News commentary

To the Moon, Alice 0
- January 23, 2012
The Economist suggests that sending a woman to the moon would have a more positive impact on the economy than building high-speed rail. Certainly, a trip to the moon would use more modern technology as the first high-speed rail line was built in 1964 but we didn’t send a man to the moon until 1969.
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Self-Driving Cars in the Pipeline 0
- January 21, 2012
The hit of last week’s Detroit Auto Show was the 2013 Ford Fusion. This was a surprise because the car was merely a stylistic upgrade of an existing model. The real significance of the Fusion is not the “strong personality” or the fact that Ford will offer both hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions, but that […]
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Is the Tea Party Falling Apart?0
- January 20, 2012
The New York Times Magazine has discovered what everyone who has ever been to a Tea Party meeting already knew: tea parties are a coalition of social conservatives and libertarians. Both are fiscally conservative and so the tea parties focus on fiscal issues and agree to disagree on social issues. Does this mean the tea […]
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Predictably Stupid 0
- January 19, 2012
The Obama administration’s rejection of the Keystone pipeline was predictably stupid and will do little to protect the environment other than by slightly increasing world oil prices. Opponents made it clear that they didn’t care about the negligible environmental impacts of the pipeline; they just wanted to “keep the tar sands in the soil.” The […]
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When We Don’t Build It, We Won’t Build It Here Instead of There 0
- January 18, 2012
Once the envy of much of the rest of the United States, the California high-speed rail project is increasingly viewed as being run by a bunch of buffoons who can’t see the handwriting on the wall. Actually, a few of them may see it: last week the authority’s executive director and board chair both resigned. […]
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Brouhaha in Grants Pass 0
- January 17, 2012
As if to show that even small cities can waste gobs of money on transit infrastructure, Grants Pass, Oregon (population 35,000) recently debated the wisdom of spending more than $100,000 each for several modest three-seat bus shelters to serve the Josephine County Transit system. As The Oregonian notes, this is roughly the cost of building […]
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