President's Day mailbag

Rethinking federalism, casino NIMBYs, and lots of policing stuff

America’s most random long-weekend is upon us!

In other good news, the solar + storage Super Bowl is pretty cool, we’re seeing some ongoing progress in advanced geothermal, I’m glad Tom Suozzi won and that the foreign aid package passed the Senate, Atlanta is rolling back some parking minimums, Los Angeles greatly streamlined production of affordable housing, and David Autor makes the optimist’s case for AI’s economic benefits.

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Just Some Guy: I went down a youtube rabbit hole the other day about the worst police corruption scandals in American history starting with the Gun Trace Task Force in Baltimore in 2017. How do we stop stuff like that? The police reform movement of the last decade or so has focused a lot of energy on questionable use of force incidents, which is understandable because those are dramatic, but what about just blatant criminality? How do we cut down on that type of bs?

Obviously carceral solutions and surveillance aren’t going to end police corruption, and the real answer has to be to provide dirty cops with access to good union jobs with steady pay, health benefits, and pensions…. right?