In both foreign policy and economic policy, the core belief of Trumpism is that there is some button one can press to instantly and easily solve any problem, and every political leader this country has ever had was simply too cowardly to press it. That’s it.
20/ Principle Three: Once you've gathered data about what problems there are, let the experts work on them--and give them cover to do so. Yes, a small group of people will get mad at any proposed change. But you can and should ignore them, confident that they don't represent public opinion broadly.
13/ And that simulacrum can look kind of convincing, to an elected official who has no other sources of knowledge. In a city council district of 100,000 people, 70 people yelling at you might be the loudest signal you get, even if those people don't represent anyone but themselves.
12/ When you have a bunch of public meetings, you're essentially attempting to extract an opinion from an entity (the public) that largely does not have one. But that entity can produce the simulacrum of an opinion, if pressed. It can produce a room full of 70 cranks willing to give a two min speech
IMHO all of 4th street NE between T street and Michigan should be converted to curbside protected bike lanes, but this is a great down payment (along with a bunch of other sensible improvements for all users in this corner of Edgewood).
*whispers* we could peg the gas tax to inflation when this is over
Another way of saying this is that the regulations would have had a cost of zero. They would not have required the power sector to do anything it wasn't going to do already.
Roberts said it would be the most expensive reg ever (because he heard that on Fox). But it cost nothing.
Learn whatever you want about "law," it doesn't matter because GOP Justices blew up the entire process of deciding cases based on chats with rich friends and stuff they watched on TV. That was the entire basis on which SCOTUS switched to the shadow docket.
Balls and strikes!
The same thing can and does happen to house prices, if only we let it happen:
ggwash.org/view/99926/h...
Sure was nice of San Diego taxpayers to not only build the team a new stadium, but give the owner development rights to the surrounding area that was "emerging as San Diego’s most desirable real estate investment opportunity." doi.org/10.1177/1078...
And to follow up further, Cobb County officials are not reliable on the financials. They continue to report select figures in a way that makes it appear that the deal was a success, even though the numbers show the opposite. I explained in this Twitter thread. x.com/jc_bradbury/...
I cannot stress this enough: Vegas gave Musk millions to build us a supposed public transportation system. Instead he built basically an Uber tunnel for Teslas that only goes FROM ONE END OF A CONVENTION CENTER TO THE OTHER. Literally just gets you to the other side of a building.
It matters to remember the Confederates as unambiguous bad guys in American history because any nation's identity is in large part defined by the narrative of the villains we've defeated: monarchism in the Revolution, the Nazis in WWII, and alongside those, the white supremacist slave power.
Technically that's called Google Discover FYI
A small, but important, win here in Cville — the fire department is moving towards smaller fire trucks. Small fire trucks opens up more possibilities for allocating the right of way in a more balanced approach that supports safety for all users: cyclists, pedestrians, scooters, and cars
Dallas doesn't have many tools available to encourage home ownership but it could remove the minimum lot size.
~90% of Dallas residential land is zoned for large lot detached homes (excluding SB840). Over 50% of Dallasites live in multi-family homes. That's 50% of people living on 10% of the land.
Millions of American voters wanted to be villains. They came to believe it’s the key to success, while goodness is weak, woke, loser stuff, done only to signal.
Offered the option of unvarnished villainy, they enthusiastically took it. Seeing others suffer more made them feel big.
And here we are.
Racist NIMBYs won.
In English Canada, Montreal is analogous to people who go to Europe and come back raving about walkable cities, except we have an example right here at home that does pedestrianization spectacularly, and we ignore it because our cities equate mediocrity to progress
New buildings are MUCH more expensive than old ones. A slightly-larger new bldg can only exist if it's MUCH pricier; a much-larger new bldg can divide those fixed costs across many more sq ft.
When you think about it, there really can be no more perfect representative of today's GOP:
* wildly entitled, yet ...
* utterly dependent on & enriched by gov't policy that protects ...
* their shitty, misery-producing, anti-social business model, and yet ...
* endlessly whiny & resentful.
🎯
Lib women are just like, "yeah, orange man is bad, we're going to go out and patiently organize people to fight him" and the US media is all 🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱
Heather Cox Richardson has a larger audience than almost any dudefluencer. More informed. Better values & policy preferences. And yet there are no profiles, no elevation or lionization, because there's *nothing* US media is less interested in than middle-aged lib women. No diner interviews for them.
Vital to stress that the Tea Party "movement" was a Koch brothers astroturfing campaign that was orchestrated to achieve the corporate objectives of said Koch brothers.
there's also something so weird about this idea that what appeals to, say, someone in Baltimore won't appeal to say, someone in Detroit. like, every state has a few major cities, and those cities have more in common *with each other* than they do with their neighboring rural areas
i like to call this "electoral college brain," when politicians (or hell just regular people) confuse the fact that the electoral system privileges closely competitive interior states with some deeper, fundamental meaning
WABA: we’re gonna sue.
NPS: oh yeah?? Well then, we’re doing open streets! So take that!
WABA: ….ok.
Why do Republicans currently control the White House, Senate, and House? Did Democrats forget to do the fraud in 2024? Decide it wasn't worth it this time?
