Thursday Links
- Helping out the “Wall Street fat cats:” Bankers are responding to the incentives generated by the economic policies of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.
- How charter schools can save states big education dollars.
- Doug Bandow: “Congress has spent the country blind, inflated a disastrous housing bubble, subsidized every special interest with a letterhead and lobbyist, and created a wasteful, incompetent bureaucracy that fills Washington. But now, legislators want to take a break from all their good work and save college football.”
- In case you missed it last week, watch Cato’s Jerry Taylor on the premier episode of Stossel.
- Podcast: “Urban Planners Romanticize Immobility“
Thursday Links
- European Union to install its first president.
- How delayed economic reform in India killed 14.5 million children. More details, here.
- It always starts with “good intentions:” How urban planners destroyed the small-town atmosphere in Portland, Oregon and made congestion even worse.
- Lots of talk but little action from the Obama administration on education.
- Podcast: If the Obama administration was serious about job creation in the stimulus plan, why weren’t dollars targeted at states with higher unemployment?
Weekend Links
- Bush-era surveillance powers are set to expire at the end of this year. Julian Sanchez explores the efforts to revise the PATRIOT Act.
- More on the medical professionals who aided in acts of torture.
- Doug Bandow: Ireland is holding a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty on Friday. If the Irish say yes, the European Union will be stronger. But will anyone notice?
- The aftermath of “Cash for Clunkers” hits automakers. Looks like it just might have been the “dumbest program ever” after all.
- Podcast: “Three Felonies a Day“
Randal O’Toole Assaults Myths of Suburbia
Urban planners want to shape our cities. And they want our cities to shape you. That’s the conclusion of Cato Institute Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole. He argues that the rationales for most urban planning collapses upon examination.
O’Toole — author of the forthcoming Cato book Gridlock — spoke at Cato University at Rancho Bernardo, California.
Randal O’Toole Takes on Smart Growth in the NYT
The New York Times has a long profile today of Cato’s Randal O’Toole, scourge of urban planners.
But O’Toole doesn’t fit the portrait of a corporate advocate. On visits to Capitol Hill, he blends in as a middle-aged, middle-height man in a dark suit — but his beard gives him away, its shaggy twists seemingly fitting for a forest dweller. He wears a string tie that most Americans would only recognize on Colonel Sanders. His lapel doesn’t carry the standard-issue flag pin but a bronze bust of his dog, Chip. The Belgian tervuren won it in a dog show.
O’Toole routinely hikes and bikes dozens of miles, and he proudly announces that he has never driven a car to work. Far from living on a luxurious Virginia manor, he left his last Oregon town when it added a third stoplight.
Now, from his home computer in Camp Sherman, Ore., population 300, O’Toole rails against smart-growth policies as money sponges that never calm traffic, fill seats on trains, or help the environment.
The story ends with Randal on his way to a conference in Las Vegas, which I also attended. There in the 80-degree early morning heat, he biked 50 miles each morning, on a folding bicycle that he could fit into a suitcase – and still got back to the hotel in time to fix my Powerpoint before my speech. He’s a Renaissance man.
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