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Recent Presentations

By | | Housekeeping
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The Antiplanner gave a presentation on property rights in Ottawa on Saturday, September 14, and a presentation on Plan Bay Area in Novato on Tuesday, September 17. The Ottawa presentation is downloadable as an 11.6-MB PDF. The Bay Area presentation is downloadable as a 16-MB PDF or a 57-MB zip file containing the PowerPoint show plus two Click on cialis no prescription more information now and be a man again. All the medicines are named as prescription cialis for getting over the issue of erectile dysfunction. Regular use of purchase generic levitra these herbal supplements offers effective cure for sexual disorders and keeps you in good health. Potential causes of this abnormal condition in which gentile of male cannot viagra without prescription canada retain its erection and plays a key role in making one impotent. videos of driverless cars.

Any one is free to distribute, use, or borrow from these presentations. I make every effort to use photographs that are in the public domain or under a creative commons license, but may have accidentally included some that are copyrighted, so it is best to try to find the photo’s origin before publishing the photos.

Happy Birthday, James J. Hill

By | | Mission
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Today is the 175th anniversary of the birth of James J. Hill, builder of the Great Northern Railway and one of the great entrepreneurs of the late 19th century. As a railfan, the Antiplanner likes Hill because the Great Northern has always been my favorite railroad. It is only a coincidence that Hill’s politics were pretty similar to mine.


Hill in 1915.

Wikipedia describes Hill as a Bourbon Democrat, meaning a classical liberal who supported free trade and opposed government subsidies and legislative efforts to protect corporations from competition. As I detail in an article that should soon be published by the Great Northern Railway Historical Society, Hill also believed that the federal government should stay out of conservation issues as it would likely do more harm than good.

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Who Should Cure the Obesity “Epidemic”?

By | | News commentary
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The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) is worried about “controlling the global obesity epidemic.” A recent report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on “The State of Food and Agriculture” frets over obesity almost as much as it does malnutrition.

The U.N.’s increasing attention to this issue have conservatives worried about another threat to our sovereignty. “The last thing the world needs is yet another anti-liberty, wealth-redistributing response to an alleged crisis,” says Michael Tennant, a writer for the New American, which is published by the John Birch Society.

The Antiplanner isn’t too worried about the United Nations trying to control what Americans eat. But the same type of UN people who want to “control” obesity inhabit the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies. Moreover, their agenda is often less oriented to fixing obesity than it is toward using obesity as an excuse for regulating land-use patterns.

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Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping
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Tomorrow, the Antiplanner is flying to Ottawa to participate in a conference on property rights. After that, I’ll fly to San Francisco to speak twice on Tuesday, September 17.

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The Future of Wildfire

By | | Wildfire
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The 2013 fire season is nearly over, and while it is too soon for a complete post-mortem, we know a few things about this year’s fires. As of September 10, about 36,275 fires to date have burned just under 4 million acres (report is updated each day), which is well under the last decade’s average of more than 57,000 fires and 6.4 million acres per year.


Dumping money on the fire.

A couple of weeks ago, the Forest Service said it had spent about $1 billion on fire suppression so far, and that it had to “borrow” $600 million from timber and other funds to keep up the hard work of pretending to put out fires. The Department of the Interior tends to spend about a quarter to a third as much as the Forest Service each year, so total federal spending this year probably came somewhere close to $1.5 billion.

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Tesla = Tucker?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Shares of stock in Tesla Motors are selling for more than $160. Some people think it is overvalued by at least $100 a share. Others think such high prices are appropriate because Tesla is more a tech company than an auto manufacturer.


The Tesla Model S, available over the Internet for a mere $69,500.

The Antiplanner thinks both views are correct. Tesla’s shares are overpriced because they are priced like a tech company–one that is likely to go bankrupt soon, or at least unlikely to ever make any money.

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Low-Capacity Rail for Las Vegas?

By | | Mission
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Robert Lang, a professor of urban affairs at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, thinks Las Vegas needs a low-capacity rail line (aka light rail). As the director of something called the Lincy Institute, Lang’s job is to “draw state and federal money to the greater Las Vegas” area, and low-capacity rail is one way to do that.


An ACE Gold bus-rapid transit vehicle in Las Vegas. With fancy vehicles like these, why does Vegas need low-capacity rail? Click this Flickr photo by HerrVebah for a larger view.

Of course, that’s not the way he puts it. He claims low-capacity rail has “transformed urban development patterns in the West” by changing “housing development from water-consuming single family homes to multifamily, mixed-use projects.” I guess he thinks people in multifamily, mixed-use projects don’t drink as much water as people in single-family homes. It’s also pretty clear he hasn’t read research by the Antiplanner and faithful Antiplanner allies such as John Charles showing that low-capacity rail attracts no new development unless it is accompanied by large subsidies to developers.

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The Second-Smallest Political Quiz

By | | News commentary
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The debate over American intervention in Syria has the media even more confused than usual. Republicans such as Senator John McCain, Robert Corker, and Representative John Boehner support intervention as do Democrats such as Senators Harry Reid, Robert Menendez, and Richard Durbin. Meanwhile, Republicans such as Senators Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cole oppose intervention, as do Democrats such as Senators Mark Udall, Joe Manchin, and Chris Murphy.

How can it be that the issue doesn’t divide along party lines, or at least on “liberal-conservative” lines? One writer goes so far as to argue that there are 22 different political views being expressed on the issue.

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DOT’s Livability Plan Ignores Real Life

By | | Transportation
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The Antiplanner hasn’t yet read all of the Department of Transportation’s strategic plan yet, but I’ve read the livable communities chapter. Though heavily footnoted, it is based on numerous minor and two major fallacies.

Among the many minor fallacies, the plan blames obesity on the lack of sidewalks forcing parents to give their children rides to work instead of letting them walk. This unquestioned assumption is not supported by reality.

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It’s Not an Affair; It’s a Committed Relationship

By | | Transportation
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USA Today asks, “Is USA’s love affair with the automobile over?” The Antiplanner is always irked when someone calls people’s use of cars a “love affair,” because it implies that driving is irrational. In fact, people’s use of cars is entirely rational, as they are the fastest, most-convenient, least-expensive of getting between most places inside of an urban area as well as for journeys up to a few hundred miles.

Ironically, USA Today quotes a study from the Department of Transportation (previously cited here) that pretty much concluded that the very slight (2.4%) decline in driving since its 2007 peak was almost entirely due to the economy, and not a change in tastes. USA Today pretty much ignores that conclusion so they can underscore opinions by car-haters from US PIRG who want to divert even more highway user fees to transit and other modes of transportation.

If there is any reason for a decline in driving other than the economy, it is demographics. Baby boomers are retiring and retired people don’t drive as much, especially during rush hour. The ratio of workers to non-workers is declining, so rush-hour traffic might be a little better. That doesn’t mean there is no reason to try to fix congested roads; roads that are congested today are bound to remain congested in the future unless something is done such as implementing congestion pricing.

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