Reason Alert E-News

Reason Alert: Air Travel Delays

  • Federal Plan To Cut Air Travel Delays Won’t Work
  • Drew Carey: LA Officials Use Eminent Domain to Help Rich Get Richer
  • Denying Licenses to Illegals
  • Hitchens Says Bah-Humbug at Reason Christmas Party
  • New at Reason

Federal Plan To Cut Air Travel Delays Won’t Work
Today the Bush administration announced its plan to reduce air travel delays, but Reason Foundation’s Robert Poole, who recently advised the Department of Transportation on this issue, says the plan isn’t a long-term fix and won’t significantly help passengers frustrated by long delays. “It is disappointing that the federal plan to reduce delays was unable to incorporate congestion pricing or produce a real auction that puts every runway spot up for bid. The new plan is a band-aid that won’t cure delays,” Poole says. In a new report, released today, Poole demonstrates why congestion pricing is the most effective long-term solution; systematically debunks the arguments that airlines try to use against congestion pricing; and details exactly how airport pricing would impact each of the three major New York airports.
» Full Study: Congestion Pricing for New York Airports: Reducing Delays While Promoting Growth and Competition (.pdf)
» Frequently Asked Questions About Airport Congestion Pricing (.pdf)

Drew Carey: LA Officials Use Eminent Domain to Help Rich Get Richer
“You know the great thing about America is once you own property – you own it,” says Drew Carey in a new Reason.tv video examining eminent domain abuse. “You can do anything you want with that property. You can build a house on it, a business. You can plant flowers, grow daisies. Whatever you want to do with it, it’s your property. You own it. And the only way somebody can take your property is if they steal it. Am I right? That’s why the government invented eminent domain.” And steal it they will. Los Angeles used the power and threat of eminent domain to take a popular Hollywood bar and numerous other small businesses along Hollywood and Vine so that the city could hand the land over to private developers planning to build a W Hotel and million-dollar condos. You can view the new Drew Carey video at www.Reason.tv.
» Archive of Reason.tv’s Drew Carey Videos

Denying Licenses to Illegals
In today’s Detroit News, Reason Foundation’s Shikha Dalmia writes, “Real ID, the draconian federal law that would make Americans ‘show their papers’ before doing anything involving the federal government, may be on its death bed in Washington. So why is [Michigan] Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land redoubling her efforts to comply with it now? The reason is that her proposal to comply with the 2005 federal law is simply a cover for her to withhold driver’s licenses from illegal immigrants.”
» Reason Roundtable

Hitchens Says Bah-Humbug at Reason Christmas Party
If you missed Reason’s DC Christmas Party this week, check out God Is Not Great author Christopher Hitchens’ dramatic reading of Tom Lehrer’s “Christmas Carol” at the party. Leave it to Hitchens to find similarities between North Korea and the United States this time of year. Happy holidays from everyone at Reason.

New at Reason

Right the First Time, Senator Clinton
Switching too quickly on immigration
Jonathan Rauch

Mind the Gap
Fixing the unjust disparity in punishment between crack and cocaine powder
Jacob Sullum

Remembering ‘The Forgotten Man’
Amity Shlaes, author of a new history of the Great Depression, talks about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s baleful economic legacy, the growth of government, and the death of classical liberalism
Nick Gillespie

Bonds for Babies
Democrats discover the Ownership Society
David Weigel

The Grand Old Party Is Up for Grabs
Three roads to a new Republican vision
Jesse Walker

The Real Mortgage Fraud
How Congress takes a problem and makes it worse
Steve Chapman