The Changing Role of Government, 1850 to 2011
A good friend of the Fiscal Policy Center and Free People, Free Markets alumni Tom Ryan has a wonderfully informative organization and website called Reclaiming Moral Government. Tom has created a slide show that displays the changing role of government from 1850 to present day.
Affordable Housing Should Mean a House You Can Afford
By Barry Poulson Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper recently signed on to “Take Root Denver,” a new affordable housing campaign sponsored by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, a “government sponsored enterprise” more commonly known as Freddie Mac. Hickenlooper touts this as a new program to assist residents with calling Denver “home sweet home.” But the […]
RACLTTOD
Probably no more posts this week as the Antiplanner is heading down to Crater Lake for RACLTTOD–Ride Around Crater Lake Three Times in One Day. The Crater Lake rim road is about 33 miles around with about 3,800 feet of elevation gain. Three laps, with a couple of side trips to a point called Cloud […]
Budget Maximization & Walkin’ Jim
I have a friend who needs my help, and I hope some of my readers will help him too. Back in 1985, the Antiplanner worked exclusively for environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society, reviewing Forest Service plans and helping environmentalists understand how the Forest Service worked. My research showed that the Forest […]
We Want High-Speed Rail, As Long As It Is Free
Americans want high-speed rail, as long as someone else pays for it. States are chuffed upset, for example, because the federal government now says it wants the states to put up 20 percent of the capital cost. The original Federal Railroad Administration grant guidelines issued back in 2008 suggested that the feds might pay all […]
Public Employee Benefits Are Out of Sync with Economic Reality
By Barry Fagin “Hypocrite! You’re always writing about how government needs to be smaller. But you work for a government institution! Why don’t you write about that?” I get e-mails like this from time to time, I assume from someone who hasn’t read a lot of my columns and instead just typed my name into […]
Living Lightly in Portland
The New York Times loves to tell stories of people who got off the “work-spend treadmill” by selling off all but about 100 personal items and moving into a 400-square-foot studio apartment in Portland. Even the Wall Street Journal has jumped on board by telling the heartwarming story of someone who bought and remodeled a […]
A Light-Rail Line That Pays for Itself?
Faithful Antiplanner ally Craig sends this amusing article from the Portland Oregonian in 1988. Unfortunately, a subscription to NewBank is required to view the link, but the gist of the article is that Congress gave Portland’s TriMet transit agency $6.2 million to subsidize a development on the city’s light-rail line that would make the light […]
A Free Parking Space Grows in Manhattan
The Antiplanner blew it yesterday by saying there was no free parking in Manhattan, which shows this Oregon resident doesn’t spend much time in the Big Apple. It turns out Manhattan has lots of free on-street parking, though on many streets you have to move your car to the alternate side of the street every […]
Video: Unions Abuse Non-Union Teacher Paychecks
Check out this new Independent Teachers video about what happens when a non-union school employee who is forced to opt out of paying union fees every year misses the deadline because of family medical emergencies:
From the YouTube summary:
Due to family medical hardships, non-union Pueblo school employee Becky Robertson missed an annual deadline to opt out […]
Free Markets and Free Parking
The Antiplanner is disappointed that my distinguished colleague and fellow supporter of free markets, Tyler Cowen, has fallen for the “high-cost-of-free-parking” arguments of Donald Shoup. Shoup is an excellent scholar, but like many scholars, he has the parochial view that the city that he lives in is a representative example of what is happening everywhere […]
More on Driverless Cars
Between hiking, cycling, and doing research on transportation and tax-increment financing, the Antiplanner has been too busy to write a decent column today. So I’ll just link to a couple of recent articles on one of my favorite topics, driverless or autonomous cars. First, the Kansas City Star notes that driverless cars are “just around […]
