What the Amish can teach us about tech
Plus the latest news on congestion pricing and Elise Stefanik
Is this the week that Donald Trump kills congestion pricing?
The Republican president has stated several times that he wants to end the program, and I reported last weekon one way in which he’s poised to underline the stance. Trump is in line to appoint former Congressman Marc Molinaro, who in recent weeks called congestion pricing a “cash grab,” to oversee the nation’s mass transit systems.
Republicans and some Democrats oppose congestion pricing. It was slated to take effect last summer, but then Gov. Kathy Hochul paused it, pared it and pirouetted to let it take effect in early January. Opponents are still grumbling, including people in New Jersey.
Molinaro would replace Veronica Vanterpool as head of the Federal Transit Administration, a sub-agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation. The actual approval for congestion pricing is with a sister agency, the Federal Highway Administration, but assumedly Molinaro would have a good perch to make his case.
(The appointment hasn’t been officially announced. I based my scoop on conversations with officials familiar with the matter; Molinaro referred questions to the USDOT, which punted to the White House, which didn’t comment.)
The more potent tea leaf on timing was first reported in the New York Times on Thursday: Trump and Hochul spoke by phone twice last week, and in one conversation Trump is said to have told the Democratic governor that before he made any moves they would touch base again this week.
Meanwhile, officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority have released data showing the $9 tolls have already uncorked some of Manhattan’s worst traffic bottlenecks, my colleagues Ramsey Khalifeh and Stephen Nessen report.
Stay tuned.
ON SPECIAL ELECTIONS: New York lawmakers are discussing a bill that would give Hochul more time to set dates for special elections, which could leave Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik’s red North Country seat empty until the summer, I reported late Friday.
If enacted, the proposal would allow New York’s Democratic governor to frustrate national Republicans, who currently control the House of Representatives by a margin of 218 to 215. Trump nominated Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations, setting her up to become the third GOP congressmember to resign her seat if confirmed by the Senate. She appeared at a confirmation hearing last month, but her confirmation vote has not yet been scheduled.
Democrats who control the state Assembly and Senate were hoping to introduce the bill on Friday, but that hasn’t happened yet. Lawmakers still hope to vote on it this week, multiple officials familiar with the talks told me. Dave Lombardo from the Capitol Pressroom had the first scoop on the discussions.
Assemblymember Latrice Walker, a Brooklyn Democrat who chairs the chamber’s elections committee, confirmed state lawmakers were considering a change but said no legislation has been finalized.
“We’re always looking for cost-effective measures by which to exact democracy,” she said. “And as a voting rights advocate, I’m always looking for fairness, justice and equity.”
But Republicans are howling.
“They should be ashamed of themselves,” State Sen. Dan Stec, a Queensbury Republican who hopes to succeed Stefanik, told the Times Union’s Lucy Hodgman. “They've never tinkered with the special election rules before. They're doing it now because there's an opportunity to mess with President Trump's agenda and his majority in the House. It's absolutely wrong.”
THE QUESTION I really enjoyed the cover story in this month’s issue of The Atlantic, which described how the Covid pandemic and technological improvements have led to declines in socialization. Author Derek Thompson argues that these innovations have prompted people to spend more times in their homes and to step away from more public experiences.
He ended by pointing to Amish communities that think deeply about which technologies to embrace and which to eschew.
If the Amish approach to technology is radical in its application, it recognizes something plain and true: Although technology does not have values of its own, its adoption can create values, even in the absence of a coordinated effort. For decades, we’ve adopted whatever technologies removed friction or increased dopamine, embracing what makes life feel easy and good in the moment. But dopamine is a chemical, not a virtue. And what’s easy is not always what’s best for us. We should ask ourselves: what would it mean to select technology based on long-term health rather than instant gratification? And if technology is hurting our community, what can we do to heal it?
I think about this a lot. Indeed, this very Substack got started when I turned away from Facebook. Are any of you rejecting technologies / innovations, and if so, why and what are they?
Have an answer? Drop me a line at jimmy.vielkind@gmail.com. Or just write with thoughts, feedback or to say hi.
THE LAST ANSWER:
