The session featured Portland's liberal Representative Earl Blumenauer and conservative Paul Weyrich in a mock radio show. In lieu of radio callers, the two accepted questions from the audience that were obviously planted in advance. The statements made by Blumenauer and, especially, Weyrich were rife with outlandish errors and fabricated data. Here are some responses to the more concrete claims presented by Weyrich and Blumenauer. Blumenauer noted that, since he was a liberal and Weyrich a conservative, increased transit funding should appeal to everyone regardless of their politics.
Libertarians are ideologues, and they have an ideology every bit as much as the communists had.
And they want to fit all reality into this ideology. I am one of those libertarians, but I am also a transit advocate. I don't like driving and I have always commuted to work and school by transit, bicycle, or on foot. So far, I haven't found such a system outside of, possibly, New York. Weyrich then says that autos and highways are poor examples of the free market at work.