The Libertarian Parking Garage Challenge
A couple of days ago, Cato’s Tad DeHaven took aim at a new bicycle storage facility being built at Union Station in Washington, DC. I remarked ” I look forward to the day when the Cato Institute does a blog post denouncing each and every publicly financed parking lot or garage in the United States of America.” To which DeHaven responded yesterday:
I denounce each and every federally financed parking lot or garage in the United States of America on non-federal property. I’m one of those quaint individuals who recognizes that the Constitution grants the federal government specific enumerated powers. Using federal tax dollars to finance local parking garages, lots, bike centers and racks is not one of the powers granted to the federal government. So let me rephrase my statement from yesterday: Look, I harbor no animosity against [car drivers], but under what authority — legal or moral — does the federal government tax me in order to build [parking garages or lots] for parochial, special interests?
To be honest, rather than addressing my concern I think this response highlights the hypocrisy I was pointing out. I have no doubt that on some abstract level DeHaven is opposed to all kinds of federal funding of local transportation projects (though I note that a facility relating to a train station in the national capital seems like a plausible area of federal concern) but in practice he denounces a specific bicycle parking project as an example of unconstitutional waste while not in practice complaining about car facilities.
But I fired up the old Google and found plenty of specific examples of federally-funded parking garage projects. This one in Fairfax County cost $28.8 million. Here’s a story about “an application for $130 million in federal grant funds to help pay for a parking garage complex in downtown Bartow.” Here’s an account of a $9 million parking garage in Vermont “Partially funded with federal transportation money.”
And, look, I’m not kidding about this: I really do look forward to the day when the Cato Institute starts specifically denouncing all of this stuff and really going after it. As a supporter of bicycle initiatives, I think it’s nice to see the federal government kick some bucks into a bicycle facility. But as you can see that money is dwarfed by what’s spent on public (and, yes, federal) subsidies for automobile parking facilities. I would gladly equalize federal funding for car parking and bike parking at $0 per year. But I get annoyed when friends of limited government pick on the crumbs handed to cyclists while completely ignoring the loafs going to cars.
49 Responses to “The Libertarian Parking Garage Challenge”
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September 18th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I would gladly equalize federal funding for car parking and bike parking at $0 per year.
Huh? So Matt is a libertarian, the real deal?
September 18th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I denounce each and every federally financed parking lot or garage in the United States of America on non-federal property. I’m one of those quaint individuals who recognizes that the Constitution grants the federal government specific enumerated powers. Using federal tax dollars to finance local parking garages, lots, bike centers and racks is not one of the powers granted to the federal government.
And the bike stand at Union Station is on Federal property. So what’s the problem – blathering at the mouth based on nothing more than ignorance when he first objected to the project – or just plain right wing hypocrisy once he clarified his position?
When so much of DC IS federally owned, most things that are done to the infrastructure here would pretty easily fall into these local projects that he so vehemently objects to. So everything in DC should be a wasteland because it might be used by locals?
September 18th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
As an aside, DeHaven’s enumerated powers argument is junk. I mean it is bad enough as applied to interstate transportation terminals in general, but it is just complete junk as applied to DC, since Congress is specifically granted plenary legislative powers in DC.
Anyway, on this:
Huh? So Matt is a libertarian, the real deal?
No. But Matt has specific reasons for opposing parking subsidies at all levels, including federal.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
It’s incredibly dumb to make a federalism argument when talking about Washington D.C. since one of the powers enumerated to the federal government is exclusive control over D.C.. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, the federal government is the local municipality for DC.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Yup. Tribalism. There’s a great intellectual case to be made for libertarianism, but it’s hard to find libertarians out there who are interested in it. Instead, they use the vocabulary of libertarianiasn towards the end of conservative boosterism from a novel angle.
Scalia is all about states’ rights for handguns near schools but not marijuana even though there are unavoidable parallels for every aspect of the argument. John Derbyshire is all about colorblindness for black people but supports discrimination under the law against gay people — two conceptually opposed positions whose common effect is (coincidentally, right?) hurting minorities. The entire Republican party was excited about Bush’s tax cut stimulus but suddenly embraces hard-line monetarism when it’s Obama’s stimulus package. Barack Obama’s administration is willing to overlook the plain requirements of certain immigration laws when it redounds to the benefit of widows but feels reluctantly compelled to rigorously defend the constitutionality of DOMA and not to suspend DADT through a perfectly legal stop-loss order or similar techniques.
All of politics, from the legislators to the pundits to the economists to the judges to the voters, is a giant kabuki dance of rationalizations to mask the ugly and unprincipled tribalism underneath.
Maybe the nation is too big and culturally disparate NOT to be this dysfunctional. Maybe this is an argument (theoretically, with admittedly no possibility of implementation) for a loose group of autonomous states with a EU-like governing body of extremely limited power. Or maybe it’s just an inevitable part of human nature — that when we’re not fighting desperately for survival, the next most important task on our innate biological agenda is finding a group of people to hate and fucking them over as hard as possible with every tool at our disposal.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
A bicycle parking facility in Washington, DC’s main train station is just the sort of thing you would expect there to be federal funding to support. Bicycle storage is considered part of the things you would put at a train/metro station. It’s like opposing funding for roads, sidewalks, parking spaces, and taxi stands at union station. This is an instance where libertarianism is just making expressions of tribal preference: bicycling is for hippies. Ergo, libertarians oppose bicycle amenities being funded at the US capital’s train station.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
It took reality-based political analysts inside the Beltway 15 years to figure out that Republicans neither argue nor act in good faith. Now MY will spend the next 15 years re-learning that libertarians do not argue or act in good faith…
Cranky
September 18th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Wait, Bartow? As in, the county seat of Polk Fucking County!?
And the link goes to the fucking NEWS CHIEF!?
Oh god, thats hilarious. 130 Million for a Parking Garage in Bartow. I’m rolling on the floor laughing at that one.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
There was a $2 million grant here to wipe out a batch of trees and build some really fancy roads for a Target store. Of course, they do have bike lanes. That was when the local congressman was in charge of the transportation committee. I never really understood the general welfare argument for that project, but I never really hear any criticism of projects like that from the small government side.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Well, with arguments like that, I hope to the dickens that Cato salaries are in no way federally funded. But I’ll bet they have a tax exemption, dammit.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
“Pick on the crumbs handed to cyclists while completely ignoring the loafs going to cars.”
This is exactly right, and analogous to conservatives complaining loudly only against perceived anti-white racial discrimination, with nary a peep about the far more prevalent anti-black type.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I suggest we suspend the Government and the Laws for a day — so that we can all flog the living shit out of the libertarians without legal penalty. Have them pleading for the return of “Gov’mint”.
It really pisses me off to hear them bleat about the Government imposing on them to pay some tax when someone whose life will be spent struggling to make $20,000 a year is subject to being drafted into the Army and Marine combat units if a foreign enemy threatens the libertarians’ wealth.
They are not an ideology — they are two-faced selfish assholes and it’s long past time we ignored them.
CATO deserves no more attention than what one would give to the sight of a crack whore blowing some john in a dirty alley. I.e., amusement that human beings can sink so low.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I share MY’s annoyance at the libertarian tendency to treat, e.g., our massively car-centric culture as the pure product of free human choices to which the state made no contribution by contrast with the wicked
tyrannical intrusions of govt in the areas of public transport or (private!) cycling. For good or for ill–for both good and ill–the present state of things is the product of collective decision making in which the state took a large hand
September 18th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Nice post, Matt.
September 18th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
A think tank costs money. Do we think that they are financed so academics can play with ideas at random? When are we going to admit that paid “conservatives” are corporate shills. STOP debating them. They are paid advocates whose job is to confuse and obfuscate.
September 18th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Parking is subsidized, mostly at the local level, but with tax dollars none the less. It is part of the massive subsidy of the autosprawl system that includes the externalities of carbon emissions and oil wars. These elephants in the room are SO OBVIOUS that is takes dozens of Phd’s to convince us to “debate” about it.
September 18th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Did Cato denounce President Bush for spending federal money on warrantless surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment?
September 18th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
DeHaven’s response is a perfect example of how libertarians view the world. Matt would like to discuss a very specific piece of public policy. DeHaven responds with an argument about how the constitution should be interpreted. As an intellectual exercise libertarianism is fine but it gets tricky in a world of existing institutions and actors with strong priors. I tend to think this is why you find a fair number of libertarians in think tanks but far fewer working in government where policy is actually made.
September 18th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Definition of an American Conservative: Someone who supports all government spending that benefits him personally and opposes all government spending that benefits someone else.
Definition of a Libertarian: An American Conservative who cites universal ideals of individual liberty and free markets as the reason why he supports all government spending that benefits him personally and opposes all government spending that benefits someone else.
September 18th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
There’s no libertarian distinction between one level of government and another (except with respect to defense and foreign policy, I expect), because libertarians are against government intervention in general.
DeHaven’s responded as a federalist (or states’ rightser, or tenther, or whatever) to a point Matt was making about libertarians. That’s just plain dumb.
September 18th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I for one applaud Libertarians self-selecting themselves out of government work. Leave it to those us who believe that government should actually work. You definitely don’t want someone flying your plane who believes that it is wrong for humans to fly.
September 18th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
One of your best posts, Matt. Let’s see if your Cato respondent has anything to add. I’d also like to see him respond to the idea posted above (which I agree with) that since Congress has the power to legislate over the District of Columbia, then his argument is bunk.
September 18th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
[...] Yglesias responds: To be honest, rather than addressing my concern I think this response highlights the hypocrisy I was pointing out. I have no doubt that on some abstract level DeHaven is opposed to all kinds of federal funding of local transportation projects (though I note that a facility relating to a train station in the national capital seems like a plausible area of federal concern) but in practice he denounces a specific bicycle parking project as an example of unconstitutional waste while not in practice complaining about car facilities. [...]
September 18th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
DeHaven denounced a wasteful highway project here and another one here.
September 18th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Yes.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/03/16/the-dangers-of-warrantless-wiretapping/
http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-rl022006.html
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9227
September 18th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Yeah, @greed9 pretty much summed it up:
Regardless of what DeHaven thinks is constitutional in Real America, anything the Federal government wants to spend money on inside the District of Columbia is a-ok from a constitutional standpoint (assuming it doesn’t do something like, say, establish a religion). It’s DC, they get to do what they want…that’s the whole point.
September 18th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I’m not against this recent trend of Matt’s to attack mainstream libertarians for perceived insufficient zealotry on the particular issues in which Matt leans libertarian, but if he’s going to do it, he should find a more systematic method. As the links in 24 demonstrate, DeHaven is justified in claiming to be really, actually, not just abstractly, against all instances of federal government transportation spending. And Matt doesn’t even respond to DeHaven’s main point, which is that the bike project is inefficient at $4 million.
It’s just not that convincing to pull out a few isolated examples and claim them to be evidence of some general pattern, without actually demonstrating that pattern.
September 18th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
I don’t think the DeHaven is in any position to make construction estimates or comment on them. In the original post, DeHaven conceded that the project includes a “1,700-square-foot building west of the station will also have changing rooms, personal lockers, a bike repair shop and a retail store that will sell drinks and bike accessories.” Much like the same way that Union Station has a modified traffic circle, taxi stand, and parking garage. And then he asks where Congress has the Constitutional Authority to approve transportation spending in Washington, DC at its main train station.
I mean, I’m sure it would be cheaper to tear down union station and replace it with a smaller cement box and to get rid of the huge parking garage, too, but I don’t run around indignant wondering what kind of Constitutional authority Congress has to allocate funds for a federal transportation funds at a District transit hub, especially when Congress appropriates funds for such things all the time with nary a peep out of DeHaven.
I don’t actually blame DeHaven. I think he’s more of an honest broker than Tyler Cowan. DeHaven is just playing to his audience. “Look at what the government is doing with YOUR MONEY, spending it on BICYCLISTS,” has more appeal to both his funders and his readers than picking out the parking garages that got federal aid to build at a train station in Cleveland.
September 18th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Yes, but that’s an anti-libertarian argument, not a “libertarians are insufficiently libertarian when I want them to be” argument. People could make similar arguments for why the highway projects DeHaven complains about weren’t actually as inefficient as he claims. This is due to different degrees of belief in the libertarian ideal. The question is whether DeHaven and the libertarian movement as a whole actually has some visceral dislike of Yglesian urbanism beyond their proclaimed political beliefs. Posters here seem to think this obvious, but I just don’t see the evidence. Why is it that you think DeHaven’s readers are more emotionally affected by federal spending on bikes than federal spending on cars, and even if they are, is there systematic evidence that DeHaven exploits this difference?
September 18th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
The rights-of-way of I-95, I-495, I-90, and other federally-funded interstate highways in Massachusetts are owned by the Commonwealth of Mass. The surface streets that are repaired and upgraded with federal funds are owned by either the Commonwealth, of the local governments.
Oddly enough, DeHaven doesn’t complain about this expenditure of federal funds for locally-owned transportation projects. In fact, he complains about funds that would have been spent on them being diverted.
September 18th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
That’s nice.
Why does he apply cost-benefit analyses to roadway projects, and denounce only those expenditures of federal funds he deems inefficient at moving cars; but denounce non-car-moving federal transportation expenditures wholesale?
The only answer I can come up with is that his motive is to move cars, and he’s other arguments are pretexts.
September 18th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
”Look, I harbor no animosity against [car drivers], but under what authority — legal or moral — does the federal government tax me in order to build [parking garages or lots] for parochial, special interests?”
Ahem..
“To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings”
September 18th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Why is it that you think DeHaven’s readers are more emotionally affected by federal spending on bikes than federal spending on cars . . . .
If true (and I don’t know enough about DeHaven’s work or his readers to endorse this claim personally), it would like be true because most of them were of such a background that they have personally benefited from public spending on cars, and less so on bicycles. Also, for complex reasons urbanism in general has become associated with liberalism in the United States, and so it might also be because most of them self-identified as anti-liberal, and see public spending on bicycles as urbanist and thus liberal, but not so with public spending on cars.
September 18th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
joe from Lowell: I don’t see how you can read DeHaven’s post on the Brad Shuster highway as anything other than a general argument. Quote:
It strikes me that I-99 is a perfect example of what happens when politicians and bureaucrats, rather than private enterprise, are tasked with economic development.
DeHaven also provides cost-benefit analysis for the bike project, by the way:
Isn’t it possible, just possible, that a bike center with even more racks could have been built for a lot less? Isn’t that the question that people like Yglesias, who want more people on bikes and less in cars, should be asking?
Maybe these analyses are wrong but I think it takes a pretty selective reading to see them as of fundamentally different type.
September 18th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Cato’s a wingnut welfare factory. Why would they take *any* controversial position when they can score cheap points off something like a bicycle commuter facility?
Could there be a more demonic figure to your average Cato-type than an urban bicycle commuter? Scaarrryy.
September 18th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
But I fired up the old Google
My Google still has a crank you turn on it. But I hope soon to upgrade to one of the new-fangled push-button models.
@J 13
I share MY’s annoyance at the libertarian tendency to treat, e.g., our massively car-centric culture as the pure product of free human choices to which the state made no contribution by contrast with the wicked
tyrannical intrusions of govt in the areas of public transport or (private!) cycling
Amen.
Good stuff today, Matt!
September 18th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
That’s not an analysis! Do you know what an “analysis” is? This is invariably an idiotic line of argument. If he has an argument to make, if there was an alternative proposal on the table, then that’s fine. But there wasn’t. His entire argument was, “millions of dollars of YOUR MONEY are being spent on BICYCLES!”
If he wants to compare to other similar facilities, then that’s fine. But we’re talking about a 1700 sq.ft facility being fit onto union station. And he picked bicycles because it’s a mode of transport that libertarians have a problem with.
You see him criticizing highway construction in rural Pennsylvania and Hawaii. You don’t see him criticizing funds for the Beltway or highway funds in general. Or the taxi stand at Union station. Or the parking garage. Or any parking garages. And he’s not even making a libertarian argument at all. He’s criticizing federal money being used in a federal district.
September 18th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
This is a really fine post, good work!
September 18th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
JustMe:
His analysis of the federal highway projects are not substantially more sophisticated than against this bike project. Either they both contain cost-benefit analysis or neither does.
His entire argument was, “millions of dollars of YOUR MONEY are being spent on BICYCLES!”
No, his entire argument is that private enterprise would be more effective at doing these sorts of projects than federal money. You may sense some ulterior emotional appeal, but your only evidence for it is a claimed disproportionate focus on bikes over cars–a claim made on the basis of a single post!
If you want to make an argument about systemic libertariam, you have to make the systemic argument.
More broadly, reading down DeHaven’s recent blog posts, he criticizes farm subsidies, the war on drugs, “tough on crime” policies, and defense spending. It’s really hard to characterize him or CATO as closet Republicans.
September 18th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Setting aside the absurdity of saying this about a facility in DC, this guy also doesn’t seem to realize that the power of the federal government under Art. I, Sec.8 to tax and spend is not limited to the other specific enumerated powers:
As a basic principle, never take seriously a theory of constitutional interpretation which would require us to return the Louisiana Purchase to France.
September 19th, 2009 at 12:13 am
I stepped into an alley to smoke a spleef when I happened across a shadowy figure hunkered down behind some garbage cans. I exhaled smoke and said, “Dude, man, you need some help?”
He responded. “No. I’m ok. I’m just waiting for the marchers to pass by.”
“Marchers. Who’s marching?” I asked.
“The anarchists,” he said.
“Wooee.” I whistled through my teeth. “Those are some tough ass motherfuckers. In my experience, anarchists are no one to be trifled with.”
“You ain’t kidding.” He looked at me a little sad, a little wild eyed. “I used to be one of them. But they’re crazy, like, CRAZY crazy. Even worse, they have the courage of their convictions.” He took a moment. “Frankly,” he continued, “they frighten the living shit out me… So I quit.”
“Interesting.” I said. “So, what are you going to do now?”
“Well,” said the man from behind the garbage can, “when I find the fortitude to leave this alley, I am officially declaring myself a libertarian.”
September 19th, 2009 at 12:59 am
[...] at the Cato Institute and Matt Yglesias at the Center for American Progress are having a bit of a blogger’s quarrel over federal subsidies for bike storage and parking lots. DeHaven, after decrying the use of [...]
September 19th, 2009 at 1:14 am
Whatever, parking structures count as road support infrastructure under the postal roads, commerce and general welfare clauses of the constitution.
I know I’ve seen mailmen of bicycles before…
Cato is seriously nuts, I don’t have any clue why people take them seriously.
p.s. The Fed can build wtf it wants in DC
September 19th, 2009 at 2:10 am
When DeHaven said “Using federal tax dollars to finance local parking garages, lots, bike centers and racks is not one of the powers granted to the federal government” how exactly did he ignore parking garages?
September 19th, 2009 at 2:50 am
Yet another iteration of the general Vulgar Libertarian leitmotif: Corporate welfare and special government privileges for the rich are kinda sorta bad, in principle, I guess, and we probably oughta do something about them someday… But government aid to the poor is FLAMING RED RUIN ON WHEELS!
September 19th, 2009 at 6:49 am
hmm…while i have no problems with you bicycling or having the bike park built, you really seem to come down hard on auto use…there are those who have trouble walking to the garage, much less riding a bike, and their numbers will only increase as this baby boom generation ages…
September 19th, 2009 at 7:55 am
Great post, but your misspelling of “loaves” is the first step in the downfall of the nation. Won’t someone think of the children?
September 19th, 2009 at 11:44 am
What? Big-L Libertarianism in general and CATO in specific are mostly thin veneers over reflection status quo defense maneuvers? Quel domage!
Also, what Kevin said in #45.
September 19th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Those of you who are claiming that libertarians (and those at the Cato Institute) don’t argue against corporate welfare and subsidies for the rich have some reading to do. These things are discussed quite often.