“Innovation is the source of our progress. It is the cutting edge of the ever larger fulfillment of our aspirations. By attacking innovation, Regulation Man attacks tomorrow’s range of choice as well as today’s. By attacking an expanding technology, he attacks our capacity to solve tomorrow’s problems. All of this is done in the name of maintaining standards. We also lose choice when we surrender to bureaucratic agencies the power to make law. Our ability to influence legislation and to exercise some choice in it is very small even when laws are made by our representatives in open debate. This, by itself, is a powerful argument for minimizing the intervention of law into our lives. “The liberty of the subject.” said Thomas Hobbes, “depends upon the silence of the law.” By giving regulatory agencies the power to make detailed rules at will under very broad guidelines, we are surrendering even that vestigial element of control.

Of all of the laws to which we are subjected each year, only a very few are now made openly by our representatives, subject to some degree of public influence. Most emerge from the regulatory agencies as rules which have the full force and sanction of law. This is not only undemocratic; it is uncontrollable. Each agency rolls forward under its acquired momentum, propelled no longer by the will of the people but by the whim of the bureaucrat. The rules and innovations are not subject to full debate and Congressional approval: we are left with the rare and occasional power of specific Congressional veto, a power which can only be exercised after a vast time-consuming and heroic effort.

In many of the works of Regulation Man, the attention given to visible victims leaves the plight of the invisible victims unknown and unlamented. But when we add to all of those consequences the loss of our power as citizens to influence the rules which confine our behavior and restrict our choices, we can finally see the shape and the name of two of those previously unseen. The lesser of them is called democracy, and the greater one is called liberty.”

From:  Regulation Man and the Invisible Victim   By: Madsen Pirie

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“Smart growth” is planning-speak for urban development, based on the principle that people should live in high-density, automobile-free, environmentally-minimal, urban centers. It tries to convince people they should want less rather than get more. Most people, however, want more. This is not a moral judgment. It’s just our nature.

In America most people migrate away from compartmented lives toward open spaces and freedom. The young start out renting in the cities and dream of the day they can reside in their own detached family structure. After building equity on that achievement they move up and out to the suburbs for more space. And then they keep going as far as they can to larger, more natural, more private spaces. At the top of the heap they buy small islands and large ranches in the West.

None of us escapes the fundamental economic principle of scarcity Our human nature is to have unlimited wants and limited means. And though our great country was built by humans who freely adapted and thrived in this construct, “smart growth” planners no longer trust us to find our own, best, natural economic balance. Instead, they dictate what our needs ought to be, and then they design the parameters of our lives so that we may some day rise to the limits they have predetermined.

They use government coercion to enforce zoning laws and we bear the burden of their communitarian vision of the greatest good for the greatest number. They’re not content with the tools available to non-bureaucratically-empowered citizens. Let the citizens have their constitutionally protected speech, their powers of persuasion, and their free choice. Let them squawk, “we” have the zoning laws.

Elbert County is full of people who migrated up and out of urban and suburban pasts. And why would they want to return to suburbia? That’s where they came from. Of course it’s a less attractive life to those that already live here. But to those on the other end of the spectrum desperate to escape the confines of the city, suburbia is a shining city on the hill. Are their fundamental rights any different than our own?

The crushing load of zoning legalese and politicking that the 20th century planning movement produced have not solved a single economic problem. They haven’t made people more happy, more healthy, more wealthy, or more wise. Rather, these bureaucracies have siphoned off and wasted untold amounts of scarce human energy in the fruitless pursuit of a mythical great society.

Get real people. Determinism never solved anything. We need to unleash human creativity to solve real problems, not enslave it to the code of a monolithic state. Elbert County won’t solve it’s water scarcity or preserve it’s quality of life through planning and zoning. Skilled lawyers create arguments to achieve any purpose under any set of circumstances and any set of laws. That is the nature of our language. Planning is, quite simply, a legal venue for third parties with no stake in our lives to control us. Planners have had decades to prove that planning works, yet the problems stay a step ahead of them. We should leave this relic of 20th century progressivism in the 20th century and move on.

Brooks Imperial

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TRW, October 07

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TRW, August 07

“Elbert County does not have a sales tax, but our commissioners will ask for one in November. Their reasoning is that the Elbert County Road and Bridge Department needs the money to, you guessed it, repair and maintain Elbert’s woeful system of roads. Unfortunately, the board of county commissioners is the very group that has been shifting money out of the road and bridge department for other projects that caused gross deficiencies in the first place. In what can only be described as a move that demonstrates shortsightedness, Elbert’s commissioners say that if the tax increase passes, all of the money will be earmarked for road and bridge. Before you start calling us hypocrites, understand that if this money is put toward that department, there is no way to get it back into the general fund without breaking the law. Lord knows the road and bridge department is a deserving group, but it is irresponsible to put all of the money from a tax increase into a place where the money can’t be used when emergencies occur. We do have emergencies from time to time.”

However you parse it, the lure of public money overcame their disdain for the BOCC.

—–Original Message—–
From: B.I.
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2007 12:17 PM
To: JH Schroeder
Subject: Funding pro-1B flyers

In the 10/25/07 ECN paper the Thomassons allege;

1) the pro-1B flyer cost $38K, and

2) the ECDC paid a portion of that expense, and

3) the ECDC receives funds from the BOCC.

If these allegations are true, the non profit ECDC may fall under a “strict construction” of government councils proscribed by C.R.S. 1-45-117 from funding issue advocacy in an election.

att. C.R.S. 1-45-117

“The purpose of this section is to prohibit the state government and its officials from spending public funds to influence the outcome of campaigns for political office or ballot issues. Colo. Common Cause v. Coffman, 85 P.3d 551 (Colo. App. 2003), aff’d, 102 P.3d 999 (Colo. 2004).

“This section must be strictly construed. It is an established principle that statutes regarding the use of public funds to influence the outcome of elections are strictly construed. Coffman v. Colo. Common Cause, 102 P.3d 999 (Colo. 2004).”

CRS 1-45-117

Peace Prize Committee Disbands By William S. Smith : 19 Oct 2007 http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=101907A

“I always thought the peace prize was a bunch of crap given to whiney, self-aggrandizing, busybodies by a bunch of self-important, narcissistic gullible, retired, left-wing, Norwegian, gasbag politicos.” Senator Inouye

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Remember the tax position of “your neighbors in Elbert County” next time they run for Elbert County Republican precinct committeeperson, district captain, party officer, or public office in a precinct caucus, county assembly, primary election, general election or vacancy appointment. 

2004 GOP Platform

“We believe that good government is based on a system of limited taxes and spending.”

“Many Democrats, however, believe the government has a right to claim the money earned by working Americans.”

“The taxation system should not be used to redistribute wealth or fund ever-increasing entitlements and social programs.”

“High taxes and unreasonable regulations stifle new and expanded businesses and thwart the creation of job opportunities and prosperity.”

Smart Growth Doesn’t Just Threaten Urban Areas

Recent reports from smart-growth groups have shown that their goals are not limited to reshaping American urban areas. They also want to impose their high-density, mixed-use visions on small towns while they freeze development in rural areas. (more…)

From:  Who Are These Planners, Anyway?

By Randal O’Toole, The Antiplanner  [excerpts]

. . .Utopianism and hubris would not be problems if planners and their architect gurus merely said to people, “Here are some ideas that will improve your life. Why don’t you try them out?” According to Peter Hall’s history of modern urban planning, Cities of Tomorrow [excerpt], most “of the early visions of the planning movement stemmed from the anarchist movement.”

. . .Sadly, most planners ended up following the authoritarian model. As Hall observes, “in half a century or more of bureaucratic practice, planning had degenerated into a negative regulatory machine, designed to stifle all initiative, all creativity.”

Yet I would argue that such authoritarianism is an inevitable result of the planning process. After all, if you have a vision of how people ought to live, and if you really believe that vision will significantly improve the world, then you don’t dare risk letting that vision be corrupted by the vagueries of the free market. So you turn to government to impose that vision on the world.

In sum, planners have historically believed that they could use urban design as a form of social engineering to perfect the world and the people in it. They acted on this belief by using the power of government to impose their designs through zoning and other regulations. The planning profession today continues to be shaped by these ideas.

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An Overview of Colorado Groundwater Law

A Primer on Colorado Groundwater Law