Wuhan and Xiantao
—————————————————————————————————————— (more…)
——————————————————————————————————————
The Church of Planningology
.
.
.
.
.
From: (click to enlarge) 
.
.
.
.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion[.]” 1st Am. U.S. Constitution
The Planning Tax
by Randal O’Toole
Conclusion
As it is usually practiced, regional growth management planning imposes huge costs on home buyers, renters, and businesses. Yet it provides negligible benefits: it does little to reduce sprawl (if that can even be considered a benefit), and its greatest social effect is to sort urban areas into central cities largely composed of young singles and childless couples and suburbs with high percentages of families with children.
The key to affordable housing is the availability of relatively unregulated vacant land for housing and other urban purposes. The effects of denying homebuilders access to such developable land appears to be an almost relentless upward push of housing prices. In 1979, price-to-income ratios in coastal California cities were greater than 4. By 1989, they exceeded 5.0. Thanks to a major recession in the early 1990s, they were still between 5 and 6 by 1999, but today they are mostly greater than 8. Prices may be declining now, but—unless changes are made—states such as Arizona, Florida, and Oregon whose price-to-income ratios were 4 or more in 2006 can expect to have California’s price-to-income ratios in a decade or two.
Remedies for unaffordable housing will require actions at the federal, state, and local levels.
• The federal government should revoke requirements that all urban areas must be represented by metropolitan planning organizations. Congress should also repeal the comprehensive, long-range planning requirements found in federal transportation and housing legislation.
• States with growth-management laws should repeal those laws and other states should avoid passing similar ones.
• Other state laws that give cities power to control the rate of development of rural areas, such as the California law creating local agency formation commissions, should also be repealed. Instead, states should insure that plenty of vacant land is available to meet each region’s need for housing and other land uses.
• Local governments should resist efforts by MPOs and other regional agencies to impose region-wide planning on their urban areas.
• As far as possible, infrastructure should be paid for by developers or property owners through annual user fees and special service districts rather than through up-front impact fees or general taxation.
Urban planners, of course, may oppose these actions. Instead, they aspire to pass growth-management laws in every state and impose growth-management plans on every urban area. The predictable result will be increasingly unaffordable housing, declining homeownership rates, and a growing disparity between the elite who own their own homes and a significant number of families who will never become homeowners.
Read the entire essay: The Planning Tax, The Case Against Regional Growth Management Planning
joint investigation protocols
DSS & Law Enforcement Joint Investigation Protocols
We are a nation and culture of laws. Laws provide the means that protect us from each other and from the state. When it comes to protection from other people, when our personal safety is threatened, we can act in self defense. For lesser degrees of protection not rising to the level of personal safety, we have civil legal remedies available to us through the courts. Any citizen can freely use these mechanisms for protection when necessary.
The state, however, is not a citizen with the same rights as everyone else. Citizens cannot protect themselves from the state in the same way they protect themselves from other citizens. To be clear, when I say the “state,” I mean all government entities – law enforcement agencies, ministerial and executive bodies, legislative bodies, regulatory agencies, public health, public schools, etc., i.e. any group funded directly or indirectly through taxation or public assessments.
American citizens protect themselves from the state with the set of laws that originate in the Constitution. Short of revolution, respect for the Constitution is all we citizens have to protect us from excessive state intervention in our lives. That is why our public servants swear an oath to defend and protect the Constitution when they take office. That is why all of our legislation and regulation is tested to see if it’s “constitutional.” We don’t care about official promises to protect us directly. We want a promise to protect the law that protects us. Law is far less fickle than personal promises. (more…)
child protection and law enforcement
http://www.futureofchildren.org/information2827/information_show.htm?doc_id=74221
“Given the evolving research about children’s suggestibility, caution is in order. Exaggerated claims that children, including preschool children, can never accurately report or always accurately report are not supported by the literature. In addition, because there is growing knowledge about factors contributing to suggestibility, as well as practical ways to lower it, it is important that those who do interview children are properly trained and that professional groups develop model protocols or guidelines for interviewing children. Some efforts in this regard are under way. For example, in a recent three-year study of multidisciplinary interview centers in Sacramento and Orange counties in California, child interview specialists received a specialized 40-hour course on interviewing children. The research and evaluation panel for this project concluded that trained child interview specialists were critical to the success of the centers and recommended that such specialists receive extensive start-up and ongoing training in child development, forensically defensible interviewing, and the informational needs of investigative agencies. The panel further recommended that California certify professionals who complete requirements established by the state for child interview specialists.36 We believe that this is a promising approach and that all states should explore the merits of certifying specially trained child interviewers.”
Reporting, Investigation and Adjudication