I remember when journalists tried to get both sides of a story. Now they are content to get the side of the poor, beleaguered bureaucrats and ignore the taxpayers who have to fund them. Case in point: a recent article in the “independent” Texas Tribune reads more like a transit agency press release than a news article.
An expensive station on the Dallas light-rail line. Photo by Mbrstooge.
The article reports on a bill in the state legislature that would redirect 25 percent of sales tax funds that are now going to transit to “general mobility” programs instead. Such programs could go for bike paths, new traffic signals, roads, and even transit. According to the lead paragraphs in the “news” article, this bill “could imperil the future of public transportation” by “sap[ping] hundreds of millions of dollars” from transit agencies.
Yet transit is practically irrelevant in Texas cities. According to the 2023 American Community Survey, only 1.0 percent of commuters in the Austin urban area, 0.9 percent of Dallas-Ft. Worth area commuters, 1.7 percent of Houston-area commuters, and 1.6 percent of San Antonio-area commuters ride transit to work. In general, even a smaller percentage of people use transit for non-work-related travel.
Nor is transit particularly important to low-income people. Survey data also show that, in the Austin urban area, just 1.7 percent of people who earn less than $25,000 a year commute by transit while 77 percent rely on automobiles; in Dallas-Ft. Worth its 1.7 percent and 83 percent; in Houston it’s 2.8 percent and 83 percent; and in San Antonio it’s 3.2 percent and 79 percent. Since well over 95 percent of low-income people don’t rely on transit, and sales taxes supporting transit are regressive, most low-income people are disproportionately paying for transit rides they rarely if ever take. Spending money on “general mobility” would do more for more people than spending it on transit.
Some people have no vehicles, but the data also show that people who have no vehicles are more likely to drive alone to work (mainly in employer-supplied vehicles) than commute by transit. In Austin, 34 percent of people who live in households with no vehicles drive alone to work while only 12 percent take transit; in Dallas-Ft. Worth its 38 percent and 10% percent; in Houston it’s 34 percent and 17 percent; in San Antonio it’s 30 percent and 24 percent. Transit is such a waste of money that even people with no vehicles are not likely to use it.
The Texas Tribune was founded as a non-profit, independent source of news aimed at “promoting civic engagement.” Yet in this case it is entirely dependent on the transit bureaucracy for its information and viewpoint. The article quotes numerous transit and planning agency bureaucrats but includes only one quote from a sponsor of the bill, acknowledging that the quote was from “earlier this year.” In other words, the reporter made no attempt to interview the bill sponsors for their responses to the bureaucrats’ claims.
One of the arguments made in the article is that Austin voters approved spending billions of dollars on new light-rail projects and the proposed bill in the legislature would overturn that result. But when news coverage is this biased, it is hardly a surprise that voters would support projects that mainly benefit construction companies while they actually harm the region’s transportation. One only has to look at Dallas, which has the nation’s largest light-rail system, to see the harm it can do: before building light rail, 2.8 percent of Dallas-area workers rode transit to work; by 2019, this had fallen to less than 1.5 percent.
A venture capitalist named John Thornton founded the Texas Tribune in 2009 because he worried that “such ‘public goods’ as clean air and national defense will not be produced in sufficient supply exclusively by market forces.” That’s a valid concern, but transit is not a public good, meaning a good from whose benefits people can’t be excluded. The various kinds of fare machines, turnstiles, and similar fare mechanisms show that people can be excluded if they don’t pay a fare (and if transit agencies try hard enough), which means it is very much a private good. So Tribune reporters have no excuse for biasing their reports in favor of transit bureaucracies.
Wikipedia defines the “deep state” as “unauthorized and possibly even secret networks of power operating independently of a state’s political leadership in pursuit of their own agendas and goals.” In this case, the networks include the transit agencies, metropolitan planning agencies, the companies that will make huge profits from building light rail, and of course the news reporters who present the deep state’s viewpoint without presenting alternative views. Although John Thornton passed away just a week ago, he might have been disappointed that his “independent” news outlet has been so quickly captured by the deep state.
Way back in 1993, the existence of the Government Industrial Complex’s information pipeline was first revealed to us by none other than the late Rush Limbaugh. On his radio and TV shows, he would play montages of media talking heads mouthing the same exact talking points. These media urchins wouldn’t even change the punctuation. I stopped trusting the Media Industrial Complex there and then.
Nothing has changed. ABCNBCCBSCNNMSNBC all sing from the same song sheet today. The music appears to be written by the same Democrat operatives acting on behalf of the bureaucratic state. Every issue is framed for how it will affect the number and amount of government checks will be issued, as well as the number of bureaucrats employed to dole out money confiscated from taxpayers.
Chicago’s RTA has sensed general taxpayer reluctance to ante up for its increasingly empty buses and trains, so that agency has resorted to sympathy stories about displaced transit employees. Chicago’s useless media dutifully parrots their talking points aimed squarely at suburban AWFLs.
The ‘Hands Off’ mayhem last weekend was essentially a tantrum in favor of rampant corruption and thievery in government. Chicago media took the bureaucracy at their word and parroted more talking points and outright lies on behalf of the paid agitators who organized these marches.
Note that the media never shows or quotes anyone advocating on behalf of the ones who are stuck with the bill for all the bureaucratic benevolence: the Taxpayers. We are expected to shut and ante up.