Tallahassee, Fla - Gun issues have not played a
major role in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
They are barely on the radar this go around. At the Tallahassee Gun Show,
attendees ranked Second Amendment cbelow issues like the
economy and "the Constitution." Only two of the four remaining
candidates mention the Second Amendment prominently on their sites:
Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. 

From Gingrich's site:

The right to bear arms is a political right designed to
safeguard freedom so that no government can take away from you the
rights which God has given you.

From Santorum's site:

Coming from Pennsylvania, a state with a rich heritage of
hunting and fishing, Senator Santorum understands
firsthand the importance of preserving our constitutionally
protected rights found in the 2nd Amendment.
Senator Santorum fights to preserve this tradition, and
will work to ensure these rights are not infringed upon.

Most of the voters I talked to at this show were supporting
Santorum or Ron
Paul. Nobody liked Romney but all said they would probably end
up voting "against" President Obama. The organizers of the event
barred me from talking to people or taking pictures inside the
actual show so we talked in the parking lot. 

Dave Young, 52, of Tallahassee said he struggled between Paul
and Santorum before eventually going with the latter. "Definitely
not big government Romney or Newt. Both of them are self confessed
progressives and progressives are just slow-motion socialists. I
agree with what Dr. Paul says but I liked what Santorum said about
the Constituion," he said. 

"It's nice to see that gun sales across the country are way, way
up," said Young, adding that gun issues comprise about 80 percent
of his political decision-making. 

One gentlemn, who professed his love for Reason but declined
give his name because he is a lobbyist, said he was pretty sure he
would vote for Paul.  "I can't freaking stand Gingrich. I
would fucking voting for Obama before I'd vote for Gingrich. He's a
disgraced, failed politican," he said.  

The lobbyist said the Second Amendment was not a factor in the
primary because so many states have liberalized gun laws. All
the
talk about Obama coming to take everyone's guns away was a
non-issue. "I've seen no indication of anything in that direction,"
he said. 

Not everyone voting for Paul said they were voting because of
his economic policy. 

"I don't think we need to be involved in everyone's business,"
said Charles Fogg, a Vietnam Vet and gun collector.

"We got people here we could be spending money on. Like health
insurance. I believe that universal health care should be done in
the United States," he said. 

Not exactly something you hear from your typical Paul
voter. 

ORLANDO — After keeping evangelical Puerto Ricans and
bored Tea Partiers waiting in a half-empty church sanctuary for
nearly an hour on Saturday, Newt Gingrich arrived at
the Centro de La Familia in Orlando and promised
to support Puerto Rico's bid for statehood; agitate for a Cuban
spring; instruct Congress to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, Obamacare, and
Dodd-Frank; and personally shake the hand of—and take a picture
with—every person in the room. 

Before Gingrich arrived at the center, Puerto Rican men in suits
roamed the sparsely populated sanctuary and women wearing their
Sunday Best gently fanned themselves with signs that read, "Don't
believe the liberal media," while Chris Tomlin
classics "Better Is One Day" and "We Cry Holy" trickled out of
the PA system. The crowd came alive as Don Carlos
Méndez, mayor of Aguadilla City, Puerto Rico, took the
stage to introduce Gingrich. 

"I
do believe that Newt Gingrich is going to be the next president of
the United States," Mendez said, to wild applause. "And I do
believe that Callista, his wife, Callista Gingrich is going to be a
wonderful first lady. The best first lady ever!" 

Gingrich took the stage, shook Mendez's hand, and introduced a
surprise endorsee, a "county commissioner" who wanted to "say a
word or two." While Mendez's endorsement brought the house
down, the second, supposedly more local one, resulted in a few lazy
claps: The commissioner was from Longwood, which is not only not a
part of Orlando, but not even in the same county. 

With endorsements out of the way, Gingrich got down to the
business of bashing rival Mitt Romney for being in Wall Street's
pocket. "My competitor on Tuesday has money power," he said.
"There's no question on Tuesday he can raise more money from Wall
Street than I can. What I want to have is people power. I want to
ask each one of you to go out on Facebook, and Youtube, and
Twitter, and on email, even by telephone and talking to people face
to face—the old fashioned way," Gingrich said, because "this is a
very important election."  

Gingrich then dipped his toe into policy, saying that repealing
Dodd-Frank would "help housing get better literally overnight. It
wouldn't get healthy, but it would get better." The real
problem with Dodd-Frank, Gingrich said, is that people can't get
housing loans. Perhaps if Floridians' chief problem were not
repaying the loans they currently have, this proposal would have
gotten some more applause. As it was, Gingrich went from
Dodd-Frank, to Obamacare, to Sarbanes-Oxley without getting much
applause (and absolutely none for Sarbanes-Oxley). 

The former House speaker struck his first chord by promising to
support Puerto Rican statehood. "I want you to know that if the
people of Puerto Rico have a referendum, and they vote for
statehood, I will work with Congress to ensure that we work through
that. I think in every way we have an opportunity here—I'm not
urging people to vote one way or another, I think people in Puerto
Rico have to make their own mind up—I will work with the governor
and we will work with the Congress."

Perhaps under the impression that all Spanish speakers care
about Cuba, Gingrich then promised to ignite a "Cuban spring."

"I find it amazing that President Obama can look east thousands
of miles to Tunisia, Libya and Syria, but he can't look south 90
miles," Gingrich said (getting absolutely no applause from the
largely Puerto Rican audience). "And I just think we've been far
too slow and far too passive. You have my committment that we will
work very aggressively and very directly in helping the people of
Cuba, and also frankly in helping the people of Venezuela, where we
have an opponent in Huge Chavez, where we need to do something to
make sure he is not effective in undermining the United States."
(This line got quite a bit of applause.)

Gingrich then laid out a case for not nominating a moderate,
saying the GOP nominated moderates in 1996 and 2008. "I think
frankly that Romneycare and Obamacare are so close together,"
Gingrich said, putting his left and right pointer fingers together,
"that you could never distinguish them in a debate." 

"So I think we need somebody out here," he said, spreading his
arms wide. From the crowd, a young Puerto Rican woman yelled,
"That's you!" 

How many public transit expert/advocates actually ride on public
transportation? 

I have met more than three
folks, in and out of the establishment media, who speak
with authority about mass transportation yet somehow can
never get around to using it in the heat of their daily struggles.
Judging by this
storied Onion headline, I’m guessing others have met
such people as well. 

But how frequently, really, are we getting our fix of
transit-solution bloviation from people with no practical
experience of the “systems” they’re diagnosing and claiming to
cure? 

I wonder this every time an expert makes the case for more
intelligently planned transit networks featuring smarter
coordination throughout the hub or loop or grid. There’s one thing
you learn by your second day of using transit when you
actually don’t have a choice: For every transfer in your itinerary,
you need to double the time allotted for the trip. 

You may end up getting lucky with your transfers and not using
up all that time. In a recent Reason.tv video,
comedian Watt Smith did so well with his LAX-Burbank run that
former Los Angeles Times transit reporter turned
Transportation Authority flack
Steve Hymon accused him of underestimating how crappy the L.A.
transit network really is. (Third item down; the pride is back,
Steve!) 

But the reality of transit use in the non-hypothetical universe
is that you don’t need smarter hubs or better coordination or more
efficient transfers. You don’t need experts planning out more
brilliant three- and four-transfer itineraries. You need more shit
running more frequently to more destinations. 

In Slate, transportation writer
Tom Vanderbilt reviews a new book from a transport expert named
Jarrett Walker. Vanderbilt is the author of the very good book
Traffic, a fun-tasmagorical whirligig of novel concepts
and unexpected tidbits (at one point our diminutive cousins the
ants are marched in to demonstrate some point about high-volume and
narrow-volume passageways) that you wouldn’t want to bet any actual
money on. 

Vanderbilt uses a heady-sounding dichotomy (“system” vs.
“empathy”) to pit
Walker against another transit expert named Darrin Nordahl.
Apparently Nordahl believes you have to make transit a more
comforting experience whose aesthetic speaks to riders’ sense of
meaning and urban folkways, while Walker says you just have to make
it more reliable and functional. Toward the end of the piece,
Vanderbilt makes what seems like a reasonable point: 

But if the question is what’s going to get the most people on
transit in a city, what’s going to move the most people, it seems
to have less to do with the quality of the experience than
the quantity—studies routinely
find increases in transit usage linked to things like metropolitan
employment numbers, fare costs, frequency of service, and gas
prices. Trolling the Yelp! reviews for San Francisco’s BART system,
for example, while one sees the occasional knock for cleanliness,
most people focus on things like ease of use (wayfinding and
ticketing), connections, price, parking. Perhaps that’s because our
expectations are so low; one budget-strapped and beleaguered
transit planner countered Nordahl’s vision of a “fun” transit
experience with this: “I’m just trying to give
people a transit experience.” Or
perhaps there’s an empathic component to a good system. What warms
a city dweller’s heart more, for example, than a local train
waiting across from an express for a quick transfer? Or transit
that comes so often you rarely think about it? Conversely, a
trolley car that comes once an hour—and rarely on time—no matter
how droll in appearance, hardly raises the quality of life of those
waiting for it.

Judging from this passage (and not having read either Walker’s
book or Nordahl’s) I’d say Walker has the more sensible point. But
then Walker
speaks up on his blog, to explain that when he talks about
reliability, he doesn’t mean you should
actually let people provide a variety of approaches for taking
customers where they want to go: 

"Massive redundancy" may be fine if you're a megacity, though
even there, its effectiveness may be a feature of the peak that
doesn't translate to the rest of the day.  Anywhere else,
services need to work together as a network.  Even in London,
New York, Paris, Hong Kong and Berlin, that's really what's
happening. 

This is what happens when your mind is full of smart networks
and transit-oriented growth. The proper word here is not
“redundancy” but “competition.” To the owner of a taxi medallion or
a member of the Transport Workers Union, minibuses, gypsy cabs,
rolling chairs and pedicabs are all redundant, because you’re
already providing all the service a customer could legitimately
need. If some abuelita is stuck in the rain for 45 minutes waiting
to make one of your smart connections, well, that just shows you
need more money so the system can be more efficiently
planned. 

If more people traveled on mass transit more frequently, this
would be obvious. Transit doesn’t suck because it lacks central
planning. It sucks because it’s artificially scarce. 

Related: L.A. Times fails to correct
California Gov.
Jerry Brown's claim that Abraham Lincoln build the transcontinental
railroad during the Civil War — proving yet again that you get
more accurate information from
AMC original series than from the Times. 

Tallahassee, Fla.—Costco cashier Daniel Saindon's flea market booth
stands out like a sore thumb.

Surrounded by vendors hawking discount DVDs, buck knives, and
cheap memory cards, Saindon's booth champions the presidential
candidacy of the libertarian Texas congressman. The
31-year-old, wearing a Ron Paul baseball tee, regrets not setting
up the booth sooner but says he just didn't have time. "It's sort
of last minute. I wanted to help in some way," he says. 

Saindon estimates that he spent nearly $120 on his Tallahassee Flea Market
booth and accompanying campaign materials. He also received some
support from the local Ron Paul Meet Up group. When asked about
Paul's lack of campaigning in the state, Saindon says he wasn't
really bothered by it. "I am totally confident in his
decisions. I am sure he's doing whatever he's doing for a
reason."

Meanwhile, the other members of the Paul Meet Up
group were 15 miles away conducting a "sign bomb" at a major
intersection. Local coordinator Stephanie Foster was with them
holding signs and motioning to drivers at every red light who
looked even slightly interested in what they were doing.  

Foster, 36, was recently let go from her
pharmaceutical research job but says campaigning for Paul has
helped keep her spirits up. The severance package from her employer
has helped, too. "It's like I am getting paid to campaign!" she
says. 

Like Saindon, she is OK with Paul
not campaigning in the Sunshine State.

"There's been a lot of effort to use grassroots efforts that
don't cost him anything," she tells me.

Foster, an Obama voter in 2008, credits Paul with bringing her
to libertarianism. Before she discovered Paul she still had faith
in "social programs helping people."

Foster also says she would be happy with Paul finishing in third
place since he had not campaigned in the state. "If he polls 10 or
12 percent that means it was a success because he is spending
almost no money here at all."