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The tornadoe to the West of us between Parker and Castle Rock is on the left. The second tornadoe was North of us near the county line. It appeared much larger though it did not appear to connect to the ground.
big time
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Apparently I have so befuddled our local Democrats that they went straight to the ad hominem card. Normally they pretend to argue for a bit before they start name calling.
While I am not worthy of this honor, I am thankful for my enemies since they allow me to distinguish myself as not a pro-tax and spend, pro-planning and control, pro-grow government, pro-Dunn, anti-boy scout, not-in-my-backyard, elitist, country-in-county, condescending, leftist, and as one who respects private enterprise more than government because private enterprise must produce a real benefit to society in order to survive while government need only rely upon force and imposition.
The left think that their mere ability to propose a departure from the status quo should be enough to warrant a change. While they are quick to produce theories about how government can make things better for us, they never seem to point to any examples where that has actually happened. In our second century of progressivism you’d think that somewhere, someone might have got it to work. Even though no one has, the faith in progressivism that our local Democrats carry in their hearts remains strong.
It must be terribly difficult for them to slog on, year in and year out, without a single positive outcome to show for all their effort. Imagine how the world might look if all that progressive energy was spent on philosophies that actually work. “And if frogs had wings they wouldn’t bump their asses a’ hoppin’ on the ground.”
political speech
Political speech, above all other sorts of speech, is what the 1st Amendment was enacted to protect.
This morning I took a call from Mr. Thomasson, Democratic commissioner candidate for District 3 in Elbert County. Mr. Thomasson is a principal content provider on the website Abe21.net. The content on Abe21.net is mostly about local political issues. I read Abe21.net and when I take issue with something printed there, I make an image record of the writing, show it here on this website in full context so people can read what has motivated me to comment, and then make my comment. Moreover, I have published, verbatim, all comments received about items on this blog.
In the early days of this blog I tried referencing the content on Abe21.net with hotlinks, but the content would invariably be moved and the links would become useless. Now I include the political content on this website that I respond to in picture image format because I want there to be no confusion about the source of the content being Abe21.net, I want there to be no claim that something was taken out of context, and I want the writings preserved for historical reference. Full context and explicit attribution remain available on this blog after they have been deleted from Abe21.net. Since many of the political issues on Abe21.net and here have long life spans of their own, I believe this is an important service to the community.
A couple weeks ago, Mr. Thomasson informed me that it was his policy to not respond to issues raised on this blog because he did not want to legitimize the debates raised here. Well ideas, whether or not Mr. Thomasson chooses to debate them, have consequences — a fact of which Mr. Thomasson is evidently aware since today he threatened me with a copyright action.
Now, if Abe21.net was not political speech, or if Abe21.net was not freely available, or if Abe21.net had a requirement for some sort of consideration to be read, or if Abe21.net preserved its political speech to enable reasonable rebuttal, or if my inclusion of Abe21.net content was in any way plagiarism, then I would gladly return to using hotlinks to reference the debatable political content there.
More interesting however is that while Mr. Thomasson does not consider issues raised on this blog to be worth discussion, he evidently thinks they are worth trying to chill.
elbertcounty.net/blog – speaking for the ideas, holding political candidates accountable.
Facilitating speech, not chilling it.
summer’s almost over
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Historical perspectives to consider in this election. File under, “dooming ourselves to repeat history,” or “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”
As if history weren’t challenging enough, there’s also outright misrepresentation:
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“When John Dunn left office twelve days into the year 2001, there was a $1.6 million surplus.”
False. Dunn’s parting act was to take $1M of that surplus and allocate it to county employee salary increases. It was Dunn who gutted the county’s reserves. The citizens were right to vote him out after 1 term, and Dunn’s budgetary dead-hand carried forth by Mr. Thomasson should be kept off county finances.
ignoring indicates ignorance
“I’m up to the challenge and look forward to bringing honesty, integrity and transparency back to Elbert County government.”
Robert Thomasson at http://vote4robert.net/index.html
Except when it comes to issues presented to Mr. Thomasson on this website which, as he told me last Saturday, he doesn’t want to “legitimize” with debate. Four months before the election and Mr. Thomasson has already mastered a key technique of Elbert County public agency leadership — just ignore what you don’t want to answer.
And here I thought having the Democrats take a more active role in this campaign would actually lead to meaningful public debates on policy issues.
primary election day
District 1
Schwab 1707, Valdez 1184
District 3
Shipper 1485, Wyer 1341
democracy isn’t about making law
Posner on Faith Based Morality and Public Policy
“Modern representative democracy isn’t about making law the outcome of discussion. It is not about modeling politics on the academic seminar. It is about forcing officials to stand for election at short intervals, and about letting ordinary people express their political preferences without having to defend them in debate with their intellectual superiors.” Link
smart growth is neither
Claire Levy – Urban sprawl drives up the cost of living
Smart Growth: Retarding the Quality of Life
Americans have moved to the suburbs:
The air is cleaner, but road expansion has lagged behind population growth:
A strong anti-suburban movement has developed.
The anti-sprawl movement suggests so-called “smart growth:”
The anti-sprawl diagnosis is flawed:
- Urbanization does not threaten agricultural land:
- Most suburban growth is not from the cities:
- “Walkable” cities are an illusion:
- Open space is expanding more rapidly than urbanization:
Smart growth would intensify the very problems it is supposed to solve.
- Smart growth increases traffic intensity:
- Smart growth increases air pollution intensity:
- Smart growth reduces housing affordability:
From Social Engineering to Freedom:.
- Sufficient road capacity should be provided to accommodate growth:
- People should be allowed to live and work where and how they like:
4th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2008
Once again, the Demographia survey leads inevitably to one clear conclusion: the affordability of housing is overwhelmingly a function of just one thing, the extent to which governments place artificial restrictions on the supply of residential land.
Myth No. 1: Smart Growth is good.
In reality, it’s not. Portland and San Jose, the two top “Smart Growth” cities in the U.S., have more unaffordable housing, higher job losses, higher urban unemployment and greater congestion, with much higher confiscatory tax and fee levels, than before they adopted their “Smart Growth” policies. Yet their leaders proclaim “success” from their policies. Hypocrisy has become the norm – lies and deceitfulness their standard operating procedure for government. Only their union employees and congestion management consultants are profiting – and the bankruptcy attorneys.
minority control
90% of Elbert County citizens who work commute to a job outside of Elbert County.
Average commute times in Elbert County are double the state-wide average.
In an economy where fuel is prohibitively expensive, we must bring jobs to Elbert County. The interests of the 10% of Elbert County citizens who do not have to commute should not control the public planning agenda to keep the rest of Elbert County impoverished by commuting time and expense.
“Managed growth compatible with a rural life style” is a tyranny by a small minority.
Sources:
an empty set
“Vote for the person who you think is creative enough to solve the dilemmas that have unfolded in Elbert County in the recent past.”
That pretty much rules out everyone Mr. Thomasson. Even if you reduced the problem set to the domain of government originally intended by the Founders, not a man alive could be smart enough to solve that set of problems. In the present, where government has expanded its control into myriads of areas of our lives it cannot possibly understand let alone resolve, the proposition is even more absurd. Any candidate sufficiently delusional to believe in the myth that one person could possess such capacity should be allowed nowhere near a controlling office.
A commissioner should be elected not for what they promise they will do, but for what they promise they won’t do. Here are some examples:
- I promise to not support tax increases.
- I promise to not grow government.
- I promise to not increase regulations on the private sector through planning and zoning.
- I promise to not impede economic growth in the private sector.
We have enough 1) taxation, 2) government, and 3) regulation, and not enough 4) economic activity. What are the odds that there is an inverse correlation between the first three and the last one? I’d say bet on it.
The prescription for the success of Elbert County is a simple one. Limit government, expand the private sector. It is the philosophy that built this country. It works. People know what is in their own best interest. All they need is the freedom to act on that knowledge. Government does not, and cannot know, what is in each of our own best interests. Life is tough enough without having to carry the dead weight of an oppressive bureaucracy on our backs.
The visions of the left are attractive and alluring, but they’ve never become reality anywhere they have been tried. Moreover, the more power vested in the state in the various social experiments of the past several hundred years, the worse the outcomes have been. This is not an arguable or close call. Mountains of evidence of human misery caused by leftism exist. The death toll runs in the 100’s of millions. There’s just no point in going down that road any further.
re: “A Word From Ben Dover”
Presumably in response to criticism of both political parties and all of the commissioner candidates that they’re all too busy kowtowing to the Country-in-County, no-growth, managed-growth, smart-growth, economic-growth-compatible-with-a-rural-life-style, (basically all those who like dictating what their neighbors can do with their property) crowd, to do anything about real economic growth, the above satire appeared on Abe21. (Use the above links to access content if no longer available on Abe21.)
I maintain that most native residents of Elbert County would love nothing better than to have a vibrant, job-providing economy, right here and right now. I maintain that the various growth regulatory schemes pushed by commissioner candidates are primarily favored by relative newcomer elites.
In response (presumably), Democratic Candidate Thomasson provided the above satire. From the patently offensive reference to sodomy in the name of his character, to the simpleton’s delivery and content of speech, Mr. Thomasson crossed a line completely unbecoming of civil discourse. Though it’s not unusual for elite grow-government types to regard minion taxpayers as stupid, it is an extremely poor campaign strategy to come right out and say as much.
If he had undertook to prove my point that he speaks from an on-high perspective of elite governmental control, he could hardly have done a better job. Moreover, his mention of several consequences of economic growth without any mention of the economic growth that would necessarily precede such public works in order to pay for them, betrays his own approach of taxing citizens to provide public works while providing no additional tax base. He stands ready to grow government, but would only allow the private sector to grow in a manner compatible with a “rural lifestyle.” Whatever that is, it’s probably not a basis for a thriving economy.
Brooks Imperial
our money pit
Elbert County’s largest employer is Government.
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- It can spend only what it first collects from taxpayers.
- It does not add any net positive value to the county.
- It does not make a profit.
- It controls and regulates who may engage in true profit-making enterprises in the county.
- It controls and regulates who may live where and how in the county.
- Elbert County’s largest employer would not exist without the coercive power of the state to prop it up.
- The direct cost of Elbert County’s largest employer is the tax cost to citizens.
- The indirect cost of Elbert County’s largest employer is an “opportunity cost” – the value of profit (wealth) that would have been added to the county if the people and resources consumed by Elbert County would have been engaged in private enterprise.
Elbert County citizens have been brainwashed into believing that this losing enterprise is their best hope for a better future. Not only is it not, it is physically impossible for it to ever be so.
Who speaks for those with no voice?
How often have you heard those born and raised in Elbert County promote a “no growth” or a “preserve the quality of life” position about this place? Like me, I bet not often.
The ability to hold these views is a luxury largely reserved for those who brought wealth into the county, who didn’t need to rely on the local economy for their sustenance. These views are for the elite, the ones who have the time to appreciate beauty, the ones with the capacity to appreciate unspoiled nature, the ones who have the option to care about others.
What about those who aren’t so gifted? So fortunate? The ones who didn’t bring wealth to this place from somewhere else? The ones scratching in the dry dirt of Elbert County trying to make a living? The ones who don’t own land? The ones who don’t own livestock? The ones who must buy expensive gas and travel long miles and long times each day to earn a paycheck somewhere else? The ones who leave home before the sun comes up, and return home after it sets, who rarely see the beauty of this place in sunlight?
You don’t hear them talking about “preserving the quality of life” here. You don’t see them at planning meetings clamoring to shut down economic growth. You don’t read their words in the blogs and in the newspapers railing to preserve the status quo. You don’t see them trying to become commissioners in order to make laws to make sure Elbert County remains a special place.
Who speaks for the people who need an economy here? Who speaks for those who need opportunities here? Who speaks for those who need jobs here?
Not the Democrats. Not the Republicans. Not any of the commissioner candidates. They’re all too busy promising to preserve the quality of life here. They would never think to actually improve it.
IBD: vote on drilling
This month, an IBD/TIPP Poll of 920 adults found that by more than 3-to-1 Americans believe gas prices to be a bigger problem than global warming. A broad-based 64% of respondents favor offshore drilling, and 65% want oil shale development in the Western states.A Rasmussen survey in June found 67% of voters in favor of drilling off the coasts of California, Florida and other states, and 64% believing gas prices would drop as a result. A Zogby poll last month found that 74% want offshore drilling in U.S. waters.This is a potential political gusher, if only Republicans would fully tap into it. Bush has the opportunity to do so before this hot, cash-guzzling summer ends. Like Truman, he can use his constitutional authority to call this negligent Congress back once it embarks on its long August recess to campaign for re-election.In so doing, he can demand that instead of nonsolutions like its failed attempt to release more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve [SPR], Congress carry out the will of the vast majority of Americans by passing laws that authorize drilling.
The French Revolution
When you least expect it, the most interesting revelations surface. I was discussing some fundamental differences between my positions and positions of the left with some Democrats yesterday. As usually happens in these situations, they grew increasingly impatient with me as I defended my position from compromise. As we parted, they made a reference to their firmly held belief that the French Revolution was the logical outcome of Laissez Faire capitalism. They all held this conclusion as if it were fact, and they tossed off questions to this assumption as they departed as absurd. [Read more…]
no easy answers
Candidate Robert Thomasson
advocates “Smart Growth” for Elbert County, an “urban planning and transportation theory that concentrates growth in the center of a city to avoid urban sprawl; and advocates compact, transit-oriented, walkable, bicycle-friendly land use.” It’s difficult to imagine “walkable, bicycle-friendly” corridors that would be practical over the distances in Elbert County.
Candidate Andy Wyer
believes “managed growth is designed to preserve the rural life style and quality of life that we all enjoy in Elbert County.” “Growth management is a set of techniques used by government to ensure that as the population grows that there are services available to meet their demands. These are not necessarily only government services. Other demands such as the protection of natural spaces, sufficient and affordable housing, delivery of utilities, preservation of buildings and places of historical value, and sufficient places for the conduct of business are also considered.
One technique is the imposition of impact fees. Impact fees are imposed to charge the owners of newly developed properties for the “impact” the new development will have on the community. Fees can be used for such things as transportation improvements, new parks, and expansion of schools. Impact fees are not used to maintain existing facilities, but instead are used to create new facilities in proportion to the number of new developments in the area.
Another technique is application of zoning to reduce the cost of service delivery. Zoning can be used to reduce the area affected by urbanization, allowing the same number of people to live and work in a smaller area, allowing services to be delivered more efficiently. For example, grocery stores and pizza delivery businesses can service only a limited area. If more customers are located within their service delivery area, the cost of delivering their services is decreased.
Preventing suburban densities from affecting a large area also has the effect of providing open spaces so that people who wish to live in a rural setting can do so without urbanization threatening their lifestyle.
The application of growth management techniques are often governed by the development of a comprehensive plan. The plan can be used to measure the impact that new growth will have on the community and define the method by which that impact is mitigated.”
Candidate Steve Valdez
would “plan and manage Elbert County’s growth with smart and proven policies.”
Candidate John Shipper
would “plan and manage growth compatible with a rural lifestyle.”
Put Mr. Valdez and Mr. Shipper in the “managed growth” camp with Mr. Wyer.
All this planning chutzpa begs a great big question. What have managed growth and smart growth planning theories accomplished in Elbert County to warrant such devotion? Answer: nothing – not a damn thing.
Elbert County town centers have minimal economic activity. The Elbert County Fair gets smaller each year. Our road network is in poor condition and does not promote efficient transits of the county. Our schools are producing historically low performance measures, enrollments are shrinking, teachers are leaving, and students are fleeing to Douglas County schools. Commercial enterprises have been closing faster than they are opening, and landowners are prevented from engaging in development that could bring economic returns to the county. Economically, Elbert County is hobbled, and at least four commissioner candidates, apparently, like things that way.
We don’t need their focus on the past, their myths about the rural life style and quality of life that need preserving. This quality of life is not worth preserving. It is poor and getting poorer. Oh, if you happen to work on or live near one of John Malone’s preserved ranches things might appear to look good, but that’s not because of anything produced here. The hobbies of one wealthy man don’t constitute a local economy.
We can and must build a much better quality of life with better infrastructure, efficient transportation corridors, desirable schools, businesses that produce goods and services for commercial markets, and opportunities for citizens to participate in economic growth. But these candidates, their myopic visions, the controls they would impose on us, and their master plans, will produce nothing. Elbert County needs opportunities of the sort that county government and Malone’s charity cannot produce. We have to do the hard work ourselves to build these things.
Elbert County citizens need to stop lapping up easy answers from planners. Master plan devotees have had over a decade to prove their worth in Elbert County and they failed miserably. New smart-growth and managed-growth master plans are no more than new lipstick on an old pig. They are not the answer. There are no easy answers.
representative government
“We finally get a chance to sit down and do the hard work of negotiation and there wasn’t a Republican candidate to be found that could share their ideas and be a part of this new type of spirited cooperation between Elbert County, its citizens and the developers who wish to shape our futures.”
Negotiate? What are you bargaining for Mr. Thomasson? What property of yours is on the table? What rights of yours are on the table?
You are bargaining for things you don’t own and have no right to represent, and you imply that the citizens of Elbert County should applaud you for this usurpation.
Your “new type of spirited cooperation” is plain old socialism dressed up in new planning-speak language, and your excitement over the process of controlling other peoples lives and property is a testament to the corrupting influence of power.
You act in the interest of your own vision because you think the entire county should look the way you want it to, and you would eagerly use the power of government to bring that about. The citizens of Elbert County may or may not need protection from developers Mr. Thomasson, but the bigger danger is from the government the crew at your focus group would unleash upon us.
It should not surprise you when Republican candidates, who hold constitutional individual rights to be superior to the whims of central planners, do not participate in a forum conducted by progressives and planners dedicated to controlling those private rights.
Brooks Imperial
Jinmao Tower in Shanghai Pudong
Our last night in Asia this trip, we’re staying in Jinmao Tower. I hope to get some colorful pictures later on when the buildings light up. Tomorrow we fly to Toronto. In the spirit of a day of new experiences – and that describes each of our days in China – we rode the Maglev train from the airport. It reached a speed of 431 kph, or 267.82 mph.
Looking out at Shanghai and considering the 19 or so million people living here, it seems that western civilization is moving forward without the west. The Islamic fundamentalists are really out of step in their hatred of America and Great Britain because our countries are no longer at the forefront of western civ. Shanghai has the youth, the population influx, workers willing to do anything 24/7, the money to pay them, the desire to grow, etc. and etc.. American cities seem a little on the quaint side by comparison, and I don’t say that as a criticism, just that we should know where we stand. We will always be the modern cradle of western civilization, and we may remain its theoretical foundation, but as to who is at the forefront, we should not kid ourselves that it’s us. And since it’s not us, and since those who are taking it to the next level have very different views about the roles of individual and state, western civilization may well become something quite different than it was when we directed its growth.
Our country does not have the comparative advantage they have over here (China) of huge population influx, and with the population influx we do have, we’re not integrating them into any kind of growth vision. Right or wrong, having everyone working toward common goals is very unifying. Americans are probably too independent to get on board with a state-sponsored vision, but there’s nothing about our approach that precludes us from voluntarily building a better world for our children. So, how the U.S. gets there must be resolved, but I think I’ve reached a conclusion that we must get somewhere better, more modern, more effective, and more integrated, than where we are today. If we continue to stagnate we will become impoverished, our culture will disappear, and we will become shabby. Our ideals deserve a much better future. And speaking locally (Elbert County), the no-growth country-in-county stagnant vision of the future is a perfect example of a prescription for decline.
North of Yangtze River, Wuhan, Xiantao
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Hefei
Hefei, capital of Anhui Province, is getting massive aid to bring it into modernity. Hundreds of thousands of poor workers wend their ways through the old streets while mile after mile of high rise apartments get constructed. Imagine an area the size of Cleveland being built to house 10 million people, all at once, from farmland. No one seems to worry too much about their carbon footprint, they’d just like to get past making footprints in mud.
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