Posted on 04/26/2002 8:14:18 PM PDT by hedgetrimmer
Hey E-S! Wanna hear my new slogan?
Pave the Rainforest!
The best thing is, we still have our freedom here in NC...at least for now.
For some reason, when it does the same thing to real estate values there doesn't seem to be the same kind of reaction. I suppose some of it has to do with the fact that everyone has a dollar bill, but not everyone owns property; so the impact isn't as universal.
Onerous land-use regulation is theft, pure and simple.
Anyways, why have people slow motion fled urban areas? Why do they leave their homes and towns? Why do they move from democrat to republican areas? It is not to ruin anything, although you can fairly say they do, but to escape entrenched leftist, unions, high taxes, regulations, shakedowns and daily tuggery of the left.
I will give you an example. Our family had 50 acres of bottom land, and lots of water rights in Oury, Colorado. Farmed hay on it and it paid the taxes. Our neighbors were small cattlemen. They made about 30k a year, each. Well, retired Californians came. Usually retired govenment/town emplyooyees and such and built $300k log mansions. And ran for town office as they had time and pensions to do so. And started spending and making a quiet, inexpensive place ito what they fled. That is a paperpushing, get your lawyer, we are spending now, and up go your taxes. We couldn't afford it and sold out. Likewise many neighbors who had been there since the late 1800's.( they moved to Wyoming )
So long as leftist take power, people will flee to the hills. No one but kids, bad artists and the rich move to democrat areas.
Reserves fell to 1.5%. This is only a built in safety margin and not a cause. It is unwise to operate plants at anything too close to 100%. Doing so will result in the failure of at least one plant and cascading blackouts like the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965 (caused by relay failure) and the New York City Blackout of 1977 (started by lightning).
Government manipulation of the free market. Electric utilities were only partially deregulated. Utilities still had price controls and limits on where they could buy. Power generators had no limits on prices they could charge utilities and had a captive market. This gave no incentive to develop new plants.
Out of State Power. California had relied on power from neighboring states for a quarter of its energy. With the utilities on the edge of bankruptcy due to state mandated price differences, out of state utilities stopped selling power to California. The federal Department of Energy later forced the out of state utilities to sell, ending the January blackouts.
...When deregulation occurred in 1996, California's major utilities sold many of their power plants to a handful of electricity wholesalers.....Demand for electricity in California has grown by 6 percent per year for the past five years.....Because of the high demand, unregulated wholesale energy prices have risen dramatically in the last year. But the rates charged to customers are still under a freeze. So the utilities buy energy at a deregulated rate from the wholesale suppliers, but have to charge customers a much lower regulated rate.....There have been no major power plants built in California in the past 10 years.....California relies on many out-of-state companies to provide them with electricity. California imports 25 percent of its electricity to meet daily demand...link
...Rolling blackouts are typically used only in severe cases, and are designed to prevent a complete collapse of the state's power system. It signals that the state's operating reserves have fallen below 1.5 percent.....Hospitals, police stations, fire departments and some residents located near these emergency agencies are unaffected by the rolling blackouts.....link
Fixes. Complete the deregulation of the industry by ending government price controls. Breakup the government created semi-monopoly power suppliers into smaller units to increase the number of competitors.
My problem has been time constraints that should now be eased as I am unemployed. Anyone looking for a lobbyist?
I have been told that by a lot of people. It's really comforting as most of my neighbors don't have a clue what I am doing, although a few are realizing that I'm not the eco-rapist they thought I was at first. I guess it's because these days I plant as much as I chop.
It's also tempting because I could do it with cash and own it free and clear, but there's one thing about it that I know in my heart: There is no coming back. Land prices here will continue to go out of sight as they always have, until it all collapses. All that love and time and care, down the tubes. Four generations of history, down the tubes, and the liberal fascism will follow me anyway in just a few years.
If it does collapse, it will do so everywhere, not just in California. That's one thing many FReepers don't understand when they bash us or advise us to cut and run. So I guess it's best that I stay and fight, and be the public example of what I espouse in stewardship and research.
Our county has resisted HCPs, although large timber companies such as Fruit Growers and Sierra Pacific have tried to go in that direction. The last example is the notorious "5 County Plan." NMFS did not want to deal with small stuff, so the state helped to broker a Coalition of the 5 Counties effected by coho. Part of the action was to go together on shared staff, conservation protocols (such as road treatments) and grant applications. The kicker was when "model" conservation ordinances began to assert themselves. These were ordinances on new building, grading, etc. that were supposed to be adopted universally throughout the region.
Locals put up a stink with the result that Siskiyou dissolved its formal ties with the coalition. (It still works with them on a collaborative and coopertaive basis.) My board wanted to back the Supervisors with a show of confidence, which meant they backed continued contractual ties with the 5 County Group. I disagreed. One of a few times that I took a public stand against my board of directors.
Anyway, I am not a fan of HCPs. I have long supported voluntary, incentive-based approaches toward conservation/habitat enhancement and non-point source pollution.
A note of interest, I have already taken the oath of office. They did it in December when I filed my papers as a candidate. I guess they do it to get the paperwork on file as there has been some stink in the past over office holders not having a signed oath on file.
I imagine that I will take it again when I am sworn in next January. I would like a formal ceremony. It is rather a momentous event in my life and I take the matter seriously. It should be marked with a bit of ceremony and witness.
I couldn't find any work building power plants there, or in NV / AZ either. I got my contractor's licence and tried building houses instead, but stumbled into the no-growth tar pit called the SLO Building Department.
There comes a time when you must ask yourself what you would do if you were Atlas under these circumstances.
I agree, and thanks for the heads up.
“Incentives” considered in local government habitat conservation plans assume that land owners will be forced to participate. In essence, local government places a new burden on property owners, then offers to partially relieve that burden as an “incentive” to cooperate.
Mob protection rackets use the same strategy. Whether one uses laws and storm troopers to operate a habitat protection racket or uses Sam and Lou as mob strong arms the end result is the same, save for one major difference. That difference is that the habitat protection racket is backed by lawmakers -- supposedly compassionate, "protect the little guy" politicians and bureaucrats -- making them appear as benefactors to society. It is based on deception that in the long run is always a net loss for the "little guy". At least a mob protection racket is seen for what it is, a criminal organization.
As one Farm Bureau manager in a rural county put it, “We don’t have a problem with urban sprawl; we have a problem with conservation sprawl.”
As one "little guy" put it, "we don't have a problem with how land owners use their land we have a problem with how politicians and bureaucrats force land owners to abide their political agendas."
Federal and state government may or may not be willing to share the cost of a habitat conservation plan. Habitat conservation plans are developed to fulfill or anticipate the demands of federal and state Endangered Species Acts. If federal and state government balk at sharing the cost, the burden would fall entirely on local property owners.
Misses the point throughout the article that the taxpayers always pay the cost. Some unfortunate citizens/subjects are forced to pay on all three levels -- local state and federal.
Local governments will argue that funding for habitat planning could be quickly depleted by landowners seeking court determination of land value. Farmers and ranchers answer that local government can avoid expensive legal battles by bargaining in good faith, offering fair market value and carefully choosing which private lands to acquire. The argument that local government can’t afford to pay market value for private land proves that government seeks to acquire land for less than market value and simply strengthens the argument that land set-asides for habitat protection are a taking of private property.
Time to sic Sam and Lou on the land owners. "Local governments mob bosses will argue that funding for habitat planning protection rackets could be quickly depleted by landowners seeking court determination of land value criminal protection racket."
I've said it before and I'll say it again. The federal government (state and local are similar) create thousands of laws and regulations each year. The three thousand laws and regulations the federal government writes in 2002 were not needed last year, nor years prior. But supposedly we need them this year and for years to come. Note that less than one percent of laws and regulations are ever repealed. Also, the several thousand laws that will be written next year and the several thousand laws and regulations written each year thereafter will not be needed until they are written. We don't need those forthcoming laws and regulations now but the supposedly compassionate, "I'll protect the little guy" politicians and bureaucrats aided by the lame-stream media and academia, will persuade the "little guy" that he and she needs the government protection services to forever write new protection laws. And of course convince force taxpayers to fund such laws as well as fund the parasitical elite that write them.
As big as the environmental scam is the IRS/congress scam dwarfs it.
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