Posted on 06/23/2005 7:30:08 AM PDT by Helmholtz
Just move into that housing that will be built next to that New London office building in which you work, or the Phizer (sp)facility in which you work, and you can walk to work. Then you are Chicom proof, as it were.
I hear that. Just adding a little fuel to this fire.
I'm all for walkable cities, believe me.
Freedom "with" the automobile will never be freedom "from" the automobile :( (unless we finally "get" it...)
Well at least the soaring French privacy rhetoric has been cut back to the home, which is the object of the SCOTUS decision. The merit of that assertion of yours, I have no anecdotal evidence, since I don't own or reside in a home on French soil Retreating from the fragile dangling limb one chose to inhabit, is a very wise move. In Anglo Saxon parlence (that vulger language), it is called, cutting one's losses.
I am quite collectivist when it comes to land use. I admit it. The economic externalities are simply too massive to ignore.
"By the way, what limits France from regulating whatever they want? My impression, is that it France is regulation city. Granted, the Germans are worse."
What limits it?
Only the willingness of the people to tolerate it and to continue to re-elect the politicians who make the regulations. If a regulation is unpopular, it will provoke a general strike and be removed. The French government is usually very careful to not pass legislation that it senses will provoke an angry public backlash, because that means a strike, and a strike means a humiliating backdown for the government.
But when a frank con like Chirac, who honestly is completely incompetent, is at the wheel of the ship of state, it keeps crashing upon the rocks. Honestly he just cannot help it. He is only President because of a voting anomaly that made Jean-Marie Le Pen his opponent. People voted for the corrupt fool in preference to the racist, but it was hardly a choice.
French business is certainly over-regulated.
Especially the labor market.
And this presents a terrible challenge for French competitivity. There is no question about it.
However, the ticklish business of using creeping regulation to start intruding on personal rights. This is a particularly American and British problem, probably because of the cultural trait of Anglo-Saxons to always obey the law. French people obey the law, but when politicans and government figures begin to use the law to try and assault liberties or privileges the French care about, French people are very quick to take to the streets and to defy the law and the authorities. You can't "creep up" on the French like this, because when a lot of people don't like what is done, they simply go on strike and disobey it, and the government has to stop doing it.
In the Anglo-Saxon countries there is not this ingrained tradition of quick recourse to civil disobedience and strikes as a powerful public pushback. Everyone knows that French politicians are arrogant, insufferable and unresponsive. And therefore, everyone knows that when they step over the line and pass a ridiculous and self-serving law, the response is to simply shove it back, say no, refuse to obey it, and force them to take it back.
In America or England, the lack of a tradition of public irascibility would make such a response more dangerous and unpredictable. In France, 7 million people can stop obeying a law, go out on strike for a week, and the government quickly retract. But in the United States, if 7 million people stopped obeying a law and went out into the street, it would be very unusual, and not obeying A law would very probably turn into a more general not obeying THE law. It would not be a strike but a riot, and things would become violent. These differences are cultural. Obviously if French government were wonderful, or even marginally responsive, there would not be so many repetitive strikes. The government ministers are as difficult and stubborn as everyone else in the country, however, so the only way to temper the one is with te temper of the other. Just so long as nobody gets killed. And nobody does.
Germany is indeed worse, much worse. For German authorities, not unlike the British, have the same insufferable condescending arrogance of high French bureaucrats. But Germans, even moreso than the English, believe that they must obey every single law, and make sure everybody else obeys every single law, no matter how stupid or overbearing. There is a famous pamphlet from Prussia issued by Frederich the Great which directs housewives all across Germany what time they are required by law to arise, what chores they must do, in what order, how they must bake their bread, the recipes they must use, etc. This is as ingrained in the German character, this reflexive obedience, as the strike is in the French character.
The result is that there are two countries, side by side, with impossible bureaucrats. One, France, has a safety valve: the people do not terribly respect their government and when government starts doing things ridiculous, they shove back, shut everything down, and don't obey the law. The government then is forced to retract it and sanity prevails. The Germans look down on this as lawlessness, and therefore, no petty regulation of any bureaucrat, however overbearing, is ever pushed back. Any individual who pushes back is pounced upon his neighbors, never mind the authorities! And so all of those laws and rules and regulations clutter, and remain, and are followed. If you drive through a German village late at night, you will see Germans quite drunk standing quietly on an empty dark and deserted streetcorner, waiting for the light to change so that they can cross the street. You will not ever see this in France.
Of course in Italy, the cars don't respect the traffic lights at noon. But the Italians take the French penchant for selective disobedience to a whole new level and make it a general national artform. For a land without any discernible laws, Italy is very pretty and well to do place. But it is foolish to drive there.
I like your last above post. I like it because I agree with it. Of course, we both might be wrong. Always bear that in mind, the clear and present possibility of errancy; it will be a salubrious antidote to that Gaulic (is that with on "l" or two?) hauteur of yours. :)
"In Anglo Saxon parlence (that vulger language)..."
Vulgar? Heavens no! It is a wonderful repository of Old French.
"Assis près de Calais dessous les lames bretonnes
Je regarde arriver les vagues anglo-saxonnes
Tous mes mots vieux français éclatent et bouillonnent."
- Balavoine
[Seated near Calais beneath the Breton eaves
I watch the waves of anglo-saxons come
and all my words of old french bubble up and boil]
You 'sound' like John Grisham. BTW, I do enjoy the exchanges between Torie and you. Carry on ... I'll get back up on the porch while the 'big dogs' run.
Either way, yer getting it in the arse from Uncle Sam, dick or harry.
Gallic. Pronounced identically to the Irish Gaelic, because it is the same thing. France is a giant Ireland.
But this is the English word.
Gaulois is the French word.
As in the cigarettes.
We in the Guild even have the Parisian French "guarantee," and the Norman French "guaranty." Most American lawyers don't know why we have two seemingly redundant Frog words for the same concept, but I know. I know, because this kind of trivia interests me - these gleaming little word toys of history, or etymology, or whatever the fancy term for it is.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/nation/story/BF6F99A05DEBCC0A8625702A001A1708?OpenDocument
Hope the link above works, it's a good article. Mentions a local mayor who says, "Taxes from commercial development help build roads, highways, schools and hospitals."
In other words, some taxpayers are taxed at the usual rate, and others, less fortunate, are taxed 100%, their homes confiscated and sold against their will. Sounds like unequal treatment, no?
And if a city is so run down, people leave. Why pour money into it, and seize homeowners' property? Why are city charters more sacred than deeds? When a house is fit only to be condemned, they condemn it. Let them do the same for hopelessly run-down cities. Instead of giving the remaining homes to a developer, give the city and its public holdings to the few hardy homeowners who struggle on in spite of inferior city government and services.
That might put the blame---and the penalty---where it belongs.
Kelo and the other holdouts should have seceded from the city and formed their own community, let that run through the courts for a couple of years.
Anyone for a boycott of Pfizer and every other Ephin' corporation that has directly benefitted from eminent domain?
America is now officially dead.
300 million Americans just had the 'American dream' of owning and preserving their property taken from them. Their protections have been stripped away and the Supreme Court specifically condoned the removal of their property protections by other investors or the government so long as the government is compensated. So, how much is any real estate investment worth in America if it can be taken by government fiat without the consent of the seller or fair market compensation?
Canada now has stronger real property rights than America. Why then would anyone invest in America if property can be taken without consent or market compensation? Private property is the foundation of private enterprise. Without any protection against seizure by competitors all real estate property in America is greatly devalued versus the rest of the world. Other countries which provide greater security for private property are sounder investments than America. Their economies will attract future investments and will prosper. America's will not.
Those are good picks, but here's the deal: Gonzales is already on the list, and furthermore, he's got his own page (see story above).
Sounds like a slam-dunk to me. Plus he's "moderate" on Roe v. Wade (less purchase for Biden and Kennedy), unless I've been totally misinformed.
Estrada is softer, too -- very Rotarian and "economic conservative", he'd fit right in at a David Dewhurst pool party. Of your two, Estrada sounds like the better bet, but Gonzales already has Post-It notes stuck all over him.
Were Danes, who accompanied Rollie the Ganger in the ninth century when he carved off a bit of Gallia omnis, whose Latin was really going downhill anyway.
Like the Danes who occupied the English Danelaw, and gave us "drag" next to "dray", "draught", and "draw", "skipper" next to "shipper" and "ship", "clog" next to "cloy", and several other cognate pairs.
Ergo, no Frenchman ever ruled England, because the Conqueror and his seed weren't French, howbeit they may have worn the sprig of the broom and called it by a French name.
I am old enough to remember the Soviets saying, and I paraphrase:
"We will sell you the rope that you will hang with...."
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