Arlington, VA
Joined November 2008
- Tweets29.7K
- Following539
- Followers559
- Likes216K
David Kinney retweeted
Underappreciated reason fed enviro review is bad:
It applies to multifamily housing with federal assistance, but not single-family
So the best housing for climate and urban vibrancy has to go through red tape, while most sprawl does not
The federal permitting bill fixes this!
David Kinney retweeted
Various disagreements about oversight priorities for Democrats but the relationship between Trump, NVIDIA, export controls, and Chinese honeypots seems like it really hits all the notes.
David Kinney retweeted
A few years ago, I wrote a huge series on every problem I could think of with age verification policy, broken down by topic. I grew it over years! Left it at 13 parts.
Still extremely relevant, close to comprehensive, and useful if you want to understand better
David Kinney retweeted
Canada began using electronic flight strips at Toronto in 1998. The FAA still hardly uses them.
Sweden has had remote-controlled ATC towers since 2015. The FAA has none.
Canada and Britain have been tracking transatlantic flights from space since 2019. The FAA is still evaluating the technology.
So yeah, no surprise that the FAA is comically far behind the technological frontier while consuming billions of taxpayer dollars. It'll stay that way as long as it's a self-regulating government agency dependent on Congress for funding.
US FAA says it will phase out floppy disks from air traffic control by 2028 reut.rs/4zsSsu2
David Kinney retweeted
There's a lot of focus on individual policy errors, but I think it's important to recognize that there is a common theme. Whether it's a trade war with Canada, renaming lakes, the ballroom, the Iran war, etc etc... these things are just clearly distractions with no connection to the problem of affordability.
Each error is consistent with that message of not caring, and builds on it. They are not separate issues.
David Kinney retweeted
I’m still very surprised it is not more of a scandal at DoD– how in the world did decades of US military presence in the CENTCOM region result in what looks to be inadequate if not terribly negligent force protection measures? Where is the responsibility for this? Accountability? This seems to me to be a massive cluster. Did we not think the Iranians would use their missiles and drones to hit our bases? Is Congress asleep in not asking these questions? wsj.com/world/middle-east/ir…
David Kinney retweeted
Jean-Luc Picard remains the single most compelling vision of progressive politics I am familiar with — secular, rational, compassionate, egalitarian; a believer in progress & abundance but also duty, hard work, and a constant battle for self-improvement and improving the world.
David Kinney retweeted
The whole Cheesecake Factory thing is such a pre-2016 nostalgia trip. I almost forgot this is what political discourse was for years, manufactured rage about beige suits and Obama maybe being too fancy. The whole thing might as well be scored by MGMT.
David Kinney retweeted
Nancy Pelosi, who is regularly hammered for her perceived insider trading, has made 213 total trades since 2014. Trump exceeded that number in a single day, which just happened to precede his own tariffs announcement. My latest on the mind boggling self-enrichment:
David Kinney retweeted
Just looked at the Louisiana Ballot Initatives and there are TWO measures offering property tax relief for seniors on the ballot.
Who is behind this? How much more generational theft do the Boomers plan on doing? Mandatory year of indentured servitude for college grads next?
David Kinney retweeted
In January 2025 my mom’s lung cancer spread to her brain. The drug with the best chance of helping her was approved in China but not here.
A doctor told me, almost as an aside, that if she were Chinese she could buy it at a pharmacy.
So I flew to Shanghai and came home with 26 boxes in my luggage. That was 19 months ago. My mom is still here, still working, and in her words has had an amazing three years.
The drug was approved in China in 2023. The FDA approved it in July 2025. It still is not for sale here. I know of at least 30 Americans who have made the same trip.
I have been scared to tell this story because I worried it could cost my mom access to the medicine keeping her alive. But the problem matters more than my silence. These drugs need to be developed and available here, and that means FDA reform.
Art Allen at KFF Health News told our story this week. It also ran in The Washington Post.
kffhealthnews.org/health-ind…
David Kinney retweeted
Nonstop blatant lawbreaking
SCOOP: The State Dept has started asking career diplomats up for promotion if they voted for Trump in 16, 20, 24.
Federal law prohibits politically based hiring for career staff.
State tells @washingtonsun it's screening for "fidelity" and execution of the president's vision👇
David Kinney retweeted
It would be helpful to disambiguate these two claims, both true imo:
1. BAAJA treats new data much centers worse than other grid users, making them pay the full cost of the upgrades they trigger *and* a full share of the existing grid (and states can the elect to charge them even more on top). This redounds to the benefit of all other grid users.
2. BAAJA makes it easier to build about anything that needs a federal permit and/or new power, and data centers benefit from that the same way factories, housing, transit projects etc do.
David Kinney retweeted
Americans have a "revealed preference" for doing less of basically everything except going online and I have serious doubts that this is making us happier.
slowboring.com/p/americans-n…
David Kinney retweeted
Agree with this take except I would dispute that the crackdown on low-end housing was primarily motivated by humanitarian goals, I think the record shows that the exclusionary outcomes were largely intended and the humanitarian stuff was pretextual.
slowboring.com/p/legalize-ho…
Legalize housing, not tent encampments
The war on rooming houses and SROs was a mistake
slowboring.com
Why were there fewer homeless people on the streets of American cities in the mid-20th century? Housing quality and quantity compete with each other. Cities used to have more wretched housing -- dingy, cramped, flop houses with shared bathrooms (no hot water). With humanitarian goals, reformers changed zoning rules to abolish such very low end housing. That was a tradeoff: Higher quality but lower quantity. Some benefited, but people who could only afford a flop house bed migrated to the streets.
David Kinney retweeted
Key point: there's a significant asymmetry between how public and private sector projects are treated under current permitting law that undermines the state's capacity to be strategic + entrepreneurial.
NEWS: 19 FORMER ECONOMIC AND NATIONAL SECURITY LEADERS ENDORSE THE BIPARTISAN PERMITTING REFORM BILL
Today, a group of former Cabinet members and White House principals across seven Democratic and Republican administrations sent a letter calling on Congress to pass BAAJA. Here are the signatories:
Janet YELLEN, Michael R. POMPEO, Steven T. MNUCHIN, Leon E. PANETTA, Timothy F. GEITHNER, Henry M. PAULSON, Jr., Robert E. RUBIN, Stephen MIRAN, Jared BERNSTEIN, Tyler GOODSPEED, Jason FURMAN, Glenn HUBBARD, Laura D’Andrea TYSON, Michael J. BOSKIN, Jeffrey ZIENTS, Jake SULLIVAN, Brian DEESE, Larry KUDLOW, Allan B. HUBBARD
Key highlights from the letter:
1. “We are not building infrastructure fast enough to remain globally competitive… The median time for a new power plant to move from an interconnection request to commercial operation has more than doubled, from less than two years for projects built between 2000 and 2007 to more than four years for projects built between 2018 and 2024.
2. China has built more high-voltage transmission in the last fifteen years than the U.S. has built in all of its history... In 2024, China accounted for 31.5% of global knowledge- and technology-intensive manufacturing value added, compared with 20.7% for the United States.
3. Federally funded or permitted projects require NEPA review, but private projects often do not, creating a threat of failure precisely where the government is trying to be proactive, strategic, and engaged.
4. A project that spends years awaiting approval must continue carrying development and financing costs while remaining exposed to rising input costs. The IEA reports that prices for utility-scale transformers increased 26% in 2024, while lead times for some transformers have stretched as long as six years.
5. Mining projects also face tremendous uncertainty: a 2026 study by researchers at the Colorado School of Mines found that permitting for modern mining projects takes an average of 5.5 years, rising to 8.9 years for contested projects. The U.S. currently has the second-longest mine development timeline in the world.
6. The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act is the most significant bipartisan legislative effort that Congress has undertaken in decades to tackle these challenges.
7. BAAJA addresses key constraints stifling American industry by requiring interregional transmission planning, strengthening the federal backstop for nationally significant transmission lines, and creating a faster, more predictable process for connecting new generation to the grid.
8. BAAJA also makes permits more durable by imposing tighter timelines for litigation and limiting frivolous lawsuits that can halt projects indefinitely, while preserving community input and judicial review of substantive agency decisions.”
The letter was organized by @arnabdatta321 on behalf of @IFP and covered exclusively by the WSJ this morning.
David Kinney retweeted
Autonomous vehicles are like congestion pricing:
Before being rolled out, people are opposed to the idea in theory.
But after experiencing how great it is in practice, they become really supportive.
David Kinney retweeted
🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Top Trump adviser Ric Grenell allegedly outlined a stunning pay-for-influence offer to a Turkish billionaire last year that included access to Trump, according to a text message reviewed by Axios that the WH counsel is investigating. axios.com/2026/10/19/kennedy…
