Liberal Talk Radio

Right-wing think tanks — of the kind that are funded by corporations to promote a specific agenda — usually have suspiciously antiseptic or innocuous names, like “Freedom Policy Institute” or some such. The trick is to throw the words “institute” or “policy” in there as often as possible to throw people off the scent. (Case in point, the “Competitive Enterprise Institute,” which until recently was largely funded by ExxonMobil specifically to cast doubt on global warming)

So, of course, the red flags went up when I read this op-ed from Michael Ennis, “the director of the Center for Transportation Policy at the Washington Policy Center.” Would you like some “policy” with that? After all, it’s a think tank that brags of being the “Heritage Foundation of the Northwest.” (Heritage being one of the key boosters of that awesome public policy initiative known as “the Iraq War”)

Long story short, I wasn’t expecting much in the way of intellectual honesty from this op-ed, and Mr. Ennis didn’t disappoint. He completely fails to do a true accounting of the cost of building more highways and the aggregate costs of buying cars and gas to drive on them. But most glaringly, he attempts to dismiss the rail/roads package because it won’t reduce congestion. That’s largely correct, but it presents a false choice.

Congestion is here to stay. Think about it: we’ve been building roads for 100 years, and every year congestion has gotten worse. If we build roads for another 100 years, will things magically get better? Maybe it’s time to try a different approach. The point of investing in alternatives to roads — as smart conservatives already know — is to provide choices, to diversify our portfolio. That’s something any free-marketer should understand.