Posted on 09/17/2011 3:05:52 PM PDT by Graybeard58
Few issues make the blood of liberal Democrats boil hotter than suburban sprawl, which they claim is responsible for a plethora of social, cultural, economic, public-health and environmental woes. They blame sprawl on the creation of the federal highway system during the Eisenhower administration, even though the suburbanization of America was well under way before the 1950s.
Sprawl actually is a sign of prosperity. Generations of Americans have fled the cities because they were fed up with the overpaying for cramped urban apartments so they could walk or bike through crime-ridden neighborhoods to get to work, stores and restaurants.
We find liberals' complaints about sprawl curious. They are huge fans of Big Government, and virtually every problem they associate with sprawl has its own Big Government program, office or agency, each with its own vault full of tax dollars for the benefit of liberal special interests and constituencies. If reversing sprawl would create the liberal utopia, then Eden wouldn't be all that heavenly because it would have legions of unemployed liberals.
But when was the last time you heard liberals decry sprawl? Not recently, and there's a reason for that. America is mired in its worst economic downturn since the 1930s. Usually, liberals complain America has more sprawl-inducing infrastructure than it can afford. But suddenly, they believe the road to recovery is paved with asphalt, spread and rolled exclusively by Big Labor. (Unspoken is the understanding that Recovery Road will be neglected by Big Government and Big Public Labor, thereby creating more "shovel-ready" work for Big Labor down the road.)
When President Obama announced his latest "jobs initiative" last week, it looked a lot like his 2009 "stimulus," which spent hundreds of billions to build and upgrade roads and bridges to no economic avail. That's because public-infrastructure projects are economically neutral at best. In financing its "stimulus," the Obama administration first drew nearly $800 billion out of the economy before putting it back in, minus billions lost to ubiquitous waste and fraud, and billions more skimmed off by governments at all levels to cover their overhead. The "stimulus" benefited governments and construction unions, but few others because it lacked the ripple effect of money invested in economically productive work carried out by the private sector.
Consequently, the "stimulus" failed as promised to lift the economy or reduce unemployment, and it will never succeed no matter how many times liberals try it. Yet even liberals who usually believe roads and bridges are evil sprawl-enablers are ready to double-down on this failed strategy because infrastructure projects give sprawling governments a shovel-ready excuse to spend, borrow and tax more. And more spending, borrowing and taxes mean more money for liberal causes and candidates.
Now it's advantageous for them, nary a peep.
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As the “Obama Money” crowds expand in the cities, the businesses and dwellers move out to escape the crime, the Democrat-controlled corrupt politics, and the drug and gang atmosphere. What’s left are the “Deetroit’s” and welfare class that then lean on the suburbanites for welfare, food stamps, medical care, crappy schools for the 70%+ out-of-wedlock births, etc. It’s gone on now for 4 generations, where NO responsible family life exists, and living off others is the norm.
sprawl means more people owning their own land, more people learning how to maintain property, more people learning how to handle more complex personal budgets, more people learning to do things themselves, more people learning to get bids on work to be done and consequently learning more about business and commerce.
rural and semi-rural folks must own and maintain their own roads, sewers, and water supply...not to mention their homes, vehicles, and sheds. There is no garbage pickup. There is no city plows.
The more sprawl there is, the more GOP voters there are.
It imports the criminal element into the areas where people moved to get away from it, forcing them to move again.
after you experience being robbed at gunpoint,
you move to the suburbs.
That is one of the best explanations of Section 8 I have ever heard.
Agreed!
Yeah, but watch out for squirrels. Car-jacked me three times now. Wouldn’t mind it so much, but they get into these squirrel drag races and then they usually crash and then the insurance company reminds me of their “No Squirrel Driving Clause”. Insurance companies....sure, they like geckos, but they must hate squirrels.
Hmmm...I didn’t see any farmland at Monticello....I didn’t get all the way to the top though. Some contractor has the place tied up and you have to pay to get on the bus or else you can’t even drive past the house.
The drive up the mountain was heavily forested...I assume it was like that in his day. I imagined Jefferson at the top of the mountain with his spyglass peering down on the UVa campus.
The infrastructure building doesnt lead to much building in the suburbs I will bet. They want less roads in the burbs and exurbs. They want us to move in closer, to be more under Rat control. Higher gas prices help that; extending public transportation further out into lower density.
Yes. But Agenda 21 is the antithesis of sprawl. And Agenda 21 is a big deal to the libs.
Jefferson was a farmer who grew cotton, Tobacco, corn and other vegetable crops. He farmed on plantation style plan with separate farms growing separate crops.
Among his more unusual crops was poplar trees. Not so much farming them as managing the poplar forest where Monticello is.
It all started with the “New Deal”, where OTHERS became responsible for some, and they have lived that way ever since.
Keep in mind that many on the dole don’t wait until their early 20’s to have children - they’re doing it in their mid teens. Bigger government check, you know...
The worst of it started with Johnson’s “great society” which should have been repealed by Nixon or Ford, or Reagan or somebody. Johnson wrote a check that the country could not afford to pay. We are now seeing the effects of the socialism.
The libs have been spreading the propaganda about lack of space for fifty years. Just take a drive or a flight west of the Mississippi (two thirds of the country), and tell me if it looks crowded to you. Even the eastern third is hardly overpopulated compared to places like England. England is far more overcrowded than here, but I’ve driven through Britain and didn’t feel hemmed in. The truth is libs just don’t like capitalist-driven prosperity. They want people to live in rabbit hutches in huge cities. The better to control people. Inside every liberal beats the heart of a fascist dying to tell people how do live their lives.
Not when they are having kids at 15--and they have been. It is only recently a generation has taken 25 years here, ond only for some folks.
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