The Henry George Program

Everybody's talking about Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's 'Abundance', the book about the future of a Democratic Party politics about building more; we have on Chirag Lala (director of energy for the Center of Public Enterprise) and Adriana Rizzo (of Californians for Electric Rail, among other hats worn) to talk about what the book does right, and what it misses; deep dive into energy policy, overview of its housing policy sins and omissions, and a loose discussion on its curious concept of politics.

The Center for Land Economics has just launched; its co-founder Greg Miller is here to talk about its mission to spread LVT, better judge assesssor offices, and explain how to work with state governments. We talk about state-level enabling legislation and constitutional hurdles, and much more.

Nicholas Laschkewitsch is with the American Coaster Enthusiasts (N. California chapter), and has been a lifelong fan of Santa Clara's amusement park, California's Great America. Until 2019, the city owned the land; just a few years after selling the land off, the operator resold the land for a profit and announced the closure of the park. We talk more about this, as well as larger issues of how urban areas and recreation coincide, the future of amusement parks, coaster NIMBYs, and much more.

Josh Junker is back with more info deep from Cincy archives: what can we learn from decades of development snafus in Cincinnati's core‒what does this mean for systems of private/public cooperation, and what could be done better? Also updates on how the Cincinnati municipal rail sale turned out, talk about interstate transit planning (Josh's op-ed here), and the surreal proposals that the city commissioned to use the subway for non-subway purposes (Josh proposes using the subway tunnels for subways).

"Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis: A Fable" (2024, Francis Ford Coppola) is a Christmas classic, but also offers a great deal of insight into 20th century urban issues, urban politics, de-slumming, liberal ideology, democracy, etc. What can this movie tell us about the boomer brain?

Part two of interview on transit costs: more focus on public-private partnerships, talking about how risk is managed/mismanaged in these arrangements, a case study on Shafter, CA, and talking about public ownership of right of way.

A deep-dive with Jordan Grimes and Derek of EB4E into affordable housing initiatives, the nitty-gritty of how the bonding for this operates, how to make regional affordable housing more efficient and accountable, and how Proposition 5, reducing anti-democratic measures against issuing bonds, will affect this for housing and transit. Sidelines on how to defeat realtors politically and more.

In part one of a super-charged episode, we have Eric Goldwyn of the Transit Costs Project on to discuss the recent publication, "How to Improve Domestic High-Speed Rail Project Delivery"; what practical political and policy changes do we need to scale up high-speed rail and more useful transit to more places?

Marc-William Palen is a historian and author of "Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World"; he's on the show to discuss how free trade was once not the purview of neoliberals and free-traders, but rather a varied group of left-wing ideologues, from pacifists to georgists to feminists, and how these strains influenced key aspects of super-national institution-building, but foundered against the cold war and American hegemony. What can we learn as the modern GOP invokes McKinley-era tariffs as a new model?

Stephen Hoskins is on for a round of meta-discourse, as we try to classify and understand the many flavors of anti-yimbyism and anti-georgism for all corners for the ideological spectrum. With some discussion on New Zealand housing, and more‒