Liberal Talk Radio

I don’t by any means intend to trivialize Iraq by continually making these comparisons. It is, after all, a relatively minor domestic infrastructure project versus a trillion-dollar fiasco of a war that has cost tens of thousands of lives. Nonetheless, the comparisons keep inviting themselves: “It is hard to see any happy ending for anybody,” [...]

It’s been argued — plausibly, I think — that the current sectarian violence plaguing Iraq was not inevitable. There was a leadership vacuum after the invasion, followed by a calculated series of attacks by Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni groups designed to pit various sects against each other. Bush was paralyzed and couldn’t [...]

Somewhere in the nexus between voter referenda, free market principles, urban growth formulas and plain-old finger wagging emerges a new American Western philosophy. See, for example, this article in the Phoenix New Times about building the city’s new light rail line: You, the customer, carry most of the responsibility for preserving the businesses you like [...]

If you buy that libertarianism, while not a very viable form of actual governance, may be the dominant political ideology that both drives and tempers American politics (as opposed to straight-up conservatism), then this notion doesn’t seem that far fetched: Can a new, progressive fusionism break out of the current rut? Liberals and libertarians already [...]

Good piece by Dan Voelpel in the Tacoma News-Tribune on how Portland does the whole new-urban smart-growh thang. Item #1 on the list? Tax Increment Financing, one of the Prof’s favorite ideas. Turns out that Washington is one of only two states that don’t allow TIF. Weird. Anyway, the point is that these things don’t [...]

Nearly a decade after the TV show “Frasier” first aired, Seattlites can finally buy an apartment like that: Some of it is just a matter of rich people deciding downtown living is OK. Potential buyers hear about the Four Seasons through word of mouth, or from friends and friends of friends, Nyhus said. “There’s a [...]

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar didn’t start out on the right track with his new Harlem neighbors: New neighbors of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were crying foul yesterday after the NBA great apparently dumped a huge pile of trash — complete with a pair of old size-17 sneakers — in the front yard of a home next-door to his Harlem [...]

A good buddy of mine says that he can feel the rise in housing prices in his gut. “Every day that I wake up, petrified that I haven’t yet bought a house and won’t be able to afford one,” he tells me, only half-jokingly. It’s a common refrain here in Seattle, where housing prices increase [...]

While traffic gets worse in virtually every North American city, commute times have actually decreased in that urban planning paradise to the North, Vancouver. In unrelated transit news, a tragic death inside Boston’s Big Dig has people looking for alternative commuting options. Only part of the tunnel is closed, but residents and tourists are spooked. [...]

Big article on gentrification Seattle’s Central District in the Washington Post: In Seattle’s Central District, though, racial change is anything but marginal. The non-Hispanic white population in the area jumped from 31 percent in 1990 to 50 percent in 2000, according to the census. Local demographers say white growth since 2000 has gained momentum, while [...]