Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Expanding and extending Beltway toll lanes over the Potomac River sooner, delays and changes to D.C. Streetcar plans, and changes to widening plans for a number of roads across the region. Those are some of the transportation projects that moved forward to be part of long-range plans that can actually be constructed in coming years. Other projects accepted Wednesday as having the funding to move forward include an additional lane by 2025 on Interstate 95 south just across the Occoquan River to exit 160, and a plan to widen Route 15 from Battlefield Parkway to Montresor Road near...

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission authorized nearly $34 million in final design contracts Tuesday for an eight-mile stretch of the Mon-Fayette Expressway from Jefferson Hills to Duquesne. If final design goes as expected, construction could begin in 2022 for the first of three remaining segments needed to finish the last 14 miles of the highway from Jefferson Hills to the Parkway East in Monroeville at a projected cost of $2.1 billion. That’s more than the $1.68 billion cost of the first 60 miles of the highway, started more than 40 years ago in northern West Virginia. The commission’s action Tuesday increased...

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) suggested on Saturday that Vice President Pence is already planning his inauguration in anticipation of President Trump's impeachment. "Mike Pence is somewhere planning an inauguration. Priebus and Spicer will lead the transition," Waters wrote on Twitter, referring to former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, both of whom resigned their positions over the past week. To be sure, impeachment proceedings against Trump are unlikely to advance in the near future. But Waters has been among the president's most vocal opponents in Congress and has repeatedly raised the...

President Donald Trump says shovel-ready projects will be the priority in the estimated $1 trillion infrastructure-improvement initiative over the next decade that he hopes to unveil later this year. “If you have a job that you can’t start within 90 days, we’re not going to give you money for it,” Trump said on Feb. 4 during a White House town hall session with 52 business leaders.Meanwhile, as reported by the Wall Street Journal on March 10, the American Society of Civil Engineers, in its latest “Infrastructure Report Card” that’s issued every four years, gave this country’s infrastructure the below-standard grade...

The key to a happy life, it’s been discovered, is living near to Georgian architecture and a Waitrose. Bath, York, Chichester, Stamford, Skipton, Harrogate, Oxford and Cambridge are among the towns listed in the Sunday Times 20 nicest places to live in Britain survey. Almost all these areas have one thing in common: they all feature a great deal of Georgian housing. And they’re all mostly unaffordable. There is a fair amount of research suggesting that traditional architecture, such as Georgian and Victorian terraces and mansion blocks, contributes to our wellbeing. Beauty makes people happy. –– ADVERTISEMENT –– This can...

For some people, "early bird gets the worm" is a life motto. To them, "fashionably" late is not a thing. These people are "on-timers," and they have unique habits that make them who they are. Seeing as showing up late is disrespectful, and can negatively affect your career as well as your relationships, it may be time to take a page out of their book. Here are 10 habits that make punctual people tick.(snip)

Authors Susan S. Fainstein and James DeFilippis wrote a book titled Readings in Planning Theory, which is all about centralized planning. In the book, the two authors spend a lot of time focusing on early planners Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier, and here's their conclusion about the three men: (page 23) "Many people dream of a better world; Howard, Wright, and Le Corbusier each went a step further and planned one." This is what we're up against. If it was really "better", it wouldn't keep failing. "The more the planning fails, the more the planners plan." -...

Faced with ever-increasing traffic jams, South Florida's public officials have come up with a plan: Make it worse. Instead of fixing the problem, government officials are deliberately adding to it in hopes we'll all walk, ride the bus or take the train. "Until you make it so painful that people want to come out of their cars, they're not going to come out of their cars," Anne Castro, chair of the Broward County Planning Council, said during a meeting last year. "We're going to make them suffer first, and then we're going to figure out ways to move them after...

The United States federal government loves a few things: war, taxes and regulations. For the last few decades, Washington, whether it’s controlled by Republicans or Democrats, has expanded the tax code and the book of regulations. But it has really amplified under the current regime. According to a new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the federal government has implemented more than 2,000 regulations in the last week. These regulations cover nearly every single issue, from energy standards to nutrition labeling, from avocadoe imports to cable TV disclosure requirements. It’s part of an effort by the Obama administration to...

Oregon Treasurer and Portland mayoral candidate Ted Wheeler issued a statement last week noting that the state pension fund’s investment returns were 2.1% in 2015. That beat the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and topped the performance of 88% of comparable institutional investment funds. What Wheeler’s statement didn’t mention was that investment returns for the year still fell 5.6 percentage points below the system’s 7.75% assumed rate of return for 2015. That’s terrible news for public employers and taxpayers. It means the pension system’s unfunded liability just increased by another 20% — growing from $18 billion at the end of...

The San Francisco Bay Area—stretching from San Jose and Silicon Valley in the south to Oakland, Berkeley, and the city of San Francisco in the north—is the world’s foremost tech hub. But the city and region also suffer from deepening urban challenges such as an acute housing affordability crisis and rising inequality. Congestion in the area is rising, commute times have become unbearable, and long-time residents and even members of the creative class are being priced out of the city center. Protests have erupted over the private bus services that transport tech workers from their expensive apartments in downtown San...

The federal Highway Trust Fund, which provides transportation funding to the states, is projected to run dry in August. But with a technology-driven revolution underway in the way Americans use surface transportation, applying yesterday’s solution and simply replenishing the fund won’t solve the problem. According to the Obama administration, if the fund is exhausted, states will be forced to put off 112,000 highway construction and 5,600 transit projects, resulting in the loss of 700,000 jobs. When dealing with the government, there are always plenty of zeroes to go around. The traditional source of revenue for the trust fund is the...

Hasan Faraji, 31, was arrested by Azerbaijani police after displaying “suspicious behavior” while wandering around the Israeli embassy in Baku on October 31. Faraji, who resisted arrest, was sentenced to 30 days of administrative detention, according to the APA news agency. According to Channel 10, Faraji is a part of the Iranian Quds Forces, a special unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard that, among other oles, is tasked with planning and executing terrorist attacks against Israeli targets overseas. On Thursday an Iranian diplomat said Faraji denies he was planning any attack... Iranian embassy officials met Faraji in custody... Azerbaijani police raided...

Steps are reportedly being taken to relocate the U.S. embassy to the Holy See onto the grounds of the American embassy to Italy. <-- Advertising --> Although no official decision has been announced, the move appears likely and is being justified on grounds of enhanced security.Previous American ambassadors to the Holy See contacted by the National Catholic Reporter have said they are opposed to the plans.Ambassador James Nicholson, who served as ambassador during the presidency of George W. Bush, said the proposed relocation would be a “massive downgrade” that would turn the embassy into “a stepchild of the embassy to...

FORT HUACHUCA — On Friday, the Army will celebrate its 238th birthday. To honor the date, the post is hosting two events on Warrior/Sentinel Field. Fort personnel will conduct a U.S. Army Birthday Run, at 6 a.m., which begins and ends on Warrior/Sentinel Field. Immediately following the run, there will be an Army birthday cake cutting ceremony on the field. Fort personnel, their family members and the local community, are welcome to join in the celebration. The 238th year of the Army is also the 60th anniversary of the Korean War and the 40th anniversary of the All-Volunteer Force. As...

To Key West Housing Authority officials it was seen as a necessary task, the chopping down of banana trees Richard "Diver" Overman nurtured daily with his fingerless hands, outside the windows of his public housing apartment on Amelia Street. To Overman it was a massacre. "They were just nubs when I planted them," the 67-year-old retired lobster diver said. "Now I am so disappointed. That was my pastime -- the only pastime I've got. Now they took them away and I feel like nothin'." Housing Authority Director Manuel Castillo said he and his staff tried to work with Overman, but...

Things began to unravel in 1973, when the Oregon legislature required cities in the state to set development boundaries with the goal of preserving farmland from “leapfrog development”​—​that is, new subdivisions not adjacent to established developments. Portland became the first major city with an “urban growth boundary.” This fact opened up a world of possibilities that are still being inflicted upon us. “Urban planners have long believed in a land-use-transportation connection that would allow them to manipulate one through the other,” writes Cato Institute senior fellow Randal O’Toole in a damning policy paper on the failure of Portland’s growth policies....

SNIP SNIP Local government planning should, first of all, protect the private property rights of its citizens. The legitimate function of local planning is to facilitate the safe and coordinated exercise of the free market in real estate and commerce. Social engineering, on the other hand, is the result of professional planners creating a vision of what they think a community should be in the future. What the landowners may want is not a factor in the design. What the planners think the broader community will want, such as open space and protected wildlife areas, outweighs private property rights or...

(CNSNews.com) – In 2005, Michael and Chantell Sackett were working toward what many American families work toward, their own home on their own land, until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) halted their plans by declaring it a “wetland.” On Monday, Jan. 9, the Sacketts and their attorneys will ask the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court to not only restore the right to use their own land – but to break the absolute power the EPA has over protected wetlands. The Sacketts, small business owners in Idaho, located a lot in the northern part of the state in a...

ATLANTA — Republican presidential candidate front-runner Newt Gingrich has scheduled an announcement inside the Georgia State Capitol on Tuesday, officials confirmed to Channel 2 Action News. Gov. Nathan Deal's office told Channel 2 political reporter Lori Geary that Gingrich is expected to hold a news conference in the north wing of the Capitol at 1 p.m. Deal is chairman of Gingrich's campaign in Georgia. The Gingrich campaign would not release the purpose of the trip to his home state, however an endorsement from fellow Georgian Herman Cain could be a huge boost to the Gingrich campaign. Cain suspended his presidential...