In advance of the March 17th delivery of a National Broadband Plan to Congress, mandated as part of the Recovery Act, the Federal Communications Commission has released a mound of useful data this month. Last week, at an event hosted by Brookings, Chairman Genachowski presented the results of a consumer survey on attitudes towards broadband and views on how to improve access for all. Some major

A lot of us have been arguing, for a while, that the Democratic health care reform plan is already bipartisan, in the sense that it incorporates Republican ideas and closely resembles plans prominent Republicans have endorsed in the past. If you're not already convinced, check out this chart by Maggie Mertens of Kaiser Health News (where I also write a column).

As I've been saying, the procedural critique of the Senate that some of us have been making for years is starting, but only starting to make headway into the conventional wisdom. The Wall Street Journal's Gerald Seib (who writes a centrist column for the news section) concedes that the filibuster has risen to unprecedented levels, but still sees disappearing comity and centrism as the primary culprit of Senate dysfunction:

One aspect of climate change that's already affecting people in various parts of the world is the slow but steady rise in sea level (via YaleE360):

This month, China started operating the fastest high-speed rail system in the world—a 600-mile line between Wuhan and Guangzhou that clocks an average of 193 miles per hour (and peaks at 245). MIT Technology Review explains what makes the new train so fleet. It's the tracks:

Lincoln Chafee has officially--finally--announced his candidacy for the governorship of Rhode Island. Last year, I spoke with him about his decision to leave the Republican Party in 2007 and become an Independent. He explained that he originally wanted to "energize a moribund party or start a new one"--and that he had pondered running for governor as a Green, a Libertarian, or even as a candidate of the Progressive Party:

My colleague Noam Scheiber has parsed Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony about the power of the Federal Reserve, but Bernanke also commented in hearings yesterday about government fiscal policy; and what he had to say was, to say the least, disturbing. Echoing the charges of economic conservatives and Wall Streeters like investment banker Peter Peterson, Bernanke took aim against what these folks call “entitlements,” but which are known popularly to be social security and Medicare. Republicans can be expected to cite his comments in the current debate over the Democratic health care reform bill.

How a society cares for those too young, too old, or too sick to work is a test of its maturity, and level of civilization. Social security and Medicare are among the foremost achievements of American government in the twentieth century. If the government needs more money to fund social security, which it presently does not, there are a host of remedies besides cutting benefits. For instance, it can always raise the limit on how much income is subject to a social security tax. 

Medicare is the most penurious and least wasteful of health insurance programs.  If anything, a dispassionate policy-maker concerned about healthcare costs might have insisted that the private sector insurance emulate, or perhaps be folded into, Medicare.  But in discussing “entitlements,” Bernanke insisted that what would have to altered is how much these programs spend.  He even threw open the question of whether these programs should be mandatory. 

When asked whether the deficits that he saw these programs as creating could be met by higher taxes, Bernanke refused to make any comments on taxes.  “I have done my best to leave that authority where it belongs, with the Congress,” he said. Yes, sure, raising or cutting taxes is Congress’s job. But so is spending money on social programs, about which Bernanke, eager to plant his flag on the side of the anti-entitlement camp, was not loath to comment.   

When I read a few of Bernanke’s comments yesterday, I thought, well, maybe they were taken out of context. Why would someone seeking to be confirmed by a Democratic majority go out of his way to promote starkly Republican concerns? 

Here are the relevant exchanges, the first between Bernanke and Utah Senate Robert Bennett and the second between Bernanke and Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed:

Some of us here at The Avenue are always poking our heads into each other’s offices and referencing great “metro” songs, ranging from the obligatory anti-sprawl anthem “My City Was Gone” by the Pretenders to PJ Harvey’s romantic “You Said Something” to Art Brut’s witty defense of public transportation in “The Passenger.”

Always choice, despite their vintage, are songs by Talking Heads.  David Byrne, the band’s lead songwriter, embraced space and geography in many songs with scales ranging from neighborhood, to municipal, to metropolitan, to the super-regional and national. Much has been written about these spatial references and Byrne’s astute attention to the built environment around him—as well as his recent interest in cycling city streets and designing urban street furniture.

Yet now Byrne, a Rhode Island School of Design drop out and serious intellectual, has outdone himself with a wonderful essay on the elements of the "perfect" city. These run from such subjective qualities as “sensibility and attitude” to items any urban planner could love: “density,” “mixed use,” and “parking.” He also extends the analysis to include a number of elements not so intuitive, ranging from “chaos and danger” (Bryne likes a little looser, “fluid and flexible” sort of order in his cities) to “boulevards” (not too wide, please) to Berlin’s sense of humor. And he cites an old joke that says “you know you’re in heaven if the cooks are Italian and the engineering is German” and adds, “if it’s the other way around you’re in hell.”

Of all the politicians I’ve encountered in the course of doing my job, there have been some that I’ve admired and some that I’ve loathed. But there’s only one politician I’ve ever pitied, and that’s Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy.

Yesterday, Anthony Swofford, a Marine Corps veteran and the author of Jarhead and Exit A, previewed the Democrats' plans to honor veterans at the convention. How'd the Dems do? Here's Swofford's response:

Good morning. It's Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island primary day.

Today could be the mother of all primaries; the primary to end primaries; the primary royale--so make sure you're up to speed.

Columbus, Ohio

This is shaping up to be the Democrats' year. According to current polls, the party stands to make significant gains in the House, the Senate, and statehouses across the country this November. And it's not hard to see why: the botched Katrina response, high gas prices, scandals in Congress and in the states, and, most of all, the quagmire in Iraq. Discontent with the Bush administration's conduct of the war is affecting even the gubernatorial races. At a recent meeting in a posh Cincinnati suburb, a group of Republicans supporting Democratic candidate Ted Strickland voiced to him their unhappiness with the war. "They expressed great concern about the war and its cost," Strickland tells me--"not just in terms of dollars, but lives and national prestige."

"Who's that gray-haired guy in there with the monkeys and the Kennedy?"