Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
Via The Los Angeles Times: “California’s stay-at-home order reduced vehicle collisions on roadways by a little more than half, saving taxpayers an estimated $1 billion since the order went into effect, according to a UC Davis survey that estimated the impact of the order on traffic.”
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“The need for a Green New Deal can rendezvous with the imperative of anti-depression public investment. Much of this sweeping proposal is on the drawing boards and has not been done for lack of funding. Some of it will take some advance planning. The time to start is now.”
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“Trump gambled very early and very often on the idea that the coronavirus wouldn’t turn out to be nearly as severe as some health officials have warned it could get,” Aaron Blake writes.
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The Guardian explains why Governor Gavin Newsom’s approval of AB 857, the Public Banking, is such a big deal. The bill will allow city and county governments to create or sponsor public banks.
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Watch a tsunami wave simulation for Washington State from a hypothetical magnitude 9.0 earthquake (L1) scenario on the Cascadia subduction zone.
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“It’s become our new reality… I don’t like to say ‘normal,’ because that sounds like a plateau, and we’re on a trajectory where we’ll get more and more fire.”
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Here’s a roundup of coverage pertaining to Frontier Communications’ plan to sell off all of its assets in the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.
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“To many inhabitants, San Francisco has become unrecognizable in a decade, as though it had gone on a cosmetic surgery bender,” writes Karen Heller.
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In this piece, Erick Trickey takes a look at “how a fast-growing city has invested heavily in mass transit alternatives to keep a lid on gridlock”.
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Forget CNN — turn to France 24 English for a French perspective of the catastrophic events of Monday, April 15th, 2019 at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France.
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We can’t build our way out of future floods with better levees, just as we can’t build our way out of traffic congestion with wider highways.
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The New York Times reports on the important work that cities like Seattle and Los Angeles are doing to expand their transit systems following a trip by New York City Transportation Commissioner to California.
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They have imbued autonomous vehicles with the possibility to solve every problem that was ever created in transportation since the beginning of time… That might
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Survivors of the horrific attack on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student body have announced plans to march on the nation’s capital next month to demand stronger gun safety laws.
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“The whole mess is like a metaphor for how the entire federal government is run today. There is talk about big needs, even as they cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, making it harder to address those needs. We the people are distracted by our borrowed bonuses. The crippling disconnect from reality isn’t even acknowledged.”
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Big cities don’t function without transit, and that means transit has to be allowed to succeed. That means it won’t go to your door, or
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Schematic shows where Amtrak Cascades 501’s rolling stock ended up after derailment
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Honestly, I think the real number of fatalities tied to cell phones is at least three times the federal figure… We’re all addicted and the
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“In our own minds,” writes Knute Berger, “Seattle is a gleaming model of progressivism. But folks look at homelessness, housing prices, affordability, crime, taxes and traffic and, at the very least, have their doubts. They shake their heads, and some sneer: This is the progressive city on the hill?”
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“Mexico City and Seattle have a lot in common when it comes to earthquakes. One example, the soil the cities sit on can actually amplify the effects and length of the shaking. KING5’s Glenn Farley is here to talk about what that means for us here in the Pacific Northwest.”
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“September has, in one sense, been an unlucky month for Mexico. But there are few places on the planet besides Mexico where the bad luck of a severe earthquake and a hurricane might actually converge,” The Washington Post’s Philip Bump explains.
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