Mythical Creatures

Quote from American Thinker:

 

I'm still searching for the mythical creature that is the "financially conservative, socially liberal" politician.  In virtually every case, the pro-abortion or pro-gay marriage politician is the first to vote against a tax cut, the first to vote for more spending and quick to compromise principles on any issue there is.

 

Using the National Journal's ratings of Senators in 2007 , the correlation coefficient between "economic" scores and "social" scores is 90%.  That means they almost always go together; financial conservatives are social conservatives and vice versa.   Every Senator scoring above 60 in economic issues, scored above 50 in social ones.  Every Senator scoring below 40 in economic issues, scored below 50 in social ones.  If there is such an animal as a "financial conservative, social liberal", it does not exist in the US Senate.

 

By Randall Hoven

Shopping, Got Deer?

Fun picture from South Carolina

 

Quiet on the 207 front ... Until Now!

Flagstaff government was first, now Tucson government gives a poke at some "old school" private property rights diminution.

Just so the record is clear ... the resulting lawsuits are a direct cause of government regulatory takings.

During the successful 2006 campaign, opponents of private property rights howled that thousands of lawsuits would be filed. To date, only two have been filed with a couple of threatened lawsuits that were averted when the government backed down by following the Prop. 207 law.

Flagstaff's situation surrounds city government passage of a restrictive historic district overlay zone. The Pacific Legal Foundation is handling the suit.

Now the big bastion of liberalism, Tucson, has disregarded the Prop. 207 law and has preeminent attorney Clint Bolick knocking at the court house doors.

Doesn't the city council have some potholes to fix instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars defending the uber-liberal property control freaks desires to boss everybody in town around?

Quick excerpt from the Arizona Daily Star article of March 13, 2008:

Tucson developer Michael Goodman has sued the city for $12.5 million or permission to tear down more than a dozen buildings affected by a new law regulating demolition of potentially historic buildings.

The suit is one of the first in the state to test the limits of a proposition approved by Arizona voters in 2006, requiring governments to compensate property owners if their property value is negatively affected by land-use laws, said Clint Bolick, Goodman's lawyer.

The suit was filed Tuesday in Pima County Superior Court and asks for either exemption from the law or $12.5 million, based on the diminished property value of more than a dozen of Goodman's properties as a result of a new land-use law.

Another Proposition 207 suit was filed in October in Flagstaff on behalf of property owners affected by a historic preservation district there.

The Tucson suit targets a law passed by the City Council in June 2007 requiring completion of a study of the property on which demolition is proposed, and others in the area, as well as approval by the Tucson/Pima County Historical Commission, before a building can be demolished.

The law applies to buildings more than 45 years old that were within city limits in 1953.

This should be interesting watching the "do-gooders" get a legal whipping that will legally solidify the provisions of Prop. 207. I've got my popcorn ready for the big show.

Bob Schlanger: Living his dream on your money

Tucson resident Bob Schlanger has a dream. He is a typical "do-gooder" with visions of proper order in his neighborhood. His neighborhood. Bob is the Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association Vice-President.

Bob's dream is that his beloved neighborhood is void of tall houses that may have rooms for students who attend the adjacent university. Bob's dreamy neighborhood is quaint, quiet and cute.

There is restlessness in Bob's dream. His neighbors can build tall houses with rooms for students. And to Bob's horror, some of them are doing it, making money and actually living their dream, not his! Bob knows that they too have saved, scrimped and risk their hard work on building tall houses.

But Bob feels since he is more sincere, his dream should be "the dream" for his neighborhood. After all, Bob is the vice-president of his neighborhood association and many of them are not even members.

His statewide neighbors passed Prop. 207, protecting those who dream about tall houses against vice-president Bob of the Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association. Poor Bob, he's blue and cranky.

Before Prop. 207, Bob would have lived his dream. His friends at Tucson City Hall like Bob and they like his dream. The "Bob's" of the community were happy. The tall house people were sad because City Hall once told them they could build tall houses, but since Bob said "no" now they can't and are sorry for their loss.

We know the rest of the story ... the tall house people got tired of being pushed around by the Bob's and his friends at City Hall. They reminded their statewide neighbors about the freedom and liberty that private property gives them. The people said "yes, we remember" and asked, "Why did Bob forget?"

Bob still hasn't remembered. He clings onto his dream. Now, Bob wants his friends at City Hall to spend some of the tax money collected from the tall house people to fight the tall house people. Bob went to a City Hall meeting to get the money to force his dream on the tall house people.

There was a reporter at the meeting who wrote down Bob's words. According the reporter, Bob said:

Schlanger said the city should have the guts to challenge Prop. 207 and find out from the courts what the initiative really means, because right now nobody knows exactly what it means.

"This a dance around Prop. 207," Schlanger said. "I think we have to challenge 207. There's no better time than now."

Bob's friends at City Hall know what Prop. 207 means. It says, "Bob, tall house people have dreams, too."

It's starting to sink into their heads .... Prop. 207

Here is an excellent excerpt from the government NPR radio station KNAU.

This story was broadcast July 25, 2007. It addressed the first Prop. 207 claim filed in Arizona by a Flagstaff resident who is represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation.

The citizen passed initiative and its individual private property protections are now starting to sink into the "collective" minds of the do-gooder activists, many government officials and their fellow travelers:

"Prop 207 at it's macro level says the individual property owner is supreme rather than the community is supreme, so it's really a change in philosophy, instead of saying we want to do this change because it's going to be beneficial for the community or the city in general, things are now looked at in terms of what's best for an individual property owner."

AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! -- Finally, back to where we started after the American Revolution and before the statists used government powers to trample on our liberties. Reminds me of the graphic of the Bill of Rights with a big red stamp over it saying "VOID Where Prohibited by Law."

Of course, before Prop. 207, the government officials only cared about the do-gooder activists and their "community" plans and to hell with the individual property owner ... and to add insult to injury ... the do-gooders and their government cronies made the individuals pay by decreasing their property values.

Prop. 207 now offers legal recourse against the do-gooders and their hair-brained schemes.

Keep rattlin'

Annual Privatization Report -- Prop. 207

Reason Foundation just released its 21st Annual Privatization Report which includes an excellent write-up on Arizona's Prop. 207. (.pdf pages 10-13)

The Prop. 207 segment is titled: The New Standard for Regulatory Takings Reform

Big Rattler highly recommends you click and read to get the flavor of how local government officials are dealing with the fact that now private property rights are protected from ham-handed, do-gooder regulatory schemes.

Kudos to Leonard Gilroy! Keep the solid research coming Len ...

Bogus Reporting on Arizona's Prop 207

Excerpts from Reason Foundation's Leonard Gilroy:

A recent article in the Arizona Republic on the impact of Proposition 207 (see my recent post here) is chock full of misinformation and is a not-so-subtle attempt to undermine the eight-month-old property rights law. Space and time don't permit a thorough fisking of the piece, so I'll focus on a few key spots.

The first three paragraphs offer a clue to the direction of the piece right off the bat:

A new state law billed as a property rights safeguard has dealt a blow to residents and city leaders who want to save old neighborhoods, create shopping districts or influence what is built in their communities.

Hardly. Prop 207 hasn't done anything to restrict cities' ability to plan, create special districts, and the like; rather, it merely holds them accountable for the impacts of these planning decisions on the property rights of affected landowners. Citizens now have a form of relief if cities and counties adopt zoning changes and land use
regulations that devalue private property.

Nothing in the measure precludes or prevents governments from regulating land use; it simply offers aggrieved landowners a remedy, either via compensation for property devaluation or exemption from the regulation at hand. [More ...]

Back to the AZ Republic article...

Arizonans are now finding out that the measure severely limits cities' power to change land use, a crucial tool that helped create signature Valley neighborhoods such as Mill Avenue in Tempe, the Encanto historic district in downtown Phoenix and the Esplanade at 24th Street and Camelback Road.

Again, complete rubbish. As I note above. Nothing in Prop 207 prevents government regulation of land use, it just gives property owners a remedy that did not previously exist. Any intelligent person can read the text of Prop 207 for themselves, and they will find nothing that limits the ability of governments to zone and regulate land use. [More ...]

Boo hoo, whine whine. While I love sidewalk cafes and urban parks as much as the next urbanist, seems to me that in the grand scheme of things, protecting private property rights might just outweigh a few inconveniences and delays suffered on the part urban planners. And, once again (I'm sounding like a broken record), landowners can't "refuse to rezone" under Prop 207. They don't gain any new rights to stop municipal planning and land use regulation under Prop 207--they just get the right to seek compensation or exemption if new rules lower their properties' value. To claim otherwise is just disingenuous spin on the part of Prop 207 opponents. [More ...]

More to come from Reason on Prop 207, starting with a feature I wrote for our upcoming Annual Privatization Report 2007, set for release next week.