NewsTrust - Transportation - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

Chamber of Commerce Urges Lawmakers to Raise the Gas Tax

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Alec MacGillis - Jul. 15 (Opinion) - On the same day as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was attacking President Obama and congressional Democrats over a tax-hiking plan to pay for health care reform, its leader urged the same people to have the courage to raise taxes on another front: the federal gasoline levy that pays for our highways

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Car Crazy

Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - May. 28 (Editorial) - At the end of his Rose Garden explanation yesterday of the new U.S. fuel-efficiency standards, President Obama remarked on the good that can be accomplished when we are "working together." The President may be getting ahead of himself. Watching the unlikely coalition arrayed behind him as Mr. Obama committed the U.S. to an astonishing passenger-car mileage average of 39 miles per gallon by 2016, it looks truer to say we are merely standing together in this adventure, for better or worse. Mr. Obama's fleet-mileage partners yesterday included the two auto companies that have fallen into his arms, Chrysler and GM, still-independent Ford, the major foreign manufacturers, United Auto Workers chief Ron Gettelfinger, and beaming representatives from the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists. All that's left to arrive at the President's new destination for the American way of driving are huge, unanswered questions about technology, financing and the marketability of cars that will be small and expensive.

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California's proposed Low Carbon Fuel Standard

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - Apr. 20 (Editorial) - The goal of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard is to lower the "carbon intensity" of fuels sold in California 10% by 2020. It does this by using complexformulas to score each type of fuel based on its life-cycle emissions; carbon intensity is calculated by comparing the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by a fuel over its life cycle with the amount of energy it produces. Starting in 2011, companies that sell fuel in California will have to lower the overall carbon intensity of their various fuels at a rate that will increase every year until 2020, or else buy credits from companies that sell cleaner fuels.

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Should Free-Wheeling be Free? One Oregon Lawmaker Says No.

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

triplepundit.com - Apr. 10 (Opinion) - Oregonians love their bikes—and for good reason. Portland and Eugene are among the most progressive cities in the nation when it comes to biking infrastructure (bike lanes, bike racks, etc.). But Oregon representative Wayne Krieger has introduced a bill that would mean this infrastructure would no longer be freely available to two-wheeling citizens. They'd have to pay to ride.

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Detroit: Can Obama's Auto Bailout Work?

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By John Gross - Apr. 01 (Opinion) - Obama also used the B-word, bankruptcy, which would be particularly disastrous for Cerberus. Under any circumstances, it seems, many of the Wall Streeters who celebrated Obama's toxic-assets plan won't profit from his auto bailout.

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Detroit Dissonance

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Eugene Robinson - Mar. 31 (Opinion) - Through a series of logical decisions, the Obama administration has maneuvered itself into an illogical and uncomfortable place. The president is telling Detroit to shape up or die while at the same time politely asking Wall Street, whose recklessness and greed caused this economic crisis, if it would be so kind as to accept another heaping helping of taxpayer funds.

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6 Cars That Signal the Future of Driving

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

U.S. News & World Report - By Rick Newman - Mar. 23 (Opinion) - So, for the next decade or so, there will be a worldwide energy derby as the backers of half a dozen plausible fuel systems battle one another for prominence under the hood. But vehicle design and infrastructure needs will eventually coalesce around one or two winners to take advantage of high-volume production, which is essential to lowering costs.

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A conversation with Rep. Krieger about his bike registration bill

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

bikeportland.org - By Jonathan Maus - Mar. 06 (Interview) - Representative Wayne Krieger (R-Gold Beach) wants everyone who owns a bicycle in the state of Oregon to pay a mandatory, $54 registration fee (and then renew it for another $54 every two years). He is the chief architect of House Bill 3008, a proposal that was met with a lot of negative responses on this site when I reported on it today.

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School politics

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Boston Phoenix - Feb. 06 (Editorial) - Educating the next generation of children is about nothing if not the future. Families project their hopes and dreams for a better life onto their kids. And though Boston has become a city where the poor and the working class — many of them immigrants — outnumber the affluent and the middle class, it is white-collar aspirations rather than blue-collar realities that animate school concerns.

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A Republican Worth Listening To

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Think Progress - By Matthew Yglesias - Jan. 29 (Comment) - Rather than endless coffee sessions with John Boehner, maybe the White House should pay more attention to this guy:

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The Net-Zero Gas Tax

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Weekly Standard - By Charles Krauthammer - Dec. 29 (Opinion) - Today's economic climate of financial instability and deepening recession, moreover, makes the piling on of new taxes--gasoline or otherwise--not just politically unpalatable but economically dubious

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The Senate GOP Seems Set on Hastening the Death of Detroit

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Eugene Robinson - Dec. 15 (Opinion) - It may be that General Motors, Chrysler and Ford are lumbering, Jurassic beasts that deserve their looming extinction. But only a free-market fundamentalist, a lunatic or a Senate Republican -- perhaps that's redundant -- would conclude that now is the moment to hasten Detroit's demise. To recap: We're in the midst of a global financial crisis. The housing bubble has burst and prices have collapsed. The economy has been in recession for a year. Unemployment has risen to 6.7 percent, and if "marginally attached" workers are included -- those who have given up even looking for jobs -- along with those who want to work full time but are forced to accept fewer hours, the rate is 12.5 percent.

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Chapter 11 is the right road for US carmakers

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Financial Times - By Joseph Stiglitz - Dec. 13 (Opinion) - The debate about whether or not to bail out the Big Three carmakers has been mischaracterised. It has been described as a package to help the undeserving dinosaurs of Detroit. In fact, a plan to bail out the carmakers would benefit shareholders and bondholders as much as anybody else. These are not the people that need help right now. In fact they contributed to the problem.

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The Big Three's real union problem

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Jonathan Cutler - Dec. 06 (Opinion) - Even if a deal for a $15-billion to $17-billion preliminary bailout comes together this weekend to keep carmakers afloat into 2009, they will continue to be dogged by their most significant competitive disadvantage: a high-priced, unionized workforce.

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How national healthcare could have saved Detroit

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Andrew Leonard - Dec. 04 (Opinion) - Any bailout, restructuring or government-overseen bankruptcy should be accompanied by comprehensive healthcare reform for all workers, along with substantial improvements in the safety net such as wage insurance, extended unemployment benefits, training and education subsidies.

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Saving the Big 3 for You and Me

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Michael Moore - Dec. 03 (Opinion) - Congress must save the industrial infrastructure that these companies control and the jobs they create. And it must save the world from the internal combustion engine. This great, vast manufacturing network can redeem itself by building mass transit and electric/hybrid cars, and the kind of transportation we need for the 21st century. And Congress must do all this by NOT giving GM, Ford and Chrysler the $34 billion they are asking for in "loans" (a few days ago they only wanted $25 billion; that's how stupid they are -- they don't even know how much they really need to make this month's payroll. If you or I tried to get a loan from the bank this way, not only would we be thrown out on our ear, the bank would place us on some sort of credit rating blacklist).

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Depression-era projects, again

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Bill Boyarsky - Nov. 25 (Opinion) - The Depression projects were built in a hurry, driven by economic need. Will the new crop also be put on a fast track?

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