Cooking the Books

The Salt Lake County Council of Governments recently agreed to spend $2.5 billion on rail transit. But a state auditor found that the analysis used to justify the decision contained some errors that, if corrected, would have indicated the money should be spent on roads instead.

The analysis ranked commuter rail as the second-highest priority transportation investment for the county. But when the errors were corrected, it dropped to 19th out of 34.

“So what?” say city and county leaders. They would have spent the money on rail no matter what the analysis found.

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Building Civic Society

On October 22, the Wall Street Journal interviewed the head of NPR and asked, “Why is it important for the government to support public radio?” The answer, “It’s important to building civic society.”

How does taxing people who don’t like something to fund that thing help to build civic society? I can understand how getting voluntary contributions from people to fund something helps build a sense of community. But how does stealing help build civic society?

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Home Again; Fire Op Eds

The Antiplanner is back home after a tiring road trip, so today’s post will be brief. But it is worth noting a couple of op eds that appeared about the southern California wildfires.

First, Richard Halsey, of the California Chaparral Institute, has an opinion piece in the San Diego Tribune. Second, the Orange County Register published an article by the Antiplanner.

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