Newsom adopts Wiener's transit lie

Scott Wiener

Randal O'Toole:

Everyone knows that transit is so morally superior to driving that we aren’t supposed to ask about how much it costs. 

Pay no attention to the fact that the next light-rail line Portland wants to build will cost nearly $3 billion; planners don’t mention the cost in their presentation of the proposal.

Nor are we supposed to ask whether anyone is actually riding transit. When Portland’s last light-rail line, which cost $1.5 billion, opened a few years ago, transit ridership declined. But that’s no reason to question the next line.

Now we have some new questions we aren’t supposed to ask. A bill signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday has exempted transit projects from detailed environmental review, meaning we no longer get to find out that the rail project that’s supposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will actually increase them. 

Not surprisingly, the bill was written by state Senator Scott Wiener, who also wants to force single-family neighborhoods to accept high-density transit-oriented developments in their midst.

When President Trump proposes to reduce the red tape required by the National Environmental Policy Act, environmental groups accuse him of “trying to gut the law” and attempting to “weaken” environmental protection measures. 

But when Newsom and Wiener do exactly the same thing for transit projects, they are hailed as heroes.

Wiener called his bill a “big win in the fight against climate change.” That’s a great myth; too bad it is a lie. 

Almost every rail transit project I’ve ever seen did far more harm to the environment than any benefits it produced...

See also Another lie from Scott Wiener.

He can't help it

Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post:

...The compulsion to attribute intentionality to Trump’s behavior leads to ludicrous explanations. Pundits, for example, too often claim that Trump tries to scare suburban women, a large and critical part of the electorate, so that he can pump up his base — White males who have never abandoned him. This...is almost certainly false. 

Trump does what he does because he cannot help himself. Does anyone really believe that he looks at polls objectively? It seems he cannot plan a day ahead — let alone a month ahead. He certainly cannot control the impulse to insult and degrade others. 

His narcissism and lack of conscience — not calculation — lead him to do things that are self-destructive. There was no benefit for Trump in refusing to denounce white nationalists at Tuesday’s debate. That moment was about Trump refusing to be told to denounce racists...

See also Proud Boys—and Craven Republicans—Stand By Trump.

Steve Schmidt takes him down

Thanks to Daily Kos.

"The sound of the man's voice was madness"

Getty Images

Paul Berman on Tablet:

The President of the United States appears to be mad. He was never sane in the past, but now, in any case, he raves. A theater director who wished to conjure madness would have ordered precisely such a hairdo, which no longer resembles the buoyant hair of the president’s younger years or his time on “The Apprentice,” but has come to weigh ever more crushingly upon his head, as if flattening a pumpkin...

The plastic lines of his mouth, mostly pointing downward into misery, occasionally spreading horizontally into a disturbing mirth, appear to have lost the firm muscularity that once was theirs. 

And from all of this, the hair, the hue, the impression of downwardness, the loss of control, the loosening plasticity, emerges the ideas, which likewise appear to be descending into rot—the fantastical claims, the angry accusations, the coup being plotted against him, the ominous invitations to the mobs of white supremacy and the extreme right...

But to my Trumpian friends I say: Leave aside for the moment the various issues that you consider paramount. Blink twice to get the ordinary politics out of the way, and just look. Gaze honestly at the spectacle that was before you last night. 

The sound of the man’s voice was madness. It is not as with other presidents, whose hair has gradually turned impressively gray over the course of his term. This is a man who is descending into hysteria. You would hesitate to give a dollar to such a man on the street for fear of inviting a physical attack.

...What exactly was Trump’s strategy on the debate stage? Was there any strategy at all, or was his debate policy similar to his Iran policy, random rage and no planning? Which portion of the electorate was he trying to court? The women who dislike him? The industrial workers who used to like him, who may have lately returned to the Democratic Party? The people whose hatred of immigrants, having abated, may need a renewed infusion of loathing to return to the Republican Party? 

Did he appeal to Floridians? Or to Pennsylvanians, or to anyone? Or is strategy something that is no longer within his comprehension?

No, he is mad. He did us the courtesy of showing it to us.

As for Joe Biden, well, it was a little shocking to hear Biden tell the President of the United States to shut up. “Shush,” said Joe Biden. This was precisely the sign that Biden is not mad.