Another great "regional metro" concept for the New York City via the @etany.org Unlocking regional transportation will make the area infinitely more livable and affordable.
08.03.2026 23:20
👍 46
🔁 7
💬 4
📌 0
Another great "regional metro" concept for the New York City via the @etany.org Unlocking regional transportation will make the area infinitely more livable and affordable.
Why are Mississippi schools getting better results for poor kids, at half the price? I’ve started talking with experts about this debate in New Jersey. Here’s the perspective of Kirabo Jackson, a labor economist and professor who focuses on education finance: www.njspotlightnews.org/2026/03/qa-w...
Like he said, salaries, pensions, & special ed spending account for about half of the diff b/w MS & NJ. Edu is labor-intensive & NJ is expensive.
But one can't leap from "NJ spends more on edu than other states w/ similar/better outcomes" to "we should cut edu spending in NJ." Bad causal inference.
Jackson hasn't studied NJ in depth, so he's prob hesitant to weigh in on a specific diagnosis. But his overall point about causation is sound.
Our fav guy, State Aid Guy, likes to cite MA spending less than NJ on edu, yet having similar edu outcomes, to justify cutting edu spending in NJ. Not good.
Just making an app.
> createdb ...
Error: ...
Docs: "If you get that error, see the installation instructions or contact the admin."
I don't have an admin & the install instructs just say your admin should've installed PG already.
So, PG isn't for normal guys like me. Sucky SQLite, it is, then.
Iran’s people were facing a horrible shortage of water before the war began. If we are destroying desalination plants and setting fire to Teheran we are committing unfathomable crimes.
I've never uninstalled something faster than PostgreSQL.
Per capita income for Sweden's bottom 95% of earners is identical to NJ's yet Swedes work much less. sethackerman.substack.com/p/eurpoors-v...
Drugs are cheap without patent monopolies. Representative Tlaib has bill to make drugs cheap cepr.net/publications...
I thought the poor largely don't vote.
Multiple news outlets are reporting a US attack on an Iranian #desalination plant.
If verified, this violates international law protecting #water systems during wars, and it sets a dangerous precedent, given intense dependence of Gulf countries on desalination.
timesofoman.com/article/1691...
Staff at the nation’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility have placed bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide, according to new reporting from the Associated Press based on 911 calls and detainee accounts.
Nepal came to a virtual halt on election day. No one without special permission is allowed to travel in a vehicle for security reasons, so people must walk — or bike or ride on horseback or oxen cart — to polling stations. Devoid of cars, buses, auto rickshaws and motorcycles, the normally frenetic and polluted capital boasted blue skies and empty avenues. Children roller-bladed and played cricket. Dogs snoozed in the middle of the street.
Katmandu went car-free for election day & it was reportedly tight. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/w...
#2 Tell state agencies like NJ Transit to ID state-owned properties appropriate for development.
#3 Work w/ towns to redev dead office parks & malls into mixed-use.
#4 Incentivize, expedite Missing Middle housing, incl manufactured homes.
Incentivize towns to reform zoning. 👍
I'm late but here are the Sherrill transition team's housing policy recs.
Item #1: Appoint a Housing Czar, of course!
www.nj.gov/governor/lib...
Even Gottheimer read the room.
Treating highways differently is def justified because they cause negative externalities and are disamenities.
This is a cool visualization of property taxes per sq/ft in Jersey City and shows the valley around the Turnpike Extension. By @runsascoded.com
A corollary of this, then, is that the State should pay PILOTs to towns for all property they own in town, like the Federal gov't does. Unless we think the positive local externalities of, say, a public university outweigh the fiscal impact.
I’ve got a wild proposal for you. Allow localities to tax highways much as water infrastructure is allowed to be taxed. DOT would be a lot more cautious in its road building if it had to pay taxes on each lane mile.
Allow NJ towns to tax _state_ highways, too, and you've got yourself a devotee in me.
Still, these polls they commission directly contradict common NIMBY talking points about "neighborhood character" & call for housing of all types, so that's nice. www.roi-nj.com/2025/10/06/r...
Their Zoning Reform Priorities doc at least says "housing" instead of just AH in one item, but I still no mention of missing middle, single-family zoning, or what exactly IZO should look like.
@betterblocksnj.bsky.social showed us IZO design matters.
www.njfuture.org/wp-content/u...
Their policy proposals are a bit lukewarm, depending on which document you read.
Their 2025 Action Agenda calls for parking reform, ADUs, & TOD, but mostly mentions affordable housing prod, not missing middle or making it easier to build ALL housing.
www.njfuture.org/wp-content/u...
Whoever decided to put this report on Scribd is bad.
Jersey City similarly stands to increase prop tax revenues by at least 25%.
The report has not been formally peer reviewed, though Kennedy says he welcomes feedback on his methods. Erick Guerra, a professor of urban planning at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Overbuilt: The High Costs and Low Rewards of U.S. Highway Building, had a chance to read over the report and said that its methodology for calculating economic development potential passes the “sniff test.” But he also offered a caution. “Any type of exercise like this, there’s going to be an element of back-of-the envelope to it,” Guerra said.
BUT these calculations are rough.
Guess which city devotes the most land to highways.
Newark.
But bcs Newark's prop values aren't as high as, say, Oakland's, it doesn't rank among cities w/ the most to gain from redeving its freeways--in terms of total $.
But Nwk prop tax revs could ⬆️ at least 32%, more than Manhattan or Oakland.
If they actually generated new investment. I would think NJ's abundance of immigrants from India is more responsible for any investments from there.
Wait, not only is the Newark Bay Bridge not getting widened, but they also aren't widening the NJ Turnpike at the Holland Tunnel anymore?! @turnpiketrap.org