Don’t miss Paul Krugman’s column in today’s NY Times, which takes a closer look at California’s fiscal crisis and its national implications.

He writes:

…Proposition 13 made it extremely hard to raise taxes, even in emergencies: no state tax rate may be increased without a two-thirds majority in both houses of the State Legislature. And this provision has interacted disastrously with state political trends.

For California, where the Republicans began their transformation from the party of Eisenhower to the party of Reagan, is also the place where they began their next transformation, into the party of Rush Limbaugh. As the political tide has turned against California Republicans, the party’s remaining members have become ever more extreme, ever less interested in the actual business of governing.

And while the party’s growing extremism condemns it to seemingly permanent minority status — Mr. Schwarzenegger was and is sui generis — the Republican rump retains enough seats in the Legislature to block any responsible action in the face of the fiscal crisis.

I need to acknowledge that the article referenced here yesterday (“Design by Deception”) is not without its critics, as noted in an article at Stateline.org when it was first published. It notes:

Indeed, when I checked the conclusions with Thomas M. Downs, former Amtrak CEO, New Jersey commissioner of transportation and now president of the Eno Transportation Foundation, he condemned both Flyvbjerg’s study methods and conclusions.

Most of the U.S. rail projects included in the study, Downs noted, are yesteryear’s news, dating back to the 1970s and early ’80s. By contrast, he said, ridership on several more recent projects – Houston, Denver, St. Louis and Minneapolis, for example – have actually exceeded projections.

Plus, said Downs, cutting the ribbon for a rail project is different from a new highway (that cars just drive onto). First-year rail ridership is often low because only starter segments are included and it takes a while to iron bugs out of new rail cars and control systems.

And Stateline.org points to another article worth reading, “The High Cost of Free Parking“.

The implicit point here, I think, is that while transit is expensive, we’re already paying high but hidden costs for other things that we take for granted, such as parking.

The article is summarized by Stateline.org:

The parking we think is “free” really isn’t – it’s built into the cost of every house or apartment we buy our rent, every purchase we make in a store, every restaurant meal or movie. Why? Because of rigid off-street parking requirements, mostly copied blindly in codes from city to city, or based on national surveys of peak demand at suburban sites devoid of public transit or pedestrian amenities.

What’s more, parking is built into taxes we pay because cities and towns provide vast amounts of totally “free” parking, or metered parking at a fraction of market rates in commercial garages.

And everyone ends up paying all the inflated costs and taxes – whether they drive or not. Plus: parking gobbles up space and makes walking perilous or impractical, feeding sprawl. Buffalo and Albuquerque, for example, devote more downtown land to parking than all other land uses combined. Overall, America is not far short of 1 billion parking spots.

The cure? Shoup would remove all zoning requirements for off-street parking – let the market dictate choices.

Second, he would increase curb-parking fees to fair market prices, thus discouraging the cruising for parking spaces that fouls the air and helps congest city traffic.

And finally, he’d minimize the predictable political backlash by earmarking the dramatically increased street parking fees to clean and light streets, repair sidewalks, remove graffiti, plant trees, preserve historic buildings and put utility wires underground.

Stateline.org also had an interesting article describing the approach to transportation and urban design in Amsterdam. It’s definite food for thought.

For some time, Life of the Land’s Henry Curtis has been the party pooper at the biofuels celebration, cautioning about threatened negative impacts in developing countries.

Then last week I saw this recent report from Colombia by Christian Peacemaker Teams about a specific example that underscores Henry’s concerns.

Recommended UH program cuts were described here back on May 16. The Star-Bulletin caught up today with a story by Craig Gima based on the same document. Such is the news food chain.

[Note: The first time around, those last two links were unfortunately the same. I think I’ve got them correct on this second pass. Thanks to the reader who gently nudged me about the error!]

Enough of all that. Time to enjoy a little moment of silence on this Memorial Day 2009. Here a couple and their two dogs enjoy an early morning dip in Kaaawa. Does it get much better than this?

Enjoy your holiday.