[[email protected]]

((Except in the largest and densest urban areas, Light Rail is a dumb
idea. Those areas in the US are limited to less than a half dozen,
maybe just three. Hybrid buses (propane electric, or dual mode
trolley wire/propane electric-substitute LNG for propane if you are
really fanatical) are far far better. HEAVY rail-as in get the freight
off the Interstates and on piggybacks-is what makes sense. Bret.))

"Who? Whom?"

Matthew Yglesias denounces the actions of class traitor Sidley Austin, Michelle Obama's old law firm, in using the environmental laws to slow down environmentalists' plans for that SWPL favorite, light rail. (Trolleys without right-of-ways are barely more efficient than buses, but SWPLs can imagine themselves taking a trolley, but they shudder at the thought of riding a bus with all those ... uh, well, you know ...)

One thing law firms do is take cases on a pro bono basis. You get
some prestige for doing so, and it helps underscore the legal
profession’s self-conception as serving the higher calling of the law.
The general idea here, of course, is that you’re supposed to be
helping out indigent clients or some kind of do-gooder causes.

Meanwhile, in DC’s Maryland suburbs we’re inching ever closer to
actually starting work on the Purple Line light rail. This would
connect several destinations that are already served by transit and
walkable transit-oriented development, provide transit access to the
University of Maryland’s main campus, and also create the possibility
of new transit-oriented development at additional stops along the way.
It’s a good idea that will help reduce congestion on the Beltway,
reduce carbon emissions, and enhance the region’s ability to keep
growing in a sustainable manner. Every environmental group in the city
is for it. But a group of NIMBYs centered around the town of Chevy
Chase, MD and the Columbia Country Club are trying to block it in
order to keep the riffraff out and are offering some spurious
environmental claims to try to block construction.

They’ve engaged the large DC firm of Sidley Austin to help them in
their fight. And Sidley’s doing the work pro bono — for free — as
charity. No doubt in part this is because Joseph Guerra is both a
partner in the firm and the husband of the woman co-chairing the NIMBY
effort. Perhaps some of the firms partners are members of the Country
Club as well. Who knows? But this is certainly a strange definition of
charitable work. They might want to ask some of the people working for
the firm on the bottom rungs — the janitors and so forth — if they
really appreciate these kind of “charitable” efforts to deny poor
people any better commuting options than the bus?

Why can’t Sidley Austin figure out that environmental laws are only
supposed to slow down bad people, like conservative developers, but
not nice liberal people who are trying to build stuff that Matthew
Yglesias wants?

Progressives didn’t spend 40 years setting up a vast web of
environmental and other land use regulations that make it glacially
slow to build anything on either coast in order to hurt progressives.
Therefore, environmental laws should _not_ apply to progressives. Any
law firm that uses environmental laws to frustrate Matthew Yglesias’s
desires is a traitor and should be dealt with. As Lenin said, the
eternal question is always “Who? Whom?”

Bulldoze, baby, bulldoze!

You can’t have a bunch of environmentalist red tape holding back
Yglesias’s Robert Moses-like ambitions to bulldoze anything standing
in the way of his vision of a better future. Now that progressives
have power, they must deregulate the environment so nobody can slow
down their efforts to save the environment.
We have to bulldoze the environment to save it!

And while they're at it, progressives should deregulate all the
affirmative action minority set-aside contract regulations that slow
infrastructure construction so badly."

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/01/who-whom.html