Quick Shout-Out to "The Examiner" for Smart Growth Article

Readers of this blog know that I am no huge fan of the free weekday DC tabloid "The Examiner", due to its irritatingly right-wing editorial slant. In fact, practically every week I say to myself "I am never reading that right-wing nut-job propaganda organ again."

However, I have to give credit where credit is due. Say what you will about the intellectual integrity of the paper's editorial rants against the President and Democrats: but the paper does the best job in town of covering traffic, commuting and development issues. Witness this article in yesterday's "Examiner" on smart growth. Here are a few excerpts:

Organizations like the Coalition for Smarter Growth are lobbying for transit projects that shy away from highway expansion and to focus more on encouraging development around transit hubs.

Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the coalition, said that rather than widening lanes and building high-occupancy toll lanes, officials should examine charging peak rates for using existing lanes during rush hour, as Metro does.

The coalition was one of several groups that rallied against a Montgomery County plan this week to widen Interstate 270.

"We urge the County Council to reject the Planning Board's misguided transportation recommendations, the result of which would be more cars on the highways and more traffic jams," said Ben Ross, president of Action Committee for Transit, a Montgomery County citizens group.

***

Schwartz said the key was to adopt a model similar to Arlington County or Old Town Alexandria, namely, focusing development near rail stations and transit centers.

So, props to "The Examiner" - here's hoping they will continue to cover these very important issues in a "fair and balanced" manner.

My Post on CNN.com's "Cafferty File"

In his blog post today on CNN.com, Jack Cafferty discusses the increasingly dire state of federal and state finances. With tax revenues in free-fall, and demands for government services spiking, he correctly points out that something's gotta give. You have basically three options in this situation:

1) Debt - put it all on the credit card (although we've just about maxed-out our credit card from the Bank of China);

2) Raise Taxes (always unpopular); or

3) Cut Government Spending and Services (also unpopular).

So what's a government to do? Here's my take, posted today:

It’s truly time to re-evaluate our priorities, and here are a few things I would do if I were Obama-for-a-Day:

1) Eliminate agriculture subsidies, which encourage overproduction and distort overseas food markets (destroying local production abroad, esp. in developing countries).

2) In accord with 1 above – Eliminate subsidies for corn-based ethanol. If we are to go down the road of renewable fuels, they cannot be based on food crops. Better to go the Brazilian way of switch grass or agricultural waste as feedstocks.

3) Increase gasoline taxes to $1 per gallon, and tilt the balance of transport spending away from ever-larger roads, and towards mass transit. I am thoroughly convinced that GM and Chrysler cannot compete in a world of $2 gasoline – the market will never buy the smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles that new owner Uncle Sam wants them to produce, until people have a reason to buy them. Tax gas to reduce environmental pollution, reduce our dependence on imported oil, and then shift transport spending from autos to mass transit, which will give people viable alternatives to driving. If you focus on nothing but automobiles for over 50 years, as we have done here, and you get nothing but more and more auto-induced sprawl and gridlock – how can you be surprised by that outcome?

4) We need to take a good, hard look at the entitlement programs which are sinking our budgets, in particular Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. We’re going to need means testing for all three programs, and higher retirement ages for SS. It makes little sense to subsidize the wealthiest demographic (retirees) by taxing the poorer demographics.


5) Require the Federal Government to operate under a balanced budget except in times of military conflict, and even then require a two-thirds majority of the SENATE (not the hopeless, parochial House) to approve deficit spending. We are drowning in red ink, and we must begin living within our means.

And while we’re at it: let’s abolish congressional districts for individual states and go to a national, party-based proportional representation system. A Congress tied to individual states has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted with the power of the purse.

6) If we can’t get to a balanced budget by using the ideas above (and there’s no way these steps will be enough), then we’ll need across-the-board reductions in ALL government operations: tell each agency they need to lose their dead wood. As someone with a wife employed by Uncle Sam, let me assure you that 5% of federal staff could be eliminated without affecting services provided! The kind of dysfunction tolerated in government bureaucracies is astounding, and it’s time we created incentives to root out waste. No more free-riders, no more coddling of dead-wood by the nanny-state and employee unions.

Thanks for allowing the rant, Jack!