Old Country Buffett

President Obama thinks it's a shame that Warren Buffett's secretary pays at a higher marginal rate than her boss does. Of course, the reason for the disparate treatment is that Warren Buffett, like most rich people, makes his money in ways that don't count as traditional income.

And sometimes Warren Buffett makes makes money in other ways, too:

Warren Buffett's Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration's decision to reject TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.

With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department.

"Whatever people bring to us, we're ready to haul," Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern, a unit of Buffett's Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said in an interview. If Keystone XL "doesn't happen, we're here to haul."

And it should be quite a haul, too. Read the whole thing.