Posts about Hillary Clinton

Roads

Urgent Political Proposal

by David Alpert   •   May 5, 2008 1:58 pm

This secret email was recently leaked from John McCain and Hillary Clinton's draft email folder:

CONFIDENTIAL/URGENT POLITICAL PROPOSAL

Dear Sir

First we must solicit your confidence in this issue. This is by virtue as being utterly confidential and "top secret".

We are SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, the wife of the former United States head of state, PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, and also SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, friend and associate of current head of state PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH. We got your contact through business inquiries as we were searching for contacts of a citizen who can help save our and our family's political careers since our country has been frustrating us.

We are top officials of the United States Senate Government who are interested in importation of oil into our country with funds that are presently trapped in the FEDERAL TRANSPORTATION TRUST FUND dedicated to improving transportation. We wish to send this money to overseas accounts in the MIDDLE EAST but cannot due to restrictions in Congress Transportation Equity Act requiring that this money must be spent to build roads, bridges and high speed trains.

If you accept we will deliver to your a sum of 30 DOLLARS in the summer 2008 in form of a "GAS TAX HOLIDAY". You will then deliver this money to accounts of our friends in Middle East by taking it to your nearby gasoline station where they have information to forward the money. Please supply your bank account, social security number, address and your vote in DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES AND NOVEMBER GENERAL ELECTION.

But bear in mind that this transaction requires absolute confidentiality. Do not visit WWW.GASTAXSCAM.COM where there is information about dangers of our proposal and a petition to stop us from this diversion of funds.

PLEASE NOTIFY US URGENTLY OF YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THIS PROPOSAL

Awaiting your rapid response

Yours truly

SENATORS HILLARY CLINTON AND JOHN MCCAIN

Read more and sign the petition at www.GasTaxScam.com.

Roads

Gas prices: Obama still gets it; Friedman slams Clinton

by David Alpert   •   April 30, 2008 5:50 pm

Barack Obama reiterated his belief that the solution to high gas prices is more rail transit. At a lunch with a Beech Grove, Indiana couple (one of whom works for Amtrak, the other in a local hospital), the candidate had this to say:

The irony is with the gas prices what they are, we should be expanding rail service. One of the things I have been talking about for awhile is high speed rail connecting all of these Midwest cities—Indianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis. They are not that far away from each other. Because of how big of a hassle airlines are now, there are a lot of people if they had the choice, it takes you just about as much time if you had high speed rail to go the airport, park, take your shoes off.

This is something that we should be talking about a lot more. We are going to be having a lot of conversations this summer about gas prices. And it is a perfect time to start talk about why we don't have better rail service. We are the only advanced country in the world that doesn't have high speed rail. We just don't' have it. And it works on the Northeast corridor. They would rather go from New York to Washington by train than they would by plane. It is a lot more reliable and it is a good way for us to start reducing how much gas we are using. It is a good story to tell.

Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman calls out Hillary and McCain's shameful pandering on the gas tax:

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer's travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is
money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit. The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: "Maximize demand, minimize
supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most."

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

Unfortunately, Friedman doesn't follow Obama in endorsing the best solution to high gas prices: transit.

Roads

Breakfast links: skyrocketing gas price edition

by David Alpert   •   April 30, 2008 7:08 am

Even Californians can do it: Transit villages like one in Hayward, CA (on BART) are becoming popular and making converts out of people who would never have imagined living without a car. SF Chronicle via Richard Layman.

Please, God, let us keep sprawl: Some people are responding to the gas crisis by using prayer, reports Streetsblog. Meanwhile, truckers responded to pricey gas by wasting it.

Drop out already, Hillary: Hillary Clinton is buying into McCain's bad ideas by calling for a gas tax holiday which would not solve the problem and just emphasizes the framing that our solution to energy shortages is to make gas cheaper. Obama, to his credit, is standing firm in calling it the bad idea it is.

Google did it first: Companies from Schering-Plough to Microsoft are rolling out Wi-Fi-enabled commuter buses, kids are putting off learning to drive and transit ridership is at the highest levels since the interstate highways were built. Via Freakonomics.

Politics

Urban policy forum [won't] skip transportation

by David Alpert   •   April 16, 2008 8:15 am

UPenn Law School is hosting a forum on "Urban Policy and the Presidency" on Thursday with reps from the Obama and Clinton campaigns. They're discussing important urban policy topics, like economic development, affordable housing, and environmental justice. But, like so many "urban policy" discussions, transportation isn't on the agenda. Update: it is after all.

Transportation drives economic development by enabling more areas to become walkable neighborhoods where housing and shopping becomes desirable. Transportation creates affordable housing by saving commuting costs and allowing more housing units per square mile than driving-oriented areas. It improves environmental justice because highway construction usually results in poorer neighborhoods being bulldozed for new interchanges.

A new investment in transit would be the best thing to happen to cities since the old days of substantial investment in transit, when building subways under the countryside of Manhattan's Upper West Side and the Bronx in the early 1900s ended staggering overcrowding in Lower Manhattan and made New York City what it is, or when building Metro in the 1970s saved DC.

Cities are more than just poverty, I've argued in the past. And without a discussion on transportation, any policy conversation about cities is diagnosing the patient without checking the heart. Thanks David from Urban Law Forum for the correction. So many forums make urban policy all about classic anti-poverty spending type programs; good to see this one isn't so narrow.

Politics

Presidential candidates on transit, cycling and walking

by David Alpert   •   January 31, 2008 10:24 am

Streetsblog's LA correspondent Damien Newton researched the Presidential candidates' positions on transportation. For the Democrats, both Obama's and Clinton's platforms hold a great deal of promise. Obama is the most pro-cycling candidate, extols the virtues of walking, and supported Chicago's transit system while in the Illinois legislature, but Clinton is the one to officially propose $1.5 billion per year for public transit and feels that "sprawl is not only a threat to the environment but to our communities as well."

On the Republican side, none support a vision of an America less dependent on cars, but John McCain, now looking more and more the sure nominee, seems to be the lesser of evils. McCain supports higher fuel economy standards but has been a longtime critic of Amtrak and of investment in high-speed rail infrastructure. Romney, meanwhile, courted the gas-guzzling vote and had his lieutenant governor veto a bill to better train police on bicycle laws to increase safety. As for Huckabee, his biggest idea for the East Coast is to build more roads.