The Right Conservative Position On The Environment

FrontPage Magazine ^ | November 2nd, 2001 | Robert Locke

[sergeantdave]

This is the market (people) making personal choices to exercise their freedom of association. Cities would not be hollowed out if the proper incentives are in place to attract that market segment that likes cities.

Broadly, the fix for crumbling cities is competitive bidding, cut the red tape, protect property rights, relax historic preservation laws and cut marginal tax rates.

With a maze of zoning laws, licenses, regulations, a difficult labor climate and an overall tax burden that is still too high, cities are their own worst enemy when it comes to fostering entrepreneurship and attracting the talented and creative, says the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

With the right package of incentives, cities can flourish. Stealing private property under the socialist anti-sprawl scams is theft.

[Remember_Salamis]

"Cities would not be hollowed out if the proper incentives are in place to attract that market segment that likes cities."

--Yas, and that's what conservatives are stiving towards. How about property tax holidays on property bought up in urban areas?

What are your thought on eminent domain?
I say we should set up a system wherein private capital is obtained to buy out entire ghettos and bulldoze them. I know in San Francisco, one of the most cramped cities in America (and the highest property values), the worst part of the city is in the primest location: Hunter's Point. Most people ony see how bad it is there when they have to drive by it to get to Candlestick Park. But it BREEDS crime, just like the worst parts of other inner cities (although Hunter's Point is on the water).

I always have concerns for government use of eminent domain, but it is a good use in certain purposes, as outlined in the constitution. If it truly does greatly benefit the public, then do it. By bulldozing a ghetto and making good use of prime property, isn't everyone benefiting. Obviously residents of the ghetto aren't happy there.

[farmfriend]

I've started linking to the synopsis page. It gives em something to bite into if they bother to click the link.

[megatherium]

Portland's my home town, so perhaps I look at the Rose City through rose-colored glasses.

Portland does have its negatives. Traffic is much worse in spite (because?) of all the money they've spent on mass transit. Housing costs have escalated (partly due to the growth boundary). There are way too many stoners. And it's rainy from September to May. But if I could get a good position there in my career, I'd love to move back.

[MegaSilver]

We do not protect arctic mudflats or trivial little fish just because they exist. The key question to ask about any thing being pondered for environmental protection is: what has it done for us lately? What does it do, other than just exist?

This is the one part of the article I call into question. I don't think most things "just exist." Just about everything has its place in the ecosystem. Sure, some things might be done away with and not have noticable impacts, but does anyone remember that weed or fungus (the name escapes me) that we nearly hacked to extinction before we discovered that it contains valuable anticancer compounds? We never know what we might find in God's treasures.

[sergeantdave]

Portland is a socialist disaster using smart growth to destroy the community.

Smart growth is the latest snake oil cure-all peddled by urban hucksters who play with people’s lives and homes like tinker toys. It’s soviet central planning lite. It’s all the rage among socialist governors disguised as Americans. The main features are:

1) Pack people like sardines into small 20- foot boxes and pray they call it “home.”

2) Build nasty roadblocks, speed bumps, detours and no turn signs every 100 feet or so on all streets to destroy the automobile culture.

3) Erect an ugly, lumbering mass transit rail system that nearly everyone hates and is mostly haunted by bums, winos and socialist mayors.

4) Anoint unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats with unlimited power to control property.

5) Inflate the price of land so an 8 by 10 shack sells for $100,000.

6) With buildings and people packed tight like sardines, paint a big fat bullseye for terrorists on the entire city.

7) Now pollute the blazes out of the whole mess.

Welcome to smart growth. Chris DeMuth, president of the American Enterprise Institute, calls Portland’s smart growth disease “...government sprawl, or perhaps strip-mall socialism.”

Portland is a story of well intentioned citizens seeing their daydream become a nightmare. This is not about happy suburban homes with prim rose gardens, white picket fences and laughing children. This is “Invasion of the Home Snatchers,” without compensation, that will attempt to plunder a local community near you.

Some years ago, Portland citizens dreamed of a vibrant, clean, up-scale community surrounded by pristine mountains, lakes and forests, where haggard yuppies could watch the deer and the antelope play after a grinding day of rat racing. It seemed so idlyic...so perfect.

Then smart growth raided the town.

The socialist engineers pushing smart growth promised the innocent sheep in yuppiedom less congestion, clean air, no pollution, reduced infrastructure costs for sewers, transportation and roads, more affordable housing and protection of open space for the deer and the antelope to play.

“We Ain’t Building No Los Angeles” was their slogan.

So the good citizens went temporarily stupid and voted to create a soviet politburo with dictatorial powers called “The Metro.”

It seemed so perfect - a hulking soviet bureaucracy staffed by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats would draw up the big utopian plan called “Smart Growth.”

This abominable bureaucracy is the malignant “Regional Planning Commission” loved by socialist state governors. The names change from state to state.

With power stripped from local governments, the soviet planners guaranteed the sheep that the buzzing hodgepodge of mishmash local zoning would be eliminated and the perfect yuppie playground would spring from the provincial weeds.

These city wreckers, now with citizens in their clutches, drew a haphazard line around Portland and its suburbs - 24 communities in all, covering 364 square miles.
Thus was born The Portland Iron Curtain in the United Soviet Socialist Portland Peoples Republic.

The Portland yuppies found their lives flipped upside down in ways they never imagined.

1) The Metro passed dictates to force the sheep into high rise multifamily dwellings or multibusiness complexes, while no trespassing and no building signs popped up on lands circling the city.

2) The taxpayers were forced to build mass transit that no one rides but gets ooohs and aaahs from collectivist city planners and socialist mayors.

3) Highway dollars were spent to create a “traffic calming” ambiance by reducing the number and width of driving lanes and reducing speeds with barriers or other obstacles.

4) The bureaucrats passed Byzantine laws on architecture so people would have to walk if they wanted to buy food, clothing, etc.

This is not what the people of Portland wanted - easy travel, lots of leg room, a birdie at every feeder and sweet mountain air. Instead the citizens found they had hired a bunch of doomsday euro-weenies who hate vehicles.

[megatherium]

Seems to me the last time I was in Portland, there was talk of restricing "snout houses", which are new houses on very small lots, with garages in front. The size of the lots forces the front of the houses to be mostly garage, if you want a house with a garage on your lot. These were deemed ugly; a person walking down the street sees nothing but garage, supposedly. The real agenda, of course, is to discourage automobile ownership. So you pay $200,000 for some little house, without the privilege of a garage. Right. So you have to park your Honda Civic on the street and worry about its stereo being ripped. If you can find parking on the street, which in some neighborhoods is tough to come by.

But I think the author is a teeny bit hyperbolic in his description of mass transit in Portland. Of course, it is hugely expensive and tough to justify on economic grounds; but it is by no means only ridden by homeless winos. One of the odd things about Portland is that the middle class do indeed ride busses and trains. There are new developments of homes and condos along the light rail line, for folks who want to live near stations and commute downtown.

I do like his line about "government sprawl". If you regulate and restrict businesses, you discourage them. Something for Portland to contemplate as it struggles with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. (Portland hitched its wagon to the high-tech star, and a huge amount of high-tech moved up there from California, but that industry has had a rough time of it of late.)

[newgeezer]

Conservatives frequently seem to dismiss environmentalism as such as a mistaken ideal.

Hmm... For some reason, the name "Rush Limbaugh" comes to mind...

Check it out. This article is right-on.

[biblewonk]

Difference #8: Conservative environmentalism is honest about the number one threat to the American environment: immigration. The neardoubling of our population since WWII, which growth is now almost entirely due to immigration, is increasing the burden on our landscape daybyday. Liberal environmentalists know the facts, but can’t speak the truth because of their own political correctness and the constituency demands of the Democratic party. The single best easy thing we could do tomorrow to save America’s environment is stop issuing immigrant visas.

I don't buy this one at all.

[DLfromthedesert]

Rush is not against a clean environment, just against enviro-whackos that have made it a religion.

[newgeezer]

Rush is not against a clean environment, just against enviro-whackos that have made it a religion.

Sure, and Dubya is not against reducing the size of the federal government; he's just keeping all those controversial positions under wraps until the second term. 'O)

[DLfromthedesert]

So you think Rush is for air pollution and dirty water? He has said numerous times Republicans drink the same water and breathe the same air as the RATs and Greens. He simply is against policies that claim to be pro-environment, but are in truth socialist.

You mean you haven't heard the stories about people whose land has been deemed virtually worthless because an "endangered" bug was supposedly found, so the property could not be developed. Evidently, you believe the propagandists on the left, because if you think Rush is AGAINST practical environmental solutions, you have not really listened.

[newgeezer]

So you think Rush is for air pollution and dirty water?

I don't recall posting anything like that.

Evidently, you believe the propagandists on the left,

LOL. When I dare to march in other than lock step with Rush, the "evidence" points to my being a fool.

because if you think Rush is AGAINST practical environmental solutions, you have not really listened.

I've heard the all-knowing Maha Rushie belittle wind power time and time again, calling the turbines "pinwheels," "useless," "tree-hugger toys," and "eye pollution," all of which only serve to prove he doesn't know jack about wind power. Because, if he did, he'd know it fits squarely with the 10 points in the article.

[biblewonk]

< big ass font > BRAVO!!!