Salon.com > Government

We don’t need new roads

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Interstate 70 in Colorado, one of the nation's best-known arteries, is the latest thoroughfare to incite an archetypal fight. Running at capacity as it cuts through Denver, this gateway to the Rocky Mountains is about to be expanded over the objections of residents whose low-income neighborhoods will be sliced apart.

No doubt, the road will probably win -- as roads almost always do in these battles. Indeed, the story of I-70 summarizes the 60-year tale of urban development in modern America: Instead of beefing up public transit, cities build neighborhood-destroying highways, cars fill up those highways, cities then build more highways to alleviate traffic, and then yet more cars flood the roads, creating even more traffic. Known as the "fundamental law of highway congestion," this cycle perfectly embodies the "if you build it, cars will come" axiom confirmed in 2011 by researchers at the University of Toronto.

Obama’s OSHA: Improved but still weak

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:00:00 +0000

After three years of the Obama administration, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) finds its ability to police the business community is extremely limited, even with a Democrat in the White House and legitimate health and safety experts leading the agency.

Almost every new regulation the agency issues, no matter how minor, is rebuffed amid a firestorm of ferocious rhetoric from influential (and highly capitalized) industry lobbying groups, and their Republican allies. Other branches of the Obama administration hinder OSHA’s rule-making process, while some Democrats, including the president, express an ambivalent attitude toward regulation.

Who’s afraid of industrial policy?

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

President Obama’s emphasis in his State of the Union message on revitalizing American manufacturing has led to predictable attacks by critics that he is practicing “industrial policy.” This criticism is largely limited to the libertarian right, which has watched in dismay as Mitt Romney denounces unfair Chinese practices and Newt Gingrich promises to revive the government-backed American space-flight industry.

In debates in the 1980s and 1990s, the term was often associated with proposals to emulate one or another aspect of the export-oriented Japanese model. Today, however, critics use “industrial policy” in blanket condemnations of any government support of particular technologies as well as particular industries and particular companies. Industrial policy, they allege, is both un-American and doomed to failure.