Christopher Swope

Recent Articles

• The Voice in Our Heads
• Jan 3, 2006
• Say it loud: "DOORS CLOSING!" Say it dorky: "Doooors Cloooooosing!" Say it sultry, say it breathy, say it Iraqi, but however ...
• 2 Comments

• A Par $20 Million Hole
• Jan 3, 2006
• How did Tennessee taxpayers wind up in the drink on a bunch of Jack Nicklaus-designed golf courses? The Tennessean has this great story showing how ...

• The Code War
• Jan 1, 2006
• As governments move toward uniform building codes, they are being lobbied by two rival groups that offer competing sets of standards.

• Mining the Future
• Jan 1, 2006
• For 125 years, miners hauled gold out of the Homestake mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Now that the mine has closed, Governor Mike Rounds thinks Homestake is due for a second gold rush, led by scientists whose work must be performed deep underground.

• Part D-Day
• Dec 30, 2005
• The new Medicare prescription drug benefit begins to kick in on Sunday. Given the confusion swirling around "Part D," Baltimore is treating the ...

• And the Transit Strike Winner Is...
• Dec 29, 2005
• The NYC transit workers' union got in 60 hours of right hooks, then went up against the ropes. And the New York Times today declares that ...

• Eminent Domain: Is Winning Losing?
• Dec 27, 2005
• The backlash against the Supreme Court's affirmation of eminent domain has grown so intense that a key state redevelopment official now says "we would ...
• 4 Comments

• Hip to Be Square
• Dec 26, 2005
• What makes a great public square? The people at the Project for Public Spaces, who Rob Gurwitt profiled in Governing in April, spend a lot ...

• Alaska Preps for Tsunami
• Dec 22, 2005
• Augustine, an island volcano off the coast of Alaska, is rumbling. The photo here is from December 12. Scientists say the chances of an eruption triggering ...

• NJ Slogan Update
• Dec 22, 2005
• After sorting through thousands of "What exit?" jokes and lines from the Sopranos, my home state's hapless search for a new slogan is ...

• Sack The Transit Workers?
• Dec 21, 2005
• Stephen Malanga of the Manhattan Institute wants New York to rip a page from the Gipper's playbook. Fire the striking transit workers, he says today ...
• 1 Comments

• Windfelled Windfall
• Dec 21, 2005
• Who says hurricanes are all bad? Florida's coffers are stuffed with $800 million in sales tax revenue related to hurricane reconstruction. (That's the 2004 hurricanes). Even more ...

• Strikeout
• Dec 20, 2005
• Just when you thought labor unions were dying, New York's transit strike reminds us that labor, at least in state and local government, remains quite ...

• Who Pays for Pollution?
• Dec 18, 2005
• Do sprawling residential and commercial developments cause air pollution? Officials in California's San Joaquin Valley think so. Last week they passed what they believe to ...
• 2 Comments

• Cell Towers: Unfine Pine
• Dec 9, 2005
• Wait: Is that a tree on steroids or a cell phone tower? It's usually not hard to tell the difference. As these pictures show, communications ...