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Archives for 2008

Whose Legacy?

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“I think we need to appreciate what we have and protect it.”
Nature vs. Greed, What Legacy Are You Teaching Your Children? from: Abe21.net 6/22/08

“A world without children will be a poorer world — grayer, lonelier, less creative, less confident. Children have always been a great blessing, but it may take their disappearance for the world to remember why.”
A World Without Children – Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe

The tension is between those who don’t have kids yet who are, ostensibly, trying to save the world for the kids of tomorrow, and those who are trying to figure out a way to live with their kids in the world of today. But those most active in preserving nature don’t appear too interested in having messy little kids muck around in their pristine wilderness.

So who really are the greedy ones in this paradigm? The folks who want to lock up vast tracks of mostly other people’s land because they like the way it looks, or the folks who want to mortgage their lives away for a small piece of property on the fringe of the metro area in the hope of securing a small piece of the American dream to raise a family?

Transportation Plan

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This image is a merge of the “existing level of service” and “new connections” graphs from the transportation master plan, plus two diagonal connections that would improve inter-county transit times.

(click to enlarge)

Transportation plan, existing level of service, planned new connections, unplanned diagonal connections needed

1) The great majority of new connections are East-West routes within the county.

2) North-South routes don’t change much.

3) There are no new connections to points outside Elbert County.

It appears fair to conclude that the plan would facilitate intra-county transportation, but not inter-county transportation with our neighbors. Therefore;

1) The plan is not designed to bring this portion of Elbert County into a more integrated regional transportation network and appears to violate the purpose of creating a component of a larger regional transportation plan construct.

2) The plan does not promote economic integration between this portion of Elbert County and its’ three neighboring counties.

3) By not improving linkages to surrounding counties the plan preserves the economic isolation of Elbert County from neighboring counties. This indicates that the “socioeconomic trend” in this section of Elbert County is to remain a bedroom community. The plan’s intent to spend $1.5 billion dollars to build out and pave road infrastructure seems inconsistent with economic isolation.

the natural state of mankind

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Happy Father’s Day June 16, 2008 Sunset

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short [and colorful].”

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651.

The no-growth crowd may love their mythological state of nature, but all that proves is they’ve never lived in it.

good evenings

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June 9, 2008 Sunset June 14, 2008 Sunset

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the “dead hand” of land control

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See: Conservation Easements_ The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.pdf

See: Rule Against Perpetuities

See: The Nature Conservancy Consolidated Financial Statements for 2007 and 2006

excerpt: The Nature Conservancy Consolidated Statement of Activities

In their last fiscal year, the Nature Conservancy sold over $260 Million worth of conservation land and easements to governments. Government officials like this method for gaining control of private land because they can do it without the public notices involved with planning and zoning land use changes.

See: Bijou Creek government purchase

See: Colorado Land Trusts

Also See:

February 21, 2008

Conservation Easements in Perpetuity are for a Long, Long Time

By Clarice Ryan [Read more…]

The Planet Tax

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“What America needs is a bill with a Manhattan Project for nuclear power plants, a plan to develop the two trillion barrels of North American shale oil, and a map of where the rigs in ANWR and offshore will go.”

The Planet Tax

Hanson, All About Me

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Victor Davis Hanson - All About Me pg. 1Victor Davis Hanson - All About Me, pg. 2

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Filed Under: PC

transportation master plan draft

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West Elbert County Transportation Master Plan May 8th Draft
West Elbert County Transportation Master Plan May 8th Appendices

These documents are available on the county web site. I saved them here in case they get removed from the county site.

On the whole, it looks like the plan creates more beneficiaries than those negatively impacted. A good deal of property stands to be reallocated to transportation, however, and the plan would gain considerable authority if it were put before the voters for adoption. Whichever way the vote went, many fights would be avoided.

I’m a little surprised the plan did not propose any major diagonal arterials into the Springs and Denver to facilitate commuting. A great way to “foster the rural quality of life so important to Elbert County citizens” (Community Vision Statement, pg. 3-5.) would be to have those citizens spend less time on zig-zag roads commuting to and from town.

self-ownership (the basis of property rights) and voluntary arrangements

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Liberty Is Worth the Abuse

Daily Article | Posted on 5/29/2008 by Gary Galles

We get a lot of abuse, those of us who publicly defend private property rights and voluntary arrangements against the varied depredations of government. Having to constantly face such attacks is a substantial part of the cost of speaking out, and probably explains why more people don’t take the risk.

For those who might be considering publicly taking up the cause of “life, liberty, and property,” I offer the following example to give you a taste of what you can expect. [Read more…]

Balderdash! Buncombe! BS!

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An Abe21 unsigned opinion, collected 5/21/08, since taken down.
The Peoples Master Plan, from an Abe21 unsigned post available 5/21/08, since removed
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“The Will of the People[?]”
“What the Citizens want[?]”
“The Collective Persona of the county[?]”

Balderdash! Buncombe! BS!

There is no such thing, entity, common idea, or consensus. The Master Plan is advisory to the Commission precisely because no fictional collective consciousness, however loudly proclaimed by a vocal minority, should ever be binding upon citizens. I don’t care how many consultants and government planners put their expensive hours into writing it, the county Master Plan is not the product of a representative legislature or representative deliberative body. The county Master Plan is the work product of a minority of non-representative, special-interest, squeaky-wheels, who cloak their totalitarian methods in social engineering platitudes, and who use the courts to accomplish what they cannot obtain at the ballot box.

Any judge who upholds their minority plan as binding upon the majority should be run out of town on a rail. No quantity of speculative judicial reasoning can disguise the injustice of holding the majority hostage to the utopian dreams of a special interest minority.

Mr. Thomasson and Democrats of like mind in this, as much as I think the county commission needs diversity, it is issues like this involving the usurpation of fundamental liberties that will lead to the election of a Republican ticket in November.

I encourage the Democrats to propose their utopian visions for voluntary democratic approval at the ballot box, however, forceful impositions of social engineering upon the citizens of Elbert County should be resisted with equal force. Citizens can and will protect their own interests far more effectively than planners ever have or will, and that is the “no-brainer.”
Brooks Imperial

progressive federal income tax

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Income Tax Facts

The top 2 income classes making $100,000 and up, comprise 15.4% of income tax payers, and pay 83.3% of federal income taxes.

Remember this next time the progressives talk about raising taxes on the rich. The rich already pay way more than their fair share, and that’s probably enough progress.

Source: U.S. Congress

Taranto

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Democrats have campaigned against Bush ever since the Wednesday following the 2004 general election, but when Bush makes a comment about appeasement, which arguably may or may not apply to a Democratic position, the left has a hissy. I want to take them seriously, I really do, but they won’t be satisfied until all conservative views are rubbed out.

By JAMES TARANTO

You Probably Think This Speech Is About You

President Bush spoke before Israel’s Knesset yesterday. According to Barack Obama, Bush’s speech was a “political attack” on Barack Obama, as the Jerusalem Post reports: [Read more…]

Filed Under: PC

dirty business

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Politics is a dirty business in Elbert County. Candidate and issue sign vandalisms are just the beginning. If history is any guide we’ll see an assortment of libels and slanders, we’ll see anonymous flyers delivered by the U.S. Mail containing false and misleading information about candidates and issues, we’ll see letters to the editor in local papers full of phony puffery, we’ll see lots of mudball (sticky ad hominem) attacks, and of course we’ll see many opinion pieces masquerading as hard news. And those are just the public indicators that statesmanship is dead. Privately, candidates will endure a variety of explicit and implied threats from characters who live in the shadows of Elbert County power centers – the ruling elite – who should not be confused with public officials.

The truth lurks somewhere between the lines of this mishmash, unspoken in public, reserved for private disposition. In Elbert County, reasonable people figure out the truth by filling in the blanks.

Thomas Jefferson

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

Aristotle

"Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved."

Karl Popper

“A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.”