Dead or Not, States Want High-Speed Rail Money
High-speed rail may be dead, but numerous states would be happy to get some of Florida’s $2.4 billion in rejected high-speed rail funds. Yesterday was the deadline for applications for this money, and some of the applicants include: California, of course, would like it all, even though that would still leave it $50 billion or […]
Portland: Second-Most Miserable City?
The Wall Street Journal has published a “misery index” that ranks Portland as the nation’s second-most miserable city after Phoenix. Or, at least, the second-most miserable of the 20 cities included in the ranking. The newspaper’s index is supposed to be based on changes in unemployment, housing prices, and gas prices in the last year. […]
New Fire Plan: Burn More Money
In the late 1990s, the Forest Service spent about $300 million a year on fire and the Department of the Interior spent another $100 million a year. Then came the 2000 Cerro Grande fire, which burned a billion dollars worth of homes in Los Alamos, NM. After that, Congress opened up the checkbook and told […]
Update on Yellowstone Wolves
“Many people hoped that introduction of wolves into Yellowstone would bring down elk populations and allow ecosystem restoration,” the Antiplanner noted last week. “While the wolves have changed park dynamics (to the detriment of coyotes but in favor of foxes), they haven’t made much of a dent in elk numbers.” On the prowl in Yellowstone.Flickr […]
Antiplanner’s Library: Freefall
Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz‘s take on the 2008 financial crisis is simple: Free markets are bad; government is good; we need more government. This is, essentially, a reiteration of what is known as the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorem, which states that markets are imperfect, so “government could potentially almost always improve upon the market’s resource allocation.” A […]
EUs War on Cars
Some people say the “war on the automobile” is a right-wing myth. Then the European Union goes and proposes to ban cars (or at least fossil-fuel-burning cars) from cities by 2050. To complement this ban, the EU proposes to significantly increase fuel taxes (as if they were not already high enough). It also hopes to […]
The Washington Times Gets It Wrong
The Antiplanner generally appreciates the efforts of the Times, a fiscally conservative paper that tries to watchdog government agencies that waste tax dollars. But an editorial last Friday about highway user fees missed the point. The article was written in response to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on highway user fees. “The claim is that […]
Who Should Pay for America’s Jewels?
National parks are one of the most popular programs of the federal government. Yet the National Park Service is also an increasing burden on taxpayers. Appropriations to the agency have doubled since 1991, and even after adjusting for inflation they have grown by a third. What have taxpayers received for this money? One of the […]
Antiplanner’s Library: Fool’s Gold
As previously noted, the Antiplanner has been reading a lot of books about the financial crisis lately. Some have tried (but failed) to be comprehensive. Most cover just a slice of the crisis, such as Bear Stearns (House of Cards) or Lehman Brothers (A Colossal Failure of Common Sense) One of the most valuable books […]
Is LaHood Admitting Defeat?
Last week, Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood designated the Boston-to-Washington corridor as an eleventh high-speed rail corridor. This makes Amtrak eligible for some of the $2.4 billion in high-speed rail funds released when Florida rejected federal funds for the Tampa-Orlando route. Of course, $2.4 billion won’t even scratch the surface of Amtrak’s $117 billion plan […]
Teachers Union and Tea Party Agree
After the dispute in Wisconsin, it is hard to believe that school teachers and Tea Party members would ever agree on anything. But 150 teachers and other school advocates held a protest march in Chicago demanding an end to tax-increment financing (TIF)–something that most Tea Partiers would readily agree to. The protesters noted that half […]
New Comments Policy
The Antiplanner has traditionally allowed anyone to post anything they want as a comment. Although I dislike namecalling and ad hominem attacks, I regard them as more reflections on the commenter. A couple of commenters — you know who they are — primarily engage in namecalling and I’ve urged others to simply ignore them. But […]
