"I love you Mini me! You complete me!"
"EEEEEEEE!"
Posted on 02/10/2006 7:45:18 PM PST by logician2u
John Stossel's "Myths, Lies and Nasty Behavior"
Do you think farmers need more government assistance? Do you think gasoline is more expensive than ever? John Stossel may make you reconsider. (ABC)
Here's my latest list of things you may have been led to believe are true ? but aren't. I'm also including some nasty behaviors that are more than just annoying, they cost us all money.
I hope this will give you a different perspective about your money, your neighbors and your politicians.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Of the ten topics Stossel takes on this week, my favorite is this one:
No. 2 -- MYTH -- Urban Sprawl Is Ruining AmericaThe others are good, too, but this one really hits close to home for many of us. If it wasn't for "sprawl" we wouldn't have a home.Suburban sprawl is evil. The unplanned growth, cookie cutter developments is gobbling up all the space and ruining America. Right?
Wrong.
Enjoy!
This is going to be a very difficult discussion if we insist on using "URBAN" and "SUBURBAN" interchangeably.
They are as different as Red states and Blue.
well glad he figured it all out
now i can go back to sleep everyting is good
How about exploding the myth that people who use cell phones in public places are evil? I'm about fed up with that one.
However, the urban planners that call the shots in most of the "blue" areas on the map don't like to admit the suburbs exist. Therefore, it's called "urban sprawl."
We'll have to see how Stossel approaches the subject. He, as perhaps you know, is an apartment dweller in NYC and rides his bicycle to work at ABC. (But I would expect that Stossel does not recommend that regimen to be forced on the rest of us. He is a libertarian, you know.)
I don't know if I agree that urban sprawl being bad is a myth. It has always existed, BUT, Firstly, much of it has happened because families have been driven out of liberal-dominated cities and their stagnant economies and soft-on-crime politics. If it weren't for liberals in the cities, there would be less sprawl.
Number 2, add in property-rights-destoying laws (that Stossel would definitely oppose on libertarian grounds), such as open space laws which prohibit development, and sprawl gets even worse.
Number 3, towns know that businesses bring in tax dollars but schools cost money. Given our lack of property rights, towns preferentially zone for businesses. This necessarily separates jobs from the residences, increasing sprawl. The old liberal bugaboo, the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again: "free" public schools create sprawl.
Number 4, (and this is more controversial), rent-seeking homeowners. Minimum lot sizes, restrictions on multi-families etc... I think that the public schools also drive this. The quality of a school is largely determined by the quality of the other students (as opposed to funding or teachers), so neighborhoods use zoning laws to self-segregate based on socio-economic status.
Does any of this mean that we wouldn't still have sprawl? Of course not. But I'll bet it would be a lot less with universal school vouchers, stronger property rights, and conservatives running the cities.
LOL!
"Well, you can't have everything," Kunstler said.
Sums up the greenie philosophy in a sentance. Or it would, had he added, "and folks like me get to decide who gets what."
In being forced to drive everywhere, my once small town is nothing but a solid, non-moving line of traffic now. Even on a fricking Sunday night, like 10 PM... there's traffic out. Mostly rude maniacs, driving like it's rush hour. I HATE it.
I believe it's there. #9 on the list of 10.
"I love you Mini me! You complete me!"
"EEEEEEEE!"
Just think; Every second the population grows by 3...
http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop
...and seems to almost double every 30 years..
so by 2036 there will be double the amount on people on your road or even by 2021 50% more.
Well don`t worry, they say each time the population doubles a new plague comes forth to ease the strain. Last time it was aids, this time it could be bird flu.
Have a HapPy DaY!
Yep, those MSM guys are right all the time. Gimme a break!:) (note I'm not saying any specifics or defending anyone here).
Dream on.
Even on the rare occasions when Republicans get elected in the big cities, you see very little change in the way they're run.
Sprawl is good. Get used to the idea.
HERE IS THE BEST QUOTE FROM THIS ARTICLE:
private property rarely gets abused or degraded.
And there's an explanation for this. "When something belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one. No one owns it. There's no incentive to take care of it. It gets abused and degraded," Roberts said.
Private property sounds selfish. We think of rich people taking advantage of other people. But it works a lot better, Roberts said.
Why don't you google "overpopulation myth" and see what the other side has to say about that.
The world may seem crowded to you because you live in NYC. But you are perceiving your local population density as a worldwide problem.
It ain't.
I think you can trace the decline of the cities directly to the day the Feds started forced busing. When I was a kid, all the stores within a few miles of a high school had window banners cheering on the high school team. They all went away the year after busing started. Neighborhoods ceased being neighborhoods. Your schoolmates weren't the kids in your neighborhood. The quality of education went down. The Feds came to the "rescue" with more aid. Quality dropped further. People fled the cities, to the suburbs, and began building new towns and schools, out of the grasp of the Federal busing requirements. A few judges tried ordering busing across district lines. One even tried ordering a father to take his children out of a private school, because he perceived it as an attempt to avoid his order to bus his children miles out of their neighborhood. These were apparently overturned, because the judges stopped making these kinds of orders, but they kept their territory on the cities. More people fled. The cities declined. The suburbs grew. Many modern cities are now monuments to Federal incompetence. The suburbs continue to grow.
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