Trannie Mae: Obama’s New Bank
President Obama’s new “plan“–more of a sketch, really–to “Renew and Expand America’s Roads, Railways and Runways” calls for spending $50 billion rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, building and maintaining 4,000 miles of rail, and rehabilitating 150 miles of airport runways and installing a modern air traffic control system. Where do these numbers come from? Is […]
Farewell, Walkin’ Jim
The world won’t be the same without you. I’ll remember your songs every time I hike in the wilderness. 1953-2010
High-Speed Rail Deathwatch
Will a high-speed rail line ever be built from San Francisco to Los Angeles? The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) has less than 10 percent of the money it needs to build this line. The plan is increasingly under fire from local and state organizations. On one hand, President Obama’s vague and controversial proposal to […]
Opposition to Amendment 63 Both Flawed and Deceptive
by Brian Schwartz Mandatory insurance takes what’s wrong with health insurance and makes it worse. It means higher costs, affordable insurance becomes illegal, and less incentive to please patients. Amendment 63 would block Colorado politicians from imposing mandatory insurance. It would also prevent the feds from pressuring the Colorado legislature to enforce Washington’s version of […]
More Rail Skeptics
“We need to rethink rail,” says Fred Jandt, the editor of Mass Transit magazine. After first defending his credentials as a rail and transit advocate, he admits, “Rail is expensive.” That doesn’t necessarily mean it is “prohibitively” expensive, he says, “but it may be something we need to rethink.” This need-to-rethink was inspired by Joel […]
Your Tax Dollars at Work
The owner of a beauty shop who applied for a loan from a community development fund received a response calling her “one crazy ass bitch” and suggesting that she was under a “delusion that somehow you might be credit worthy.” The author of the letter, who was suspended for a week without pay, later wrote […]
Good Luck to Lake Oswego Streetcar Opponents
Residents of Lake Oswego, Portland’s wealthiest large suburb, have hired one of the state’s leading (and most liberal) political consultants to oppose a planned streetcar between downtown Portland and their community. Who has the bucks to hire Bergstein? One of the names mentioned is Elaine Franklin, wife of former U.S. Senator Bob Packwood. As Bojack […]
Donald Shoup on Free Parking
Donald Shoup supports free parking. At least, in a response to my first post about Tyler Cowen’s op ed against free parking, Dr. Shoup points out that he only wants the price of parking to be “right,” and “the right price [for parking] will often be zero.” However, the main purpose of Shoup’s response is […]
September Main Time Colorado School Employees Can Opt Out of Union Dues or Non-Member Fees
September has arrived. For teachers and other employees in many Colorado schools, the busy season continues. But today also marks the beginning of the short time frame in which union members in several school districts can choose to opt out of a year’s worth of union dues (and in a few cases — as our […]
Exaggerating the Benefits of Transit
HDR, a consulting firm that routinely misleads cities in order to get contracts promoting and designing streetcars, has written a report for the Michigan Department of Transportation that greatly exaggerates the benefits of public transit. In claiming that those benefits are “conservatively” $805 million a year, the report makes many unwarranted assumptions. The most important […]
Crater Lake User Fees
The Antiplanner’s Ride Around Crater Lake Three Times in One Day (RACLTTOD) went well. My brother Richard joined me for all three laps, his wife Carin for two, and the Antiplanner’s faithful ally (and sometimes commenter) Andy Stahl for two. With two 2-mile detours to Cloud Cap overlook, Richard and I did a total of […]
Free Parking Revisited
Two weeks ago, the Antiplanner responded with dismay to George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen’s op ed against free parking. This led to a variety of responses in the blogosphere, none of which address the Antiplanner’s point. Instead, they all argue against the minimum-parking requirements found in many zoning regulations. In particular, Cowen himself points […]
