Getting along in Washington DC

We have been taught that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and we have seen large-scale special interest-pet-project-funding in the name of a all sorts of greater good.

Alan Pisarki now reports on the Urban Land Institute's just released "Moving Cooler" report. He wonders about the report's objectivity and sees it as just one more anti-auto and anti-suburban-development tome.

But that brings up the question of why the trade group that speaks for real estate developers has gone to these lenths to openly embrace the "green" agenda. Just plain Washington politics? The well known tactic of established suppliers using new regulations to keep out upstarts? Beltway kool-aid? A dash of each?

Some of us are too distant from crisis central to know the answer.