One of the more interesting issues to emerge during the recent Republican primary debates was the division of powers in our federal system of government. Often this gets called something like “states’ rights”, but that phrase is probably irreversibly entwined with Jim Crow and other state curtailments of civil rights. The present issues perhaps require a new term, along the lines of “states’ responsibilities”, which would emphasize things that states should do for their citizens—in the absence of federal action, or perhaps even in preference to federal action. Continue Reading »

The Bloomberg administration announced recently that it had chosen the new model for the New York City taxi cab, the minivan-like Nissan NV200. The van has a number of interesting features, including outlets and USB ports for charging cell phones and PDAs, and sliding doors for reducing dooring of pedestrians and cyclists (OK, neither USB ports nor sliding doors are exactly rocket science). The van also gets a respectable 25 mpg. Certainly not revolutionary, but a significant improvement over the roughly 15 mpg of the fleet-dominating Ford Crown Victoria. Not as good as the one-third of the fleet which are already hybrids Continue Reading »