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Matthew Chapman Profile picture
Matthew Chapman
@fawfulfan
Game programmer, reporter @RawStory, author, elections nerd, devoted husband. Proudly on the spectrum. All opinions are my own.
13 subscribers
Sep 15 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
The government's promotion of suburban homeownership destroyed this rail network, but not necessarily for the reason you might think.

It wasn't because the suburbs were too spread out for rail to be successful. That wasn't the main problem. First of all, you have to understand that the passenger rail network from the 1830s to the 1970s was almost exclusively a private industry — like the modern airline industry, it was a patchwork of private companies, not a nationalized entity like Amtrak.
May 29 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
So. This weekend, I went to see the Lilo & Stitch remake with my wife, niece, and nephew.

I thought it was bad. But the more I sit on it and think about what I saw, I didn't just not like it, I'm actually angry how badly Disney mutilated the original message of this movie. And yes, I'm about to drop a big spoiler, but who cares. You should not see this movie. If you liked the original, the ending of this movie completely destroys it. I am doing a public service by spoiling it for you.
Feb 4 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This is absolutely insane.

If scientists aren't allowed to use the term "women" or "female" when applying for NSF grants, that basically rules out any human clinical trials of anything.

"Disability" is blacklisted too? There goes a lot of medical research. If you can't use the word "bias," that would make it pretty hard to apply for a grant for any study that involves statistics.

Also, sorry immunologists, but you can't say "systemic." And tough luck if you're studying emergency medicine, you can't say "trauma."
Jan 9 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This situation is now even more insane. WV Republicans are now moving to assert *they* in fact have the right to appoint De Soto's replacement, even though he formally defected to the Democratic Party before being vacated and under the law that would give Dems the replacement. Here they've announced applications for the seat, even though the WV SOS office listed De Soto as a Dem before the resolution vacating the seat.

Basically we have an antipope situation, with both Dems and GOP claiming the appointment is theirs. Could a court fight be looming?
Jan 9 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I know those who just lost their homes are in no mood to talk about the politics of it right now, but this is yet another reason California's ridiculous zoning practices need to be reformed wholesale. Climate change has made many outlying suburbs of L.A. simply too dangerous. Some can be rebuilt with better fireproofing, but some others will simply never be insurable and can't be built back.

Which puts greater urgency on allowing more density in the inner and coastal suburbs.
Jan 9 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is not true. Kamala Harris did not fight to "keep inmates past their terms" for fighting fires or for anything else. The CA Bureau of Prisons did once try to argue in court that too many inmates were being *paroled* to staff prison firefighting positions.

Harris' AG office represented the BOP during this period, but she only later learned this argument was being used and didn't agree with it.
Dec 31, 2024 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The main problem isn't actually the cold — a lot of that area is no colder in winter than parts of New England or the Midwest, and even gets fairly warm in summer.

The problem is the land. It's boggy, rocky, useless for agriculture, and not very good for buildings either. Most of that area is covered by a formation known as the Canadian Shield, which was formed by the glaciers of the Pleistocene. It's just scattered patches of marshy, nutrient-poor dirt on solid bedrock. You really can't do much with that land.
Dec 10, 2024 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Let me add something else: a lot of people are convinced that rail could never work in most U.S. cities because we have too much sprawl, but it's more complicated than that.

Transit can serve *residential* sprawl perfectly fine. What it can't handle is *commercial* sprawl. In other words: it's still fairly doable to serve single-family neighborhoods with bus and rail service into the urban core, with park-and-rides and other concessions to meet drivers halfway.

The problem is when the places people *work* are sprawled across the city.
Dec 2, 2024 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Here's the big three things Democrats need to follow to fix the problems in their cities:

1. Police fairly but consistently. You don't have to jail people for minor offenses, but stop and ticket them. Don't let quality of life crimes go unpunished. 2. Stop privatizing local govt services. Homeless shelters should not be run by unaccountable corrupt nonprofits. Public works shouldn't be needlessly farmed out to contractors. Parks shouldn't be run by HOAs. Build a skilled, in house team of municipal workers and use them.
Oct 12, 2024 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
If you're still wondering, "How did we ever let politics derail the COVID response?" Well, we've let politics interfere with public health crises several times throughout history.

I'd like to tell the story of Dr. Joseph Goldberger — kind of the Anthony Fauci of his day. Image Goldberger was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who became a renowned epidemiologist with the Public Health Service in 1899, screening new arrivals at Ellis Island, and doing research to fight infectious diseases all around the country.
Aug 26, 2024 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
So I've wondered for a while too how Starbucks become such a huge target of online Gaza boycotters, since they aren't on the BDS list and don't even operate any locations in Israel.

I've looked into it and it turns out there are two extremely silly reasons for this. First of all, it turns out that anti-Israel Starbucks boycotts didn't start with the Israel/Hamas war. In fact, it goes back WAY further than I ever imagined.

This started all the way back in 2006.
Aug 13, 2024 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
You know what? I'm going to set aside all my liberal arguments (we need affordable housing, segregation is bad) and libertarian arguments (zoning infringes on property rights) for why zoning reform is good, and I'm going to make a *conservative* argument for it.

Image
Image Car-dependent suburbs as they exist today were built at least partly for a good, well-intentioned reason, which is that many people who need big city jobs nonetheless want to live in a small, closely-knit community that shares values and takes care of each other.
Jul 28, 2024 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
There are a lot of reasons CAHSR has been so delayed and over budget, and a lot of them have been bad things — NIMBY lawsuits, grifting by contractors, the desire by politicians to use the project as a jobs program.

But I'd like to discuss one GOOD reason it's taken so long. Image And that reason is: California officials conceived of this project, from the start, as a core trunk service that will connect and modernize all the currently disjointed and outdated rail systems in Northern and Southern California.
Jul 4, 2024 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
All right. Here is my long, nuanced take on the last week of Biden panic and media chaos.

I'm probably going to make a lot of people on every side mad with at least part of what I have to say here. 1) Biden is genuinely older than he was, does not have the physical stamina he used to, and it is apparent in his speeches.

2) It is also apparent in his speeches he is cognitively fine. He answers questions sharply and with policy nuance. He just sounds tired doing it.
May 16, 2024 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
With Detroit seeing a population and economic rebound, it's worth exploring what exactly caused the city to fall so hard — because there are REALLY important lessons for a lot of other U.S. cities, some of which are making similar mistakes to Detroit and not realizing it. So why did Detroit go bankrupt?

The standard answer that politicians and economists will give you is "the auto industry changed, there weren't as many jobs as there used to be, so the population declined."

This is true, but it's really not the whole story.
May 9, 2024 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Biden gave Netanyahu months — literally months — to explain what his plan was for keeping the civilians he forcibly evacuated to Rafah safe if they bomb that area.

He was very clear they needed to have that plan or we'd cut him off.

Netanyahu ignored him. Totally blew him off. The U.S. has *already* at this point bent several of its own laws that require countries receiving our weapons sales to allow a certain level of humanitarian aid in, to keep Israel supplied for a war that it absolutely has the money and manufacturing to prosecute 100% on its own.
Apr 29, 2024 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Actually, it's bad that California's average property tax rate is that low. Really bad.

Excessively low property taxes is a big reason why California is so unaffordable for middle-class workers, and why so many of them are moving to Texas.

Let me explain. Ever since Proposition 13 set hard limits on property taxes in California, cities there have had a big problem. Previously when they had budget deficits on infrastructure, education and public services, they could raise property taxes to plug the gap. But now, they can't do that.
Feb 20, 2024 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Sigh... every year I have to explain this. THIS PART OF THE TAX CODE HAS A VERY GOOD REASON FOR EXISTING.

Of course the IRS doesn't expect criminals to follow it. The idea is that when they DON'T follow it, they can then get charged with tax evasion on top of their other crimes. Organized crime bosses are hard to prosecute because they can kill, threaten, or intimidate any witnesses to their crimes.

But it's MUCH harder for them to beat tax evasion. Because they clearly have the money, and clearly didn't file a tax return and declare how they earned it.
Feb 13, 2024 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Neither side wants "a secular binational one state solution for Jews AND Palestinians" because both sides are (rightly) terrified of what would happen if the other elected a majority to rule over that combined country.

The *only* path to peace is both of them getting a state. When either side says "one state solution," they mean the other side being ethnically cleansed.

They do not mean a heterodox secular state where everyone enjoys full and equal rights.

Even *if* such a state were created, it would only last a few years and plunge into civil war.
Dec 20, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
What's maddening about the whole Colorado decision is that tons of people aren't even trying to argue the court erred — they're just saying, "we should ignore what the plain text of the Constitution says and let Trump run anyway for the sake of avoiding political controversy." If you want to argue Trump didn't really participate in an insurrection, go for it — the trial court found mountains of evidence that he did, and even Trump's *own lawyers* have called January 6 an insurrection, but you're welcome to argue why the trial court is wrong.
Dec 7, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Caroline, Hamas *filmed themselves* committing rape. They are literally boasting about doing it. And many of the recovered bodies of women from 10/7 show clear sexual trauma.

I don't know what to say if you're going to deny this. nbcnews.com/news/rcna122564
Okay but... "a terrorist organization well-established to have committed mass rape violated its ceasefire agreement to return all the women in its captivity" is in fact already reason enough to continue war operations against them. We don't need "proof" they're still being raped.