Burlington Northern, Santa Fe, New York Central, Southern, Rio Grande and Southern Pacific) also took advantage of other railroads' view that passenger service was uneconomic to get better trains and equipment for cheap in the late 1950s, creating the system of excellent long-distance trains which would be the genesis of the trains that Amtrak would take over in 1975.

- Railroad mergers reduce the number of operational major railroads from over 60 at the end of World War II to eighteen by the summer of 1979, when a massive scandal breaks out over Union Pacific's actions in attempting to sabotage the Rock Island and its actions during its merger with the Missouri Pacific, which results in a moratorium on railroad mergers by the Interstate Commerce Commission effective August 1, 1979. This moratorium is largely made permanent by the Surface Transportation Act of 1986, which despite this also provides money to improve the safety and operational abilities of the railroads. The moratorium does, however, create round after round of trading and business agreements amongst the surviving railroads, each seeking to gain advantage.

- The Penn Central merger never happens owing to mid-1960s research by the stockholders of the New York Central, allowing the NYC to push its way through the 1960s and 1970s and prosper starting in the early 1980s. The Pennsylvania, however, declares bankruptcy in 1966, and a major ecological disaster caused by a bridge collapse that drops a train of chemicals into the Ohio River in June 1973 results in the creation of Conrail and the reorganization of the Northeast's railroads. Pennsylvania, New Haven, Boston and Maine, Central of New Jersey and several other smaller lines were swept into Conrail, along with the bankrupt (but deemed critically important) Milwaukee Road. The New York Central and Erie Lackawanna go through the merger, with the majority of the Reading went to the New York Central and the Erie Lackawanna gets access to Boston, Detroit and Columbus and a bunch of Pennsy secondaries in the Midwest and a secondary main line from Baltimore to Oswego, NY, while Canadian Pacific took over the Lehigh Valley and the Delaware and Hudson soon was able to extend its operations as far west as Pittsburgh and as far south as Washington. As messy as the creation was, it would prove hugely beneficial as it allowed no less than five railroads by 1980 to be slugging out for the Midwest's and Northeast's rail traffic and allowed Conrail's ex-Milwaukee Road mainline to be a vital transportation corridor that Conrail would upgrade almost constantly (as the Milwaukee had) from 1973 until the mid-1990s.

- One effect of the merger moratorium, however, was the scuttling of a proposed Santa Fe-Southern Pacific merger, resulting in SP being sold back to its employees in 1982....and starting one of the greatest American business recovery stories of the 20th Century. SP's status as a California icon was played to the fullest by its new management, and the company did everything it possibly could to earn money early on - but its excellent facilities proved able to handle huge loads, agreements with trucking firms and co-operatives massively increased the railroad's perishables traffic, investments in everything from building materials to telecommunications lines to energy facilities earned the company billions in income. The company bought the ex-Great Northern Portland-Vancouver line in 1984, merged the Frisco into its system in 1986 (many investors in this case traded SLSF stock for SP stock, and most who did this benefitted enormously), rebuilt the ex-Chicago Great Western mainlines from Kansas City to Chicago and Minneapolis between 1988 and 1991 (they would also buy the bankrupt Chicago, Missouri and Western in 1990) and north from Odgen, Utah, to Boise, Idaho, between 1991 and 1993, then completing the biggest new rail project in decades in the 1990s by building a mainline from Salt Lake City through Utah and Nevada to its main system at Barstow, California, as well as reclaiming lines into Mexico in the 1990s, running from Mexicali and Nogales to Guadalajara, Manzanillo and Irapuato. On top of its huge railroad expansion efforts, the dot-com boom and a deal with billionaire Philip Anschultz to grow the telecom assets of the firm. This deal makes SP a pile when they bail out of the resulting Sprint and Qwest Communications companies in September 2000. SP also got into ocean shipping business when they purchased the American President Lines ocean shipping firm in 1997. The overall result was a company that grew in value from $420 million (the sale price in 1982) to over $28 Billion by 2012, and making hundreds of its employees into multimillionaires. SP would be one of the great success stories of employee-owned firms (though not by any means the only one) from the early 1980s onwards.

- After the revelations of Union Pacific's conduct in 1979, the struggling Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific found new funds for its operations from investors, and the growth in traffic in the 1980s resulted in new markets and profitability, particularly as the railroad narrowed its focus into its trunk routes connecting Chicago with Minneapolis, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston and Memphis, while the line connected New Orleans to its network in 1983 and in 1985 added an ex-Milwaukee Road line to expand from Minneapolis to Duluth, followed by the purchase of an ex-Great Northern line from Burlington Northern to connect to Winnipeg. The latter proved fortuitous - As the Rock Island's grain traffic swelled in the 1980s, the Winnipeg-Duluth-Twin Cities line allowed Canadian grain to funnel onto the Rock Island, then all the way as far as Galveston, Texas. This and other connections in 1986 pushed the Rock Island to be the founder of the Alliance of American Railroad Carriers, which in 1987 got the Rock Island, Rio Grande, Western Pacific, Erie Lackawanna and Delaware and Hudson to agree to a wide-ranging deal to allow each other's traffic to move across the system as seamlessly as possible. This when combined with the fast-freight efforts of the railroads allowed for the railroads to offer New York to San Francisco services starting in 1988. The Alliance facilitated the merger of the Rio Grande and Western Pacific in 1990, and the building of the Rio Grande's Marysvale Subdivision into the company's Utah Main Line from Barstow, California, to Salt Lake City via Las Vegas, which along with SP's route, led to a reshaping of a lot of Los Angeles-bound freight traffic through Salt Lake rather on the congested SP Sunset Route or ATSF Transcon. The improvements at Rock Island and Frisco's integration into the SP doomed the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, which merged into the Burlington Northern (after surprisingly little objection from rivals) in 1991. The Alliance gained a new member in the newly-independent Wisconsin Central in 1995, and the Southern Railway became a partner of the Alliance in 1997.

- As American railroads got their differences sorted out in the 1980s, traffic for them helped drive the growth - American rail freight traffic grew a factor of four between 1975 and 2005 - and increasingly-better relationships between the management of the railroads and their workers both improved the workers' lives and would ultimately see many train systems grow their workforces. The disappearance of cabooses off of trains ended by the late 1980s as several railroads (naturally led by Conrail and Southern Pacific) began equipping cabooses with air compressors and remote control systems to give better brake response and using manned mid-train helpers on difficult routes. GATX's TankTrain system, first used in the mid-1970s, began to be used heavily for bulk chemical shipments in the early 1980s before gaining widespread use for liquid petroleum products later in the decade and later for bulk shipments of everything from industrial acid to beer. Safety concerns (and insurance demands) resulted in double-stack trains largely being built with movable bulkheads to allow the carrying of many different sizes of container, and bulk trains of all kinds got greater and greater traction during the 1980s and 1990s.

- After Conrail's extensive electrification growth in the 1970s onward (they would extend electric traction from Seattle and Tacoma all the way to McLaughlin, South Dakota, as well as from Philadelphia to Canton and Columbus as well as from Lewistown, Pennsylvania to Albany and Boston) showed many railroads the benefits of it, other railroads moved to electrify routes. Wires were strung above Burlington Northern's Powder River Basin divisions, Southern's Cincinatti-Chattanooga-Atlanta main line, New York Central's freight mains from Selkirk, NY to New York and Boston and Canadian National's Edmonton-Vancouver Rocky Mountain Main Line in the 1980s, with Union Pacific's power-hungry Overland Route from North Platte, NB, to Salt Lake City and Pocatello, ID, the British Columbia Railway from Vancouver to Prince George, BC, Norfolk and Western's New River Gorge main line (Cincinatti and Columbus, OH to Lynchburg, VA) and Southern Pacific's Shasta (Portland, OR to Sacramento, CA), Salt Lake (Sacramento to Odgen, UT), Mojave (Bakersfield, CA to Los Angeles, West Colton and Las Vegas), Tuscon and San Antonio divisions followed in the 1990s. electric locomotives improved economics of the railroads involved if they could handle the extra maintenance cost, and most had little difficulty with that.
 
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Here's one off-the-cuff idea: Britain is conquered (temporarily) by Napoleon. Fearing French dominion, the Canadian territories seek annexation by the United States.
 
Here's one off-the-cuff idea: Britain is conquered (temporarily) by Napoleon. Fearing French dominion, the Canadian territories seek annexation by the United States.

No way, pre-Canada would not request annexation, the war of 1812 happend then.
 
Strategic Air Command Wank - Part 2 Manned Aircraft

Up to and including the B-47 Stratojet there was no change from OTL. The number of Hustlers built is the same as OTL because it was still decided to replace the B-47 force with the Minuteman ICBM.

All 744 production B-52 Stratofortresses had the OTL B-52G/H airframe. There was enough money to replace them one-to-one with the B-70 Valkyrie, but it was cancelled. The USAF could have afforded the plan to replace the B-52C to F and B-58 with 263 FB-111A too, but that didn't happen either. Instead all B-52B through H models were rebuilt to B-52I standard with 4 high bypass turbofan engines in parallel with the C-137* re-engining programme. A front line of 600 B-52 aircraft was maintained from the middle of the 1960s until the end of the Cold War.

The B-52s that survived instead of the OTL B-52s and FB-111A were armed with the SRAM and later the AGM-86 ALCM. However, the aircraft that retired IOTL but survived to the end of the Cold War ITTL were armed with Skybolt from 1965.

ITTL both versions of the B-1 Lancer were stillborn. The B-1A only reached the prototype stage when it was cancelled in favour of modernising the B-52s and 100 extra B-2 Sprit were bought instead of the B-1B because ITTL the B-2 was in service earlier.

Although not a strategic bomber the number of F-111 aircraft built was increased from 482 to 586 because 76 extra aircraft were built instead of the FB-111A. Due to the earlier invention of the transistor and microprocessor ITTL all the aircraft were built with Mk III avionics which were more powerful, more reliable and cheaper than the OTL Mk I, II and IIB systems. The 1980s Avionics Modernisation Programme (AMP) was more powerful, more reliable and cheaper than the OTL avionics upgrade.

The cost of the F-111 did not escalate as much IOTL. The RAAF received its 24 F-111C on time and on cost and used some of the money saved to buy another 24 to replace its Canberras one-to-one. Instead of 24 aircraft in 2 squadrons, it had 36 aircraft in 3 squadrons of 12, with the other 14 in a training flight or in reserve. They bought twice as many surplus USAF aircraft at the end of the Cold War.

The RAF didn't cancel its initial order for 50 F-111K and liked them so much that it increased the order to 320 instead of buying the last 50 Buccaneers (only 43 delivered) and Tornado IDS. No Tornado IDS means no Tornado ADV and had the F-111B survived the RAF would have bought 165, but ITTL it bought F-14B Tomcats instead.

*ITTL the USAF and French Air Force did not buy 820 C-135s (45 C-135A/B, 732 KC-135A/B and 31 E/R/WC-135A/B) also known as the Boeing 717. They instead bought 820 larger C-137s, also known as the Boeing 707. Because of the larger fuselage they could carry more fuel, more passengers and more cargo. Because the Boeing 707 airliner remained in production until 1979 and the military E-3 into the 1980s it was possible to buy attrition aircraft to maintain the front line at 615 KC-137 until the end of the Cold War.
 
The US abolishes slavery in the late 18th century. Shorn of that albatross, the southern states industrialize and develop more like the north, and the US is even more clearly the land of the free and home of the brave.

This isn't a US that's necessarily larger, but it's one that's more developed than OTL and didn't lose 800,000 people in a 4 year civil war.
 
Military Airlift Command Wank

The C-130A and B Hercules of OTL were built to C-130E standard ITTL. By 1980 the USAF had over 800 C-130E/H standard aircraft equipping 40 regular, reserve and ANG squadrons.

285 C-141 Starlifters were built to equip 14 squadrons. IOTL they were to have been complimented by 115 C-5A Galaxies in 6 squadrons. However, cost overruns and delays reduced this to 81 aircraft in 4 squadrons. However, ITTL 400 C-5A Galaxies were bought to equip 20 squadrons and because this is a wank they had none of the problems that the OTL aircraft suffered from. The C-141s were sold onto the civil market where some of them were refitted with CFM-56 engines.

The Boeing and McDonnell aircraft built to the Advanced Medium STOL Transport (AMST) of TTL wasn't any better than the OTL and it was found that continuing C-130 production was more economical.

Because 400 C-5A Galaxies were built there was no need to build 50 C-5B aircraft in the 1980s or the C-17 Globemaster. The money spent on the former was spent on buying more KC-10 Extenders, increasing the number built from 60 to 110. ITTL Lockheed was so busy building the Galaxy that it didn't have time for the Tristar so another 250 DC-10s were sold by default, which increased the number built to 636.
 
United States Navy Surface Warships Uberwank Part 2 - 1945-1990
US Naval Electronics


IOTL the 1956 Plan was cut by half partially because of cost overruns, partially because of the cost of Polaris and partially because of the unreliability of the early American SAMs. ITTL the cost overruns were cancelled out by the sheer number of ships built reducing the unit cost through economies of scale. ITTL the reliability problem was avoided because valves were replaced by transistors and microprocessors 5 years earlier, which was partially because the latter were invented 5 years earlier. This also avoided the "cure programme" where all the ships built before the middle 1960s had their valves replaced by solid state components.

The improvement in electronics also meant that the New Threat Upgrade was available 5 years earlier.

The earlier invention of the microprocessor meant that NDTS and its derivatives entered service 5 years earlier. E.g. ADTS entered service on the E-2A Hawkeye in 1959 instead of 1964. As a result 88 E-2A were built in place of the E-1 Tracer and it had fewer of the reliability problems of the real one and 62 E-2B were built in place of the 59 OTL E-2A.

DASH and LAMPS

Because ITTL the Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter (DASH) could have been made reliable enough, but the US Navy bought 755 SH-2F Seasprite Light Airborne Multi Purpose System (LAMPS) helicopters in their place. All 190 UH-2A/B helicopters were built with 2 T-58 engines instead of one.

All the ships that were built or converted to carry DASH IOTL were fitted with a larger hangar and flight deck for the Seasprite ITTL. In the case of the new ships the hull was enlarged. In the case of the Gearing class destroyers that received DASH as part of their FRAM refit the twin 5" gun in Y position would be removed to make way for the larger hangar and flight deck.

The Guided Missile Cruiser Conversions

IOTL 11 cruisers were converted. 2 Baltimore class CA became Boston class CAG with 2 Terrier launchers. 6 Cleveland class CL became CLG with one Terrier or Talos launcher and 3 Baltimore class CA (of 6 planned) became Albany class CG with 2 Talos and 2 Tatar launchers. Some of the ships had their electronics upgraded in the second half of the 1960s to cure the unreliability problems of the SAM systems. This was planned for all the others, but it wasn't carried out due to the cost and the age of the ships.

ITTL 15 Baltimore CA and Cleveland CL were converted to Albany class standard. All the ships completed after 1960 had NTDS and solid state electronics so that they did not need the electronics upgrade. The post-1960 conversions also had their other systems such as their machinery modernised in what was effectively a FRAM/SLEP type refit as part of their conversion that enabled them to serve into the first half of the 1980s. The ships converted before 1960s had a combined FRAM/SLEP refit and electronics modernisation that enabled them to serve into the early 1980s too. The Talos missile remained in service until the early 1980s too instead of being withdrawn in the 1970s. The 15th ship was the Northampton, which IOTL was completed as a command ship in 1951 IOTL as a communications ship, but ITTL she was completed in 1955 as the first Albany class. It was possible to refit 6 Cleveland class to Albany standard because they had the Baltimore class hull and machinery ITTL.

The FRAM Destroyers

As this is a wank and therefore money is no object the USN converted all the destroyers and destroyer escorts it wanted into DDE, DDK, DDR and DER. The number of destroyers that had FRAM refits was the same as OTL, but all of them had the more extensive FRAM Mk I version. This is in part was because more Gearing class were built in place of the Sumner class and ITTL all the destroyers to have the FRAM refit were Gearing class ships.

New Construction in the 1950s

IOTL one Norfolk class CLK, 4 Mitscher class DL, 18 Sherman class DD (because the Mitscher was too expensive) and 17 DE were built in the 1950s. All 4 Mitschers were to have been refitted with Tatar in the 1960s and re-designated DDG (instead of DLG like their Farragut class cousins because Tatar had a shorter range than Terrier) but only 2 were converted. Similarly all 18 Sherman class were to have been refitted with Tatar (but unlike their cousins the Adams class they only had one SPG-51 radar instead of 2) but only 4 were converted.

ITTL all the destroyers retained after World War II were Fletcher and Gering class and all the destroyer escorts built in World War II were the 24-knot version. Therefore the policy was to use them for convoy escort and concentrate on building large destroyers DL, which were re-designated frigates. Therefore 40 Farragut class DLG were built in place of the 40 CLK, DL, DD and DE built IOTL. They had an electronics modernisation in the 1960s that enabled them to serve into the 1980s.

New Construction in the 1960s

In 1956 IOTL the USN wanted to build a mix of 101 guided missile frigates and guided missile destroyers. In the event cost overruns, the Polaris programme and the unreliability of the new systems meant that only 53 ships (30 DLG and 23 Adams class DDG) were built. Meanwhile the number of SCB.199 destroyer escorts was cut back from the 75 planned to 65 with a lighter armament than originally planned too.

ITTL 176 guided missile frigates were built instead of 118 assorted frigates, destroyers and destroyer escorts. 151 were built as Belknap class DLGs and 24 were built as Truxton class DLGN and one was built for gas turbine trials in place of the AGDE Glover. ITTL they were re-designated destroyers (DDG) in 1975 instead of cruisers (CG).

ITTL there would have been enough money to give all 176 ships a SLEP refit around 1980 that would have extended their service lives by 10-15 years and included giving their Standard ER systems the New Threat Upgrade. However, this might not have been needed because more new ships were being built.

New Construction in the 1970s and 1980s

IOTL the USN acquired 113 cruisers, destroyers and destroyer escorts made up of 27 Ticonderoga CG, 31 Spruance class DD, 51 Perry class FFG, which were built for the USN which also acquired 4 Kidd class DDG ordered by Iran. However, about 100 Spruance class were originally planned, the number of Perry class planned was increased from the original 50 to 74 and 2 planned FFGX were not built.

ITTL 175 Spruance lass DDG were built over the same period. These were not the same as the Kidd class, because each Mk 26 launcher was fed by a 44 round magazine for a total of 88 missiles instead of 68 because the Kidd's forward magazine only had a capacity of 24 missiles. ITTL the Mk 41 VLS came into service 5 years earlier and all Spruances completed from 1980 had a pair of them with a total capacity of 122 missiles and all the earlier ships were refitted with them. No Ticonderoga class strike cruisers were built ITTL because the nuclear powered strike cruiser was built. However, all 175 Spruance class had the New Threat Upgrade.

The Sea Control Ship

IOTL 8 helicopter carriers called Sea Control Ships (SCS) were planned to be ordered FY1975 to 1978 and completed 1978 to 1981 (JFS74-75). The SCS was built ITTL, but because the ships would be operating with destroyers instead of slower destroyer escorts they had more powerful machinery driving two shafts instead of one. This also drove up the size and cost of the ships, but it also increased the number of helicopters that could be carried.

ITTL the SCS was not a direct replacement of for the Essex class CVS, because there was enough money to build up to 10 SCB.100 CVS to replace them, but instead of building them it was decided to build more SCB.101 CVAN (the Nimitz class). Instead the SCS were to augment the escort of the military convoys and as there were 15 of these under the TTL 900-ship Navy instead of 7 under the OTL 600 ship navy 15 SCS were built instead of the 8 planned IOTL.

Nuclear Powered Surface Warships

6 Long Beach class CGN were built ITTL instead of the one built out of 3 planned ITTL. They had a more extensive modernisation than the one Long Beach had at the end of the 1970s IOTL, which included fitting AEGIS. They became flagships of the numbered fleets, with 4 active and 2 refitting.

24 Truxtun class DLGN were built ITTL so that each of the 6 Enterprise class CVAN built ITTL had an escort of 4 nuclear powered warships.

The decision to reduce the CVA building rate from one ship a year to one ship every other year reduced the building rate of nuclear powered frigates from 4 per year to 2 per year from FY1964. The class initially built was the DXGN, better known as the Virigina class. The ship built ITTL was the long-hull version with a larger forward magazine holding 44 missiles instead of 24 for a total of 88 instead of 68. These ships were refitted with Aegis instead of receiving the New Threat Upgrade and had their Mk 26 launchers replaced by a pair of 61-cell Mk 41 launchers with a total capacity of 122 missiles.

In spite of (or even because of) the improvements in US electronics the Typhon system was cancelled and replaced by what would become Aegis 5 years earlier than OTL. As a result production of the Virginia class was terminated in FY1971 when a total of 16 had been ordered in favour of the Nuclear Powered Strike Cruiser (CSGN), which was ordered at the rate of 2 per year from FY1972. The ships completed before the end of 1979 had a pair of Mk 26 launchers with a combined magazine capacity of 128 missiles. The ships completed after the beginning of 1980 had a pair of Mk 41 launchers with a total of 180 cells.

Thanks to the LMR fitted to the SSN Seawolf being a success ITTL all American nuclear powered surface warships had liquid metal reactors instead of pressurised water units, which produced more power for their weight. This was used to make them faster instead of reducing their size, which would have been a false economy.
 
Transportation

Railroads

[SNIP]
Oh I do like this. By coincidence I've been looking into the history of the US railroad industry post-WWII, or at least trying to, the last day or so and Jesus wept but was it a complicated mess.
 
Oh I do like this. By coincidence I've been looking into the history of the US railroad industry post-WWII, or at least trying to, the last day or so and Jesus wept but was it a complicated mess.

Yeah, it was a big, big mess, in an industry that from the immediately post-war era until the early 1980s struggled horribly.
 
The US manages to keep open borders for Europeans until 1960, and goes through a more moderated depression with Hoover convincing congress and the fed to start inflating in late 31. With an easier depression than Europe, five more years of the roaring 20s, avoiding WWII on our own soil, less tyrannical government, and much more wealth in the postwar era, the US clears an extra 45 million net permanent European Immigrants and refugees than than OTL. This results in an extra 150 million people today, who are assimilated into mainstream white American culture.

Israel somehow gets aborted at the last second and fails to establish a foothold in the Middle East, resulting in most moving to America.

Less racist early 20th century leaders, FDR considers desegregation a major priority, and by around 1950 segregation is done. Black Americans are much wealthier and more integrated by the present, often even outcompeting the last wave of Europeans by virtue of superior knowledge of English and the area.

Significantly greater trade and immigration with Canada, resulting in an annexation by 1990.

Near open borders between 1965-1990 for anyone with noteworthy skills, regardless of their race, religion, ect. Anyone with an MD, engineering degree, proven entrupuenership, a science degree, and so on. Allow them and their immediate family in as soon as they pass a backround to show no outstanding criminal record or connections. This can give the US an extra 100 million people by the present, with extreme wealth and skills.

Throw in a good multiplayer UHC system similar to Germany's, much more nuclear power, a lower corporate tax rate, and relaxed zoning laws and America looks set for another century.

This gives America about 600,000,000 people, reduces the amount of poverty, gives the country substantially more skilled people (and as many high skill immigrants than Britain or France [who are still considered Great Powers] have people), takes care of some of the racial issues through greater integration, energy independence, double as many tech people and companies, a larger financial sector, a constantly growing labor force, a lower cost of living, a much larger military, slightly higher income levels, and symbolically makes the largest country in the world.

With a GDP per capita of 65,000, this America has a GDP 39 trillion, double the financial assets from OTL, a murder rate closer to OTL Canada (1.7 per 100,000, the the US 4.8, Brazil 25, and Japan .3 for comparison), a majority of the worlds billionaires, tech companies, even greater cultural influence (especially given that it now has the elite of countries from all over the world often living there), and a military budget of 1.2 trillion annually.
 
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To increase America's dominance of the world's popular culture look at the Wikipaedia page of the US TV shows that were based on British TV shows and reverse it.

Also have NPR make the definitive radio adaptations of the Philip Marlowe books, starring Ed Bishop, then sell them to BBC Radio instead of vice versa.
 
Yeah, it was a big, big mess, in an industry that from the immediately post-war era until the early 1980s struggled horribly.
The infrastructure is still all rather complex. They appear to be making some good moves on that however with projects like the Almeda Corridor out in California linking the ports more efficiently and the major Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program (CREATE) to improve both freight and passenger traffic flows.
 
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