Politics

The Great Deconstruction - First in a New Series

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History imparts labels on moments of great significance; The Civil War, The Great Depression, World War II. We are entering such an epoch. The coming transformation of America and the world may be known as The Great Deconstruction. Credit restrictions will force spending cuts and a re-prioritization of interests. Our world will be dramatically changed. There will be winners and losers. This series will explore the winners and losers of The Great Deconstruction.

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The phrase, The Great Depression, was coined by British economist Lionel Robbins in a 1934 book of the same name.  read more »

Power in Los Angeles: The High Price of Going Green

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Greece and Los Angeles are up against a financial wall. Los Angeles had its bond rating cut on April 7. Greece managed to hold out until April 9. Greece has endured public employee strikes as it has attempted to reign in bloated public payrolls. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa drew the ire of the city's unions and city council opposition in proposing two-day a week furloughs for city employees.

A Bankrupt Los Angeles?  read more »

Transit in Los Angeles

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Los Angeles officials hope to convince Congress take the unprecedented step of having the US Treasury to front money for building the area’s planned 30 year transit expansions in 10 years instead. The money would be paid back from a one-half cent sales tax (Measure R), passed by the voters in 2008. That referendum required 35% of the new tax money to be spent on building 12 rail and exclusive busway transit lines.

Measure R was not the first instance of Los Angeles officials committing to spend 35% of a new one-half cent sales tax on new transit lines.  read more »

Jobs Will Rule November

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Health care lays behind him, financial reform and climate change ahead, but for President Barack Obama--and his opponents--there is only one real issue: jobs. The recent employment reports signal some small gains, yet the widespread prognosis for a slow, near-jobless recovery threatens the president and his party more than any major domestic challenge.  read more »

Queensland, We’ve Got a Problem

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Queensland Premier Anna Bligh MP has a problem. Reacting to sensationalized media reports of runaway population growth as well as an infrastructure lag revealing itself in everything from mounting congestion to a lack of hospital beds, Queensland residents are starting to say ‘enough.’ The prospects of continuing population growth at around 2.5% or 100,000 people per annum, despite the economic benefits this brings, are increasingly unpopular, something that gets the attention of most politicians.  read more »

Financial Crisis: Too Late to Change?

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A travelling salesman is driving down a country road when he runs over a cat. Seeing a farmhouse nearby, he approaches to confess this unfortunate situation to the pet’s owner. When a woman answers the door, he says, “I’m sorry, but I think I just ran over your cat.” She asks him, “Well, what did it look like?” “Oh, m’am,” he replies, “I completely ran over it, so it was very awful, just a smear on the road…” “Oh, no,” she interrupts, “I mean, what did it look like before you ran over it.”  read more »

EPA Joins the Green Building Party

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By Richard Reep

Well into the last decade, green design and smart growth operated as two separate and distinct reform movements. Both were widely celebrated in media, academic and planning circles, seeing themselves as noble causes albeit underdogs in the struggle against the mighty capitalistic enterprise of real estate development. Starting in 2009, the frozen credit market has kept private development moribund, and these two movements are somewhat moot as development takes a cease-fire.  read more »

Freeing Energy Policy From The Climate Change Debate

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The 20-year effort by environmentalists to establish climate science as the primary basis for far-reaching action to decarbonize the global energy economy today lies in ruins. Backlash in reaction to “Climategate” and recent controversies involving the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 2007 assessment report are but the latest evidence that such efforts have evidently failed.

While the urge to blame fossil-fuel-funded skeptics for this recent bad turn of events has proven irresistible for most environmental leaders and pundits, forward-looking greens wishing to ascertain what might be salvaged from the wreckage would be well advised to look closer to home. Climate science, even at its most uncontroversial, could never motivate the remaking of the entire global energy economy.  read more »

Don't Mess With Texas

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One of the most ironic aspects of our putative "Age of Obama" is how little impact it has had on the nation's urban geography. Although the administration remains dominated by boosters from traditional blue state cities--particularly the president's political base of Chicago--the nation's metropolitan growth continues to shift mostly toward a handful of Sunbelt red state metropolitan areas.  read more »

Mayor Daley’s Report Card

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In December of 2010 Mayor Daley will become Chicago’s longest serving Mayor. In office since 1989, he will surpass the record held by his father. In the March issue of The New Yorker magazine, journalist Evan Osnos has a long article on Mayor Daley. The front cover of the magazine calls Daley, “America’s most successful mayor”.  read more »