Some of the day’s best reads:
- ITT Corp. President Steve Loranger sees a model for infrastructure financing in his own company’s efforts to remake the air traffic control system: “To address this challenge, ITT is investing more than $200 million of its own capital to help make modernized air traffic a reality in this country. In exchange for that investment, the FAA has granted ITT the rights to manage the NextGen program’s ADS-B ground infrastructure during the next 10 years.”
- David Roberts looks at the merits of a utility-only cap-and-trade bill: “At this point, however, the question may no longer be whether a comprehensive bill is preferable to a utility-only bill, but whether a utility-only bill is preferable to the energy-only bill the Senate seems bent on passing. Judged against that somewhat pathetic baseline, it is, in fact, preferable.”
- Peter Beinart quashes a rumor making the rounds on the right: a Hillary Clinton primary challenge in 2012: “The claim that Hillary will challenge Obama in 2012 is a lot like the claim that George W. Bush would dump Dick Cheney in 2004. In both cases, what seemed like dispassionate analysis was actually wishful thinking.”
- David Jackson takes a look at James McCommons’ Waiting on a Train, a new book about the state of passenger rail in the U.S.: “What’s truly illuminating are his interviews with executives from CSX and BNSF on their views of passenger rail and his exposition of how Federal Railroad Administration regulations slow down the quasi-high speed Acela Northeast Corridor service.”
- CBPP lays out what young adults stand to gain when health care reform legislation goes into effect.
