Don't Fund the Atlanta Streetcar, Obama Administration

I never thought I would ever be against an attempt to expand rail transit in the United States. As someone who is finally being forced to get a license so I can join Zipcar for the too-frequent occasions when Atlanta's transit doesn't cut it, I would normally be thrilled by it. But the Atlanta Streetcar seems like an unbelievably stupid idea.

Now, while heavy rail is better (for dense city areas), it's also much much more expensive, and I am generally quite supportive of light rail, and I am generally supportive even of modern streetcars.

However, even though I really, really hate to say anything to undermine A.J. Robinson and Central Atlanta Progress, I have to oppose the Atlanta streetcar.

This is not to say I am against adding passenger rail capacity that runs in the streets in denser areas of Atlanta. I differ with AJC's in-house 30-something right-winger Kyle Wingfield on that.

However, Mr. Wingfield made some good points, and unlike far too many right-wingers, spends probably more of his column bashing wasteful highway spending (on the other hand, Wingfield is terribly handicapped by his position against actual planning instead of letting developers run hog-wild with no regard for anything else like this country has for the last 60 years; he fails to realize that laying transit to encourage smart development is a good thing, and should visit Washington, DC and I'm told, Portland, if he doesn't believe me).

Tourists would be the biggest beneficiaries of the streetcar, which would run from the aquarium, alongside Centennial Olympic Park, through Fairlie-Poplar, and finally down Auburn Avenue to historic sites from the civil rights era.

Nothing against tourists, but Atlanta’s biggest congestion headaches come from commuting, not tourism, and generally are on highways, not downtown surface streets.

And never mind that MARTA already runs a subway line that comes within a couple of blocks of most of the major destinations, is canceling a little-used bus route that’s very similar to the proposed streetcar’s path, and discontinued a previous tourist trolley in the same area due to poor ridership.

The broader plan also calls for a trolley line along Peachtree Street, north to Brookhaven and south toward Fort McPherson. It’s central to an attempt to create Atlanta’s version of the Champs-Élysées in Paris or Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

Actually, MARTA runs BOTH of its lines (well, technically there are four lines, but they split only at the ends, with the east-west line only having one green-line only station) in the area around the initial proposal for the streetcar.

Typical tourists would not use it either, as typical tourists will be willing to walk a mere 2-3 miles over the course of a day or two of seeing a city. Only fat/lazy/old and wheelchairless tourists would use it (this is why they canceled the non-rail tourist trolley, I assume).

Moreover, I cannot really see commuters using it. Businesses in downtown are basically all already close enough to MARTA that people are not going to waste time waiting for a streetcar because they can walk from the MARTA station and get there more quickly. Or rather, any businesses that are not close enough are also not close enough to be much shorter walking distances from the streetcar that would be necessary for people to transfer rather than just walking.

Of course, the really ugly thing about Downtown (and Midtown) as, for some reason, Mr. Robinson seems to miss is the unholy percentage of both of them devoted to parking lots.

I filled in all (or almost all; I may have missed a few so it may be worse) of the parking lots in downtown (north of I-20, west of I-75/I-85, east of the major rail line (leaving out the area between it and Northside, and south of Ivan Allen). Look (the embedding has so many lots it won't even show) here; it's absolutely unbelievable.

Note if I'd included the full downtown, with borders of I-20 on south, Piedmont on the east, Northside on the West, and North Avenue on the North, it would be just as bad, but Google Maps can't draw that many vector shapes.

Anyway, it's really really wasteful to have to have so much parking in the middle of town, where as many offices should ideally be located to minimize aggregate commutes while affording freedom of places to live.

That being said, the smartest thing to do to expand rail transit would be to browbeat/coerce (I can think of all sorts of unorthodox ways to do so) Gwinnett and Cobb into joining MARTA, and extending the Green Line north through rail corridors through Knight Park to Underwood Hills, then west across the Chattahoochee, following the rail corridor north through Vinings to Cumberland Mall, Symrna and then ending in downtown Marietta or cutting from there to the Interstate and heading to Kennesaw State.

Additionally, extending the Gold Line along the Buford Highway rail corridor northeast from Doraville through to Norcross and Duluth.

Too bad it wasn't done already. Atlanta has been majorly losing ground on mobility.

Shocker: States with Loose Gun Laws Sell More Guns Used Criminally

Of course, the actual news story that brought me to this study, said something even more trite; that 10 states account for nearly half the guns bought and taken across state lines to commit a crime.

The reason this is particularly trite is, of course, that 10 states (California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina) account for more than half the population of the United States.

That being said, the actual study, done by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition has some slightly less obvious information in it.

Specifically, three of those states (Arizona, Indiana, Virginia) are not in the top 10, and Georgia, which is only the 9th largest state, has been the #1 offender in this category for the last four years.

Moreover, using the data provided, I ran a correlation test on the number of interstate criminal guns sold per 100,000 state residents with the score that state receives for its gun laws by the pro-gun control Brady Campaign.

The result was a -0.57 correlation, quite high.

Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins Co-Sponsored the Employment Non-Discrimination Act

Yet they both voted today against cloture on money for our men and women overseas just to oppose the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell"

Jeff Merkley sponsored the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the Senate; Barney Frank (unsurprisingly sponsored it in the House).

From the Congressional Record Summary:

- Prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity by covered entities (employers, employment agencies, labor organizations, or joint labor-management committees). Prohibits preferential treatment or quotas. Allows only disparate treatment claims.

Prohibits related retaliation.

Now, admittedly, this bill does exempt the US military, in addition to religious organizations (so Fred Phelps can still keep his group gay-free), so it's not technically hypocrisy.

In the House, incidentally, one of the few Republican co-sponsors was Michael Castle.
On the plus side, discrimination against witches was and is legal, so feel free to discriminate against Christine O'Donnell in the Delaware Senate race.

Nathan Deal Cannot Be Trusted on Passenger Rail

So according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Republican gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal has come out in favor of the regional transportation tax

That being said, the actual quotes from Deal given are a bit less than absolute commitment to build, with what seem to me like caveats in warning about expenses.

“The question always is, what is the priority, and where do you spend your money first,” he said. “Whether it’s light rail, heavy rail, passenger rail, whatever you call it, it’s expensive because of capital expenditures.”

Any new rail operation would also likely require subsidies to keep it afloat “and that’s difficult to do. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be working toward it.”

Never mind that Nathan Deal has to my knowledge not spent time arguing that we need to eliminate all of those expenditures for automobile transportation. Other than the vehicles themselves (which for automobiles are owned by people, which makes it different entirely from public transportation), 100% of operating expenses for roads come from taxes. And for that matter, we've been subsidizing vehicles via years and years of favorable legislation to (at least American-made) automobile manufacturing plants, even those made by non-American companies; we've given sweetheart deals to Asian companies to build plants in the South, all of this well before the auto industry bailout and cash for clunkers.

And of course, operating expenses for automobile transportation are also subsidized. Streetlights on highways, for instance. That electricity isn't free. Neither are traffic police. I would also say we have subsidized the cost of gasoline over the years with what have amounted to sweetheart deals on drilling on federal land/in U.S. waters. And last but certainly not least, we have massively subsidized parking those automobiles. Using land for parking lots is a major, major cost, and yet in so many places, one can park for free, and in many others, parking costs are under "market rate" for parking lots in that area, for various reasons. Of course, private companies also subsidize parking in addition to the government doing so. Still, those companies charge everyone higher prices to compensate for the loss from the free parking.

So let's not pretend the need for the government to provide operating subsidies and essentially 100% capital expense is qualitatively different from what we do for personal automobiles.

At any rate, given his past record, Nathan Deal cannot in any way be trusted on this.

MSNBC's Senate Moderates: Should Bob Casey, Dick Lugar, Bob Corker Be Included?

So Chuck Todd is usually pretty brilliant, but I find his and the other NBC "First Read" people's views on "The Gang of Moderates" to be a little bit off.

Here’s one other point we want to make about the middle striking back: Note these senators who are all up in 2012: Snowe, Dick Lugar, Jon Tester, Claire McCaskill, Bob Corker, Bob Casey, and Jim Webb. What do they all have in common? They’re all moderates, and all of them could face -- potentially -- tough primaries or general elections two years from now. Don’t be surprised if these folks try to work with each other to stay elected. It will be an interesting caucus to follow. This gang (of something or other) is going to make a comeback, and if they actually stick together they COULD, become a governing force. The Balkanization of the Senate appears to be inevitable.

This is not just because of the major unlikelihood of people from opposing parties trying to work with each other to stay elected.

It's also because, for instance, Bob Casey is not so much a "moderate", per se, as he is just a moderate or so on social policy and foreign policy. On economic policy, he's been scored by National Journal either among the most liberal Senators, or in the middle of the Democratic caucus.

Then, of course, there's the bewildering question of where in the world they got the idea that Bob Corker is a moderate. True, the National Journal ranked him as the 7th most moderate Republican in 2009 (he was ranked 21st most moderate Republican in 2007 and 22nd most moderate in 2008), but that just means that at most, he's more moderate than a majority if not most of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate today.

But that does not make him a moderate. It just makes today's Republican party unbelievably right-wing and uncompromising.

I mean, take a look at the 8 longest-serving Republicans (in other words, all of the Republicans who have been in the Senate since January 1987). There are three special cases, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, and Richard Shelby, who was a Southern Democrat in January 1993.

The other five guys (yes, they are all male) are Richard Lugar, Orrin Hatch, Thad Cochran, Chuck Grassley and Kit Bond.

Consider how the American Conservative Union and the Americans for Democratic Action rated their voting records during the 100th Congress (1987-1988). By averaging the ACU score and 100 minus the ADA score, we get a composite conservative score.

Of the 46 Republicans in the Senate at the time, Grassley, Cochran and Lugar ranked right in the middle, at 22nd most liberal, 23rd most liberal and 24th most liberal. Bond was slightly to the right, at 31st most liberal, and Hatch was solidly in the conservative wing, only 36th most liberal.

Incidentally, McCain was the 26th most liberal and McConnell was the 30th most liberal, while Ted Stevens ranked 13th most liberal, Pete Domenici 17th most liberal, and John Warner the 20th most liberal.

Now, looking at the 109th Congress, averaging the National Journal rankings, we have, out of the 49 Republicans, Lugar as 7th most liberal, Hatch as 13th most liberal, Cochran was 18th most liberal, Grassley 27th most liberal, Bond was 33rd most liberal,

Incidentally, Warner was 8th most liberal, Stevens was 11th most liberal, and Domenici was 14th most liberal.

Finally, in 2009 we have Richard Lugar as 2nd most liberal, Bond as 10th most, Hatch as 11th most, Cochran as 12th most, Grassley as 14th most liberal, out of the 40.

My point is that the reasonable conclusion is not that every one of these guys got more liberal, but that the rest of the party got more conservative. Hence, not really moderates.

Christine O'Donnell Doesn't Like Witchcraft, Either

From an Op-Ed she wrote in the Washington Post, June 15, 1997 about her group hosting a booth at HFStival:

We pulled into parking lot No. 5 at RFK Stadium and began looking for our assigned spot. With colorful open-air tents and corporate banners draped on every fence, the area had been transformed into a carnival. Only instead of cotton candy and roller coasters, this carnival offered a celebration of death, in the guise of free condoms, "pro-choice" literature and glorification of the occult.

Not just evolution: More About Christine O'Donnell

She's also, for instance, a young Earther. In the same interview/"debate" with Miles O'Brien and an evolutionary biologist (Dr. Michael McKinney) on CNN on March 30, 1996, she makes that clear with some sort of weird rant about Mount Helens and hundreds of millions of years.

I agree with what the gentleman said about we need to teach DNA, and I think that when you look at genetic engineering, it all points to creationism, because genetics can be traced back to the obvious existence of a higher being - of God.

Now, he said that it's based on fact. I just want to point out a couple things. First of all, they use carbon dating, as an example, to prove that something was millions of years old. Well, we have the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens and the carbon dating test that they used then would have to then prove that these were hundreds of millions of years younger, when what happened was they had the exact same results on the fossils and canyons that they did the tests on that were supposedly 100 millions of years old. And it's the kind of inconsistent tests like this that they're basing their 'facts' on.

Carbon-dating, as Dr. McKinney points out, is only useful up to about 50,000 years back; Carbon-14 has a half-life of about O'Donnell's belief of the age of the universe (assuming the literalist Christians do hold by the Jewish (according to most halachic authorities) symbolic count of 5771, so it makes sense, since only about 2^-8 is left after 50,000 years, and much more than that and our instruments aren't precise enough.

Then there's this gem:

Because you're getting out of a public arena. The public schools are a public arena and you can't present one view point as more accurate than another.

Interesting. If she's serious and applies this idea across the board, this means that Christine O'Donnell supports teaching, among other things, the homosexual agenda, communism, masturbation, abortion and of course, the David Icke view of history.

But wait. She doesn't support those at all:

"Every single person on [the board] leans more to a mixed message of 'use a condom' than the message of 'exercise self-control and abstain from sex until you're married,' " said Christine O'Donnell, spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, a conservative family-advocacy group.

"We have the solution [to teen pregnancy]," Miss O'Donnell added. "We know if we all band together and tell these kids that it's OK to say 'no' - and not only is it OK, it is the best choice for them - we would see a great turnaround." (Washington Times, April 3, 1996)

More in subsequent posts