A few weeks back I taunted the Seattle P-I for exploring the future of tolling on Washington state roads, by essentially printing a debate between two conservative analysts, Matt Rosenberg of the Discovery Institute and Michael Ennis of the Washingon Policy Center. To which the article’s author, Aubrey Cohen, responded in my comment thread:
While the Discovery Institute surely is as conservative as can be when it comes to teaching evolution, the Cascadia Center is progressive with regard to transportation policy. Tarring the Cascadia Center as conservative because of the Discovery Institute’s views on evolution makes no sense and is a disservice to progressives.
Cascadia Center is “progressive” with regard to transportation policy? Oh really, Aubrey?
So I guess it’s progressive to advocate taking money away from Sound Transit’s light rail to spend on a privatized, regional monorail? It’s progressive to demand $30 billion for more freeways, but nothing for street cars, bike lanes or light rail? An expensive Sounder station under Benaroya Hall, and an untested deep bore tunnel… these are progressive policies?
I’m not saying that all of Cascadia’s proposals are conservative (mostly, they’re just kinda nutty), or that transportation issues even tend to neatly line up along a progressive/conservative divide, but to describe either Matt Rosenberg or Cascadia as “progressive” is, quite frankly, ridiculous. And to suggest, as Cohen does, that a vehemently and cynically conservative organization such as Discovery has room within its ranks for a “progressive” transportation policy center, strains all credulity.
I mean, how twisted is the transportation debate in Washington state when the Discovery Institute is portrayed as representing the progressive side of the debate, and nobody bats an eye? And honestly, what does Bruce Chapman have to do in his advancing years to convince the Seattle establishment of his political dotage? What, seeking to destroy science education in our nation’s schools and replace it with Christianist hocus-pocus isn’t enough? Does he have to actually instigate pogroms? Burn witches at the stake? Wander naked through the halls of the Rainier Club, talking to angels?
The Discovery Institute isn’t just crazy-conservative, it’s downright crazy. Perhaps Cohen and others think people like me are crazy too, but “progressive” and “crazy” are not one and the same thing.
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
guess who
I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We’d be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.
August 14, 1992, remarks to Discovery Institute
guess who said it about iraq
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
The Discovery Institute is just plan nutty, period.
Maybe Aubrey Cohen was using the word “progressive” in a Progressive Rock sort of way.
Think Yes and Jethro Tull.
Then think of dreamy, swirly privatized transportation. And then think of the thick clouds of pot smoke which must have influenced both snob rock and the Discovery Insitute’s weird transportation concepts….
More “progressive” politics churned out by the Discovery Institute thunk tank:
Thursday, March 20, 2003
Bush and Blair will be redeemed
http://www.seattlepi.com/opini.....ce20.shtml
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Iraq a year later: Criticism about Bush, Iraq war won’t stand over time
http://www.seattlepi.com/opini.....bruce.html
Aubrey is confused because conservatives and progressives both like to spend taxpayer money. The difference between them is rather subtle, so perhaps she missed it: Conservatives like to give public money to private interests. Progressives like to spend public money on things that help the public.
Here’s the hilarious part, though. Eight years before Bruce Chapman was cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq, he warned us that Bill Clinton’s incursion against Serbia was going to lead us into a quagmire. The guy is downright visionary:
Clinton Risks Leading Us Into Quagmire of ‘Vietnam II’
http://www.discovery.org/a/544
..I know this post is about Discovery Institute lunacy on transportation policy…but I couldn’t help myself.
I must be missing something in the last story link you posted. As I read it, they called for better park-and-ride facilities so more people would take transit of all kinds, including light rail; “accelerating the transition from oil to electricity and biofuels in transportation” with plug-in stations for electric vehicles and “a rapid shift in vehicle technology away from carbon-based fuels”; and congestion-based pricing on roads in concert with improved rapid transit.
I agree that they support some projects, such as the tunnel, that many progressive Seattle residents do not. But do you really want to call every tunnel supporter a conservative?
Yes Disovery’s ideas on creationism are extreme, but the whole idea of a think tank is to spin off ideas — some are lousy and some are good. You don’t have to accept all (or any) ideas from a think tank – but it is helpful to have them around. It is unfortunate that some attack all ideas from this large organization just because of some ideas from a small portion of it. Cascadia is doing some great work on rail issues and its whole “beyond oil” project is needed and doing a great job. Liberals claim to have open minds. Let’s live up to that ideal and not be hyper-critical of an organization like Discovery that discusses many many different issues and has added a lot to debate on local and regional issues. I don’t like their views on creationism at all but I still respect much of their work, some of which is excellent.
goldy, any thoughts on the auditor’s findings for king county (and the subsequent finger-pointing amongst executive candidates)?
Because nothing says progressive like (u)SP’s biggest front page moral scold. Apparently the couldn’t find any actual progressives in Seattle so they went to the Discovery Institute.
Just spinning off ideas, that’s what a think tank does, that, and other progressive things.
http://www.discovery.org/a/2915
How does a Creationist dog breeder explain what he’s doing?
There is no other way to explain dog breeds other than that there must have been a first cause, an original CREATOR of breeds.
How else to explain their multiplicity and perfection?
Aubrey @8,
As I wrote in the post:
That said, Park & Rides are not considered particularly progressive. Hence the lack of them along ST’s initial route, with the exception of Tukwila. The idea is to get people out of their cars, not just save them the expense of downtown parking.
You labeled Cascadia “progressive,” something it most definitely is not. Indeed, I’m betting Matt Rosenberg would be offended by the label.
I just don’t understand how people can witness the dangerous, destructive, anti-science/anti-intellectual crap that comes out of Discovery on ID, and still give Chapman and his cohorts the benefit of the doubt on transportation and other issues. These guys are fanatics, and they simply do not deserve the respect you and others lavish on them.
Yellowdog D @9,
Discovery is not a real think tank. It’s a propaganda mill.
“……but the whole idea of a think tank is to spin off ideas.”
Wrong. Nearly all ‘think tanks’ operate to promote the point of view of their funders. The ‘neat ideas’ they ocassionally spew out are ancillary, window dressing for the rubes.
14 It’s a good point that eventually the cost of mechanized transport is going to lead us to living and working in more “stacked-up” environments where we can go from home to office to store to school to whatever primarily on muscle power. In the meantime, to expect all those spread-out subdivisions in the North End/South End/Eastside to coalesce into condo stacks around transport hubs in less than the intended lifespan of the housing stock is highly unrealistic.
In the meantime, if Joe Suburbanite can be persuaded to drive a mile and a half to the station and ride the train/bus/hovercraft the remaining 15 miles to wherever he works, we’ve covered 90 percent of the problem, and for dirt cheap at that. Heck, on nice days he might even decide to leave the Big Iron Thing in the garage and hoof it.
Any way you slice it, it is always dangerous to conflate ideological labels with policy.
No, Cascadia is not “progressive” unless you consider public funding to promote sprawl progressive. But this of course leads to the legitimate question of what kind of future development for the region would actually be “progressive”?
Local political leaders and journalists have been running away from that question for about a half a century. Even a superficial analysis of the Times’ and Seattle PI editorial pages over that period will reveal a bias in favor of intensified suburban and ex-urban development. And it hardly seems reasonable to expect a local journalist with a career so indelibly marked by the real estate and development industry to stray far from the fold.
Transportation modality is for the most part neutral with respect to form and location of new or intensified development. But routing and service levels are not. The public’s insistence (with the encouragement of the media) on embracing certain specific transportation modes as “more progressive” than others provides suburban and ex-urban pro-development voices (such as the BIAW) a useful means of smearing lipstick on their beloved pig.
Despite decades of warning, despite spiraling infrastructure burdens, despite looming environmental catastrophe, the pace of sprawling semi-rural and suburban development in Puget Sound has not slackened. “Increased mobility” has been the driver of that trend since the turn of the 20th century, when the corporate barons of early Seattle first sought to relocate themselves to the “distant” romantic shores of first Lake Union and later Lake Washington.
A public policy institution like Cascadia that is welded to the idea of “increased mobility” can hardly be labeled “progressive” for advocating public policy with its roots in 19th century romanticism.
We’re pretty progressive over here at Transportation Choices Coalition and have some thoughts on tolling, maybe next time we can go head to head with the Washington Policy Center.