Author: Kaitlin Hopkins

When Congress has found time not occupied with nationalizing healthcare, they have introduced a series of laws designed to curtail suburban living. This column by Wendell Cox explains why that is a mistake.

Wendell on the Reason Foundation

It reminds me of the introductory anecdote from the book Up From Conservatism by Michael Lind. Lind describes the 4-way 1948 Presidential election between Democrat Harry Truman, Republican Thomas Dewey, Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace, and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond. He traces each of those candidates’ ideologies into the ’90s (when the book was written). Thurmond, he suggests, is a modern day Republican: Right-wing, conservative, and Southern – which he uses as a code for racist throughout the book. Wallace, he argues, is New Left – the predecessor to George McGovern, Jerry Brown, and (if Lind had waited a decade to write his book) the Markos Moulitsas Left. Thomas Dewey is the DLC: centrist, pro-business, inoffensive to all, and indifferent to labor. But, there’s no modern equivalent to Truman.

Michael on Free Silver

I like the idea. And Aaron Renn has pointed out that Detroit has one distinct advantage: an ineffectual and inefficient municipal government.

Aaron on Dustbury

JOEL KOTKIN: The Green Movement’s People Problem. “The movement needs to break with the deep-seated misanthropy that dominates green politics and has brought it to this woeful state.”

Joel on Instapundit

Urbanologist Joel Kotkin agrees: “Even other liberal places wouldn’t put up with the degree of dysfunction they have in San Francisco. In Houston, the exact opposite of San Francisco, I assume you’d get shot.”

Joel on The Trumpet

Michael Lind is quite right to suggest that American progressives need to reflect on their ideological differences, exposed by the defeat of Bush, and I think we need to, as well. In so doing, we also need to recover a sense of the possibilities of progressive politics, and not to rest content with a vaguely progressive desire to steer social and economic forces and actors this way or that.

Michael on Larvatus Prodeo

So big thanks to Aaron Renn of Streetsblog Network member blog The Urbanophile, who today takes a look at the creature known as an Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS. The EIS is a precondition for road projects receiving federal funding, and one of its components — the “Purpose and Need Statement” — determines the type of project that will be built.

Aaron on Streetsblog

The city’s ineptitude is no secret. “I have never heard anyone, even among liberals, say, ‘If only [our city] could be run like San Francisco,’” says urbanologist Joel Kotkin. “Even other liberal places wouldn’t put up with the degree of dysfunction they have in San Francisco. In Houston, the exact opposite of San Francisco, I assume you’d get shot.”

Joel on San Francisco Weekly

“Houston is your post-racial, post-ethnic future of America,” said demographer Joel Kotkin. “It’s a leading-edge place.”

Joel on POLITICO

Barack Obama may be our first African-American president, but he’s first got to stop finding his muse in Scandinavia. With his speech for the Nobel, perhaps he’s showing some sign of losing his northern obsession.

Joel on Politico