Reason Alert E-News

Reason Alert: Toll Booths, Oil, Drew Carey

  • Life in the Slow Lane
  • Oil Crisis, Or Not?
  • Reason Interview With Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi
  • Next Drew Carey Video: Eminent Domain, Nov. 15
  • New at Reason

Life in the Slow Lane
In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Reason Foundation’s Robert Poole says it is time to “get rid of every toll booth and toll plaza in the country…Why do away with toll booths? No more delays, accidents and pollution caused by long lines of waiting cars. No more need for large swathes of land for toll plazas, making it possible to fit toll roads into tight corridors where congestion relief is needed. Lower payroll costs, no buildings and no cash ‘shrinkage’ (i.e., theft) by collectors.”
» Reason’s Transportation Research and Commentary

Oil Crisis, Or Not?
With some predicting $100 a barrel and others forecasting an economic slowdown that will send oil prices tumbling, Reason magazine’s science correspondent Ronald Bailey writes, “…a likely and painful scenario is that greedy and incompetent government oil producers will continue to under-invest, causing a shortfall in supplies that will drive up prices and provoke a global economic slowdown. Expensive oil also encourages consumers and businesses to invest in energy efficiency that will combine with the slowdown to cut demand. Reduced demand will drive down oil prices as steeply as they rose. Some day peak oil production will be reached, but most oil reserve estimates suggest that there are good reasons to doubt that that day is now at hand.”

Reason Interview With Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi
Reason magazine interviews Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi about the presidential campaign trail, Rep. Ron Paul, and the religious right. Taibbi tells Reason, “You have to commit so many moral atrocities to be a Washington politician that any kind of religion you actually maintain after that experience has to be not entirely sincere. So when I see these guys invoking the name of God, it’s comical…Anyone who is willing to put up with as much shit as necessary to become a U.S. senator or president has to be a sociopath. That’s why you see all these crazy behaviors popping up with Sen. Larry Craig [R-Idaho] and [former Rep. Mark] Foley [of Florida]. These people have to drive their true selves so far beneath the surface to present this clean face to the world, and that’s why they end up indulging in these subterranean weirdnesses.”
» Reason Foundation’s Shikha Dalmia Interviews Former Press Secretary Tony Snow

Next Drew Carey Video: Eminent Domain, Nov. 15
Next Thursday, Nov. 15, Reason.tv will release a new Drew Carey video examining the government’s abuse of eminent domain.
» Reason.tv’s Drew Carey Video: Gridlock
» Reason.tv’s Drew Carey Video: Medical Marijuana
» Associated Press: Carey Defends Medical Marijuana Online
» CBS’ The Early Show on Reason.tv
» CNN on Reason.tv

New at Reason

Friday Funnies
When terrorists get nervous
Chip Bok

The Costs of Doing Business
A World Bank report ranks the world’s most business-friendly countries
Paul Karl Lukacs

Drown by Law
The Bush administration’s position on waterboarding is all wet
Jacob Sullum

John Edwards vs. the Lobbyists
A presidential candidate promises to clean up Washington–by trashing the First Amendment
David Weigel

Can the Democrats Own Prosperity?
And can they exorcise the ghost of Jimmy Carter?
Jonathan Rauch

Workers of the World…What?
On strike in Paris, Northern Ireland, Cincinnati…and Abu Dhabi
Katherine Mangu-Ward