How Colorado Has Raised $300 Million in Debt Without Asking Its Citizens: The Colorado Bridge Enterprise
Colorado’s citizens are supposed to have a final say before our state can borrow money. But the 2009 FASTER law subverted citizens’ rights to vote on tax and debt issues. The law allows an unelected group of bureaucrats to appoint an unelected administrator and together borrow whatever amounts of debt can be backed by FASTER funds. On December 1, 2010, they did just that. And now Colorado’s citizens are burdened with $300 million of newly issued debt—with the promise of more to come. Because of the borrowed money, it is unlikely a future legislature can ever repeal the FASTER tax. All this, and we weren’t asked!
Obama’s Reauthorization Proposal
Over the next six years, the Obama administration proposes to spend $253 billion on highways; $119 billion on mass transit; $53 billion on “high-performance” passenger trains; $28 billion on “livability”; and $25 billion on an infrastructure bank. At least, those are the numbers that can be found in a copy of an undated bill representing […]
Building Micro-Homes in Portland
Okay, it is one thing for someone who wants to live within a block of Central Park to pay $700 a month for a 90-square-foot “apartment.” But now a major homebuilder, D.R. Horton, is building 364- to 687-square-foot micro-homes in Portland. “You can’t just keep going farther from the city and acquiring farm land,” says […]
Ending the Mortgage Interest Deduction
Realtors and home builders strongly defend the mortgage interest deduction as a way of increasing homeownership, which is supposed to be a good thing. But does it really work that well? Edward Glaeser doesn’t think so. While he agrees that there are social benefits to increasing homeownership, he notes that the mortgage-interest deduction mainly benefits […]
Whitest City Gets Whiter
Portland should change its motto from “the city that works” to “the city that’s white.” Already the whitest big city in America in 2000, the city has gotten whiter still as poor people have been pushed from the inner city into the suburbs, as shown in this stunning series of maps. The Antiplanner has covered […]
Transit Energy Efficiency
A new report from Florida’s National Center for Transit Research looks at how transit can save energy. The report’s lead author, Steve Polzin, has been mentioned here before. Some of the findings are more surprising than others. Transit uses about the same amount of energy as driving, the report finds, and transit in most places […]
Federal Transportation Subsidies
Per passenger mile, federal subsidies to Amtrak are 30 times greater than federal subsidies to airlines and 500 times greater than federal subsidies to intercity buses, according to a new study from the American Bus Association. The study also reports that federal subsidies per passenger mile to public transit are 3,200 times greater than federal […]
Indiana Legislature Makes GOOD Choice to Adopt “Nation’s Most Expansive Voucher Law”
Spring continues to unfold, bringing the latest and greatest school choice development, this time from the Hoosier State. The Foundation for Educational Choice lauds the very GOOD news of the Indiana legislature’s passage of the “nationR…
Demand for Free Money Continues to Grow
The demand for rail transit “is strong all across the country,” says a new report from Reconnecting America. How do they know? They simply added up all the “planned and proposed fixed-guideway transit projects” they could find. They found a total of 643 projects (1-mb Excel spreadsheet) in about 80 urban areas whose total costs […]
Life-Cycle Budgeting? No, Thanks
Life-cycle budgeting is suddenly the latest transportation-planning fad. Even some free-market groups are promoting it as a way to save tax dollars. The theory is that a life-cycle analysis will look ahead at all future costs, not just the initial cost, of transportation projects. At first glance, this sounds great. Most transportation fixed infrastructure needs […]
The Rights of Mother Earth
Here‘s a great way to bring about the collapse of civilization: declare that Mother Earth has equal rights with humans and give anyone standing to represent Mother Earth in court in challenging any activity by anyone else. In practically no time, the gears of industry would grind to a halt, agriculture would shut down, and […]
Contributing Factors, Part Two
Be sure to read part one first. Greedy bankers: Changes in the banking industry caused the crisis, many writers claim, by creating perverse incentives to earn short-term profits by making long-term risks. “High leverage and risk-taking in general was fueled by the Street’s indulgent compensation practices,” says Lowenstein (p. 287). A prime example is Joseph […]
