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Will Whole Foods Destroy Brooklyn?

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:45:00 EDT

Whole Foods will open its first location in Park Slope, Brooklyn next year, following an eight-year battle with community activists, preservationists, and some leaky subterranean oil tanks.

Opponents of the project are concerned the upscale grocer will destroy the bucolic landscape, chase away the thriving manufacturing industry, and forever conceal the historic backyard of one of Brooklyn's most treasured landmarks. Seriously.

A few blocks away sits the legendary Park Slope Food Co-op, which routinely tackles issues of national—and international—importance, such as conflict in the Middle East, natural gas drilling, and our "post hyper-capitalist" future.

What do threatened co-op shoppers and neighborhood activists have to say about the new Whole Foods?

Reason.tv correspondent Kennedy investigates.

Written and produced by Jim Epstein.

Approximately 2.30 minutes.

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How to Save a Treehouse from a Zoning Board

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:00:00 EST

It was supposed to be a "slice of Americana and of childhood dreams," says U.S. Army Specialist Mark Grapin, who lives in Fairfax County, Virginia. He's talking about the treehouse he built for his two sons after returning from his latest tour of duty in Iraq.

What Grapin didn't expect was that Fairfax County's zoning board would demand he tear down the treehouse after an anonymous complaint, thus launching the family into an eight-month legal battle.

Grapin went to the local media for help and public outcry turned into an online petition. A neighbor donated trees to cover the treehouse, and the family even received a pro bono lawyer to help win over board members.

Just days before the treehouse was to be torn down, Grapin was able to convince the board to let him keep it on the condition it be removed after five years. Plenty of time, he says, for his sons to enjoy it.

About 2 minutes. Produced by Joshua Swain.

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The Tragedy of Urban Renewal

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:01:00 EDT

In 1949, President Harry Truman signed the Housing Act, which gave federal, state, and local governments unprecedented power to shape residential life. One of the Housing Act's main initiatives - "urban renewal" - destroyed about 2,000 communities in the 1950s and '60s and forced more than 300,000 families from their homes. Overall, about half of urban renewal's victims were black, a reality that led to James Baldwin's famous quip that "urban renewal means Negro removal."

New York City's Manhattantown (1951) was one of the first projects authorized under urban renewal and it set the model not only for hundreds of urban renewal projects but for the next 60 years of eminent domain abuse at places such as Poletown, New London, and Atlantic Yards. The Manhattantown project destroyed six blocks on New York City's Upper West Side, including an African-American community that dated to the turn of the century. The city sold the land for a token sum to a group of well-connected Democratic pols to build a middle-class housing development. Then came the often repeated bulldoze-and-abandon phenomenon: With little financial skin in the game, the developers let the demolished land sit vacant for years.

The community destroyed at Manhattantown was a model for the tight-knit, interconnected neighborhoods later celebrated by Jane Jacobs and other critics of top-down redevelopment. In the early 20th century, Manhattantown was briefly the center of New York's black music scene. A startling roster of musicians, writers, and artists resided there: the composer Will Marion Cook, vaudeville star Bert Williams, opera singer Abbie Mitchell, James Weldon Johnson and his brother Rosemond, muralist Charles Alston, writer and historian Arturo Schomburg, Billie Holiday (whose mother also owned a restaurant on 99th Street), Butterfly McQueen of "Gone with the Wind" fame, and the actor Robert Earl Jones.

Designating West 99th and 98th Streets a "slum" was bitterly ironic. The community was founded when the great black real estate entrepreneur Philip Payton Jr. broke the color line on 99th Street in 1905. Payton, also credited with first bringing African Americans to Harlem, wanted to make it possible for a black man to rent an apartment, in his words, "wherever his means will permit him to live."

A couple years after Payton moved his first tenants into West 99th and 98th Streets, the black orator Roscoe Conkling Simmon marveled that African Americans for the first time were living in "the most beautiful and cultured neighborhood in New York City...because back of them stands organized and sympathetic capital."

Fifty years later, the federal bulldozer tore that neighborhood apart.

Written, produced, shot, and edited by Jim Epstein. Narrated by Nick Gillespie.

Approximately 7 minutes.

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Matt Welch Talks About Subsidized Homeowner Insurance on Freedom Watch

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:00:00 EDT

Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch appeared on Freedom Watch to discuss why the government actually subsidized many risky homes by giving cheaper insurance to beachfront houses. Airdate: August 30, 2011.

Approximately 5 minutes

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Adam Summers Discusses California's High Speed Rail on Los Angeles' KABC-TV

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 EDT

Reason Policy Analyst Adam Summers debunks the myths that California's High Speed Rail Project was approved by voters, will be built in budget, and pay for itself on Los Angeles' KABC-TV. Airdate: June 12, 2011.

Approximately 5.52 minutes.

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LA Food Police Ban Burger Joints: Is Your City Next?

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:00:00 EDT

First Lady Michelle Obama hopes to curb childhood obesity by teaching children about nutrition and exercise. "There's no expert on this planet who says that the government telling people what to do actually does any good with this issue," she says.

But local government officials around the country have already adopted a more forceful tack, whether it's New York's salt assault, San Francisco's frown at Happy Meals or, most recently, South LA's all-out ban on new fast-food restaurants.

Reason.tv spoke with Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks, one of the architects behind the ban, who argues that "in order to force choice into the market, we have to limit one that is overconcentrated and attract others that provide other options."

Reason Magazine editor in chief Matt Welch is skeptical of "the idea that you can create more choices by reducing choices," and fitness consultant and documentary filmmaker Chazz Weaver—who ate McDonald's for 30 days and lost body fat—points out that consumers can eat fast food in moderation and still stay healthy. Reason.tv also spoke with the co-owner of The Burger Stand in South Los Angeles about why he thinks that banning new fast-food restaurants is bad for business and bad for his community.

Writer-Producer: Zach Weissmueller. Senior Producer: Ted Balaker. Camera: Hawk Jensen, Paul Detrick, Alex Manning.

Approximately 8 minutes.

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Boondoggle in the Motor City: Detroit's Train to Nowhere

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:00:00 EDT

Detroit has become a place Hollywood directors come for great wreckage shots. One quarter of the city's 140 square miles are deserted. Detroit public school students boast the nation’s worst reading scores, the products of a corruption-ridden school system that recently flirted with bankruptcy. Detroit bested Baltimore in 2009 to take the dreaded “murder capital” title. It may also be the worst place in the country to have a heart attack: prepare to wait half an hour for an ambulance.

In a town lacking essential services, what do local leaders and federal politicians have in mind for helping the city? What's needed to hoist Detroit back to its 1950 heyday, when it was America's fourth largest city, with more than double its current population?

Why, light rail, of course!

The Motor City is moving ahead with a plan to build a 9.3-mile light rail line that will run from downtown Detroit to the edge of the suburbs. It’ll cost an estimated $500 million. Three-quarters of the bill will be paid by federal taxpayers, with the rest picked up by a consortium of foundations and businesses.

If built, the project will end up on the Mackinac Center's list of government-subsidized white elephants touted as “crucial to Detroit’s comeback,” its “rebirth,” and pivotal to “turning things around." In reality, it’ll just be another train to nowhere, much like Detroit’s existing light rail line, the unfortunately named "People Mover,” which operates at 2.5% of capacity.

For more on Detroit’s light rail folly, check out Reason Foundation’s Adrian Moore and Shikha Dalmia's rebuttal to PBS’s recent documentary, “Beyond the Motor City,” which laid out the case that light rail can, yes, "revive" Detroit.

Produced by Jim Epstein. Approximately 5.45 minutes.

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3 Reasons Why Obama Should Kick His Own Ass

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:00:00 EDT

President Barack Obama made news on The Today Show when he talked about kicking some ass over the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

If he is interested in punishing those responsible for what is shaping up as one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, he should think about giving himself a boot.

While BP is ultimately responsible for the spill (and for cleaning it up), the federal government is a major player in the problem for at least three reasons:

1. It owns the property on which the oil well is located.

2. It regulates offshore drilling. And

3. In order to protect small players in the drilling industry, it capped economic damages from this sort of spill at just $75 million, a way-too-low cap that encourages risky behavior.

"3 Reason Why Obama Should Kick His Own Ass" is written and produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie, who also hosts.

Approximately 2:30 minutes.

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Encourage Bottom-Up Redevelopment: Reason Saves Cleveland With Drew Carey, Episode 5

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:00:00 EDT

Cleveland has spent billions on big-ticket urban redevelopment efforts including heavily subsidized sports stadiums and convention centers that have utterly failed to revitalize the city’s economy. Should the city be pouring even more money into and pinning yet higher hopes on long-odds mega-projects? Or should they realize that bottom-up projects driven by the actual residents and private-sector investors are the best was to build a vibrant city for the long haul?

Reason Saves Cleveland with Drew Carey is written and produced by Paul Feine; camera and editing by Roger Richards and Alex Manning; narrated by Nick Gillespie; music by the Cleveland band Cats on Holiday. This is the fifth of six episodes that will air March 15-19, 2010.

Approximately 10 minutes long. Scroll down for iPod, HD, and audio versions of this video.

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