Sharply rising prices in 2022 and 2023 made “Bidenflation” a Republican talking point. Inflation, Republicans claimed, was due to a 2021 Democratic spending bill that gave substantial money to people while the US economy suffered the effects of Covid. As this money was spent, prices rose. Reality repudiates this Republican fiction. Presidents have limited control […]

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Between the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race, and the rapid coalescence around Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee, everyone’s rushing to update their political calculus. But there’s one recurring thread that haunts us that people aren’t yet talking about: the debt ceiling, which must be addressed once again […]

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Not two months ago, in a brief history of how congestion pricing triumphed in New York, I canonized New York Governor Kathy Hochul, placing her alongside transportation legends Bill Vickrey (Nobel-winning traffic theorist), Ted Kheel (transit-finance savant), and the upstart Riders Alliance that in 2019 achieved what previous campaigners could not: legislation mandating a revolutionary […]

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November will bring a rare election between a former and current President. Both passed landmark legislation that transformed the US economy. One bill provided large tax breaks for corporations and the rich. The other helped people survive during Covid by expanding social safety net programs. In December 2017, Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans passed the […]

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A miracle is coming to New York City. Beginning on July 1, and barring a last-minute hitch, motorists will soon pay a hefty $15 to enter the southern half of Manhattan — the area bounded by the Hudson River, the East River and 60th Street. An anticipated 15 percent or so of drivers will switch […]

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