New York States of Mind

Streetsblog notes that right along side Hillary Clinton, New York's senior senator Chuck Schumer has been another leading advocate of gas tax demagoguery. This is really a bizarre position for the Senators from New York, of all places, to be taking. After all, they represent the densest, most transit-intensive, least car-using major population cluster in the United States. If anyone statewide politicians ought to be in a position to resist political pressure to do something pointless, and to show the way to alternative transportation and lifestyle schemes, it ought to be them.

Clinton, of course, is only a very nominal New Yorker, but Schumer is an honest-to-God Brooklynite. Note that these are also people who, nominally, believe that catastrophic climate change is a real problem and that action ought to be taken against it. That's nice, but when you combine that conviction with the set of political beliefs they're operating under, you get the result that catastrophic climate change is a real problem that should be dealt with, but won't be due to sheer cowardice. It's something Al Gore might want to consider. Perhaps his own 2000-vintage SPR gambit would prevent him from speaking out on this controversy, but I think most of Gore's post-2000 career has been aimed at getting away from the style of political engagement that made his 2000 campaign such a hollow one.

Photo by Flickr user Aturkus used under a Creative Commons license