30 Years Ago in Reason

January 1977

From the January 2007 issue

"Gene McCarthy summed up the campaign just right. Accused of being a ‘spoiler,’ the independent candidate said: ‘If there was ever a year when it didn’t matter if you spoiled things, this is it.’ ”

—Bill Birmingham, “Quickies”

“The old liberal panacea for solving urban transportation ills—multibillion-dollar mass transit systems—is coming into question, and market-oriented approaches to transportation are suddenly being taken seriously…Cal Trans director Adriana Gianturco is a strong proponent of jitneys, noting their widespread use in Los Angeles early in this century, until outlawed by the state under pressure from trolley car systems.”

—Robert Poole Jr., “Transportation New-Think”

“Freedom of speech entails the right to annoy people. Unregulated video disks will create the right of the producers and purchasers of video messages to annoy anyone they wish. The production of television signals will be freed from the veto power of groups acting through the political process.”

—David Levy, “Video Disks: Communications Revolution”