Free Republic

Alert: Immediate Action Required! Friday, November 28, 2008 Tuesday night the Goochland Board of Supervisors will gather and cast a vote on new language to be included in the Comprehensive Plan. If approved, the consequences of these changes on property owners will be paralyzing. Property values and surrounding counties will be compromised. Marketability of real estate will be further diminished and areas of Goochland County will be neglected for important infrastructure investment. Once again, government is trying to tell citizens what they can do with their land. Help send a message to these politicians that the best comprehensive plan is...

Many California planning and environmental groups are heralding the passage of legislation designed to address global warming by curbing suburban sprawl as a watershed moment, perhaps the state's most important land-use law in more than 30 years. "It's a sea change in the way we're planning and funding growth and development," said Stephanie Reyes, senior policy advocate with San Francisco's Greenbelt Alliance. "The winds are shifting, and this is the time to get on board." But she and other advocates acknowledge that the importance of SB375, signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in late September, lies as much in...

Imagine you had never seen a skating rink. I tell you, "I'm going to invite 100 people down to strap blades to their feet and race around as they like." You say, "That's insane! Someone must coordinate all those people." Yet we know that the skaters' actions are coordinated, though not through central planning. There are predictable and understandable rules, but within them, people are free. In promoting my interest in avoiding a collision with you, I also promote your interest in avoiding a collision with me. Economics Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek called it spontaneous order. The market system is...

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed first-in-the-nation legislation Tuesday that takes the campaign to curb global warming to the streets. The complex measure includes a series of incentives and penalties aimed at encouraging cities and counties to be more aggressive in enacting land use policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming. Sen. Darrell Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat who carried SB 375, said the measure "will be used as the national framework for fighting sprawl and transforming inevitable growth to smart growth. This is a historic day for California." The legislation would use up to $12 billion in...

California 'Central Planning'   If you live in California,  you already know  that the Inmates have taken over the Asylum.    ...If you don't want to end up 'living in a condo by the Railroad Tracks', do yourself a favor and either phone, or fax a letter to, Governor Schwartzenegger TODAY, urging him to oppose, and NOT sign SB 375.   See: http://reason.org/commentaries/staley_20080826.shtml for details... (...and see below for Arnold's fax number/address.) http://www.seadogbytes.com/sbimages/SB375_Steinberg.jpg   Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger State Capitol Sacramento, CA 95814 Phone: (916) 445-2841, ext. 0 (and tell them you oppose SB 375) Fax: (916) 558-3160  

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — For decades, California cities and counties knew one way to grow — by sprawling outward. That approach, which has led to ever longer commutes, jammed freeways and worsening air quality, is being challenged under a bill that was approved Saturday in the state Legislature. If signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has not yet indicated whether he would do so, the bill would require local governments to plan their growth so that homes, businesses and public transit systems are clustered together. The goal is to help California meet the emission mandates spelled out in a wide-ranging...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger moved to end the stalemate over a state budget Wednesday by offering a compromise spending plan that calls for a temporary 1 percent sales-tax increase and additional cuts. In the past, the governor has said he is against raising taxes. But with the budget nearly two months overdue, he said it is time to move beyond partisan ideology. He said Republicans and Democrats must find a middle ground between taxes and cuts to state programs. California was supposed to have a budget in place by July 1, the start of the fiscal year, but lawmakers differ over...

Chris Matthews: Back With an Obamania Vengeance . . . If Barack Obama makes it to the White House, perhaps he should appoint Chris Matthews Commissar of Gosplan, the Commission charged with developing the economy's Five Year Plans. The Hardball host, back from vacation, displayed the enthusiasm of a dutiful apparatchik in praising an Obama ad that was in turn a pitch for central planning. During the "ad wars" segment on this evening's Hardball, Matthews first played a McCain ad that hit Obama over his plans to raise taxes and his lack of readiness to lead. After Andrea Mitchell suggested...

April 28, 2008, 7:24 a.m. The Biofuels Disaster Must EndAnother failed energy policy, courtesy of the Washington central planners. By Phil Kerpen & James Valvo Big-government, command-and-control technocrats believe that when central planning fails, the solution is a better plan and smarter planners. They never step back and look at whether planning makes sense in the first place. This was true of the Soviet Union, with tragic five-year plan after five-year plan. It was true of Communist China, with Mao’s revolutionary upheavals. And today, here in the United States, it is true of government energy policy. The 1970s and...

The hastening decline of community life in the countryside is highlighted today in a new Government report. Nearly half of all neighbourhoods have lost key amenities such as surgeries, post offices, shops and schools in the past four years, figures from Oxford University show. The report suggests that towns and villages across England are losing basic services at "their fastest rate ever", prompting claims that Labour is overseeing "the slow death of community life". Geographical deprivation is likely to worsen because of the planned closure of thousands of post offices across Britain This means that in the past four years,...

/begin my translation Growing Mushrooms and Raising Rabbits for Celebrating 60th Anniversary of Party's Birth Issue No. 118 2008.04.03 People are busy trying to grow mushrooms and raise rabbits all over the country, following Kim Jong-il's directive issued on Feb. 3, 2008. Ministry of Agriculture, which will be in charge of this drive, are prodding factories, enterprises, and other work units all over the country to carry out the directive. Workers at factories, enterprises, and work units as well as children at Kindergarten should grow mushrooms and raise rabbits until the 60th Anniversary of Korean Worker's Party's Founding. People's...

As the economy weakens and the campaign intensifies, we'll hear more of James Carville's familiar refrain: It's the economy, stupid. Well, it ain't — or, at least, shouldn't be. I'm not claiming that Carville is wrong about voting. People vote their pocketbooks. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, the economy overshadows Iraq as the most important issue by a 39% to 19% margin. What I'm saying is that this sort of voting is shortsighted. It rewards or punishes candidates for something beyond their power. We have a $14 trillion economy. The idea that presidents can control it lies between...

Economy: What the Fed does Tuesday will set the tone not just for the rest of the year, but for the rest of the decade. With so much at stake, the central bank has to get it right. That means a bigger rate cut than expected. In this case, the right thing would be to drop the fed funds rate at least a half-point to 4.75%. This would help keep the credit crunch from morphing into an ugly recession — something the Fed can avoid if it acts quickly and boldly to re-liquefy the economy. A little over two weeks...

SB 375 requires all regional transportation planning decisions and all transportation funding to be limited to a “preferred growth scenario,” that requires a minimum housing density of 10 units per acre. It was adopted by the Senate on June 7, 2007. Here is Senator McClintock’s speech in opposition to the bill: Mr. President: This measure says that all transportation plans and transportation funding decisions must be made with the object of concentrating people in dense urban cores. In this bill, it is called a “Preferred Growth Scenario.” It says all transportation plans and funds must serve this “Preferred Growth Scenario,”...

So why are people so concerned about the state of the climate? I mean really, why are these people so concerned? Do they care about polar bears, baby seals and cute, little Arctic lemurs? Please! These people have found the ticket to power, the fulcrum of Archimedes’ dreams. They can control what we do at work, what we eat, what we drive and now, how many children we have and which people are allowed to even have them. And they do it all, for the future. Global Warming is the ultimate mind job. The issue provides the ultimate shillelagh of...

Bob Samuelson has arrived to save us from our lack of testicular fortitude. He’s bipartisan and even-handed in calling people in both parties “Gurlie-Men.” Stalin may have self-selected the moniker “Man of Steel”, but his kung-fu is weak next to that of Bob Samuelson. Samuelson is Economist, hear him roar! The substance of his seven-step plan would certainly do well in front of a cast of characters that manned one of the former Soviet Union’s Central Committees. Fortunately, our modern politicians are a bunch of quiche-swilling panty-waists, when compared to the mighty Bob Samuelson. This troglodytic trouser-load of centrally planned...

At first I thought I might have stumbled across a document of some historical interest - an internal memo from the central planning committee of the Soviet Union ordering the apparatchiks to find a way to increase spending in a certain sector of the economy.Turns out it was just an editorial from today's New York Times. Consumption by the middle-class isn't high enough to suit the Gray Lady's taste, or as it puts it: "The information on middle-income households is mixed, with some data showing a decline in their spending during the Bush era and some showing an increase. But...

FREE TO CHOOSE: Tyranny of Control Friedman: It is harvest time and Japanese farmers gather their crops for the rice market in Kyoto. Of course, they will try to get as much for it as possible and the buyer's will try to buy it as cheaply as possible. That is how markets are supposed to work. That is what Adam Smith, the Scotsman who turned economics into a modern science, observed 200 years ago. He observed something else too. Adam Smith: In every country it is always and must be in the interest of the great body of people to...

The Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday approved a nearly 13-cent hike in the state's wholesale gasoline price for next week... That increase, combined with this week's hike, adds up to about 27 cents a gallon more for gasoline so far this month. The Hawaii state average is currently $2.997 for regular unleaded gas... $2.914 on Oahu, $3.096 in Hilo and $3.294 in Wailuku, Maui...regular unleaded ... Lanai...$4.149 a gallon. The national average is $2.695 a gallon.