Roundup time at New Plains’ Prairie Times
Responding to Viewpoints, in the order presented in the print edition of the New Plains’ Prairie Times:
- In a Rodney King “why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along” moment, Jerrry Bishop laments our divisions, and wishes they’d all just go away. Of course he’d never go so far as to allow that Leftist societal ratchet to slip back a notch or two.
- Ric Morgan wants to bring federal and state grant money into the county, and seeks donations from water districts and agencies around the state, as well as some Elbert County revenue, to study water levels. He sees this as a political question. It would be better if it were a question the private sector wanted to take up, which apparently, currently, it is not.
- In the first of two political smears disguised as news, Susan Shick thinks commissioners spend too much on vehicles of all sorts, and she’d really like to see a reallocation of funds toward securing the water study grant.
- John Dorman uses his 1st Am. right in a letter to the editor to assert his Republican nature, dump on the local Republican elite, and frame his pro-planning, no-growth, no-oil&gas activism in the county as proof of his Republican values. Hehe. Yeah. That’s a good one John.
- In another letter, Paul Crisan hopes we haven’t lost the ability to work for the common good. But don’t forget Paul sat on the Elbert County Planning Commission for years dictating just what that common good would be. That’s the trouble with the common good, there’s always a dictator telling us what’s in it.
- Turning the page, Susan Shick lets no one forget for a moment the visceral hatred she harbors against Commissioner Schlegel. And oh yeah he won’t fund what has now become her pet water grant project. “He denies them funding.” There is no greater sin to a Democrat.
- Moving on, it’s all Leftist politics all the time as Jill Duvall focusses her rhetoric on Robert Rowland, using various Alynsky techniques designed to demean and disgrace. Two pages of that stuff, yeah that’s fun to read.
- Which brings us to the crescendo, the top card duo of Thomasson and his wonderboy Bailey each weighing in. Thomasson’s bitch is high art because after reading his complaint, you have no idea about what he wants. His abstract discontent, presumably, allows him to jump in any direction as circumstances develop. Why commit? Keep your options open Robert.
- And then Bailey, donning Roberto the Amazin’ Psycho‘s turban, darkly warns that “dubious plans are afoot.” No doubt, and the above ringleaders are in the kitchen, with the wrench.
blunt talk – essential speech
See the most relevant 40 minutes of television ever produced. The mix of authoritative voices who refused to be intimidated by political correctness gave us a frank factual analysis that everyone must absorb. This is a defining moment for our culture. It’s a rare conversation these days that supersedes politics.
a lesson from Singapore for Elbert County
“We had to make a living, to persuade investors to put their money into manufacturing plants and other businesses in Singapore. We had to learn to survive, without the British military umbrella and without a hinterland.”
So begins the narrative thread in [Lee Kuan Yew’s, From Third World to First: Singapore and the Asian Economic Boom], which approximates the lessons of Machiavelli’s The Prince. As Lee writes, “A soft people will vote for those who promised a soft way out,” and because there was no soft way out, Lee determined to forge a hard island race of overseas Chinese with Malay and Indian minorities. Only a hard people could build the “throbbing and humming” industrial, commercial, and communications center he envisioned. He would make a fair society, not a “welfare” society.
Robert D. Kaplan, Asia’s Cauldron
With 12% of the land mass of Elbert County, a population of millions, virtually no natural resources per capita, on an island with a requirement to import everything, in the space of a few decades Singapore rose to become the premier example of human achievement in the world.
With its comparative natural gifts, Elbert County could make a much more commensurate contribution to the world than it has. The noisy minority seems to think Elbert County’s destiny is to be a place where people come to watch grass grow. Isn’t it time for Elbert County to grow up and become something more useful?
free speech at Elbert County public meetings
Yesterday, in a review of the recent meeting held by Commissioner Schlegel with representatives from Elbert County water districts, Bill Thomas wrote that “no public comment” was permitted, “even though it was a public meeting.”
He repeated his objection later in the piece where he said, “He [Commissioner Schlegel] did not allow questions or comments from the spectators, even though it was, in his words, ‘a public meeting.'”
Lastly, Thomas referred to the meeting as an “Open/Closed Meeting of the Water Districts,” implying that because local Leftist spectators at the meeting asked to speak and weren’t given the floor, the meeting was “open/closed” – presumably a pejorative characterization.
The Colorado Sunshine Law requires that meetings between public officials be open to the public. No requirements in state law exist for public officials to conduct forums for public speech during their public meetings.
The 1st Am. guarantees the Left a virtually unlimited right to present their ideas to the public through various publication venues, just as it does everyone else. Leftists in Elbert County generally use that right to dump on and disparage everything non-Leftists do. But there is no 1st Am. guarantee for individuals to input their free speech into meetings of public officials.
Characterizing an open meeting of public officials as tainted because Leftists were not given an opportunity to make their opposed positions heard in the meeting is simply gratuitous whining.
If Leftists put more energy into developing and publishing creative solutions to the challenges that public officials are tasked to lead, public officials might welcome their comments at public meetings.
But everyone knows what the Elbert County Left is going to say before they open their mouths. It’ll be mudballs, character assassination, impossible environmentalism, and hyperbolic images of their fantasy fears. Their cases are never realistic, just terribly frightful.
Bill Thomas is a good reporter and I appreciate his diligence. But it’s rare that he doesn’t also include a few tips of the iceberg of his Leftist agenda. Perhaps Mike Phillips requires that everyone he publishes on New Plains must also throw in some feints to the Left, an agenda tax if you will.
But the New Prairie Plains Times crowd is fiddling while Rome burns – and it’s not about the petty stuff they like to complain about – like how many miles get logged to company [county] cars, or which commissioner didn’t use his magical xray vision to foresee a water pipe break at the old courthouse, or how the Colorado Sunshine Law is really supposed to provide an open forum for the Left to hijack every meeting of public officials.
Renewable water is the holy grail of sought-after solutions in Colorado. An awareness of this problem is probably coded into the DNA of everyone born here. And considering how much rain falls throughout the state, the market can solve this problem provided people, acting in commercial organizations, are allowed to aggregate demand into economic units, and buy and sell water properties to satisfy that demand.
That’s exactly what markets do – they efficiently and fairly allocate scarce resources.
But oh wait. The Left doesn’t trust markets. The Left trusts dissent, utopian visions, social justice, and progress toward the agrarian villages of Tolkein’s Shire. The Left distrusts economic growth, technology, production, and capital accumulation. Despite hundreds of years of material advances in the quality of life throughout the world enabled by allowing individuals to accumulate capital and leverage their property in markets, Leftists persist in the erroneous belief that they can plan a better society.
After every one of the Left’s utopian experiments has increased oppression, suffering and even mass death in some cases, you’d think it would give them pause. You’d think.
Evidently the Elbert County Left have decided that renewable water in Elbert County threatens their utopia, just like oil & gas, industry, a job base for local citizens, and non-utopian elected officials do.
But the poverty and lack of opportunity we live with in this planned economic backwater they want to preserve won’t go away under the terms of the status quo. We must embrace progress in the form of real economic growth if we’re to have any chance at long-term viability in Elbert County.
Elbert County commissioners have correctly perceived the challenge and appear to be doing what they can, which involves removing the obstacle of local government and allowing the private sector to grow the economy.
This apparently frightens the Left. It shouldn’t. They stand to benefit despite themselves.
Kurds, Turks, Iranians, Iraqis, and ISIS
Douglas County’s renewable water plan
Our region is going to need a renewable water supply system. While we’ve not built this type of system before, the Bureau of Reclamation has built these types of water systems throughout the American West.
If 2005, DCWRA began [exploring] if and how the Bureau of Reclamation’s Rural Water Supply Program might be applied to water supply issues facing the Douglas County region. This Reclamation program provides planning assistance, and the opportunity for loan guarantees to fund construction of water supply solutions.
In 2010, DCWRA completed an Appraisal level study that was published in the Federal Register as exemplary, and was given permission to proceed to Feasibility level investigation. With support of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, in June, 2013 a study was completed that depicts water supply planning efforts in the outlying areas of the Douglas County region.
Combined with the S. Metro Water Supply Authority’s Master Plan, these studies detail water supply issues facing the region, and how these issues can be addressed to provide for long-term water supply solutions for the region.
Cover Letter of URS Feasibility Level Report 758k pdf
URS Feasibility Level Full Report 43,600k pdf
Summary page printed below:
Elbert County Commissioners are correct to follow Douglas County’s lead here.
Coordinating ElCo water districts
The recording can speak for itself, however I have a couple observations.
All of the water districts here today are groundwater operations relying upon non-renewable water supplies. The water districts operate independently from each other, and independent from county government oversight.
Commissioner Schlegel’s vision is to get them all to agree on an Elbert County water master plan so that future water infrastructure development will build out within a network designed to eventually support commercial economic growth from renewable water sources.
This is a laudable goal – an “if you build it they will come” approach that will incentivize market makers to come here and create infrastructure to benefit everyone. Lest the contrast be lost on the Prairie-Plains-oriented, this vision stands in stark contrast to their deterministic, scarcity-spells-doom, fear-infused, closed off vision of the future.
Apparently, Elbert County Commissioners will lead off the water planning effort by producing an Elbert County planning vision statement next week – not sure if this is a general planning vision or just a water planning statement.
My metric for assessing whether planning statements can succeed depends on if they anticipate and foster local job markets for all of the working age population who live in Elbert County. We are too remote to succeed as a horsey bedroom community.
Elbert County needs to offer a vision to water districts, developers, commercial investors, and to all of its neighbors, of a viable economic entity worth their support because they can potentially make a return on their investment here. We must attract capital, not chase it away by obsessing like Democrats on how to tax it.
To put it objectively – what vision would reasonable people standing outside of the county consider an attractive investment? That vision would have to include a job market that supports its population. A charity case with high unemployment won’t sell.
From that first principle you can deductively back into the rest of the plan.
the competition
“The Singapore model was made explicit for me [Robert D. Kaplan] at the Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park, twenty miles outside Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it is still called by everyone outside of government officialdom. I beheld a futuristic world of perfectly maintained and manicured right-angle streets where, in a security-controlled environment, 240 manufacturing firms from Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, Europe, and the United States were producing luxury golf clubs, microchips, pharmaceuticals, high-end footwear, aerospace electronics, and so on. In the next stage of development, luxury condominiums were planned on-site for the foreign workers who will live and work here. An American plant manager at the park told me that his company chose Vietnam for its high-tech operation through a process of elimination: “We needed low labor costs. We had no desire to locate in Eastern Europe or Africa [which didn’t have the Asian work ethic]. In China wages are already starting to rise. Indonesia and Malaysia are Muslim, and that scares us away. Thailand has lately become unstable. So Vietnam loomed for us: it’s like China was two decades ago, on the verge of a boom.” He added: “We give our employees in Vietnam standardized intelligence tests. They score higher than our employees in the U.S.”
This is an example of international manufacturing competition today – intelligent employees with a positive work ethic producing high quality products in predictable and efficient modern factories. This is the standard of production that America must retool to meet in order to successfully compete for business in the world market.
Protecting American companies from international competition through import duties on products, high tariffs, and anti-dumping laws, lowers the bar for American domestic manufacturing, raises prices to American consumers, and induces the obsolescence of American manufacturing capacity. Remember British Leyland? A memory is all that remains of it.
The choice is clear.
Americans can continue to protect themselves, stay on the path toward manufacturing extinction, and become a client state to the various countries in the world who produce goods.
Or Americans can disassemble the protectionist devices shielding our markets, undo the congressional influence-buying and political-patronage system of Customs import duties, engage in international manufacturing on competitive terms that will attract capital to America, and once again enjoy the benefits that follow from a growing economy.
We can either produce, or get used to enslavement.
unemployment causes and solutions
American Unemployment Causes:
- Highest corporate tax rate of any country in the world.
- High import taxes on cheaper foreign products that could benefit American consumers.
- Heavy federal regulation of exporters.
- Heavy federal regulation of employers for employment taxation, health insurance, and environmentalism.
- Anti-competitive federal subsidies for selected American corporations.
- Entitlement subsidies that incentivize not working.
- Anti-business, anti-capitalist, Marxist-centered higher education.
- Liberal-dominated media hostile to American business.
- Environmental activists overwhelming local, state and federal regulators with legal attacks to shut down new businesses.
- Marxist public planners using zoning and regulatory strangulation to inhibit new businesses.
Solutions:
- Fire the planners. Shut down the planning agencies.
- Close the courts to prospective injury lawsuits. Require an injury-in-fact before a lawsuit is admitted.
- Eliminate regulations.
- Eliminate business taxation.
- Eliminate import duties.
- De-fund Marxist education.
Allow Americans to compete in world markets without government interference.
Kiowa Street Fair
prudence
Take the various fear factors out of the marijuana sales question. They lead to hyperbolic hysterics and wordy inconclusive dissertations. (See comment stream from marijuana proponents on the sheriff’s FB post below.)
Marijuana use is a marginal adult behavior that does not enhance family-friendly environments for raising children. Neither do porn and gambling, and you don’t see those establishments on every block like you do marijuana stores in some sections of Denver.
There was a time when government was less ubiquitous, and people generally exercized more prudence. Today, government seems to view anything non-criminal as a revenue opportunity to be exploited.
On the commercial marijuana question, the Town of Kiowa should be prudent. Decriminalization of recreational drugs and commercial sales of recreationa drugs are a false alternative.
Besides, we should be minimizing government revenues, not looking for ways to expand them.
Colo. Const. Art. XVIII, Section 16(5)(f)
A locality may prohibit the operation of marijuana cultivation facilities, marijuana product manufacturing facilities, marijuana testing facilities, or retail marijuana stores through the enactment of an ordinance or through an initiated or referred measure; provided, any initiated or referred measure to prohibit the operation of marijuana cultivation facilities, marijuana product manufacturing facilities, marijuana testing facilities, or retail marijuana stores must appear on a general election ballot during an even numbered year.
Caucuses don’t work
2014 Republican Governor State Assembly Results:
Sylvester ———— 1.59%
House ————— 12.81%
Brophy ————– 18.89%
Gessler ————- 33.11%
Kopp —————- 33.60%
2014 Republican Governor Primary Results:
Kopp —————- 19.83%
Gessler ————- 23.21%
Tancredo ———– 26.72%
Beauprez ———– 30.24%
Evidently the Colorado Republicans who self-select by showing up at precinct caucuses to volunteer for county and state assemblies do not accurately represent the cohort of Republicans voting in the primary. In 2010 the caucus system gave us Dan Maes, and everyone knows how well that worked out.
It’s time to thank the delegates for their service, retire the broken caucus system, and move to a petition process more representative of the electorate.
birds of a feather
independent, adj. 1. Not subject to the control or influence of another. 2. Not associated with another (often larger) entity. 3. Not dependent or contingent on something else.
dependent, n. 1. One who relies on another for support; one not able to exist or sustain oneself without the power or aid of someone else.
local green councils of deputies
2 views on rights
See: The New Road to Serfdom
See: The Lisbon Treaty
And see: Paul L. Poirot
see you in the funny papers Colorado
Stewie sings about local control amendments, fracking, Polis, Udall, Steyer, and the Guv’na
“No change is permitted”
“It takes people putting their thoughts and ideas together to actually accomplish something. These ideas must take into consideration the reality of the situations and the means to correct the problems.” Jerry Bishop, 6-11-14, The Prairie Times
Jerry wrote these words in a lead editorial where he also took exception to being labeled a leftist. Well if the shoe fits Jerry, you may as well put it on and lace it up. Look at the rest of the authors Jerry printed in this same Viewpoint edition of his fishwrap:
Paul Crisan, notorious planner, eco-green anti-business zoner, and leftist.
Robert Thomason, Democrat Party official, notorious leftist.
Jill Duvall, Democrat Party official, notorious leftist. (2 articles)
Anne Johnson, advises Republicans to “vote outside the party.”
Susan Shick, Democrat Party official, notorious leftist. (2 articles)
Name Withheld, advocates for totalitarian planning control.
Kelly Dore, “government’s role is to work with people to make their lives better.”
John Dorman, “commissioners have to manage the business of the county.”
Non-leftist viewpoints: None.
Not an individualist in the bunch, including Jerry. Not a hint of recognition in the whole lot of them that it’s the private sector who create wealth, provide jobs, and solve problems. These people share an obsession with all things collective and governmental.
Now let’s face it, government is the 900 lb. gorilla in the living room of Elbert County. There is no substantial private sector here so there’s little else to talk about in a local newspaper besides government. Government is the largest employer by far with the largest payroll in Elbert County.
It doesn’t matter which party controls here, government’s been used by all parties to keep Elbert County’s economy stuck in the 19th century from as far back as anyone remembers; and this will remain the case for the foreseeable future.
It would be so much more honest if all of these collectivists could just hang a sign out at the county border saying that Elbert County is a preservation zone where there will be no economic growth, no enabling of the private sector, no new jobs, and no changes. Perhaps they could purchase the right to name the county Pleasantville.
Just get rid of all the legal mumbo jumbo in county zoning, dump all the expensive lawyerly jargon that pays lip service to the illusion of property rights and constitutional liberties, and replace it with a simple sentence; “No change is permitted.” Put that on the sign at the county border.
Then all the leftists could go off to other battleground locals to community-organize and inflict their advocacy, and people would know before ever considering putting down roots here just what they’re in for.
Think of all the time and money this would save. All of the public meetings we now have with foregone conclusions – gone. All of the empty rhetoric from government officials and would-be government officials – gone. All of the legal work around the regulatory edges – gone. People in the private sector would still drive to town for work. The number of government employees could be cut way back. And Jerry would have to find something else to publish and write about.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves. The myth of American freedom in Elbert County is an expensive joke. Freedom, as an ideal, deserves better than this. If we’re not going to serve it, then we should at least stop sullying it.
Big Green Radicals
From: Big Green
“Colorado is ground zero for the fracking debate. That’s why national environmental groups are turning their attention and their checkbooks to the state, trying to gin up support for several anti-fracking ballot initiatives that would advance their radical agendas. But rather than being up front about their support and agendas, these groups are resorting to deceptive practices to trick Colorado voters into siding with them.
For example, knowing that its radical agenda would be unpalatable to Coloradans, big green’s out-of-state agitators founded the “local” group Frack Free Colorado (FFC). In addition to receiving generous support from out of state funders, FFC shared Water Defense’s Manhattan-based press secretary Ana Tinsely up until last year. And FFC’s leader, Russell Mendell, worked for Water Defense as recently as 2012 and didn’t even move to Colorado until that year.
That’s not to say that FFC doesn’t work hard to maintain the fiction that it’s a grassroots group. Following Water Defense’s bragging about the role it played in helping to pass several Colorado fracking bans in 2013, FFC deleted all mentions of Water Defense from its website. FFC also keeps quiet about its other outside Colorado founding members, including Food & Water Watch, Fractivist.com (run by a Sierra Club operative), and Patagonia, a California clothier. Unfortunately for big green’s agenda, Coloradans know the difference between grassroots and astroturf.
Big green groups are also deceptively using the Trojan Horse strategy to advance their radical agenda. Rather than present their true motivations – a complete ban on responsible energy development – they advance the notion of mere “local control.” (Surely they have been told that this doesn’t sound as radical to Coloradans, who – as poll after poll shows – overwhelmingly favor responsible energy development.) Of course, local control is anything but: City, county, or statewide bans violate one’s local property rights, the sanctity upon which Colorado and the country was founded.
This is a dangerous game that big green is playing. As its deceptive practices are exposed, it risks real backlash from Colorado voters, who hate deceptive groups pretending to be from Colorado even more than they hate outside groups themselves.”
end planning and zoning
Project Veritas stings anti-frackers
the times they are a changin’
Republican/Independent/Democrat — Distinctions without a difference
Kelly Dore – “I will work hard to make sure that growth preserves our county rural lifestyles…”
John Dorman – will “…work very hard to improve our land and protect our lifestyle…“
It appears the Elbert County BOCC majority will soon shift back to country-in-county – rurally impoverished – economics.
Commissioner Rowland and Commissioner Schlegel should do everything they can to swing the pendulum in Elbert County toward freedom and liberty.
Repeal zoning. Repeal the master plan. Repeal planning regulations. Repeal all regulations.
NOW! Before the lifestyle Nazi’s get control.
Green Light Elbert County’s Private Sector! Free Elbert County Citizens from the planning Leviathan.
“Most of the rules and regulations that affect the rights of ordinary Americans are not laws written by elected lawmakers but regulations imposed by unelected administrative agencies that wield broad authority to interpret their own commissions, write their own regulations, and enforce their own rules in hearings overseen by their own agents. These bureaus are not accountable to the voting public in any realistic sense; they are generally beyond the control even of an affected citizen’s elected representatives. Yet courts review their actions with a lenient, deferential attitude, under the doctrine of Chevron, U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a precedent that gives agencies power to interpret their mandates as expansively as they want except in the most extreme cases. In short, the modem administrative state has outstripped the quaint model of conscientious legislators deliberating about the public good, which might have justified a court in leaving citizens to the political process for protection. The idea that the people can “vote the bums out” if they dislike government policy is simply unrealistic.”
“Americans are realizing the dangers of expanding the scope of government and are protesting the continued calls for bailouts, handouts, entitlement programs, and restrictions on freedom, privacy, property rights, and other aspects of liberty. The time has come for the legal community to pay heed. The time has come to reject the notion that people have the right to control each other’s lives and to take the fruits of their labor. The time has come to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.”
Timothy Sandefur, The Conscience of the Constitution
expensive government wasteland
Now, see, your average Leftist will look at this hot mess of a conclusion and get a warm feeling in her belly that the government is out there on the forefront of pollution, actively protecting her.
But the language says nothing, does nothing, solves nothing, recommends no specific remediation, and only suggests that it would be good if some unspecified person kept thinking about something unspecified, to move the world forward in an expedient manner toward a goal that could take a very long time to accomplish – that we already know! – undo the effects of man.
The ultimate irony is all of those EPA goals will involve reestablishing a prior status or condition to the environment – that is, turn the clock backward – the only way the EPA knows to go forward. But since we’ve all seen where we’ve been, why on earth do we need a huge expensive government agency to tell us what we already know?
“Moving forward with the end in mind.” Good grief! Make up an acronym – an RAO in this case – and feed it to the rubes out there in flyover country. This stuff rivals the brilliant pronouncements of Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardner character.
God only knows how much this study cost. But I guess if it helps a Leftist sleep better at night, it must be worth it because there’s just no other point to this pablum.
the problem
Elbert County with its depressed local economy, high unemployment, anti-business regulations, and anti-growth planning, has proven to be a failed state. Without subsidies and grants for schools, roads, and county services, Elbert County would shut down tomorrow. Tweaks to this or that county procedure or budget line item, regardless of motivation from political party or constituency, won’t fix Elbert County.
The only necessary public function Elbert County should be engaged in is road maintenance. And even if the county focused only on that, it would still be challenged to produce a popular outcome. Emergency services should stand or fall on their own merits as separate agencies. As for the rest of it, the county hosts a Kabuki shadow play that redistributes wealth, enables failure, blocks free people from securing the fruits of the American dream, and crowds out competition.
Until the private sector of Elbert County rises up and produces something that people elsewhere want, in other words, until Elbert County citizens engage with the free market outside of the county borders and successfully bring a stream of wealth and capital into the county, Elbert County will remain a failed state.
Today, and unless something drastically changes, for the foreseeable future, Elbert County citizens practice a form of voluntary servitude that can only consume them. Unless we add something of value to the supply chain, the future here remains bleak.
A map showing the foreclosure rate in 10 Colorado counties. Elbert county has the highest foreclosure rate (over 2.8 percent), while Clear Creek, Gilpin and Douglas plug in the lowest rates (under 0.8 percent). Denver Business Journal
In Memoriam
“These “factions”– a term Madison defined [in Federalist 10] as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole [populace], who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community”–can breach the limits that the Constitution places on their power and enact laws that deprive people of their private property, abridge religious freedom, or implement other “improper or wicked project[s].” When this happens-when either a small faction uses government to harm the majority, or where the majority uses government to harm the minority-the rights of individuals are placed at risk, just as they were before the establishment of government. Such a society is governed not by law, but by the unaccountable will of the majority. Madison rejected the notion that “the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong,” because unless it was “qualified by every moral ingredient,” that notion would be “only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as a measure of right.” After all, “it would be in the interest of the majority in the community to despoil and enslave the minority.”
Timothy Sandefur, The Conscience of the Constitution
Now comes a manifestation of Madison’s foresight, 227 years into his future, in the form of Clifton Wilmeng’s Community Rights Amendment –
“That right shall include, without limitation . . .the power to enact local laws establishing, defining, altering, or eliminating the rights, powers, and duties of for-profit business entities, operating or seeking to operate in the community[.]”
On this Memorial Day, consider whether the sort of totalitarianism described in the Community Rights Amendment – packaged in various authoritarian political systems through the years – is exactly what they fought against.