The Bronx Parking Development Company, the public/private partnership that owns and operates parking garages around the new Yankees Stadium, has defaulted on $237 million in bonds. The Yankees are in the playoffs again, and posted the second highest attendance in the league, but the lots have remained only 43 percent full on game days, and virtually empty the rest of the time.

Atrios explains what went wrong:

The problem is that rich important people who influence and make policy decisions are drivers. Normal people would think that this is New York, the stadium is on top of 8 thousand rail lines, and relatively few people are actually going to drive to a baseball stadium. Decisions about how much parking is needed are made by people who live in a world where people drive everywhere.

It's actually a rather obvious observation, and one that could be applied more broadly in other areas of public policy. It can explain, perhaps, how a group of wealth white guys (you pick the legislative body) could fail to see how refusing to require insurance companies to cover birth control could in any way be seen as denying women the right to reproductive choice.

It speaks to the important of diversity in public office, because narrow experience can lead to tunnel vision. (Pun intended.)