Chris Christie, Undesirable Savior

Hopefully they’re all running off a cliff.

Wal-Mart Is An Economic Cancer On Our Cities

The Article: Wal-Mart: An economic cancer on our cities by Charles Montgomery in Salon.

The Text: Most of us agree that development that provides employment and tax revenue is good for cities. Some even argue that the need for jobs outweighs aesthetic, lifestyle, or climate concerns—in fact, this argument comes up any time Walmart proposes a new megastore near a small town. But a clear-eyed look at the spatial economics of land, jobs, and tax regimes should cause anyone to reject the anything-and-anywhere-goes development model. To explain, let me offer the story of an obsessive number cruncher who found his own urban laboratory quite by chance.

Joseph Minicozzi, a young architect raised in upstate New York, was on a cross-country motorcycle ride in 2001 when he got sidetracked in the Appalachian Mountains. He met a beautiful woman in a North Carolina roadside bar and was smitten by both that woman and the languid beauty of the Blue Ridge region. Now they share a bungalow with two dogs in the mountain town of Asheville.

Asheville is, in many ways, a typical midsize American city, which is to say that its downtown was virtually abandoned in the second half of the twentieth century. Dozens of elegant old structures were boarded up or encased in aluminum siding as highways and liberal development policies sucked people and commercial life into dispersal. The process continued until 1991, when Julian Price, the heir to a family insurance and broadcasting fortune, decided to pour everything he had into nursing that old downtown back to life. His company, Public Interest Projects, bought and renovated old buildings, leased street-front space out to small businesses, and rented or sold the lofts above to a new wave of residential pioneers. They coached, coddled, and sometimes bankrolled entrepreneurs who began to enliven the streets. First came a vegetarian restaurant, then a bookstore, a furniture store, and the now-legendary nightclub, the Orange Peel.

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Basic Income, A New Human Right

One way to eliminate poverty and reduce the size of the welfare state in an economy that generates few jobs while garnering massive amounts of rights? A guaranteed basic income.

The Top Republican Presidential Contenders For 2016

A concise summation on who’s who among the party of liberty vanguards. Pretty accurate.

American Wars, Won And Lost

The Article: American Wars, Won And Lost by Steve Chapman in Reason.

The Text: On a recent visit to Moab, Utah, I saw a T-shirt with a picture of a Jeep stuck in a gap between two rock formations and a caption: “Confidence is the feeling you have before you fully understand the situation.”

If you still brim with self-assurance despite hopelessly stranding your vehicle, you may have to repeat the mistake a few times before confidence yields to comprehension. That’s also the case with members of Congress and other fans of intervention who call on the Obama administration to use force in Syria or Iran.

They always make such ventures sound quick, low-risk and ordained to succeed. You can believe that, if you erase from your mind everything that’s happened in the American wars of the 21st century.

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