{"id":1006,"date":"2008-10-11T08:14:31","date_gmt":"2008-10-11T15:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2008\/10\/11\/planning-democracy\/"},"modified":"2008-11-07T08:44:17","modified_gmt":"2008-11-07T15:44:17","slug":"planning-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2008\/10\/planning-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"put it to a vote"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/planningdemocracy.jpg\" title=\"Abe21 - Planning Democracy\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/planningdemocracy.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"Abe21 - Planning Democracy\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Did you read the above?<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the problem.\u00a0 What Mr. Thomasson described isn&#8217;t democracy.\u00a0 The room contained a <u>self-selected<\/u> group of people who were 99% in favor of regulatory planning.\u00a0 The planning commission members were in favor of regulatory planning.\u00a0 They brought letters from their friends who were in favor of regulatory planning.\u00a0 Mr. Miller from county planning had switched his recommendation to also favor regulatory planning.\u00a0 To be generous, from all those sources there may have been 200 votes in favor of regulatory planning.<\/p>\n<p>Those 200 <u>non-representative<\/u> people were busy determining (amidst applause, self-congratulations and jokes) a county policy about regulatory planning that will have the authority of governing law over all of the land owners in Elbert County.\u00a0\u00a0<u><\/u>They had a good ol&#8217; time manipulating a system that most people in the county don&#8217;t even know exists.\u00a0 <u><\/u><\/p>\n<p><u>Not one<\/u> of those people in the room were <u>elected<\/u> to represent the people they were, effectively, governing.\u00a0 That is not democracy.\u00a0 No way.\u00a0 No how.\u00a0 Not even close.<\/p>\n<p>Before they can reasonably connect the word &#8220;democracy&#8221; to &#8220;regulatory planning&#8221; in Elbert County, Mr. Thomasson and friends will need to <u>put it to a vote of all the people<\/u>.<\/p>\n<p>Acting like thugs and courting sympathetic judges does not earn them the right to claim democracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did you read the above? Here&#8217;s the problem.\u00a0 What Mr. Thomasson described isn&#8217;t democracy.\u00a0 The room contained a self-selected group of people who were 99% in favor of regulatory planning.\u00a0 The planning commission members were in favor of regulatory planning.\u00a0 They brought letters from their friends who were in favor of regulatory planning.\u00a0 Mr. Miller [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,11,28],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-bocc","7":"category-planning","8":"category-treachery","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}