Cartoon Tuesday: Conventional Wisdom
As the Democratic convention convenes in Denver, Matt Davies of the Journal News drills down on the national energy policy debate. Click through for the punchline.
August 26, 2008
Energy Policy Straight Talk From Elizabeth Kolbert
Back in his Straight Talkin' days Senator John McCain acknowledged that offshore drilling wasn't a viable solution for America's energy troubles. In 2003, he broke with the Bush Administration and co-introduced legislation to reduce carbon emissions, by, in effect, imposing a price on them. McCain had a reputation for being a politician who told the American people the truth, even when the truth wasn't something that people particularly wanted to hear. But the past few weeks have seen a fundamental change in McCain, writes Elizabeth Kolbert in an outstanding piece in this week's New Yorker:
August 6, 2008
Cartoon Tuesday: The Elegant Simplicity of the Free Market
Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling. Click through to view the comic in its entirety.
July 29, 2008
The U.S. Wants to “Borrow” From Transit to Pay for Highways
Like a burned-out addict stealing to support a meth habit, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said yesterday that due to declining gas tax revenues, the Highway Trust Fund would need to borrow money from its mass transit account to pay for road projects. Today's big news story was buried at the bottom of page A17 in the New York Times:
July 29, 2008
$36,000,000,000 for Corn. $0 for Transit.
The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would provide emergency funding to local transit systems facing simultaneous increases in ridership and fuel costs. The legislation is now stalled in the Senate. The Bush Administration has made clear their distaste for funding mass transit operating costs. They say they don't want local transit systems to become dependent on federal subsidies. Meanwhile, when it comes to subsidizing Midwestern farmers and the operating costs of America's fleet of private motor vehicles... well, here's how Michael Daly of the Daily News summed it up in his column yesterday:
July 25, 2008
Robert Novak Cited in Possible Hit-and-Run
Politico is reporting that conservative columnist Robert Novak, a.k.a. "The Prince of Darkness," hit a 66-year-old pedestrian with his black Corvette this morning in Washington D.C. and then drove away.
July 23, 2008
Print This
Thanks to Anil Makhijani, the Open Planning Project's crack web developer, it's now a whole lot easier to print a Streetsblog story. Click the little printer icon below. You'll get a web page formatted 8.5 x 11 with all of the links annotated at the bottom as footnotes. Check it out.
July 23, 2008
Al Gore Connects the Dots
"We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in
ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change."
July 22, 2008