Randal O'Toole article on Metro (fwd)
Bob Tiernan
Expanded article by Randal O'Toole, which appeared in "Liberty" magazine:
**************************************************************
In a previous issue of Liberty, I told the story of Oak Grove, a suburb of
Portland protesting a plan to quadruple local population densities. Oak
Grove is just one of many neighborhoods that Portland-area planners want to
"densify" through a prescriptive zoning system that would impose apartments
and commercial developments on quiet residential areas. These plans are
coming from an agency known as Metro, which proudly bills itself as one of
the strongest regional governments in America.
In 1973, a right-wing publisher called the Independent American issued a
little book titled Beware Metro and Regional Government! Subtitled "an
expose of those who seek to destroy local self-government," the book is
full of factual errors and paranoid delusions tying metropolitan and
regional governments to the Rockefellers, the Council on Foreign Relations,
and other favorites of conspiracy theorists.
At the same time, the book contains a glimmer of truth: that regional urban
governments tend to restrict freedom and local self determination. This is
clearly visible in Portland, where Metro and related agencies think nothing
of passing rules that, among other things:
* Impose high-density developments on unwary neighborhoods of
single-family homes;
* Drive up the price of single-family housing even as they
make it nearly impossible for some people to sell their homes;
* Forbid some farmers to build homes on their land even as
they coerce other farmers to subdivide;
* Force employers to monitor and reduce the amount of driving
done by their employees;
* Insist that retailers build tiny stores even as the
national trend is to larger and larger stores;
* Demand that stores and other developments be designed in
ways that developers have proven, through hard experience, to be
unmarketable.
Metro and other regional governments, sometimes called "metropolitan
planning organizations," are not an international conspiracy. Instead, they
are a product of decades of struggle between central cities and the suburbs
that surround them. As soon as streetcars and automobiles made it possible
for people to live several miles from their work, some people began moving
out of the established cities to places where land was cheaper, life was
less regulated, and taxes were lower.
To central city officials, suburbanites were parasites, enjoying the
advantages of the big city without paying their fair share of the costs.
Annexations and city-county consolidations were attempts to include the
suburbs in the tax base and make them pay their fair share. The suburbs
fought back by incorporating towns of their own, making them immune to
hostile takeovers-or so they thought.
In 1966, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development required that
all urban areas seeking federal grants form "metropolitan planning
organizations." Today there are more than 300 of these MPOs or metros
scattered across the country. Some are little more than post office boxes;
others are much more powerful.
For the federal government, metros were simply a way to insure that it
would not have to consider competing proposals from different jurisdictions
in an urban area. But for central city officials, metros were a new tool
for extending their reach over the suburbs.
At first glance, the regional government idea seems to make sense. There
are some issues, it is argued, that are clearly of regional (or
metropolitan) concern, and the individual cities, counties, school
districts, and other governments that make up an urban area can't handle
those issues. These issues might include pollution, transportation, and
protection of scenery and open space.
Like any bureaucracy, however, a regional government wants to grow. So,
once established, it tends to take on more and more issues until it become
exceptionally intrusive on the lives of urban-area residents.
Portland's Metro
Portland's regional government, which calls itself Metro, started out life
as a solid waste disposal agency. Sounds innocent enough. Then it took over
the Portland zoo. Then it became the chief planner for Portland-area
transportation, again for the purpose of getting federal grants.
As Metro was growing, so was a new movement in urban planning called the
New Urbanism. New Urbanists believe that cars are the chief problem in
cities and that people rely on cars only because cities are poorly designed
for transit, pedestrians, and cyclists. So New Urbanists call for urban
redesign for transit and pedestrians.
New Urbanists also worry about sprawl and the loss of farms, forests, and
open space. Everybody says that they don't want their city to look like Los
Angeles, sprawling across thousands of acres of once-prime farm land.
A key New Urban prescription for both cars and sprawl is higher density
development. Instead of building homes on half-acre lots, people should
live in apartments located above retail stores and offices. Then they can
walk to markets and work and their communities will require less land.
The "Neotraditionalists" who I described in my previous article are a
special branch of the New Urbanists who believe that building design is as
important and urban layout. Neotraditionalists want large front porches,
tiny garages, peaked roofs, and other design elements. Otherwise, they are
a part of the New Urban movement.
New Urbanism is fine so long as it is optional. There's nothing wrong with
someone building or living in a walk-up apartment with shops on the ground
floor. But the New Urbanists know that, given a choice, most people won't
want to live like that. In some cities, New Urbanists are trying to build
demonstration communities to show how nice high-density living can be. But
in Portland, New Urbanists are going much further.
Portland's Metro has a five-part program for urban and suburban renewal:
* A fifty-year plan for the region, complete with population
and employment targets;
* An urban-growth boundary outside of which little or no new
development may take place;
* Densification of the residential areas within the growth
boundary to double or quadruple their current populations;
* Construction of light-rail lines throughout the area; and
* Prescriptive zoning codes that call for pedestrian-friendly
and transit-oriented developments, especially near light-rail lines.
Metro's efforts are also supported by a number of policies and regulations
passed by various other federal, state, and local agencies.
Metro's Fifty-Year Plan
In 1992, Portland-area voters were confronted with a ballot measure titled
"limits regional government." In fact, the measure gave almost unlimited
powers to Metro, including the power to do all planning in the urban area
and to force three counties and twenty-four cities to conform to its plan.
Voters, most of whom did not understand this, approved the measure by a
modest margin.
Metro immediately began writing a fifty-year plan for the Portland area
that will be finished in 1997. Cities and towns will then have three years
to revise their zoning codes and other ordinances to conform to the plan.
Metro has already given all cities in the area new population targets for
both residents and jobs, and many are moving to revise their zoning codes.
The plan designates thirty-five "centers" connected by "main streets" and
transit "corridors." These areas occupy about a quarter of the urban area,
but planners want them to house nearly half of all new residents over the
next half century.
Needless to say, if Soviet five-year plans were failures, then Metro's
fifty-year plan will be ten times worse. As in the Soviet case, Metro's
planning will lead to severe shortages of some things-notably
congestion-free highways and single-family homes-and huge surpluses of
others-notably an obsolete transit system and high-density apartment
complexes.
The Urban-Growth Boundary
Oregon's 1973 land-use law requires all cities to have urban-growth
boundaries outside of which developments would be minimized. Metro set
Portland's boundary in 1979. Supposedly, the boundary would be expanded
when most of the land within it was developed.
More than half of the land inside the boundary that had been vacant in 1979
was developed by 1990. Portland grew exceptionally fast in the early 1990s
and housing prices shot up. Homebuilders argued that rising home prices
were due to the lack of vacant land within the boundary and convinced the
1995 legislature to pass a "truth-in-planning" law requiring expansion of
urban-growth boundaries to insure a twenty-year supply of vacant land.
Libertarians argue that the boundary is an uncompensated taking of private
property. But a more insidious problem has developed: Now that the boundary
has been set, it is sacred. Many local environmentalists and city officials
are lobbying relentlessly to insure that it not be expanded. Since Portland
is growing rapidly, the only alternative is to pack more people within the
boundary. That seems to be Metro's goal.
Densification
Instead of expanding the boundary, Metro responded to the truth-in-planning
law by giving all cities in the area targets for increased residential
densities. Even though the fifty-year plan is incomplete, several cities
have begun rezoning to meet these targets. The targets also include jobs,
and zoning must provide for these as well.
Region-wide, Metro wants new housing developments to average more than 15
units per acre-less than 2,900 square feet per unit. That includes both
multi- and single-family homes; developments of just single-family homes
are to average 4,100 square feet per lot (e.g., 41 feet by 100 feet or 64
feet square). That's less than half the recent average of about 8,500
square feet per new home.
Densities in areas designated centers must more than double; corridors must
nearly double. Existing neighborhoods of single-family homes will be left
alone only if they are outside of a designated center or corridor and if
cities can meet their population targets elsewhere.
In many places, these targets are ludicrous. In the centers, Metro wants to
triple or quadruple existing population densities and to require retail
developments on the same sites, thus meeting the New Urban goal of a
mixed-use neighborhood where people can walk to market or work. Metro plans
to have nearly half of all newcomers to the Portland area live in such
high-density, mixed-use areas.
For example, a typical urban office complex today might employ 60 or 80
people per acre. A typical apartment building might house 12 to 24 families
per acre. Only in downtown cores are jobs or residents denser. Yet Metro is
proposing several developments that would employ 90 people and house 25 or
more families all on the same acre. Effectively, Metro wants to build new
downtown Portland's all over the urban area.
Frank Lloyd Wright realized 75 years ago that the automobile, electricity,
and the telephone effectively made downtowns obsolete. Joel Garreau, author
of Edge City, says that Wright was right: Americans haven't built any new
"downtowns" in more than eighty years. Yet Metro planners are betting that
nearly half of all new Portland-area residents will want to live in a
downtown-like setting.
The New Urbanists have an answer for those critical of their downtown
orientation. It is called light rail.
Light Rail
Light rail, says Metro planners, will attract people to live in centers,
corridors, and other high-density areas. So Metro wants to build a huge
system of light-rail lines throughout the Portland area.
Portland already has one light-rail line completed in 1986. Planners
projected that ridership would reach 41,500 people per day within five
years of completion. In fact, ten years later, ridership is only about
27,000 people per day.
The reason for such low ridership is simple: Light rail is an inflexible
system that doesn't go where people want to go. Developed over a century
ago (when people called them "streetcars" or "trolleys"), light-rail
vehicles made sense in cities with no cars and little pavement, but can't
compete against the almost infinitely flexible and convenient automobile.
In a place such as New York City, population densities are high enough that
a rail system can make sense. But even if light rail can attract people in
Portland to live in higher densities-which is unlikely-light rail suffers
from another problem: Pork.
The federal government pays from 50 to more than 80 percent of the
construction costs of light-rail lines. For many city officials, then,
light rail becomes a way to transfer money from the feds to local
contractors. Transit has nothing to do with it.
At a cost of about $14 million per mile, the first light-rail line went 50
percent overbudget, but it was cheap compared to the lines now under
construction and in the planning stages. A line now under construction is
costing $55 million per mile, while two more lines being planned are
projected to cost $100 million per mile.
The total cost of one planned eleven-mile route will be $1.5 billion. All
eleven miles closely parallel a line of the Southern Pacific Railroad,
which the Union Pacific just bought for $3.9 billion. For less than three
times the price, Portland could have bought a 15,000-mile railroad, instead
of just eleven!
To Metro, the high cost of light rail has a benefit other than pork: It
reduces the funds available for activities that might actually reduce
congestion, such as highway expansion or improved bus lines. Metro says
that it regards congestion as a sign of "positive urban development." What
this means is that, since Americans tend to live, on average, within 22
minutes of work, increased congestion will make Portlanders want to live in
higher density areas-which is Metro's real goal.
Portland already spends two-thirds of every public transportation dollar on
transit. Boosting the cost of light-rail construction will increase this to
at least 75 or 80 percent. This means that highways will slow to a crawl.
People will continue to drive, because even in bumper-to-bumper traffic
autos remain more convenient-and usually faster-than light rail (whose
average speed is only 19 miles per hour). But they will tend to settle
closer to work to keep their commute times down.
Transit-Oriented Developments
Metro plans to supplement light rail with "pedestrian-friendly" and
"transit-oriented" design codes aimed at reducing people's dependency on
the auto. Pedestrian friendly means that people can easily walk or take
transit from home to work or market without being confronted with seas of
parking lots, difficult-to-cross streets, and whizzing cars.
New Urban design codes call for all stores to front on the streets, with
parking hidden in back if it is available at all; residential areas with
homes on small lots and narrow streets; and more pedestrian ways and bike
paths. To the New Urbanist, "pedestrian friendly" means "auto hostile." So
parking will be limited throughout the city; traffic will be "slowed" under
the theory that more congestion means more local business; and the rate of
highway expansion and improvement will be far slower than the rate of
population growth.
In effect, Metro is designing a city for the 6 to 10 percent of people who
walk, bicycle, or ride transit to the exclusion of the 90 to 94 percent of
people who drive or ride in automobiles.
The Results
Will light rail, urban-growth boundaries, and high-density,
pedestrian-oriented developments make Portland a better place to live? Many
Portlanders seem to think so, as they have supported Metro in several
elections. Portland's mayor, Oregon's governor, and numerous other elected
officials strongly support Metro's efforts. Suburbanites are less
supportive, including several suburban city officials, but Metro is still
too distant for most people to understand the real trade-offs.
Metro claims that its fifty-year plan will increase Portland's livability
by reducing congestion, reducing pollution, and protecting open space. But
at least one major organization suspects that Metro's plan will, in these
respects, make Portland far worse to live in. According to this
organization,
* Despite major efforts to discourage auto usage,
Portland-area congestion will quadruple;
* Despite spending billions on light rail, the numbers of
people using transit will remain below 5 percent;
* Despite mandates to reduce air pollution, some forms of
pollution will increase and violate both federal and state standards;
* Despite efforts to protect open space, tens of thousands of
acres of farms and forests will be developed; and
* Despite all of planners' efforts to make high-density,
pedestrian-friendly developments as attractive as possible, developers
won't build them and people won't live in them unless they are subsidized.
Who is making these predictions? Why, Metro itself. All of these numbers
are published and readily obtainable in Metro documents. But Metro
supporters choose to ignore them, believing instead in myths and fables
such as the idea that light rail and higher population densities will
reduce congestion.
Currently, says Metro, about 94 percent of all trips in the Portland area
are by auto. Less than 3 percent are by transit and the rest by bike or on
foot. Metro predicts that spending some three-fourths of Portland's
transportation budget on light rail will have zero effect on auto usage.
Higher density developments may reduce auto usage a couple of percentage
points, while pedestrian-friendly design and higher parking costs may
reduce it a couple more points.
The result is that, after fifty years, 90 percent of Portland-area trips
will still be by auto-and that is according to Metro's transportation
computer model, which is probably optimistic. With projected population
growth, this means that overall auto-miles driven will increase by 68
percent-yet Metro plans to increase the highway system's capacity by only
13 percent. Metro expects that the number of miles of congested roads will
increase from 160 today to 620 in fifty years. Since most pollution is
generated in congestion, this will produce far more pollution than a less
congested alternative, and more of some types of pollution than is
generated today despite cleaner cars in the future.
If the fifty-year plan won't reduce congestion or pollution, then its only
saving grace is its protection of open space. But, to save "open space"
outside the urban-growth boundary means Metro must force the development of
farms and other lands inside the growth boundary. At least 13,000 acres of
lands inside the boundary are currently farmed by people who sell their
produce to urban residents. These farms are protected by Oregon tax
exemptions designed to preserve farms and open space.
But Metro regards farms inside the growth boundary as "vacant land" that is
wasted if not developed. So Metro wants to take away the farmers' tax
exemptions, which it says are "counterproductive to good planning."
Meanwhile, many farmers outside the urban-growth boundary want to develop
their land-in some cases because the land is not really suitable for
farming anyway. Metro and other planning agencies are trying to prevent
this by forbidding development of land in small parcels.
But some people simply want to live on large lots and won't be satisfied
with a new home on a 41-foot-by-100-foot lot. If just 5 percent of the
people who would have been happy on quarter-acre lots inside the growth
boundary build instead on 20-acre lots outside the boundary, then Metro's
plan will accelerate, not slow, urbanization.
The open-space question is a red herring in any case. Only about a third of
the Portland-area is residential, and allowing people to build on bigger
lots won't add that much to the urbanized area. Even if it did, Portland's
urban area takes up only three-eighths of one percent of Oregon, so
doubling the urban area's size would bring it to just three-quarters of a
percent. That hardly represents a major loss of farms, forests, or open
space.
Even though its own numbers show that high densities and
pedestrian-friendly designs won't reduce congestion or protect much open
space, Metro persists in promoting such developments. Metro and
Portland-area cities such as Gresham, Hillsboro, and Beaverton have given
millions of dollars in tax breaks and direct subsidies to developers who
will build to high densities. The developers readily admit that, but for
the subsidies, they expect their developments will lose money.
There won't be enough subsidies to go around, but within a few years Metro
expects to have all local zoning codes revised to mandate such
developments. The city of Gresham has already passed such a code requiring
high-density apartments in an area of single-family homes. City officials
assured residents that their homes would be "grandfathered" in so long as
they wanted to keep them.
After the first apartment complex was built, with subsidies of course, some
families decided to move-and found that they couldn't sell their homes. The
new zoning code specified that a single-family home destroyed by fire
couldn't be rebuilt without special permission from the city. Since banks
won't lend on a house that can't be rebuilt after a fire, no one who wanted
to buy in the area could get financing.
Federal and State Support
Many federal and state agencies are supporting Metro's New Urban goals with
similarly draconian rules. Although transportation planners traditionally
see their job as reducing congestion, the U.S. Department of Transportation
is enthusiastic about Metro's plans to congestify Portland. Ironically,
federal funds aimed at congestion reduction are a major source of Metro
grants to developers of high-density housing.
The state Environmental Quality Commission passed a rule requiring
employers to attempt to reduce their employee's use of autos for commuting
by 10 percent. Employers who failed to make a good faith effort to do so
can be fined. Another state agency passed a rule requiring all major Oregon
cities to reduce per-capita auto usage by 20 percent in the next thirty
years. Since per capita auto usage has increased steadily by 2 percent or
more per year for at least 75 years, this seems impossible. The same agency
also requires a 10 percent reduction in per-capita parking in all cities.
These rules won't work. Reducing parking, for example, may merely cause
people to drive more looking for a parking space. But rules and red tape
will confirm the suspicions of many that government is too big.
Unfortunately, Metro's plans, rules, and regulations will all be in place
before many Portland-area residents wake up to the problems. To date,
Metro's only opponents are the developers-and they are widely ignored
because of their "conflict of interest." Local newspapers print Metro
fables as if they were fact and ignore other viewpoints. And most people
are happy to vote for light-rail boondoggles in the hope that they will
reduce congestion even though most voters will never ride a light-rail
vehicle themselves.
Oak Grove, where I live, seems to have escaped Metro's grasp. Metro had
tentatively designated Oak Grove as one of the centers whose population
density would be quadrupled. After neighbors loudly protested the county's
planned densification, the county asked Metro to not designate Oak Grove as
a center. Perhaps fearing that Oak Grove's protest would spread, Metro
complied.
Oak Grove lucked out that the county decided to rezone the neighborhood
before Metro's plans were finished. Other neighborhoods will not be so
lucky, and residents will wake up one day to find the bulldozers and their
door driven by local officials with a mild apology that "Metro is making us
do it."
For cities elsewhere in the nation, Portland is widely regarded as a
testing ground for New Urban ideas. Planners tout Portland's light rail and
urban-growth boundaries as a great success, and few know enough to answer
them. So it is not surprising that cities all over the country are
building, planning, or considering light-rail lines, transit-oriented
developments, and other New Urban ideas. If you live in one of those
cities, hang onto your pocketbook and plan to either loudly protest or make
a quick getaway.
Randal O'Toole
A Fat Guy
In article
<Pine.SUN.3.92.961207...@kelly.teleport.com>,
zu...@teleport.com says...
> * Impose high-density developments on unwary
neighborhoods of
>single-family homes;
No offense intended here, BUT:
I take it you are against growth? Do you propose that we all live out
in the country and burden the already over crowded freeway
systems?
Lets face it. People are going to move into an area of growth, such
as Portland, whether we want them here or not. It is purely assinine
to NOT plan for this and build high density subdivision. If we don't
do this, what do you think the prices of land will be in 10 years?
They would be astronomical!!!!
Heres another interesting thought. If you don't like living in the city,
why did you ever come here in the first place? You know, your
neighbors thought the same thing when most of you moved in.
They hated seeing these "new" subdivisions too.
Just my professional opinion as a Civil Engineer working in the land
development industry
FLAME ME!
Bob Tiernan
RANDAL O'TOOLE'S REPLY (forwarded by me) FOLLOWS THIS:
dlar...@pacifier.com wrote:
>zu...@teleport.com says...
>
>> * Impose high-density developments on unwary
>> neighborhoods of single-family homes;
>No offense intended here, BUT:
>
>
>I take it you are against growth? Do you propose that we all live out
>in the country and burden the already over crowded freeway
>systems?
>
>Lets face it. People are going to move into an area of growth, such
>as Portland, whether we want them here or not. It is purely assinine
>to NOT plan for this and build high density subdivision. If we don't
>do this, what do you think the prices of land will be in 10 years?
>They would be astronomical!!!!
>
>Heres another interesting thought. If you don't like living in the city,
>why did you ever come here in the first place? You know, your
>neighbors thought the same thing when most of you moved in.
>They hated seeing these "new" subdivisions too.
>
>Just my professional opinion as a Civil Engineer working in the land
>development industry
Randal O'Toole replies:
I guess we haven't communicated very well, because neither Bob Tiernan nor
I oppose growth. What we oppose is government interference with people's
lives, which though well intended almost always ends up being bad for both
business and the environment.
Less than 1.8 percent of Oregon has been developed to date, so we are not
exactly threatening to overrun the countryside. The idea that we need
government agencies to force people to live in high-density developments in
order to save open space is absurd--yet that is what is going on.
Taking up a little more of the countryside is actually one of the best ways
to reduce congestion and pollution. On the other hand, high-density
developments are among the best ways to increase congestion and pollution.
Yet planners at Metro are selling high density to Portland leaders on the
promise that it will reduce congestion and pollution--a promise refuted by
Metro's own computer models and projections.
The price of land is shooting up today because planners have created an
artificial shortage of it. Expanding the Portland urban-growth boundary by
just one mile in all directions (except into Washington, of course) would
provide all the land we need for roughly the next 100 years. Instead, some
people are working hard for a "zero option" meaning no expansion of the
boundary. That will drive up land prices and make homeownership
unaffordable for many Portlanders.
Take a look at my report on Metro, planning, and urban growth at:
http://www.teleport.com/~rot/Metrotofc.html
I'd be interested in your comments.
Randal O'Toole The Thoreau Institute
"In wildness is the preservation of the world."
"That government is best that governs least."
smudge
In article <Pine.SUN.3.92.961226...@kelly.teleport.com>,
Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> wrote:
> RANDAL O'TOOLE'S REPLY (forwarded by me) FOLLOWS THIS:
>
>
> >Lets face it. People are going to move into an area of growth, such
> >as Portland, whether we want them here or not. It is purely assinine
> >to NOT plan for this and build high density subdivision. If we don't
> >do this, what do you think the prices of land will be in 10 years?
> >They would be astronomical!!!!
Correct...only the rich will be able to live here...
> Randal O'Toole replies:
>
>
> Taking up a little more of the countryside is actually one of the best ways
> to reduce congestion and pollution. On the other hand, high-density
> developments are among the best ways to increase congestion and pollution.
> Yet planners at Metro are selling high density to Portland leaders on the
> promise that it will reduce congestion and pollution--a promise refuted by
> Metro's own computer models and projections.
Correct here, sir...high-density is responsible, IMHO, for our recent
flooding, if houses were not cramded together, the rain would have some
place to-go (ie under ground). Have you been up Sky Line Blvd lately, see
all those condos and what ever else they call that crap...recipe for
disaster!!!!
>
> Randal O'Toole The Thoreau Institute
> "In wildness is the preservation of the world."
> "That government is best that governs least."
We do need less govt. Look at Metro..what a joke...
--
----
A Fat Guy
In article <no_spam-2912...@ip-pdx07-26.teleport.com>,
no_...@teleport.com says...
>> Taking up a little more of the countryside is actually one of the best ways
>> to reduce congestion and pollution. On the other hand, high-density
>> developments are among the best ways to increase congestion and pollution.
>> Yet planners at Metro are selling high density to Portland leaders on the
>> promise that it will reduce congestion and pollution--a promise refuted by
>> Metro's own computer models and projections.
>
>Correct here, sir...high-density is responsible, IMHO, for our recent
>flooding, if houses were not cramded together, the rain would have some
>place to-go (ie under ground). Have you been up Sky Line Blvd lately, see
>all those condos and what ever else they call that crap...recipe for
>disaster!!!!
>
After reading Randal's article further, I realized that we actually agree on the issue.
The reply, unfortunately, went via email but would not post here due to a server
problem of some sort (sorry Bob). Anyway, I do agree with this. As for flooding,
the runoff from the buildings is handled via infiltration systems and such, but this
has been a most unusual year as we have had two years in a row now that have
broken records. This much rain is only supposed to happen every 100 years. A
100 year rain is expected to cause minimal flooding, but two 100 year storm events
in a row were never planned for. Believe me, we've been hearing a lot of
complaints at the office this year. It's bound to get worse too when the snow
starts to melt.
Bring out the sandbags!
Foxglove Records
Mr. O'Toole,
You and Mr. Tiernan claim that what you really oppose is government. The
problem in today's world is that government is essentially the only
organized power base that offers any protection to the average citizen
against complete domination by the rich and powerful. You refer to our
locally elected regional government, Metro, as a joke. The only joke
about Metro is that it's being taken over and subverted by representatives
of the development industry, using manipulative, back-room maneuvering to
pave the way for certain companies and individuals to make huge profits.
This is to be done in spite of the will of the citizens of this area to
hold the line on urban sprawl. The joke is on us, the taxpayers. The
cost of extending services and basic infrastructure to your newly
urbanized areas will be paid by us all, for a long time, along with the
not always quantifiable costs of increased pollution, loss of quality of
life, etc. The profits will be reaped by a comparative few. The real
joke is that so many people have been fooled into thinking the issue is
individual rights versus government interference. The real issue is
private profit versus the well-being of our community.
I welcome your comments.
Randal Bays
Mike Chapman
On 7 Jan 1997 02:08:01 GMT, f...@teleport.com (Foxglove Records ) wrote:
>You and Mr. Tiernan claim that what you really oppose is government. The
>problem in today's world is that government is essentially the only
>organized power base that offers any protection to the average citizen
>against complete domination by the rich and powerful.
And what protection is there for those who don't share the majority's
vision? What protection for those who seek alternative medicines,
alternative lifestyles? Those who don't want their children to be
force-educated? Those who don't want police breaking the door down
because they were growing the wrong plant or because someone say them
slap their child or spouse?
There is none sir, from your social democracy. A gang I can defend
myself from. The socialist police I cannot. A rich man I can run
from. The government is everywhere.
The idea of private property is that you CONTROL its use. You should
be able to sell any portion of it, and make any improvements which do
not DIRECTLY affect the property of others, or the true common
property, such as air and water.
>You refer to our
>locally elected regional government, Metro, as a joke. The only joke
>about Metro is that it's being taken over and subverted by representatives
>of the development industry, using manipulative, back-room maneuvering to
>pave the way for certain companies and individuals to make huge profits.
Hello? Earth to Marxist dupe. Know what the urban growth boundary
is?
>This is to be done in spite of the will of the citizens of this area to
>hold the line on urban sprawl.
To do so they would properly (and constitutionally) need to pay all
people whose property they have seized for public use, or just not
extend services, in which case private industry would step in and do
so.
>The joke is on us, the taxpayers. The
>cost of extending services and basic infrastructure to your newly
>urbanized areas will be paid by us all, for a long time, along with the
>not always quantifiable costs of increased pollution, loss of quality of
>life, etc. The profits will be reaped by a comparative few. The real
>joke is that so many people have been fooled into thinking the issue is
>individual rights versus government interference. The real issue is
>private profit versus the well-being of our community.
I really can't imagine what makes you think this. I suspect you
aren't happy with the concept of private property in general, nor
private industry. You don't think that individuals can decide where
they want to live, in what structures.
Please provide some more details of exactly which corporations and
individuals are controlling the government to induce all this
uncontrolled sprawl we're seeing (? do you really think that?).
Lense dense population is MORE healthy and MORE dignified. I don't
care if it covers the entire country (not bloody likely), we've got a
hell of a lot of people you know, and only more coming. To force them
on top of each other, particularly in a region prone to serious
natural disaster, is criminal. It causes disease, crime and other ill
effects, and a general loss of dignity. Better to have a half acre of
grass to call your own, and nice roads to use at your own will, than a
concrete patch shared among 100 other families, and high taxes for
moving when and where the government provides for.
The primary answer is to stop encouraging population growth.
Eliminate immigration except for special cases. Break up the US so
that that places like California can't dump their diseased populations
on the less developed areas. If someone wants to go terrorist, PLEASE
DO take out I5 at the border with as many tons of ANFO you can cook
up. Then do it again. And again.
You, and the other socialists, have a vision for the society they
want. They think they have a right to engineer society, rather than
encourage it in certain directions through consentual institutions.
You are going to experience a backlash, that will probably be just as
extreme as your actions have been, but in the opposite direction. The
urban yuppies and their stacked condos are going to be driven out as a
matter of survival - class warfare.
It will be a matter of survival for the many people who REJECT your
kind of society. The farmers were duped into supporting the urban
growth boundary for the short-term benefit of keeping the yuppie scum
out of their communities. When they fully realize what kind of
government they have helped put in power, and that it can't be
dislodged at the ballot box... one can only guess at possible
outcomes.
----
Brought to you by the "Vote 7.62x51 for Real Change" Committee.
Don't stick anything through my front door you don't plan on losing.
David Papworth
In article <5av913$r...@news.pacifier.com>,
A Fat Guy <dlar...@pacifier.com> wrote:
>
>I resemble this remark. Truth be known, it's the local officials who are making
>big bucks with developments. The only way we are allowed to develop is
>to bride the officials. Of course these aren't called bribes, they are called
>"impact fees" or "development fees" or "subdivision fees". Usually we pay
>about $60,000 per development just in fees to the local city planners. Are
>these fees necessary? By no means! I've even seen them wave fees to
>developers that they were friends with. We are talking major corruption here.
>
Do you have specific names, dates, or any other
substantiation of your allegations? If this were
real there should be no problem taking your case
to the local prosecutors.
>
>Now, here is the amusing part. All those fees we pay? They are supposed
>to go to maintaining all this infrastructure. Also, the cost of extending
>services and building the new roads are all incurred by the developer. If I
>want to develop an area, I have to build the roads and lay all utilities AT MY
>EXPENSE and not the cities. The affect developments have on your taxes is
>to affect your property values. All other expenses are paid for by the
>developer.
Traffic impact fees are supposed to be collected,
to help mitigate the consequences of the additional
traffic in the general area. Most developers manage
to avoid paying much of anything towards general TIF
monies, by applying for credits against their subdivision.
Typically they are conditioned to put a traffic
light on the entrance to their cul-de-sac subdivision;
this exhausts the TIF money; leaving nothing to pay for
widening the surrounding roads or otherwise provide
infrastructure for anything other than the subdivision itself.
This is why the region is constantly trying to raise
road construction funds through the various MSTIP
bond issues.
> I won't disagree that developers are making a lot of profit in some (most)
>cases, but they are not doing anything that you couldn't do yourself. It's
>called capitalism and anyone can do it. The unfortunate part is that people
>who are to lazy to motivate themselves to become successful prey on those
>of us who do by voting in more and more government intervention to bring
>what they consider "equality". Government is not the answer. How much
>better would your life be if you didn't have to pay a federal income tax?
>
I personally have nothing against profit from free enterprise.
Home building is something of a special case, however, since
it involves the permanent harvesting of a non-renewable resource
(open land) and is heavily subsidized by the surrounding community.
It is true that developers (and, indirectly,
the eventual homebuyers) pay for most of the expenses
of the homes, streets, and lighting within each
subdivision. Fees are charged to connect sewer and water.
This is as it should be. Anything less is an overt and
unfair subsidy.
Subdivisions bring new people, and these people don't sit quietly
within their subdivision, but are part of a larger community.
This community, and the governments you so readily demonize,
builds schools for the children, sewers for the waste products,
fire houses for the emergencies, roads for the cars,
and planners to avoid a chaotic mess.
These items cost money; money which would not be needed in the
absence of the new development. I've seen estimates that peg
the costs of new schools at $11000 to $16000 per home;
sewer hookups running at a $1000 per home deficit to actual
costs, road improvements running at $3000 to $7000 per home.
I won't even try to guess at the costs of prisons and fire
houses.
The home builders have managed to avoid even the mildest
level of impact fees to pay for schools, by convincing
the "Rabid Republican" Oregon state legislature to
pass laws against it. California and Washington State
charge ~$1200 per home, to at least
provide some money for new schools. But the home builders
spin the absurd argument that such a charge is "unfair"
because not all new homes bring new children. But they
neglect to mention that the lack of impact fees passes
the entire burden on to whole community, rather than
confining it to the new developments that are the
direct cause of the need for more infrastructure.
This is somehow considered "fair" to a home builder.
>Do you know what the income tax pays for? Nothing in this country. It
>simply pays the interest to the federal reserve. Interest accumulating
>because we use the Federal Reserve bank note. If we didn't use their notes
>or banks, we wouldn't owe them any money and there wouldn't be a need for
>an income tax. (this is simplified, but the basic idea)
>
I'll bet the home builders are happy to accept those
Federal Reserve bank notes to pay for the new homes
they sell. Or do they accept two-bedroom bungalows
in Santa Monica and a couple of surf boards in trade?
And just how are you going to sell those new
homes without an economy and a banking industry and
credit agencies and a government to provide the
environment to do it in?
Name any other country on earth that provides an
environment as favorable as this one for making money
off home building.
The home builders apply two common arguments, which
are kind of ironic in their inconsistency.
On the one hand, they bleat about the evils of
socialism, and unfair constraints on free enterprise.
They exploit the currently fashionable demonization of
government to push for the elimination of any regulation
or other impediment to their industry.
At the same time, they concoct cleverly distorted
statistics to try to argue that home ownership is
unaffordable. That the price of land needs to be lower,
and that development fees are an unbearable burden.
The government they so despise is now expected to step in
and subsidize the expenses resulting from new homes;
to manipulate land supply to drive down prices,
and otherwise engage in socialistic income
redistribution to facilitate lower cost new home
construction.
Since the Portland area is still growing at one of the
fastest rates in the whole country, new homes
are clearly NOT unaffordable, by any measure
acceptable to a true maven of "laissez-faire
government-is-evil" free-enterprise.
Bill Shatzer
In a previous article, mi...@paranoia.com (Mike Chapman) says:
>On 7 Jan 1997 02:08:01 GMT, f...@teleport.com (Foxglove Records ) wrote:
>>You and Mr. Tiernan claim that what you really oppose is government. The
>>problem in today's world is that government is essentially the only
>>organized power base that offers any protection to the average citizen
>>against complete domination by the rich and powerful.
>
>And what protection is there for those who don't share the majority's
>vision? What protection for those who seek alternative medicines,
So far as I know, there are no laws against medicating yourself however
you so desire. Hell, here in Oregon we even _officially_ license
quacks like naturopaths - don't think yer likely to need much protection
seeking the alternative medicine of your choice.
>alternative lifestyles?
Hooboy! We got nothing if not _lots_ of alternative lifestyles.
What did ya' have in mind? Nudist colony? Buddhist monastery?
Hippie commune? Survivalist compound? Scientologists? Hare
Krishna? The Nation of Islam? The Young Republicans Club?
We got 'em all - take your pick.
Those who don't want their children to be
>force-educated?
Then educate 'em at home. Or send 'em to your local parochial/
fundamentalist Christian/montessori/other private school of
your choice. Ya' don't have to send 'em to public school ya' know,
all ya' gotta do is educate 'em.
>Those who don't want police breaking the door down
>because they were growing the wrong plant or because someone say them
>slap their child or spouse?
Ah hah! Now it comes out - gubmint should somehow butt out of your
"right" to use force and violence against yer wife and yer children?
Just gotta slap 'em around a bit to show 'em they shouldn't get uppity?
Sorry, son, you go whipping up on your wife and kids when they get
uppity and I hope to hell the gubmint breaks down your door. No,
on second thought, I hope they don't - rather, I hope your wife
is Loraine Bobbit!
Peace and justice,
--
- Bill Shatzer bsha...@orednet.org -
............................................................................
- This space for rent -
Michael O'Hair
In article <5b1gka$4...@news.jf.intel.com>,
David Papworth <papw...@ichips.intel.com> wrote:
>
>The home builders apply two common arguments, which
>are kind of ironic in their inconsistency.
>
>On the one hand, they bleat about the evils of
>socialism, and unfair constraints on free enterprise.
>They exploit the currently fashionable demonization of
>government to push for the elimination of any regulation
>or other impediment to their industry.
This doesn't sound much different than the other "capitalists" who yammer
on about freedom and then go running to Uncle Sam when they need to get
bailed out.
The fundamental problem is that life is complex. It has never been simple
and it's getting more complex all the time. There was an excellent article
years ago in Ramparts magazine about the "power elite" of America. I can't
remember the exact quote, but the author pointed out that people who have
access to the buttons of power mistake that access for many things, including
a god-given right, an indicator of intelligence, and a license to do what
they damn well please. These people learn to use influence and specialize
in it. The major problem is that the government and business have flowed
together, in the name of the common good, of course. An excellent example
is the Foreign Aid machine. We have been paying out billions of dollars for
years and what have we gotten out of it? It became a tool of the military
industrial complex and the agribusiness corporations. Got a surplus of
wheat? Talk to your duly elected officials and see if you can unload a
few million bushels on the feds, who will then distribute it to foreign
countries, even when it's not in the best interest of the recipients.
The problem is that people complain about the federal government and then do
not take the only step that makes sense: vote out the incumbents. Everyone
wants to get rid of the "other" rascals and keep their own. Everybody wants
someone else to make the sacrifice.
Put "None Of The Above" on the ballot and make it stick.
A Fat Guy
In article <5b1gka$4...@news.jf.intel.com>, papw...@ichips.intel.com snivels;
>
>
>Do you have specific names, dates, or any other
>substantiation of your allegations? If this were
>real there should be no problem taking your case
>to the local prosecutors.
You must take me for a complete moron. If I divulge names, how long will it be before a
host of persons in black uniforms break into my home at 3:00 am wielding machine guns.
Even if that never happened, I would still have a bad name in the planning department. I
have to consider how this will affect getting my subdivisions approved in the future, and
frankly it's not worth making trouble. It's time we all learn to be responsible for ourselves
and stop relying on an overburdeoned justice system. I'm not going to go sniveling to
the prosecutor like a whipped liberal.
>Traffic impact fees are supposed to be collected,
>to help mitigate the consequences of the additional
>traffic in the general area. Most developers manage
>to avoid paying much of anything towards general TIF
>monies, by applying for credits against their subdivision.
>
>Typically they are conditioned to put a traffic
>light on the entrance to their cul-de-sac subdivision;
>this exhausts the TIF money; leaving nothing to pay for
>widening the surrounding roads or otherwise provide
>infrastructure for anything other than the subdivision itself.
Sorry. We pay to widen the roads. Everytime a subdivision goes on next to a major
thorougfaire, we are required to expand that street. There may be special cases where
this isn't necessary, but for those subdivisions I've worked with, we've had to widen the
roads with our money in order to get subdivision approval.
>
>Subdivisions bring new people, and these people don't sit quietly
>within their subdivision, but are part of a larger community.
>This community, and the governments you so readily demonize,
>builds schools for the children, sewers for the waste products,
>fire houses for the emergencies, roads for the cars,
>and planners to avoid a chaotic mess.
>
Great! You've struck a nerve here with me. I don't think we should be building these
public schools. I was taught at home for years. When I finally was forced into the
public schools by big brother (read government intervention) I went to private schools.
All the public schools of today are just expensive babysitters. The kids don't learn shit.
These are the dumbest, most brainwashed kids I've ever seen. I learned more by the fifth
grade than the public school kids learn EVER. I know. I went to public high school.
Talk about easy, I got all A's. I never learned anything new in high school. It was like
rehashing my 3rd grade education over and over.
I think all of you parents would just take responsibility for you childrens education and
stop relying on the government to teach them. They aren't learning much of anything in
the public school system. It's just too bad that so many peope like this rely so heavily
on our government.
>I'll bet the home builders are happy to accept those
>Federal Reserve bank notes to pay for the new homes
>they sell. Or do they accept two-bedroom bungalows
>in Santa Monica and a couple of surf boards in trade?
Was this a joke? Ha ha ha. Slightly amusing as we don't have any choice to which
money we use now.
>
>And just how are you going to sell those new
>homes without an economy and a banking industry and
>credit agencies and a government to provide the
>environment to do it in?
Buddy, the economy was far stronger before the time of the Federal Reserve note. I'm
not against notes that represent something, but if you look at your bank notes, you will
notice that they are no longer a note backed by anything. The note that once
represented equal value in gold or silver is now backed by nothing. It is just a Federal
Reserve DEBT note. Nowhere does it say on the bills that there is any value to them.
Take a close look at one and I hope you can see what I'm talking about. If not, respond
and I shall try to clear this up.
>
>
>On the one hand, they bleat about the evils of
>socialism, and unfair constraints on free enterprise.
>They exploit the currently fashionable demonization of
>government to push for the elimination of any regulation
>or other impediment to their industry.
Call a demonic organization demonic if it is so.
>
>At the same time, they concoct cleverly distorted
>statistics to try to argue that home ownership is
>unaffordable. That the price of land needs to be lower,
>and that development fees are an unbearable burden.
Not quite true. It's the city planners that cry for affordable housing, yet when we try to
build affrodable housing they slap us with fees and restrictions on what we can do with
our own land. OUR LAND. Not their land. Where I originally come from, no one tells
you what to do with your land. This is how it should be. As long as we conform to the
zoning requirements, why should they tell us which trees we can or can't cut, or which
direction the lots must face? As for affordable, a home that goes for $300K here would
go for maybe $80K where I come from. An apartment that rents for $900 here would rent
for maybe $150 back home. Yes yes yes...I plan on returning there soon, don't you worry
about that.
>The government they so despise is now expected to step in
>and subsidize the expenses resulting from new homes;
>to manipulate land supply to drive down prices,
>and otherwise engage in socialistic income
>redistribution to facilitate lower cost new home
>construction.
This is first time I've heard this theory.
>
>Since the Portland area is still growing at one of the
>fastest rates in the whole country, new homes
>are clearly NOT unaffordable, by any measure
>acceptable to a true maven of "laissez-faire
>government-is-evil" free-enterprise.
They are only unaffordable when people stop buying them. Then you will see the prices
coming down. I expect the market to crash here within two years. Hope your not
expecting the value of your home to stay high
David Papworth
In article <5b1srs$j...@news.pacifier.com>,
>>substantiation of your allegations? If this were
>>real there should be no problem taking your case
>>to the local prosecutors.
>
>You must take me for a complete moron. If I divulge names, how long will
> it be before a
>host of persons in black uniforms break into my home at 3:00 am wielding machine guns.
> Even if that never happened, I would still have a bad name in the planning department. I
>have to consider how this will affect getting my subdivisions approved in the future, and
>frankly it's not worth making trouble. It's time we all learn to be responsible for ourselves
>and stop relying on an overburdeoned justice system. I'm not going to go sniveling to
>the prosecutor like a whipped liberal.
Raising non-specific allegations of "corruption", and then being unable
or unwilling to back them up is a cowardly, despicable attack more suited
to the likes of Wes Cooley than an obviously well-educated man
such as yourself.
>
>
>Sorry. We pay to widen the roads. Everytime a subdivision goes on
>next to a major
>thorougfaire, we are required to expand that
> street. There may be special cases where
>this isn't necessary, but for those subdivisions
>I've worked with, we've had to widen the
>roads with our money in order to get subdivision approval.
>
The road widening done as a condition for development rarely extends
beyond the actual frontage of an individual subdivision. Anyone can see
the patchwork "sidewalks to nowhere" all over Washington County.
The limitation on traffic impact fees to barely cover a turn lane
and traffic light for the the entrance to "Quail Pointe Estates"
means there is no money left in the TIF pool to fund intersection
improvements, arterial widening, or otherwise come even close to
mitagating the complete consequences of the extra daily vehicle trips.
I imagine many developers consider the token road widening to be
adequate recompense, and that the general taxpayers should be happy
to pay for the rest (or to live with congestion).g
>Great! You've struck a nerve here with me. I don't think we
> should be building these
>public schools. I was taught at home for years.
> When I finally was forced into the
>public schools by big brother (read government intervention)
> I went to private schools.
>All the public schools of today are just expensive babysitters.
> The kids don't learn shit.
Regardless of how you feel about public schools, the fact remains that
most new residents will send their children to public schools, and that
the general population indirectly subsidizes development by either paying
for general bond obligations or letting schools deteriorate through
excessively large class sizes. Just building houses, carping that
public schools are no good and not worth paying for, and running
away from providing any sort of education is selfish and irresponsible.
I wonder about the quality of your "private education" if you seriously
believe that machine gun wielding men in black uniforms are going to
break into your home over allegations of corruption in local planning
departments.
>
>Buddy, the economy was far stronger before the time of the
> Federal Reserve note. I'm
>not against notes that represent something, but if you
>look at your bank notes, you will
>notice that they are no longer a note backed by anything. The note that once
>represented equal value in gold or silver is now backed by nothing.
> It is just a Federal
>Reserve DEBT note. Nowhere does it say on the bills that there
> is any value to them.
>Take a close look at one and I hope you can see what I'm
>talking about. If not, respond
>and I shall try to clear this up.
New homes are not bought bought with banknotes today. The develoment
is not funded with them either. Home development and home buying
involves a complex interaction between banks, insurance companies,
mortgate lenders, title insurance, credit agencies, and an otherwise
interwoven web of cooperating institutions. No one is going to buy a
home from you with pile of gold coins; so it isn't particularly
relevant what it says on actual currencies.
While we might all wistfully harken back to the days of hard-money
currency, mountain men, no income tax, and minimal government, it
just isn't going to work in a nation of 250,000,000 people or
a world population of 5 billion plus.
You ducked my previous question of naming any other country on earth
more suited to making money from home development than the United
States. Without an existance proof of a functioning modern economy
based upon the financial principles you espouse, what evidence
can you offer that it would work?
>
>Not quite true. It's the city planners that cry for affordable
> housing, yet when we try to
>build affrodable housing they slap us with fees and restrictions on what we can do with
>our own land. OUR LAND. Not their land. Where I originally come from, no one tells
>you what to do with your land. This is how it should be. As long as we conform to the
>zoning requirements, why should they tell us which trees we can or can't cut, or which
>direction the lots must face? As for affordable, a home that goes for $300K here would
>go for maybe $80K where I come from. An apartment that rents for $900 here would rent
>for maybe $150 back home. Yes yes yes...I plan on returning there soon, don't you worry
>about that.
>
People are paying the high prices because they feel they get good
value for their money. The area hasn't yet been trashed by over-
development the way much of the rest of the country has, and is more
affordable than many other equivalent areas, so they move here in droves
The median home price is high, in part, because of relatively recent
trends towards larger houses and a peculiar-to-the-west preference for
new homes over existing homes.
The cost of raw land has risen from $40000 per acre to $100000 per acre
in the last 5 years. This amounts to an added cost of $10000 per home,
figuring 6 to the acre. The median home price has risen by something
like $40000 in the same timeframe, so there is obviously something
going on besides high land prices and fees. I don't see any way we
could possible "build our way to affordability"; the buying power of
the refugees from our big neighbor to the south would overwhelm
any such efforts.
>
>>
>>Since the Portland area is still growing at one of the
>>fastest rates in the whole country, new homes
>>are clearly NOT unaffordable, by any measure
>>acceptable to a true maven of "laissez-faire
>>government-is-evil" free-enterprise.
>
>They are only unaffordable when people stop buying them. Then you will see the prices
>coming down. I expect the market to crash here within two years. Hope your not
>expecting the value of your home to stay high
>
Don't let the door hit you in the backside on the way out...
As for me, I would be more than willing to lose half the value of my home
in return for the Portland Metro area dropping from 2.5% population
growth per year to a more reasonable and sustainable .5%. A high home
value doesn't count for much if the area isn't worth living in...
Dale Wagner
David Papworth wrote:
> >They are only unaffordable when people stop buying them. Then you will see the prices
> >coming down. I expect the market to crash here within two years. Hope your not
> >expecting the value of your home to stay high
> >
>
> Don't let the door hit you in the backside on the way out...
>
> As for me, I would be more than willing to lose half the value of my home
> in return for the Portland Metro area dropping from 2.5% population
> growth per year to a more reasonable and sustainable .5%. A high home
.
A high home value is only a measure of how high it will be taxed. True
home value is how much you can recieve if you needed to dump it on the
market and cash out within a week. 'Creative' financing distorts true
figgers.
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
In article <32d4220...@news.spiritone.com>,
mi...@paranoia.com (Mike Chapman) wrote:
>On 7 Jan 1997 02:08:01 GMT, f...@teleport.com (Foxglove Records ) wrote:
>>You and Mr. Tiernan claim that what you really oppose is government. The
>>problem in today's world is that government is essentially the only
>>organized power base that offers any protection to the average citizen
>>against complete domination by the rich and powerful.
>
>And what protection is there for those who don't share the majority's
>vision? What protection for those who seek alternative medicines,
>alternative lifestyles? Those who don't want their children to be
>force-educated? Those who don't want police breaking the door down
>because they were growing the wrong plant or because someone say them
>slap their child or spouse?
You can seek out alternative medicine (now getting the insurance company to
subsidize that is a different issue...but there you're talking capitalism, not
gubment control). Alternative lifestyles? Well, depends... Education?
Oregon's pretty permissive regarding homeschooling. And there's a good
parochial system out there. Growing the wrong plant...use yer brains, bud.
Slapping your child or spouse...well, there's no cure for assholedom. That's
indefensible.
snip
>The idea of private property is that you CONTROL its use. You should
>be able to sell any portion of it, and make any improvements which do
>not DIRECTLY affect the property of others, or the true common
>property, such as air and water.
Mike, honey, the problem is that without gubment protections those that got
prey on those that don't got. Without gubment protections you've got little
or no chance going up against those with the bucks. The odds are slightly
better with gubment, and goes up in those rare instances where you have
gubment people with integrity...but I'm not as idealistic as you are. Reality
is that someone who wants to fuck with the air and water will do so...and if
he's got more dough than you or I, odds are he's able to hire better weaponry,
better mercs, and is overall better defended than you or I against your
beloved weaponry.
>Hello? Earth to Marxist dupe. Know what the urban growth boundary
>is?
Yep. You'd better go take a look at the history of the land-use laws in
Oregon. If you're agin the UGB, you're in bed with the asshole developers who
want to rape and ruin. Gee Mike, I never figured you as one of the capitalist
running dog lackey class. How the mighty are fallen!
>
>>This is to be done in spite of the will of the citizens of this area to
>>hold the line on urban sprawl.
>
>To do so they would properly (and constitutionally) need to pay all
>people whose property they have seized for public use, or just not
>extend services, in which case private industry would step in and do
>so.
Snort. You don't know your history, do you?
>I really can't imagine what makes you think this. I suspect you
>aren't happy with the concept of private property in general, nor
>private industry. You don't think that individuals can decide where
>they want to live, in what structures.
Gee, so you like the idea of developer sorts like Morrisette structuring the
UGB for their own profit? Mind you, I'm not against making a profit...I'm
against people using public office for personal profit instead of thinking
about the good of the general public.
>Lense dense population is MORE healthy and MORE dignified. I don't
>care if it covers the entire country (not bloody likely), we've got a
>hell of a lot of people you know, and only more coming. To force them
>on top of each other, particularly in a region prone to serious
>natural disaster, is criminal. It causes disease, crime and other ill
>effects, and a general loss of dignity. Better to have a half acre of
>grass to call your own, and nice roads to use at your own will, than a
>concrete patch shared among 100 other families, and high taxes for
>moving when and where the government provides for.
Mike, Mike, Mike. You're addicted to suburbia. A half acre is nuthin. It
ain't worth shit in suburban terms, except as a pain-in-the-ass space to mow.
If you could use that land to grow something on, it'd be one thing. But
those fancy-pants developers you're defending set up covenants (and, BTW,
these covenants aren't drawn up by government but by DEVELOPERS!) to keep
folks from doing that (gee, I don't know why, I happen to think a veggie
garden is just the thing). You can't grow livestock on a half acre worth
beans, especially since those covenants won't let you do it. Those nice roads
end up getting choked up as more people use them to drive further and further
out.
>The primary answer is to stop encouraging population growth.
>Eliminate immigration except for special cases. Break up the US so
>that that places like California can't dump their diseased populations
>on the less developed areas. If someone wants to go terrorist, PLEASE
>DO take out I5 at the border with as many tons of ANFO you can cook
>up. Then do it again. And again.
You've been reading Ecotopia Emerging again, haven't you?
>You, and the other socialists, have a vision for the society they
>want. They think they have a right to engineer society, rather than
>encourage it in certain directions through consentual institutions.
>You are going to experience a backlash, that will probably be just as
>extreme as your actions have been, but in the opposite direction. The
>urban yuppies and their stacked condos are going to be driven out as a
>matter of survival - class warfare.
Nah, yuppies ain't socialists. They're capitalists with the money to take
over government to create the society they want.
*True* socialists don't drive Beemers.
>It will be a matter of survival for the many people who REJECT your
>kind of society. The farmers were duped into supporting the urban
>growth boundary for the short-term benefit of keeping the yuppie scum
>out of their communities. When they fully realize what kind of
>government they have helped put in power, and that it can't be
>dislodged at the ballot box... one can only guess at possible
>outcomes.
Uh......Mike? The farmers weren't duped. They *did* the duping. (sarcasm
here, okay?). And, from what I see, a lot of them are very happy with the
results.
You gotta do your research, man.
jrw
A Fat Guy
In article <5beb51$d...@cobweb.aracnet.com>, j...@aracnet.com says...
>
>Yep. You'd better go take a look at the history of the land-use laws in
>Oregon. If you're agin the UGB, you're in bed with the asshole developers who
>want to rape and ruin. Gee Mike, I never figured you as one of the capitalist
>running dog lackey class. How the mighty are fallen!
>
I resemble this remark!!
Funny though, I never thought of it as raping. I just think of it as providing homes
to needy people who've got no place to live. Boy, guess we should just put those
folks on the streets. Wouldn't want anyone else to be able to own a home like we
do would we? We might be less important or something!
(heavy note of saurcasm)
>
>Uh......Mike? The farmers weren't duped. They *did* the duping. (sarcasm
>here, okay?). And, from what I see, a lot of them are very happy with the
>results.
>
He he he. You got that totally right! Not only do I develope, but that place I
mentioned in an earlier reply is a farm. You think I'd be caught dead living in this
S#!t hole of a city? HA!!
>You gotta do your research, man.
>
>jrw
>
*The developer guy
Bob Tiernan
On 16 Jan 1997, A Fat Guy wrote:
> In article <5beb51$d...@cobweb.aracnet.com>, j...@aracnet.com says...
> > You'd better go take a look at the history of the land-use laws in
> > Oregon. If you're agin the UGB, you're in bed with the asshole
> > developers who want to rape and ruin. Gee Mike, I never figured
> > you as one of the capitalist running dog lackey class.
> Funny though, I never thought of it as raping. I just think of it as
> providing homes to needy people who've got no place to live. Boy,
> guess we should just put those folks on the streets. Wouldn't want
> anyone else to be able to own a home like we do would we? We might
> be less important or something!
That's right. And they'll also say that anyone who wants to develop a new
farm is greedy and can't wait to sell some corn and stringbeans, as if the
reasons for their sale can't be factored into the equation. And the
people who made the computer you're all using now are greedy. They've
built computers that nobody bought I guess, so long as they made money
by building them. Hmmmm....
Bob T.
Robert Reed
In article <5bkfi6$6...@news.pacifier.com> dlar...@pacifier.com (A Fat Guy) writes:
|In article <5beb51$d...@cobweb.aracnet.com>, j...@aracnet.com says...
|
|>Oregon. If you're agin the UGB, you're in bed with the asshole developers
|>who want to rape and ruin. Gee Mike, I never figured you as one of the
|>capitalist running dog lackey class. How the mighty are fallen!
|
|Funny though, I never thought of it as raping. I just think of it as
|providing homes to needy people who've got no place to live. Boy, guess we
|should just put those folks on the streets. Wouldn't want anyone else to be
|able to own a home like we do would we? We might be less important or
|something!
I can assure you that most of the housing developments that land-use laws
regulate are not what you'd normally call homeless. And Portland isn't
suffering excessive rents or prices due to a lack of housing. Yet Portland
(and other cities in Oregon) continue to develop WHILE preserving adjacent
farm and forest lands, while Seattle and San Francisco turn into the suburbanly
spralled traffic nightmares reminiscent of their cousin to the south. It's
not a bipolar, you-can't-have-one-without-the-other situation.
|>Uh......Mike? The farmers weren't duped. They *did* the duping. (sarcasm
|>here, okay?). And, from what I see, a lot of them are very happy with the
|>results.
|
|He he he. You got that totally right! Not only do I [develop], but that
|place I mentioned in an earlier reply is a farm. You think I'd be caught
|dead living in this S#!t hole of a city? HA!!
Does that mean there are other S#!t holes we could catch you dead living in?
(Neat trick) Or is that a sentiment against city living in general, or
metropolitan living? As S#!t holes go, Portland is a pretty good one.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
HOW COLD IS IT?
15 - French cars don't start
You plan a vacation in Mexico
Cat insists on sleeping in your bed with you
10 - Too cold to ski
You need jumper cables to get the car going
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed
In article <E45y...@slipknot.rain.com> rob...@slipknot.rain.com (Robert Reed) writes:
|
|I can assure you that most of the housing developments that land-use laws
Oops! That should have read:
I can assure you that most of the housing developments that land-use
laws regulate are not aimed at what you'd normally call homeless. ...
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
--Robert Frost
________________________________________________________________________________
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
In article <5bkfi6$6...@news.pacifier.com>,
dlar...@pacifier.com (A Fat Guy) wrote:
>In article <5beb51$d...@cobweb.aracnet.com>, j...@aracnet.com says...
>
>
>>
>>Oregon. If you're agin the UGB, you're in bed with the asshole developers
who
>>want to rape and ruin. Gee Mike, I never figured you as one of the
capitalist
>>running dog lackey class. How the mighty are fallen!
>>
>
>Funny though, I never thought of it as raping. I just think of it as
providing homes
>to needy people who've got no place to live. Boy, guess we should just put
those
>folks on the streets. Wouldn't want anyone else to be able to own a home
like we
>do would we? We might be less important or something!
>
Oh Gee. A Philantrophist. Are you selling your homes to Section 8, blue
collar types?
Funny, though, the housing I see out there being produced by folks whining
about the UGB seems to be in the upper $100,000-$250,000 range.
Didn't know needy people who've got no place to live could afford to pay more
for a house than I can.
And the word is "house", not "home," bud.
"Home" is the advertising buzzword used to distinguish for sale versus rental
property in the classified ads. Interesting semantic piece of work there.
>
>>
>>Uh......Mike? The farmers weren't duped. They *did* the duping. (sarcasm
>>here, okay?). And, from what I see, a lot of them are very happy with the
>>results.
>>
>He he he. You got that totally right! Not only do I develope, but that
place I
>mentioned in an earlier reply is a farm. You think I'd be caught dead living
in this
>S#!t hole of a city? HA!!
Shrug. Classic asshole NIMBY. Another elitist f**k who doesn't mind making
cash off the city but is too damned good to live in the mess he makes.
Definite capitalist pig running-dog elitist.
Hey, I could get to like this name calling stuff....down Joyce! down Joyce!
jrw
A Fat Guy
In article <5brdhh$3...@cobweb.aracnet.com>, j...@aracnet.com says...
>Oh Gee. A Philantrophist. Are you selling your homes to Section 8, blue
>collar types?
>
>Funny, though, the housing I see out there being produced by folks whining
>about the UGB seems to be in the upper $100,000-$250,000 range.
>
>Didn't know needy people who've got no place to live could afford to pay more
>for a house than I can.
>
>And the word is "house", not "home," bud.
>
>"Home" is the advertising buzzword used to distinguish for sale versus rental
>property in the classified ads. Interesting semantic piece of work there.
>
Cute Joyce. What if there were no new homes (houses if you must)? What do
you think would happen to rent or the cost of a new house? It would sky-rocket
and you should know that. It would get so expensive that only the eletists could
afford to buy a house. It's pretty close to that already as you have already pointed
out. The only solution is to meet the demand and build more houses, unless of
course you can convince the assessors to lower all property values and make land
AND houses more affordable.
If you don't believe this works, take a look at the Boise area. Just three years ago,
real estate was rather expensive as that city began to grow. The developers built
like crazy until the demand was met. Now, the building is tapering off and the
prices of houses are beginning to fall. It's just now getting back to the point where
a blue collar worker can once again afford to buy a home.
>
>Shrug. Classic asshole NIMBY. Another elitist f**k who doesn't mind making
>cash off the city but is too damned good to live in the mess he makes.
>Definite capitalist pig running-dog elitist.
>
You must think I'm making big bucks huh? If the truth must be known, I can't
afford to buy a house here. I simply make a living and no more. I rent a place from
a local family member because the cost of houses are too high. I'm sure there may
be developers here that make huge amounts of money, but I know I'm sure not one
of them.
I believe in the capitalist way. Call me a capitalist pig if you must, the Communists
always have called us that anyway.
(Life according to Joyce must be where all people are treated equal. Everyone lives
the same lifestyle and the government will give everyone their daily allotments.
There will be no rich, no poor, only total equality!!)
Didn't they try that somewhere already?
A Fat Guy
In article <E45y...@slipknot.rain.com>, rob...@slipknot.rain.com says...
>I can assure you that most of the housing developments that land-use laws
>regulate are not what you'd normally call homeless. And Portland isn't
>suffering excessive rents or prices due to a lack of housing. Yet Portland
>(and other cities in Oregon) continue to develop WHILE preserving adjacent
>farm and forest lands, while Seattle and San Francisco turn into the suburbanly
>spralled traffic nightmares reminiscent of their cousin to the south. It's
>not a bipolar, you-can't-have-one-without-the-other situation.
>
There seems to be a general note of misunderstanding here. I didn't mean to say
that the homeless should be able to buy homes. I meant that without new homes
to buy, the cost of buying a home will be out of most peoples price range.
|
>|He he he. You got that totally right! Not only do I [develop], but that
>|place I mentioned in an earlier reply is a farm. You think I'd be caught
>|dead living in this S#!t hole of a city?
>
>Does that mean there are other S#!t holes we could catch you dead living in?
>(Neat trick) Or is that a sentiment against city living in general, or
>metropolitan living? As S#!t holes go, Portland is a pretty good one.
Good observation. That sentiment is against all cities. Portland is alright as far as
cities go, but Vancouver is a little better in my personal opinion. Of course,
anywhere where there's no curbs or sidewalks is far better even yet.
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
In article <5bs041$g...@news.pacifier.com>,
Yeah. Right. (That's sarcastic, in case you can't tell).
Near as I can tell (repeating myself), most of what I see being built in areas
which are pushing the UGB are NOT low income or blue collar housing, will not
be low income or blue collar housing, will NEVER be low income or blue collar
housing.
It's not necessarily the price tag I'm talking about...I'm talking about huge
"executive" style homes. Vaulted, energy-inefficient ceilings. Showplaces.
2000-3000 square foot palaces.
What about the so-called Street of Dreams? Years ago that used to be
energy-efficent, reasonably priced houses for normal people. Now they're
major showplaces suitable only for folks with incomes to support said
showplaces...no matter what the local price scale is.
I'll believe the big developers are deprived when I see more energy being put
into smaller houses aimed at the middle to low-end market rather than the
executive home market...which, BTW, I understand various groups like Habitat
for Humanity are doing right now.
>If you don't believe this works, take a look at the Boise area. Just three
years ago,
>real estate was rather expensive as that city began to grow. The developers
built
>like crazy until the demand was met. Now, the building is tapering off and
the
>prices of houses are beginning to fall. It's just now getting back to the
point where
>a blue collar worker can once again afford to buy a home.
ROTFL! As if Boise is the home of the enlightened universe!
>
>>Shrug. Classic asshole NIMBY. Another elitist f**k who doesn't mind making
>>cash off the city but is too damned good to live in the mess he makes.
>
>>Definite capitalist pig running-dog elitist.
>>
>
>You must think I'm making big bucks huh? If the truth must be known, I can't
>afford to buy a house here. I simply make a living and no more. I rent a
place from
>a local family member because the cost of houses are too high. I'm sure
there may
>be developers here that make huge amounts of money, but I know I'm sure not
one
>of them.
Maybe you're playing to the wrong market, bub. Maybe you just can't keep up
with the big boys, hmm?
>I believe in the capitalist way. Call me a capitalist pig if you must, the
Communists
>always have called us that anyway.
Oh puhleeze. There are other options besides capitalism and communism.
And...for the record, I'm not a Communist, socialist or whatever.
>
>(Life according to Joyce must be where all people are treated equal.
Everyone lives
>the same lifestyle and the government will give everyone their daily
allotments.
>There will be no rich, no poor, only total equality!!)
Try reading the Gospels sometime, bub. Or check out dejanews for some of my
or.politics posts. You might be surprised.
Or Thomas Jefferson.
>Didn't they try that somewhere already?
Red-baiting...the last refuge of the ignorant and greedy.
jrw
Robert Reed
In article <5bs0fi$g...@news.pacifier.com> dlar...@pacifier.com (A Fat Guy) writes:
|In article <E45y...@slipknot.rain.com>, rob...@slipknot.rain.com says...
|
|>I can assure you that most of the housing developments that land-use laws
|>regulate are not what you'd normally call homeless. And Portland isn't
|>suffering excessive rents or prices due to a lack of housing. Yet Portland
|>(and other cities in Oregon) continue to develop WHILE preserving adjacent
|>farm and forest lands, while Seattle and San Francisco turn into the suburbanly
|>spralled traffic nightmares reminiscent of their cousin to the south. It's
|>not a bipolar, you-can't-have-one-without-the-other situation.
|
|say that the homeless should be able to buy homes. I meant that without new
|homes to buy, the cost of buying a home will be out of most peoples price
|range.
As far as I can tell, your distinction is just a matter of degree. (The higher
the housing prices, the larger the potential "homeless" problem.) And, the
Oregon land use goals include ensuring housing availability for those of modest
means. All you have to do is look at the cost of housing in the unregulated
states north and south of us to recognize that our land use goals have had
negligable affect.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
New Viruses:
ROSS PEROT VIRUS: Activates every component in your system, just before
the whole thing quits.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed
In article <5bs041$g...@news.pacifier.com> dlar...@pacifier.com (A Fat Guy) writes:
|In article <5brdhh$3...@cobweb.aracnet.com>, j...@aracnet.com says...
|
|>"Home" is the advertising buzzword used to distinguish for sale versus rental
|>property in the classified ads. Interesting semantic piece of work there.
|
|Cute Joyce. What if there were no new homes (houses if you must)? What do
|you think would happen to rent or the cost of a new house? It would sky-rocket
|and you should know that. It would get so expensive that only the eletists
|could afford to buy a house. It's pretty close to that already as you have
|already pointed out. The only solution is to meet the demand and build more
|houses, unless of course you can convince the assessors to lower all property
|values and make land AND houses more affordable.
In the isolated world you postulate such a thing might occur, but that's not the
point, nor the effect of Oregon land use planning. Look at the San Francisco
area for example. Whether you're talking about the south bay or Concord,
housing prices rose drastically despite the lack of regulation, and what once
was known as an agricultural and orchard land is now a sea of houses and
industrial developments, with little free land to accomodate future development.
The Oregon alternative is to manage growth to coordinate decisions about land
use and hopefully make more efficient use of the land, providing adequate space
for housing, retail and industrial development while preserving agricultural
land. It's not denying growth but planning for it.
|If you don't believe this works, take a look at the Boise area. Just three
|years ago, real estate was rather expensive as that city began to grow. The
|developers built like crazy until the demand was met. Now, the building is
|tapering off and the prices of houses are beginning to fall. It's just now
|getting back to the point where a blue collar worker can once again afford to
|buy a home.
Let's see what it looks like in another 5 or 10 years. The problem with
unregulated growth is that it's a Pandora's box, a genie uncorked from the
bottle. You say building is tapering off. I'd like to believe you, but a
voluntary limitation to growth by developers would be a situation unique in
the west.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which
they avoid.
--Kierkegaard
________________________________________________________________________________
A Fat Guy
In article <E4Au...@slipknot.rain.com>, rob...@slipknot.rain.com says...
>
Now here's an intelligent response! Thanks for keeping this an intelligent debate
Robert.
>Let's see what it looks like in another 5 or 10 years. The problem with
>unregulated growth is that it's a Pandora's box, a genie uncorked from the
>bottle. You say building is tapering off. I'd like to believe you, but a
>voluntary limitation to growth by developers would be a situation unique in
>the west.
I agree with managing growth. I don't believe I said I was for deregulation, but it may
sound that way. My personal feeling is that growth is going to slow down in the not
so distant future. We are long overdue for a recession, and when that hits (it's only a
matter of time) the land market will go down. Fewer homes will be bought or sold and
thus fewer will be built. We may still have growth, but not nearly as rampant as these
last few years have been.
A Fat Guy
In article <5butrl$2...@cobweb.aracnet.com>, j...@aracnet.com says...
>Yeah. Right. (That's sarcastic, in case you can't tell).
>
>Near as I can tell (repeating myself), most of what I see being built in areas
>which are pushing the UGB are NOT low income or blue collar housing, will not
>be low income or blue collar housing, will NEVER be low income or blue collar
>housing.
>
>It's not necessarily the price tag I'm talking about...I'm talking about huge
>"executive" style homes. Vaulted, energy-inefficient ceilings. Showplaces.
>2000-3000 square foot palaces.
If you would read more carefully, I think you'll see that what I'm saying is that it's a
simple matter of supply and demand. When people stop buying the expensive
homes, we will stop building them. Currently, my projects are not the "executive"
style homes, but rather low income homes. Modular homes and mobile home parks
to be exact. People like you need somewhere to live too.
>ROTFL! As if Boise is the home of the enlightened universe!
It sure beats this crime infested rat hole you love so much.
>
>Maybe you're playing to the wrong market, bub. Maybe you just can't keep up
>with the big boys, hmm?
>
And you can? Maybe I'll just come over to your house and learn directly from the
master!
>Oh puhleeze. There are other options besides capitalism and communism.
>
>And...for the record, I'm not a Communist, socialist or whatever.
>
Okay. Maybe then you're just a simple Marxist.
>
>Try reading the Gospels sometime, bub. Or check out dejanews for some of my
>or.politics posts. You might be surprised.
You need to read the gospel more closely. As long as our earth continues in sin,
there will always be masters and slaves. Today, that translates into business owners
and employees. Which are you again?
>
>Red-baiting...the last refuge of the ignorant and greedy.
Look who's talking!
You wit astounds me, but your intelligence leaves much to be desired.
Ritchie
In article <E45y...@slipknot.rain.com>, rob...@slipknot.rain.com (Robert
Reed) wrote:
> I can assure you that most of the housing developments that land-use laws
> regulate are not what you'd normally call homeless. And Portland isn't
> suffering excessive rents or prices due to a lack of housing. Yet Portland
> (and other cities in Oregon) continue to develop WHILE preserving adjacent
Portland isn't suffering excessive rents or prices...?
what are you smoking...rents are steadily increasing in my neighborhood
(SE) and show no signs of slowing...housing prices are going up 10 percent
a year....
--
----
Mike Chapman
On Sat, 18 Jan 97 22:03:41 GMT, j...@aracnet.com (Joyce Reynolds-Ward)
wrote:
>Oh Gee. A Philantrophist. Are you selling your homes to Section 8, blue
>collar types?
>
>Funny, though, the housing I see out there being produced by folks whining
>about the UGB seems to be in the upper $100,000-$250,000 range.
Perhaps this is because the federal government owns all the land
and what land there is can't be subdivided into small enough lots to
build cheap homes.
I.e. you can't have a $50,000 house in a very limited market. There
is no cheap land. In town it's fought over, around town its useless.
The way to limit growth is to secede. There is no other way. Oregon
will be the dumping grounds for the human rubbish of California.
Until immigration can be limited, growth will continue, and no amount
of heavy-handed government will make it better. Land will continue to
skyrocket.
----
Mike Chapman - http://www.paranoia.com/~mike
Mike Chapman
On Mon, 20 Jan 1997 08:57:11 GMT, rob...@slipknot.rain.com (Robert
Reed) wrote:
>Let's see what it looks like in another 5 or 10 years. The problem with
>unregulated growth is that it's a Pandora's box, a genie uncorked from the
>bottle.
You could say the same thing about any other aspect of life. If the
government doesn't control it, anything might happen. People might do
what the hell they want.
Solution: Stop immigration. Sell off most of the federal land (with
strict use stipulations if necessary). The Union is a bad deal.
Mike Chapman
On Mon, 20 Jan 97 05:57:54 GMT, j...@aracnet.com (Joyce Reynolds-Ward)
wrote:
>Near as I can tell (repeating myself), most of what I see being built in areas
>which are pushing the UGB are NOT low income or blue collar housing, will not
>be low income or blue collar housing, will NEVER be low income or blue collar
>housing.
EXACTLY Joyce. Ex-fucking-actly. Look elsewhere, where land is
cheap, not limited by bullshit excessive zoning or bullshit federal
ownership of all the land and you will see LOTS of $50-80,000
"starter" homes.
With such a limited market, why build anything other than the
expensive house? They're far more profitable. They can demand top
dollar with so few houses around.
Bob Tiernan
On 9 Jan 1997, Michael O'Hair wrote:
> This doesn't sound much different than the other "capitalists"
> who yammer on about freedom and then go running to Uncle Sam
> when they need to get bailed out.
But then real capitalists dis-own them the way lefties dis-own the
leftist dictators of the world.
Bob T.
A Fat Guy
In article <32e4e39c...@news.spiritone.com>, mi...@paranoia.com says...
>EXACTLY Joyce. Ex-fucking-actly. Look elsewhere, where land is
>cheap, not limited by bullshit excessive zoning or bullshit federal
>ownership of all the land and you will see LOTS of $50-80,000
>"starter" homes.
>
>With such a limited market, why build anything other than the
>expensive house? They're far more profitable. They can demand top
>dollar with so few houses around.
>----
>Mike Chapman - http://www.paranoia.com/~mike
Hey! There is intelligent life out there!
But seriously, the houses that sell for $50-$80K here would only sell for maybe
$20-$30K in a less crowded area such as a rural, small city. The houses that sell
for $200-$300K here would sell for maybe $100K in that same small rural city. If
there are jokers who are still willing to pay that much for a house, why wouldn't
an intelligent builder (developers don't always build) sell it for any less?
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
In article <32e4e39c...@news.spiritone.com>,
mi...@paranoia.com (Mike Chapman) wrote:
>On Mon, 20 Jan 97 05:57:54 GMT, j...@aracnet.com (Joyce Reynolds-Ward)
>wrote:
>>Near as I can tell (repeating myself), most of what I see being built in
areas
>>which are pushing the UGB are NOT low income or blue collar housing, will
not
>>be low income or blue collar housing, will NEVER be low income or blue
collar
>>housing.
>
>cheap, not limited by bullshit excessive zoning or bullshit federal
>ownership of all the land and you will see LOTS of $50-80,000
>"starter" homes.
Like LA? Snicker. Only starter homes down that way demand huge commutes to
the workplace. Not a desirable effect, either. Like Seattle and all?
Snicker. Don't see price tags at that level either.
Look at Orange County. Not a darned orange grove left, either.
Then again, maybe you don't want to see agricultural land left to its highest
and best purpose. I find it entertaining that recent flooding points out that
some areas in the Willamette Valley *should* have been left for agricultural
purposes, instead of being built up.
>With such a limited market, why build anything other than the
>expensive house? They're far more profitable. They can demand top
>dollar with so few houses around.
I dunno, now that it's profitable, my neighborhood slumlord is knocking down a
bunch of his old beater houses and putting up duplexes and triplexes, which is
a density fully supported by the local neighborhood plan. The local yups are
totally appalled, since that means--oh no! MORE RENTERS. Suits me, as my
land is worth more than my house and has been for several years.
Unfortunately, my house is in the single dwelling zone area, though I *might*
be able to get away with a carefully designed duplex.
Then again, this is a village-like neighborhood which would not be excessively
harmed by carefully designed, more intensive housing. It's a perfect
neighborhood for more intensive development, as we have two downtown bus lines
and one cross-town bus line passing through it. More multi-family housing
means the neighborhood services might just be able to stay instead of getting
displaced by yuppie-trendy antique malls and "junque" decorating shops.
jrw
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
In article <32e4e1a...@news.spiritone.com>,
mi...@paranoia.com (Mike Chapman) wrote:
>On Sat, 18 Jan 97 22:03:41 GMT, j...@aracnet.com (Joyce Reynolds-Ward)
>wrote:
>>Oh Gee. A Philantrophist. Are you selling your homes to Section 8, blue
>>collar types?
>>
>>Funny, though, the housing I see out there being produced by folks whining
>>about the UGB seems to be in the upper $100,000-$250,000 range.
>
>Perhaps this is because the federal government owns all the land
>and what land there is can't be subdivided into small enough lots to
>build cheap homes.
Feds don't own much land around PDX and in the Metro boundary, Mike.
As to your second point, what do you prefer, cheap homes or agriculture? I'd
sooner see smaller truck farms remain around than see Portland become an
LA-clone sprawl haven. Protecting agriculture is why you can't subdivide
lots to build cheap homes.
I'm surprised at you, frankly. As a good survivalist you should know that it
is better to keep local food sources in production rather than become
dependant on shipping for your food sources. The area which is overly
dependant on shipped food is vulnerable to attack...just cut off the transport
lines. Go reread a good book or two on sieges.
>I.e. you can't have a $50,000 house in a very limited market. There
>is no cheap land. In town it's fought over, around town its useless.
>
>The way to limit growth is to secede. There is no other way. Oregon
>will be the dumping grounds for the human rubbish of California.
>Until immigration can be limited, growth will continue, and no amount
>of heavy-handed government will make it better. Land will continue to
>skyrocket.
See my above comments. If Oregon secedes, then we can write off California
food sources. If we continue to develop unchecked onto prime agricultural
land, we lose our local food sources.
See a connection here?
There's a lot of controversy about starvation in the world today, but one
thing is clear. Whoever controls the transport of local food, controls an
area.
I don't particularly want to see that situation develop here.
jrw
Bob Tiernan
On 7 Jan 1997, Foxglove Records wrote:
> The only joke about Metro is that it's being taken over and subverted
> by representatives of the development industry, using manipulative,
> back-room maneuvering to pave the way for certain companies and
> individuals to make huge profits.
If you understood the nature of the State, and bureaucracy, you wouldn't
be surprised that eventually the "wrong" people would be running for
Metro positions. Just like people who crave power now run for legislative
seats, developers run for Metro.
> This is to be done in spite of the will of the citizens of this
> area to hold the line on urban sprawl.
"Will of the people" ? Who do you think elected the developers?
This, of course, is the classic "mixed signal" result which allows
government to do whatever it wants while claiming a mandate.
> The joke is on us, the taxpayers.
Ah, so density and government-forced scarcity of "buildable"
land has *not* caused the price of housing to rise faster
than your taxppayers' salaries could keep up with?
> The real joke is that so many people have been fooled into thinking
> the issue is individual rights versus government interference.
No, the real joke is that so many citizens of this supposedly
free society have been fooled into believing that they have a
"right" to control other people's property for their own selfish
desires of how things should be. This is no different than what
the OCA believes in. Control is control.
Bob T.
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
In article <5c1hkc$s...@news.pacifier.com>,
>
>>Yeah. Right. (That's sarcastic, in case you can't tell).
>>
areas
>>which are pushing the UGB are NOT low income or blue collar housing, will
not
>>be low income or blue collar housing, will NEVER be low income or blue
collar
>>housing.
>>
huge
>>"executive" style homes. Vaulted, energy-inefficient ceilings. Showplaces.
>>2000-3000 square foot palaces.
>
that it's a
>homes, we will stop building them. Currently, my projects are not the
"executive"
>style homes, but rather low income homes. Modular homes and mobile home
parks
>to be exact. People like you need somewhere to live too.
If you would read more carefully, you would note that I'm citing the
developers of those executive homes as those pushing the UGB.
As to specifics...let's hear 'em. You're obviously not working within PDX,
at least not West Side or Inner Southeast. Where then, pray tell? And why do
you feel it necessary to hide under a psuedonym?
>
>>ROTFL! As if Boise is the home of the enlightened universe!
>
>It sure beats this crime infested rat hole you love so much.
Never said anything about loving PDX. But from what I see Boise ain't much
better. If I want to live in that part of the world, I can think of a heckva
lot better places than Boise...run elbows with Albertsons, Boise Cascade, Trus
Joist and Morrison-Knutson sorts? Uh-uh. Not to my taste.
>>
>>Maybe you're playing to the wrong market, bub. Maybe you just can't keep up
>>with the big boys, hmm?
>>
>And you can? Maybe I'll just come over to your house and learn directly from
the
>master!
Mistress to you, bub. And I have no interest at all in land development
schemes (or anything else involving any male other than my hubby). There's
better ways to make or lose money.
At least more *fun* ways.
>>Oh puhleeze. There are other options besides capitalism and communism.
>>
>>And...for the record, I'm not a Communist, socialist or whatever.
>>
>Okay. Maybe then you're just a simple Marxist.
Redbaiting...the last refuge of the ignorant and uniformed idiots.
Marx was a fool.
>>Try reading the Gospels sometime, bub. Or check out dejanews for some of my
>>or.politics posts. You might be surprised.
>
>You need to read the gospel more closely. As long as our earth continues in
sin,
>there will always be masters and slaves. Today, that translates into
business owners
>and employees. Which are you again?
Read the Gospel(s), bub. There's four of 'em.
As I recall, Jesus chose to hang out with publicans and sinners. He held up
the poor widow giving her last mite as a positive example for all of us.
And I don't recall any specific Biblical cite confirming your above statement
about masters and slaves. Even Paul recommended that Philemon manumit
Onesimus. There's no tie between sin and masters and slaves.
Or, at least I'd find it interesting to see how you twist Scripture to come up
with *your* conclusions.
And, btw, I'm a self-employed artisan.
>>Red-baiting...the last refuge of the ignorant and greedy.
>
>Look who's talking!
>
>You wit astounds me, but your intelligence leaves much to be desired.
Look in a mirror. Can't have wit without intelligence, y'know.
jrw
Robert Reed
Please read the whole sentence, not quote me out of context. If rents and
housing prices are climbing, it's more likely due to other factors than the
regional planning process, one of which's goals is to ensure an adequate supply
of affordable housing. If anything, regional planning's contribution is likely
to be a lowering of housing costs, through expedited approvals in designated
zones, oversight to ensure land availability, and coordinated planning with
infrastructure development. But other factors, cost of materials, delays in
building cycles and development financing, rising property values, and
willingness of consumers to bear a higher priced market, all contribute to
housing inflation. I hope I've made myself clear?
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
When George S. Kaufman was drama editor at The New York Times, a press agent
asked, "How do I get our leading lady's name in your newspaper?"
"Shoot her," Kaufman replied.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed
In article <5c1htd$s...@news.pacifier.com> dlar...@pacifier.com (A Fat Guy) writes:
|In article <E4Au...@slipknot.rain.com>, rob...@slipknot.rain.com says...
|
|Now here's an intelligent response! Thanks for keeping this an intelligent
|debate Robert.
Thank you. I don't feel that just because we can't see each other, that gives
us any reason to be less civil. Flaming is fun, but it just sets up barriers
to communication.
|>Let's see what it looks like in another 5 or 10 years. The problem with
|>unregulated growth is that it's a Pandora's box, a genie uncorked from the
|>bottle. You say building is tapering off. I'd like to believe you, but a
|>voluntary limitation to growth by developers would be a situation unique in
|>the west.
|
|I agree with managing growth. I don't believe I said I was for deregulation,
|but it may sound that way. My personal feeling is that growth is going to
|slow down in the not so distant future. We are long overdue for a recession,
|and when that hits (it's only a matter of time) the land market will go down.
|Fewer homes will be bought or sold and thus fewer will be built. We may still
|have growth, but not nearly as rampant as these last few years have been.
Then we have no argument. I've been off the news channels for a while due to
equipment problems and missed the original O'Toole article, but saw what I
thought was lambasting an issue I care a lot about. I agree that we are long
overdue for a recession. Life works in boom-and-bust cycles. And growth at
whatever rate will eventually outstrip the resources of any environment. Bust
cycles occur frequently in nature: floods, forest fires, pestilence. They
destroy, generally in small patches, but also replenish. But our "environment"
is so highly linked--for very good reasons--it's hard to have localized bust
cycles without bringing the whole game down.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
It's hard to decide if TV makes morons out of everyone or if it mirrors
Americans who really are morons to begin with.
--Martin Mull
________________________________________________________________________________
Bob Tiernan
On 9 Jan 1997, David Papworth wrote:
> I personally have nothing against profit from free enterprise.
Well, gee, thanks.
> Home building is something of a special case, however, since
> it involves the permanent harvesting of a non-renewable resource
> (open land)
So what? Haven't you ever been to an old farmstead or ghost town
where there are fields where homes and outbuildings once stood?
> and is heavily subsidized by the surrounding community.
This is a crock argument. If the subsidization ends, you'd still be
against homes for new people.
> It is true that developers (and, indirectly,
> the eventual homebuyers) pay for most of the expenses
> of the homes, streets, and lighting within each
> subdivision. Fees are charged to connect sewer and water.
> This is as it should be. Anything less is an overt and
> unfair subsidy.
Did you say that the homebuyers "pay for most" of these
expenses? ^^^^
Then *where* does the "heavily subsidized" idea come from?
^^^^^^^
> Subdivisions bring new people, and these people don't sit quietly
> within their subdivision, but are part of a larger community.
I smell a collectivist thought coming.
> This community, and the governments you so readily demonize,
> builds schools for the children, sewers for the waste products,
> fire houses for the emergencies, roads for the cars,
> and planners to avoid a chaotic mess.
I like that last one: "planners". You mean the ones who
create the "orderly" messes?
> These items cost money; money which would not be needed in the
> absence of the new development.
Well of course, but new people bring money with them. Stop thinking
of new developments as tragedies.
> I've seen estimates that peg
> the costs of new schools at $11000 to $16000 per home;
Good case against building new government skools, I guess.
> sewer hookups running at a $1000 per home deficit to actual
> costs, road improvements running at $3000 to $7000 per home.
> I won't even try to guess at the costs of prisons and fire
> houses.
So what are you saying, that we can't afford to be alive?
I think I'm done readin' this one.
Bob T.
"Satan's cleverest wile is to persuade us that he does not exist"
-- Baudelaire
Mike Chapman
On Thu, 23 Jan 97 23:03:22 GMT, j...@aracnet.com (Joyce Reynolds-Ward)
wrote:
>See my above comments. If Oregon secedes, then we can write off California
>food sources. If we continue to develop unchecked onto prime agricultural
>land, we lose our local food sources.
>
>See a connection here?
Yeah, let's go ahead and secede and it will drive up the value of the
farmland enough to preclude development without heavy-handed
government. :-)
You'll need to demonstrate that significant acreage is threated, and
that there isn't other land which could be converted to argriculture.
Irrigation along the Columbia produces a lot of grain and could make
plenty more if the demand for local grain were there.
If the government wants to take control of land it is required by the
constitution to pay the owner for whatever value it has diminished.
If the land was originally owned without zoning restrictions, the
government *must* pay when it imposes *or increases* such
restrictions. Otherwise, you don't own your land. What next? Will
they require you grow certain crops? Hell they already do for all I
know. I wouldn't be surprised. They do limit harvesting of trees.
Guerilla
> >See my above comments. If Oregon secedes, then we can write off California
> >food sources.
And they can write off our water. You people never shouldve let Brown
do that in the first place. See the connection?
BTW, OR grew more wheat than any other state last yr. Everything else
is just icing on the cake!
> > If we continue to develop unchecked onto prime agricultural
> >land, we lose our local food sources.
> >
> >See a connection here?
This is nonsense. Capitalism is foremost about private property. Only
13% of the land in this country is in private hands. IE: private
property. In OR, the figure is 6%. The rest of this land is considered
by the govt to be their private property. You want that land taken care
of? Sell it. Most people dont deficate in their yards. The govt does
only because it doesnt sleep/live there, and have to smell it in the
morning. Im gettin my land soon, and Im outraged at the prices.
Robert Reed
In article <32e4e455...@news.spiritone.com> mi...@paranoia.com (Mike Chapman) writes:
|On Mon, 20 Jan 1997 08:57:11 GMT, rob...@slipknot.rain.com (Robert Reed) wrote:
|>unregulated growth is that it's a Pandora's box, a genie uncorked from the
|>bottle.
|
|government doesn't control it, anything might happen. People might do
|what the hell they want.
Well, you could. This is a free country. You could say anything you want
(given some restrictions). But good government is any always has been a
delicate balance to maintain. It takes constant vigilance. And I might
amend your last sentence to "Some people might do what the hell they want"
because I can guarantee that more people would suffer from the myopic greed
of a few who did what the hell they wanted.
|Solution: Stop immigration. Sell off most of the federal land (with
|strict use stipulations if necessary). The Union is a bad deal.
A possible solution. Immigration has very little effect on the problems we're
discussing here. And if you attempt to sell off federal land, either the buyers
will find ways around your stipulations (what can be made can always be unmade)
or else you'll find no interest, or interest without resources. Let's face it,
in the history of the United States, the western public lands have served mostly
as an extractive reserve. If there's nothing to extract, there's little
financial interest.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
--G.K. Chesterton
________________________________________________________________________________
wbg
Robert Reed (rob...@slipknot.rain.com) wrote:
: If rents and housing prices are climbing, it's more likely due to other
: factors than the regional planning process, one of which's goals is to ensure
: an adequate supply of affordable housing.
wbg responds:
If we should have learned anything in the last 40 or 50 years (let alone
the preceding centuries) it is that a planning bureaucrat's having
trumpeted a "goal" bears little relationship to the eventual realization
of anything approximating that "goal".
Robert continued:
: If anything, regional planning's contribution is likely to be a
: lowering of housing costs,
wbg rejoins:
Hard to imagine how, since a large portion of the regional planners'
impact involves the UGB, which axiomatically drives up the price of land.
Surely I don't need to belabor explaining how that happens.
Robert explicates (weakly):
: through expedited approvals in designated zones,
Perhaps, in a small way,
: oversight to ensure land availability,
I doubt it very much,
:and coordinated planning with infrastructure development.
Maybe. A little. But most of this is far outweighed in the final mix of
housing costs by the cost of the land.
Robert continued to make the try:
: But other factors, cost of materials, delays in
: building cycles and development financing, rising property values, and
: willingness of consumers to bear a higher priced market, all contribute to
: housing inflation. I hope I've made myself clear?
Actually you probably committed obfuscation more than you fostered
clarity, but at least I see you made a passing mention of rising property
values, albeit without acknowledging one of the major causes of same.
Brewster
--
***********************************************************************
W. Brewster Gillett w...@hevanet.com Portland, Oregon USA
***********************************************************************
Bob Tiernan
On Fri, 17 Jan 1997, Robert Reed wrote:
> Bob Tiernan wrote:
> |That's right. And they'll also say that anyone who wants to develop a new
> |farm is greedy and can't wait to sell some corn and stringbeans, as if the
> |reasons for their sale can't be factored into the equation. And the
> |people who made the computer you're all using now are greedy. They've
> |built computers that nobody bought I guess, so long as they made money
> |by building them. Hmmmm....
>
> Wha'chu been smokin'? Have you been developing new farms AS FARMS lately?
That means that when someone buys an existing farm, let's say one in
disuse, with the intention of farming. The point is, is he doing this
to make money by taking advantage of our growling stomachs? I don't
see any farmers growing food to give away, and I doubt that you work
for nothing yourself.
> One of the major thrusts of Oregon's land use goals is to preserve farm and
> forest land for farmers and foresters. One of the major thrusts of developers
> is to turn those lands into housing tracts, strip-malls and other non-farm or
> forest uses.
While I personally don't like to see this, I do note that people crowd
these places once they're built. Guess enough of the people want it.
What gives you or anyone else the right to excercise your own greed
over use of land that is not yours, just to satisfy your desire to see
some pigs in a field when you drive by?
> Greed is good but the greedy aren't generally known as altruists.
Authorities, elected or not, aren't known for this either.
Bob T.
Bob Tiernan
On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Robert Reed wrote:
> And, the Oregon land use goals include ensuring housing availability for
> those of modest means.
The market ensures this as well, even better. Unless, of course, you are
one of those who believes that developers, if unregulated, would only
build homes for people making over $100,000 per years. Henry Ford made
more money than ever before when he started to make a cheaper car for
more people to buy. That's where there's lots of money. That's also why
the government taxes the middle and lower income groups so much.
Bob T.
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
In article <32e92b42...@news.spiritone.com>,
mi...@paranoia.com (Mike Chapman) wrote:
>On Thu, 23 Jan 97 23:03:22 GMT, j...@aracnet.com (Joyce Reynolds-Ward)
>wrote:
>>See my above comments. If Oregon secedes, then we can write off California
>>
>>See a connection here?
>
>farmland enough to preclude development without heavy-handed
>government. :-)
Nope, we'll be too busy fighting off the Feds. Ecotopia is an interesting
fantasy, but the reality has a lot of big holes in it.
Only way it would work would be during a period of major distraction where the
loss of region is a lesser priority than the major distraction. I don't see
that coming very soon, if at all. Despite your survivalist fantasies (and
hey, I've had a few of my own in younger days).
>You'll need to demonstrate that significant acreage is threated, and
>that there isn't other land which could be converted to argriculture.
>Irrigation along the Columbia produces a lot of grain and could make
>plenty more if the demand for local grain were there.
There's more to agriculture than grain, Mike. As for significant acreage, I
suggest you take a look at prior usage and soil classification data in the
Willamette Valley. I think you will be very surprised at the acreage now
growing houses which should instead be growing crops.
Furthermore, do you know why those irrigation grain farms survive along the
Columbia, Mike? Cheap electricity (boy, I know this one, having worked on the
WPPSS litigation and spending one part of my job learning about the irrigation
districts). The only way those lands can afford to produce what they do now
is through cheap electricity rates. Period. Before electric pumps which
could either pump water up from deep wells--and, BTW, the aquifer is limited
in that area, so at some point the resource will run out--or from the river,
there wasn't as much grain along the Columbia; certainly not producing at
current yields. But the water has to be pumped. And if the electricity isn't
cheap, then the grain becomes less profitable. If a heavier population in the
Willamette Valley pulls off the electricity available to agriculture, then
what happens?
Outside of grass seed, during my lifetime in the Willamette Valley grain has
not been a significant product. What has been displaced by development has
been truck farms...vegetables and fruit produce. The Gateway development in
Springfield rests on what used to be a pretty productive strawberry field.
Furthermore, while you can grow these crops in Eastern Oregon, the weather
extremes are not that favorable for some of the more delicate crops in the
Valley. Or available year round.
>If the government wants to take control of land it is required by the
>constitution to pay the owner for whatever value it has diminished.
>If the land was originally owned without zoning restrictions, the
>government *must* pay when it imposes *or increases* such
>restrictions. Otherwise, you don't own your land. What next? Will
>they require you grow certain crops? Hell they already do for all I
>know. I wouldn't be surprised. They do limit harvesting of trees.
Where do you think farm subsidies come from? <VBSEG).
jrw
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
In article <32E991...@hevanet.com>, Guerilla <guer...@hevanet.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 23 Jan 97 23:03:22 GMT, j...@aracnet.com (Joyce Reynolds-Ward)
>> wrote:
>
>> >See my above comments. If Oregon secedes, then we can write off California
>> >food sources.
>
>do that in the first place. See the connection?
Geez, you're ignorant. They don't get our water. They get our electricity
<fiendish grin here>. Which do you think is more precious?
Much as LA would like to fantasize, our water stays *here.* And I'm fairly
certain that should any idiot seriously try to take Columbia River water,
they'd have to post armed guards around any project set up to route water from
the Columbia to LA. All those farmers and environmentalists, y'know. Would
make a decent organizing tool, now, wouldn't it? <FGH>
>
>BTW, OR grew more wheat than any other state last yr. Everything else
>is just icing on the cake!
No, if you want to be technical, the cannabis crop probably outgrew wheat.
Don't discount the fruit and vegetable market, either.
Or beef.
>> > If we continue to develop unchecked onto prime agricultural
>> >land, we lose our local food sources.
>> >
>> >See a connection here?
>
>This is nonsense. Capitalism is foremost about private property. Only
>13% of the land in this country is in private hands. IE: private
>property. In OR, the figure is 6%. The rest of this land is considered
>by the govt to be their private property. You want that land taken care
>of? Sell it. Most people dont deficate in their yards. The govt does
>only because it doesnt sleep/live there, and have to smell it in the
>morning. Im gettin my land soon, and Im outraged at the prices.
Snort. Go cruise around in the state of Washington. Some of the biggest land
rape around up there is on privately owned logging lands, because Washington
has had fewer state logging restrictions than Oregon over the years.
Go look at any of the local slumlord's properties. What looks better, the
rental or homeowner property? Yet both are privately held.
At least with government held lands we can argue about how it should be
managed.
As to the price of land...poor baby. Life is hard, and I do wish we'd bought
a bigger place when we did buy, 'cause I'm not too eager to contribute to the
current price inflations just to have a bigger place to live.
Considering my parents bought the 5 acre farm I grew up on for $15,000 in
1967...anything is incredibly expensive. Compared to the price the average
homesteader paid for land a century ago...it's outrageous.
Shrug. You want land here...you pay the price. Or go elsewhere.
jrw
Bob Tiernan
On Tue, 21 Jan 1997, Mike Chapman wrote:
> Solution: Stop immigration. Sell off most of the federal land (with
> strict use stipulations if necessary). The Union is a bad deal.
Immigration in itself is no problem. Having a welfare state that
immigrants, as well as US citizens, can latch onto *is*.
Bob T.
Bob Tiernan
On Fri, 24 Jan 1997, Mike Chapman wrote:
> If the government wants to take control of land it is required by the
> constitution to pay the owner for whatever value it has diminished.
> If the land was originally owned without zoning restrictions, the
> government *must* pay when it imposes *or increases* such
> restrictions. Otherwise, you don't own your land.
Yup. Decades ago the statists and their progressive followers (and
others) realized that if the government controls land-use but lets
the land-owner *keep* the title, it's *not a taking*!!!! If that's
what the "living" Constitution gave us, I'll take the dead one.
Bob T.
A Fat Guy
In article <5cb1sd$n...@cobweb.aracnet.com>, j...@aracnet.com says...
>
>
>As to specifics...let's hear 'em. You're obviously not working within PDX,
>at least not West Side or Inner Southeast. Where then, pray tell? And why do
>you feel it necessary to hide under a psuedonym?
>
I'm sure this is just my paranoia, but better a little safe than a lot sorry. Besides, I have a very
common name and A Fat Guy people recognize.
You'll be seeing one of my projects on the troutdale area soon. I'm not currently working with
PDX. I am more concerned with development in general than I am with a small area like
Porkland. (Oops...did I misspell that?)
>>You need to read the gospel more closely. As long as our earth continues in
>sin,
>>there will always be masters and slaves. Today, that translates into
>business owners
>>and employees. Which are you again?
>
>Read the Gospel(s), bub. There's four of 'em.
>
There's more to the Bible than just the gospels. You have to read just a little further, into the
writings of Paul.
>As I recall, Jesus chose to hang out with publicans and sinners. He held up
>the poor widow giving her last mite as a positive example for all of us.
Mite??
Sorry, I'm not following what your saying here. Maybe you could be more specific. Texts
would be great!
>And I don't recall any specific Biblical cite confirming your above statement
>about masters and slaves. Even Paul recommended that Philemon manumit
>Onesimus. There's no tie between sin and masters and slaves.
>
>Or, at least I'd find it interesting to see how you twist Scripture to come up
>with *your* conclusions.
>
Let's start with First Peter 2:18, Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22, First Timothy 6:1, Titus 2: 5-9,
to name a few. I'm not trying to convince you to believe as I do, I was simply stateing my
views. Read the scriptures for yourself and draw you own conclusions if you please. I hope
you just don't take my word for it.
>And, btw, I'm a self-employed artisan.
OK. 'Nuff said.
>>You wit astounds me, but your intelligence leaves much to be desired.
>
>Look in a mirror. Can't have wit without intelligence, y'know.
>
Well thank you very much!
My heartfelt apologies for the flames in my last post. I was already on edge and reading
your reply did not make me any happier. I took it out on you. Sorry bout that.
Robert Reed
In article <Pine.GSO.3.95.970124...@julie.teleport.com> Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> writes:
|On Fri, 17 Jan 1997, Robert Reed wrote:
|
|> Bob Tiernan wrote:
|> |That's right. And they'll also say that anyone who wants to develop a new
|> |farm is greedy and can't wait to sell some corn and stringbeans, as if the
|> |reasons for their sale can't be factored into the equation.
|>
|
|That means that when someone buys an existing farm, let's say one in
|disuse, with the intention of farming. The point is, is he doing this
|to make money by taking advantage of our growling stomachs? I don't
|see any farmers growing food to give away, and I doubt that you work
|for nothing yourself.
I'm not arguing against the profit motive. I'm suggesting that you'll find very
little NEW land being added to the roles of farm use. Exclusive farm use zones
have kept down property values, but not so low that those farms can sit idle.
There are possibly payments but certainly taxes to be paid, and the money has to
come from somewhere. There are only a few alternatives: either the land is
actively managed by the owners or rented out. Or despite the controls in place
to prevent it, some lands--especially marginal lands--might slip into the
category of "hobby farms" whose owners principally earn their living by some
means other than working that land, often by commuting into some high-tech or
professional jobs. Insofar as this causes the loss of that land from the roles
of producing farms or forests, we get a net loss to the agricultural
productiveness of our state. I'd love to see your examples of recent attempts
to ADD farmland.
|> One of the major thrusts of Oregon's land use goals is to preserve farm and
|> forest land for farmers and foresters. One of the major thrusts of developers
|> is to turn those lands into housing tracts, strip-malls and other non-farm or
|> forest uses.
|
|While I personally don't like to see this, I do note that people crowd
|these places once they're built. Guess enough of the people want it.
|What gives you or anyone else the right to excercise your own greed
|over use of land that is not yours, just to satisfy your desire to see
|some pigs in a field when you drive by?
You malign my motives by your insinuations. The fact that these facilities get
used is not a justification for their construction, no more than that rule
holds true in any other sprawled development along the west coast or elsewhere.
And it's not me or any other individual exercising their greed, but by the vote
of the majority to elect officials and institute laws calling for oversight in
planning for our future as a state. So far they've not done the best job, but
they've done a good job in balancing issues of growth and preservation. The
real question now is whether the immigration to this state over the last ten
years will reinforce or dilute that spirit of community action for a common
good. With the recent successes of individuals like Bill Sizemore, community
spirit is on the ropes while corporations profit much more than individuals.
Finally, the "pigs in a field" bit was a cheap shot, but of a nature I've
frequently seen in your previous posts. The fact is that I couldn't care
less about pig-filled drives in the country, but I am concerned that local
produce remain local, and that the overcrowding of our freeways is not
compounded by further suburban sprawl. Those are both reasons that I think
many people share.
|> Greed is good but the greedy aren't generally known as altruists.
|
|Authorities, elected or not, aren't known for this either.
Well, that's your opinion. But surely you would acknowledge that candidates for
elective office tout their altruism, parading past experiences in community
service and volunteerism. Whether you agree that authorities demonstrate
altruism or not, surely you would agree that it is a desirable characteristic?
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents'
shortcomings.
--Laurence J. Peter
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed
No, I agree that market forces are very good for filling some needs, but not
all. For example, leaving suburban development to the market, given no other
constraints, can supply affordable housing needs but linked with our marketing
driven fascination for the automobile, has generally lead to sprawl. Look at
any unregulated community you choose. Houston is a classic example of sprawled,
chaotic, and problematic development. The intersection of Houston's ring road
and its north-south freeway has previously earned the appellation of the busiest
intersection in the world.
My point was that while regulating for these other goals not well served by
markets, Oregon's planning process has made provision for other goals such as
affordable housing as well. It may not even be as good for providing
affordable housing as unregulated markets, but it does a lot better than such
markets for serving our disparate set of needs. And urban planners across the
globe tout Portland as an exemplar of maintaining quality and viability in an
urban setting.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the
power of speech.
--George Bernard Shaw
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed
In article <Pine.GSO.3.95.970122...@kelly.teleport.com> Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> writes:
|
|But then real capitalists dis-own them the way lefties dis-own the
|leftist dictators of the world.
What leftist dictators did you have in mind? Most dictators are extremely
right-wing, typically military leaders or close to them. But now we're getting
WAY off the subject.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
An ideal wife is one who remains faithful to you but tries to be just as
charming as if she weren't.
--Sacha Guitry
________________________________________________________________________________
Guerilla
Joyce Reynolds-Ward wrote:
>
> In article <32E991...@hevanet.com>, Guerilla <guer...@hevanet.com> wrote:
> >> On Thu, 23 Jan 97 23:03:22 GMT, j...@aracnet.com (Joyce Reynolds-Ward)
> >> wrote:
> >
> >> >See my above comments. If Oregon secedes, then we can write off California
> >> >food sources.
> >
> >And they can write off our water. You people never shouldve let Brown
> >do that in the first place. See the connection?
>
> Geez, you're ignorant. They don't get our water. They get our electricity
I just read about a county in kali that gets 75% of its water from OR.
Geez, youre ignorant.
> Much as LA would like to fantasize, our water stays *here.* And I'm fairly
> certain that should any idiot seriously try to take Columbia River water,
> they'd have to post armed guards around any project set up to route water from
> the Columbia to LA. All those farmers and environmentalists, y'know. Would
> make a decent organizing tool, now, wouldn't it? <FGH>
>
> >
> >BTW, OR grew more wheat than any other state last yr. Everything else
> >is just icing on the cake!
>
> No, if you want to be technical, the cannabis crop probably outgrew wheat.
>
> Don't discount the fruit and vegetable market, either.
>
> Or beef.
>
> >> > If we continue to develop unchecked onto prime agricultural
> >> >land, we lose our local food sources.
> >> >
> >> >See a connection here?
> >
> >This is nonsense. Capitalism is foremost about private property. Only
> >13% of the land in this country is in private hands. IE: private
> >property. In OR, the figure is 6%. The rest of this land is considered
> >by the govt to be their private property. You want that land taken care
> >of? Sell it. Most people dont deficate in their yards. The govt does
> >only because it doesnt sleep/live there, and have to smell it in the
> >morning. Im gettin my land soon, and Im outraged at the prices.
>
> Snort. Go cruise around in the state of Washington. Some of the biggest land
> rape around up there is on privately owned logging lands, because Washington
> has had fewer state logging restrictions than Oregon over the years.
Trees are a crop. To be harvested. So you govt worshipping goons use a
title like 'rape' to justify your arguement. You are much smarter than
the rest of us, and we should just trust you.
> Go look at any of the local slumlord's properties. What looks better, the
> rental or homeowner property? Yet both are privately held.
Slumlord?
Youre an idiot.
But I guess youve got a solution huh? Somebody is providing housing
that doesnt meet your morally superior, ethnocentric standards? You
should start a war on poverty! Itll only cost a few trillion, and your
masters will never let slums develope.
Oh, wait. I forgot, you and the Russians both already tried that.
It didnt work.
ps. Youre gonna have a hard time calling my place a 'compound' when
y'all kill me if Ive only got 5 acres. Jerk.
wbg
Robert Reed (rob...@slipknot.rain.com) wrote:
: In article <5cbjpr$2...@glisan.hevanet.com> w...@hevanet.com (wbg) writes:
: |Robert Reed (rob...@slipknot.rain.com) wrote:
: |
: |: If rents and housing prices are climbing, it's more likely due to other
: |: factors than the regional planning process, one of which's goals is to ensure
: |: an adequate supply of affordable housing.
: |
: |wbg responds:
: |If we should have learned anything in the last 40 or 50 years (let alone
: |the preceding centuries) it is that a planning bureaucrat's having
: |trumpeted a "goal" bears little relationship to the eventual realization
: |of anything approximating that "goal".
: Maybe in your philosophy. I certainly don't agree. Planning is a process
: that serves a beneficial role everywhere in our personal, public and
: financial lives and in our government. Surely you're not ranting against
: the planning process in general?
Surely not. Just that as typically performed by (mostly) unelected
visionairies who have the presumption that they know better than we do.
And I'm critical of "goals" precisely because that terminoligy is
generally employed as a euphemism for something that "we'd really like to
see happen but have not idea whether it ever actually will". And because
our history is replete with examples of where planners' "goals" turned
out to be unfulfillable.
And Oregon's land use goals have had a
: substantial impact in shaping the development of our region, an impact
: that most people recognize as beneficial.
I would challenge the "most" portion of that :-)
: |Robert continued:
: |: If anything, regional planning's contribution is likely to be a
: |: lowering of housing costs,
: |
: |wbg rejoins:
: |Hard to imagine how, since a large portion of the regional planners'
: |impact involves the UGB, which axiomatically drives up the price of land.
: |Surely I don't need to belabor explaining how that happens.
: Well, if you truly believe the effect on land prices of the UGB to be
: axiomatic then I might as well save my breath because you're arguing
: from dogma <snip>
If believing that the laws of supply and demand border on being as
immutable as the laws of physics, (neither of them 100%, of course :-) )
then perhaps some would consider that dogma. I don't.
: |Robert explicates (weakly):
: |
: |: through expedited approvals in designated zones,
: |
: |Perhaps, in a small way,
: |
: |: oversight to ensure land availability,
: |
: |I doubt it very much,
: |
: |:and coordinated planning with infrastructure development.
: |
: |Maybe. A little. But most of this is far outweighed in the final mix of
: |housing costs by the cost of the land.
: I take it you don't like me because of my viewpoint, thus the subtle mockery
: of my arguments.
Au contraire, Robert. First, there's nothing personal in any of this.
Second, I believe you're reading mockery (not intended) into what I
intended as straightforward refutation.
: In the early '90s a Rutgers University study found that building in more
: compact development patterns could save state and local governments in New
: Jersey $8-9 billion over 20 years in building, operating and maintaining
: roads, water, sewer and school facilities. Sprawl added $12-15,000 to the
: cost of serving every new household. In 1989 the Urban Land Institute noted
: that homes on 1/3 acre lots 10 miles from job centers are twice as costly to
: serve as "urban villages" located closer in. (figures from the Sept 1995 issue
: of Landmark.) With the savings pressures of measure 47 bearing down on
: municipalities, can we seriously consider any alternatives to reducing average
: lot sizes and restricting devlopment within our UGBs?
I guess my point is that they seem not to have also estimated what amount
land scarcity added to that same set of household costs. And what a great
deal of this debate overlooks is that people, if _allowed_ to, will often
cheerfully pay more in infrastructure costs if (a) they are partially or
wholly offset by lower land costs, and (b) it means that they can have a
little dirt around their castle instead of a neighbor on a common wall.
The utopian planner mentality seems to be bent on removing that as a
choice because of a yet-unproven set of assumptions that we're all
somehow better off with increased density, or that we are preserving a
(yet-unproven) vanishing farmland resource.
Understand that I'm not necessarily objecting to density per se, just the
the form in which it currently tends to get mandated. I live in a fairly
close-in neighborhood, and we've seen a ton of in-fill development the
past few years. My belief is that the majority of that would happen even
without the planners' mandates, since many people are willing to accept
greater density in order to live closer to the core. It's nice that they
have that choice, but not so nice to deny the, in effect, oppposite
choice to others, based on someone's utopian visions. My problem is,
Robert, that the philosophical position you _seem_ to be supporting would
make that the _only_ choice of shelter - to which I strongly object.
And, really, _nothing_ personal!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
" The statesman who would attempt to direct private people in what manner
they ought to emply their capital would assume an authority which could
be safely entrusted not only to no single person, but to no council or
senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands
of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to
exercise it. "
Adam Smith
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
On Sun, 26 Jan 1997 06:06:29 -0800, Guerilla <guer...@hevanet.com>
wrote:
>> Geez, you're ignorant. They don't get our water. They get our electricity
>> <fiendish grin here>. Which do you think is more precious?
>
>I just read about a county in kali that gets 75% of its water from OR.
>Geez, youre ignorant.
Specify, please. Or are you talking about the county which shares
Goose Lake with Oregon? Let's talk details, bub.
snip
>> Snort. Go cruise around in the state of Washington. Some of the biggest land
>> rape around up there is on privately owned logging lands, because Washington
>> has had fewer state logging restrictions than Oregon over the years.
>
>Trees are a crop. To be harvested. So you govt worshipping goons use a
>title like 'rape' to justify your arguement. You are much smarter than
>the rest of us, and we should just trust you.
Aha. The lordly Go-Ryder now Guerilla admits to his true
proclivities: he supports the timber industry. He supports
clear-cutting. He who blames the Feds for dominating our lives is
actually a timber industry shill/worshipper.
This explains one heckva lot, including his willingness to overlook
corporate welfare handouts by the government.
"timber is a crop" is a Weyerhaeuser corporate slogan, bub. And
there's a lot of cut and run history behind that slogan, including a
conscious decision to overcut company property planning to use Federal
timber as a bailout. Some very cynical decisions were made about
timber production, and both corporations and Feds were in it up to
their mutual necks.
>
>> Go look at any of the local slumlord's properties. What looks better, the
>> rental or homeowner property? Yet both are privately held.
>
>Slumlord?
Yep. Need the term defined?
>Youre an idiot.
Look in the mirror.
>But I guess youve got a solution huh? Somebody is providing housing
>that doesnt meet your morally superior, ethnocentric standards? You
>should start a war on poverty! Itll only cost a few trillion, and your
>masters will never let slums develope.
Hey, if I were designing a program it would at least produce more
literate folks than you.
And you're reaching to assume "morally superior, ethnocentric
standards." The only one I've seen flogging such attitudes around
here has been you.
Remember your "morally superior" attitude about the babies killed in
the Oklahoma City bombing?
Case closed.
>
>Oh, wait. I forgot, you and the Russians both already tried that.
Stupidity and lack of imagination. Disagree with someone and bring up
the "R" word.
>ps. Youre gonna have a hard time calling my place a 'compound' when
>y'all kill me if Ive only got 5 acres. Jerk.
So where the hell did you ever get the notion I a.) would call your
place a "compound" and b.) kill you if you only have 5 acres? What
planet are you on, bub?
Not the same one I am...or else your meds are running low.
jrw
I use spamblock!
Robert Reed
In article <5cbjpr$2...@glisan.hevanet.com> w...@hevanet.com (wbg) writes:
|Robert Reed (rob...@slipknot.rain.com) wrote:
|
|: If rents and housing prices are climbing, it's more likely due to other
|: factors than the regional planning process, one of which's goals is to ensure
|: an adequate supply of affordable housing.
|
|wbg responds:
|If we should have learned anything in the last 40 or 50 years (let alone
|the preceding centuries) it is that a planning bureaucrat's having
|trumpeted a "goal" bears little relationship to the eventual realization
|of anything approximating that "goal".
Maybe in your philosophy. I certainly don't agree. Planning is a process
that serves a beneficial role everywhere in our personal, public and
financial lives and in our government. Surely you're not ranting against
the planning process in general? And Oregon's land use goals have had a
substantial impact in shaping the development of our region, an impact
that most people recognize as beneficial.
|Robert continued:
|: If anything, regional planning's contribution is likely to be a
|: lowering of housing costs,
|
|wbg rejoins:
|Hard to imagine how, since a large portion of the regional planners'
|impact involves the UGB, which axiomatically drives up the price of land.
|Surely I don't need to belabor explaining how that happens.
Well, if you trully believe the effect on land prices of the UGB to be axiomatic
then I might as well save my breath because you're arguing from dogma and I
have no chance to sway that. But if you meant to say asymptotic and by that you
mean exponential (or geometric, whichever you prefer), then I need an
explanation. What may be obvious to you is not clear to me. I am not an
unintelligent person, and if I don't get it, I'm sure there are many more in
this forum in the same boat.
|Robert explicates (weakly):
|
|: through expedited approvals in designated zones,
|
|Perhaps, in a small way,
|
|: oversight to ensure land availability,
|
|I doubt it very much,
|
|:and coordinated planning with infrastructure development.
|
|Maybe. A little. But most of this is far outweighed in the final mix of
|housing costs by the cost of the land.
I take it you don't like me because of my viewpoint, thus the subtle mockery
of my arguments. Land costs are an important factor in the cost of housing.
So is the placement and/or expansion of schools, assestment costs for
utilities and the costs for providing access. And these costs are
interrelated. People do buy property on speculation and having services in
place, or even just in planning can increase property value. Do you
criticize these planning activities as well?
|Robert continued to make the try:
|: But other factors, cost of materials, delays in
|: building cycles and development financing, rising property values, and
|: willingness of consumers to bear a higher priced market, all contribute to
|: housing inflation. I hope I've made myself clear?
|
|Actually you probably committed obfuscation more than you fostered
|clarity, but at least I see you made a passing mention of rising property
|values, albeit without acknowledging one of the major causes of same.
More mockery! Have you no civility, sir? I hardly consider this obfuscation,
but I do have a limited time to spend on this net news silliness and so I
apologize if my attempt to summarize a lot of concepts was perceived by you
as vague or misleading. Certainly you understand materials costs, and you've
already commented on rising property values. Were you around when Oregon
suffered a great influx of former Californians, who in order to roll over
their home sales and avoid capital gains, had money to burn in buying local
housing? That in itself was a great inflator, and is at least part of the
reason for local housing costs today. And surely you're familiar with the
difficulties in obtaining bank loans that were epidemic about 3-5 years ago
and were often described in the press? (I'm just working from memory here,
so please bear with me.) As I recall, there was a lot of concern raised that
despite dropping interest rates, money was still tight because of the
reticence of bankers to face more exposure. It may have been related to
the savings and loan troubles of a few years ago. In any case it was a
condition that depressed housing starts and certainly affected the supply.
So, all of these factors have affected housing costs in this area. I have not
seen any studies analyzing the causes of local property value increases, but
I have heard of some studies that back the positions I've espoused above.
In the early '90s a Rutgers University study found that building in more
compact development patterns could save state and local governments in New
Jersey $8-9 billion over 20 years in building, operating and maintaining
roads, water, sewer and school facilities. Sprawl added $12-15,000 to the
cost of serving every new household. In 1989 the Urban Land Institute noted
that homes on 1/3 acre lots 10 miles from job centers are twice as costly to
serve as "urban villages" located closer in. (figures from the Sept 1995 issue
of Landmark.) With the savings pressures of measure 47 bearing down on
municipalities, can we seriously consider any alternatives to reducing average
lot sizes and restricting devlopment within our UGBs?
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
When you consider how indifferent Americans are to the quality and cooking of
the food they put into their insides, it cannot but strike you as peculiar that
they should take such pride in the mechanical appliances they use for its
excretion.
--W. Somerset Maugham
________________________________________________________________________________
Newsgroups: or.politics,or.general,pdx.general
Subject: Re: Randal O'Toole article on Metro
References: <no_spam-2001...@ip-pdx06-27.teleport.com> <E4Iz5...@slipknot.rain.com> <5cbjpr$2...@glisan.hevanet.com>
In article <5cbjpr$2...@glisan.hevanet.com> w...@hevanet.com (wbg) writes:
|Robert Reed (rob...@slipknot.rain.com) wrote:
|
|: If rents and housing prices are climbing, it's more likely due to other
|: factors than the regional planning process, one of which's goals is to ensure
|: an adequate supply of affordable housing.
|
|wbg responds:
|If we should have learned anything in the last 40 or 50 years (let alone
|the preceding centuries) it is that a planning bureaucrat's having
|trumpeted a "goal" bears little relationship to the eventual realization
|of anything approximating that "goal".
Maybe in your philosophy. I certainly don't agree. Planning is a process
that serves a beneficial role everywhere in our personal, public and
financial lives and in our government. Surely you're not ranting against
the planning process in general? And Oregon's land use goals have had a
substantial impact in shaping the development of our region, an impact
that most people recognize as beneficial.
|Robert continued:
|: If anything, regional planning's contribution is likely to be a
|: lowering of housing costs,
|
|wbg rejoins:
|Hard to imagine how, since a large portion of the regional planners'
|impact involves the UGB, which axiomatically drives up the price of land.
|Surely I don't need to belabor explaining how that happens.
Well, if you trully believe the effect on land prices of the UGB to be axiomatic
then I might as well save my breath because you're arguing from dogma and I
have no chance to sway that. But if you meant to say asymptotic and by that you
mean exponential (or geometric, whichever you prefer), then I need an
explanation. What may be obvious to you is not clear to me. I am not an
unintelligent person, and if I don't get it, I'm sure there are many more in
this forum in the same boat.
|Robert explicates (weakly):
|
|: through expedited approvals in designated zones,
|
|Perhaps, in a small way,
|
|: oversight to ensure land availability,
|
|I doubt it very much,
|
|:and coordinated planning with infrastructure development.
|
|Maybe. A little. But most of this is far outweighed in the final mix of
|housing costs by the cost of the land.
I take it you don't like me because of my viewpoint, thus the subtle mockery
of my arguments. Land costs are an important factor in the cost of housing.
So is the placement and/or expansion of schools, assestment costs for
utilities and the costs for providing access. And these costs are
interrelated. People do buy property on speculation and having services in
place, or even just in planning can increase property value. Do you
criticize these planning activities as well?
|Robert continued to make the try:
|: But other factors, cost of materials, delays in
|: building cycles and development financing, rising property values, and
|: willingness of consumers to bear a higher priced market, all contribute to
|: housing inflation. I hope I've made myself clear?
|
|Actually you probably committed obfuscation more than you fostered
|clarity, but at least I see you made a passing mention of rising property
|values, albeit without acknowledging one of the major causes of same.
More mockery! Have you no civility, sir? I hardly consider this obfuscation,
but I do have a limited time to spend on this net news silliness and so I
apologize if my attempt to summarize a lot of concepts was perceived by you
as vague or misleading. Certainly you understand materials costs, and you've
already commented on rising property values. Were you around when Oregon
suffered a great influx of former Californians, who in order to roll over
their home sales and avoid capital gains, had money to burn in buying local
housing? That in itself was a great inflator, and is at least part of the
reason for local housing costs today. And surely you're familiar with the
difficulties in obtaining bank loans that were epidemic about 3-5 years ago
and were often described in the press? (I'm just working from memory here,
so please bear with me.) As I recall, there was a lot of concern raised that
despite dropping interest rates, money was still tight because of the
reticence of bankers to face more exposure. It may have been related to
the savings and loan troubles of a few years ago. In any case it was a
condition that depressed housing starts and certainly affected the supply.
So, all of these factors have affected housing costs in this area. I have not
seen any studies analyzing the causes of local property value increases, but
I have heard of some studies that back the positions I've espoused above.
In the early '90s a Rutgers University study found that building in more
compact development patterns could save state and local governments in New
Jersey $8-9 billion over 20 years in building, operating and maintaining
roads, water, sewer and school facilities. Sprawl added $12-15,000 to the
cost of serving every new household. In 1989 the Urban Land Institute noted
that homes on 1/3 acre lots 10 miles from job centers are twice as costly to
serve as "urban villages" located closer in. (figures from the Sept 1995 issue
of Landmark.) With the savings pressures of measure 47 bearing down on
municipalities, can we seriously consider any alternatives to reducing average
lot sizes and restricting devlopment within our UGBs?
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
When you consider how indifferent Americans are to the quality and cooking of
the food they put into their insides, it cannot but strike you as peculiar that
they should take such pride in the mechanical appliances they use for its
excretion.
--W. Somerset Maugham
________________________________________________________________________________
Larry Caldwell
In article <5ce04c$2...@cobweb.aracnet.com>,
j...@aracnet.com (Joyce Reynolds-Ward) wrote:
> Nope, we'll be too busy fighting off the Feds. Ecotopia is an interesting
> fantasy, but the reality has a lot of big holes in it.
Not the least of which is Balkanization. Once you start, it's hard to
stop. Southern Oregon has a strong separatist movement. Down here,
they call it the State of Jefferson. We don't have OPB, we have Jefferson
Public Radio. You even see occasional references to "The State of
Jefferson" on television and in the newspaper.
If Portland wants Ecotopia, Southern Oregon is guaranteed not to join.
I doubt that Eastern Oregon would either.
> Outside of grass seed, during my lifetime in the Willamette Valley grain has
> not been a significant product. What has been displaced by development has
> been truck farms...vegetables and fruit produce. The Gateway development in
> Springfield rests on what used to be a pretty productive strawberry field.
Willamette valley agriculture has always been characterized by diversity.
At one time, walnuts and apricots were big crops. The wheat grown in
Western Oregon is soft white wheat, used mostly in oriental style noodles
and cake flour. It is not milled for bread. We use midwest hard red
wheat for that. Barley has been a big grain crop, and hops make the
whole beer. Hay is not a big crop, but it is steady. The next time
you buy a jar of dill pickles, take a look at the lable. Chances are
it was packed in Oregon.
Oregon has literally hundreds of food crops. Most of them grow better
somewhere else, but they all grow well here. You want onions or potatoes?
Got em. You want filberts, wine grapes, table grapes, blackberries,
blueberries, sweet corn, squash, tomatoes or melons? Got em. Not just
in somebody's garden, but in commercial quantities. There are broccoli,
carrots, cows, sheep, horses, oats, gooseberries, strawberries, kiwi,
rhubarb, mint, horseradish, mustard, canola, apples, peaches and pears.
And they're *all* getting displaced. The Willamette Valley is one of
the great garden spots of the whole earth, and they're paving it over.
When I was a teenager, I went on hayrides through downtown Aloha. It
was maybe 6 blocks long, and then you were back to farms. Twenty-five
years ago I built a potato sorting shed in Gresham.
However, there is a bright spot on the horizon. The paper today had
a lead headline that the big boom in Oregon is slacking off. No more
jobs = no more people = no more urban sprawl.
We can hope.
-- Larry
Russell Senior
>>>>> "Larry" == Larry Caldwell <lar...@teleport.com> writes:
Larry> And they're *all* getting displaced. The Willamette Valley is
Larry> one of the great garden spots of the whole earth, and they're
Larry> paving it over. When I was a teenager, I went on hayrides
Larry> through downtown Aloha. It was maybe 6 blocks long, and then
Larry> you were back to farms. Twenty-five years ago I built a potato
Larry> sorting shed in Gresham.
The view has been expressed in this forum that agricultural land is
not scarce. Those who proclaim this view seem to think that all land
is equally suitable for cultivation and that there is no cost to
paving it over with roads, parking lots and strip malls. If people
want to pave it over, they say, let them. We can always grow stuff
somewhere else by pouring water on the desert, for example. These
ignorant twits have not the thinest grasp of the important role of
soils and climate and the myriad other factors beyond the control of
mankind on the viability and sustainability of agriculture. The
reason that it might seem less than a crime against humanity to
abominate our once-rural lands is that today our nation is ascendant
and transportation is inexpensive. We can afford to bring our food
from elsewhere. Look forward in time and consider that someday local
productive agricultural land may be much more valuable and much more
relevant to your next meal than one more Burgerville Drive-Thru.
--
Russell Senior
sen...@teleport.com
Mike Chapman
On Sat, 25 Jan 1997 20:54:12 -0800, Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com>
wrote:
>Immigration in itself is no problem. Having a welfare state that
>immigrants, as well as US citizens, can latch onto *is*.
The Californians moving to Oregon aren't exactly all on welfare.
Larry Caldwell
I thought I would chip in here with a little reality check.
Rising housing prices:
Generally these are caused by market forces. Some areas of Oregon
have had a rapidly expanding population, with attendant housing shortage.
Housing prices just rise to meet the cost of production. It's an
unfortunate fact that you can't build a site built home for $40,000
any more. An average construction cost is more like $80,000, and
by the time you add in land, utilities, and site development you're
over $100,000 for a site built home. Even at that, you don't have
much of a house. Most people choose to upscale a bit, which pushes
average new home costs up around $120,000.
Basic manufactured housing can still be affordable. You can buy a
new double wide 850 sf 3-bedroom for about $36,000. By the time you
get it set up in a neighborhood, you're looking at maybe $55,000,
and you still have to deal with landscaping.
When you look at those prices, and what you get, older homes in
established neighborhoods start to look like a better deal. The
price goes up to a good percentage of new construction prices.
A completely upgraded older home can be as good a house as a new
one, but costs about 20% less.
Other areas of the state don't have Portland's problems. Roseburg
has all sorts of development space, with more on the way. If you
price a home in a new development in Roseburg, you will find that
it costs just about what a home in a new development in Portland
costs. Developers add in the cost of land, sewers, streets, curbs,
electricity and construction, tack on a profit, and that's what
they sell them for.
A building lot isn't cheap wherever you go. Your UGB doesn't make
all that much difference. The big advantage Roseburg has is that
the population is only growing at 1% per year. That takes the
pressure off of existing housing, and you can still buy a used
home fairly cheaply. The cost of a new home is about the same as
in Portland.
The desirability of planning:
In some areas, planning isn't worth the hassle. I'm sure you could
get permission to do whatever you want in Wheeler County. Last I
heard, there were 1,700 people in the whole county. Or consider
most of Texas, where there's no particular intrinsic worth to the
land.
However, nothing lasts forever. Our nation's history is the story
of inexhaustable resources being used up. Through planning,
productive resources like prime farm ground can be preserved, while
unproductive areas can be targeted for development. Undeveloped areas
inside a city are the least productive areas in the world. Infill
is just a sensible use of resources.
Land use planning makes too much sense to too many people for it ever
to be repealed. If you want change, you better get a seat on one of
the planning commissions, or go testify.
-- Larry
Mike Chapman
On Sat, 25 Jan 1997 00:02:53 -0800, Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com>
wrote:
>That means that when someone buys an existing farm, let's say one in
>disuse, with the intention of farming. The point is, is he doing this
>to make money by taking advantage of our growling stomachs? I don't
>see any farmers growing food to give away, and I doubt that you work
>for nothing yourself.
Oh why bother Bob? It's the same "I want, I see, I take" that the
Constitution sadly fails to protect against, despite its clear
restriction on such public theft.
>While I personally don't like to see this, I do note that people crowd
>these places once they're built. Guess enough of the people want it.
>What gives you or anyone else the right to excercise your own greed
>over use of land that is not yours, just to satisfy your desire to see
>some pigs in a field when you drive by?
Why, that'd be the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the next step and
all you know? Or are we calling that Social Democracy these days?
Robert Reed
In article <32EB64...@hevanet.com> Guerilla <guer...@hevanet.com> writes:
|Joyce Reynolds-Ward wrote:
|>
|> In article <32E991...@hevanet.com>, Guerilla <guer...@hevanet.com>
|> wrote:
|> >> On Thu, 23 Jan 97 23:03:22 GMT, j...@aracnet.com (Joyce Reynolds-Ward)
|> >> wrote:
|> >
|> >> >See my above comments. If Oregon secedes, then we can write off
|> >> >California food sources.
|> >
|> >And they can write off our water. You people never shouldve let Brown
|> >do that in the first place. See the connection?
|>
|> <fiendish grin here>. Which do you think is more precious?
|
|I just read about a county in kali that gets 75% of its water from OR.
|Geez, youre ignorant.
Well, you're both right--and wrong. Northern California gets the benefit of
the Kalamath River which flows out of? You guessed it, Oregon. Yet the pipe
dream that floated around during Jerry Brown's governorship of diverting part
of the Columbia to boost supplies in the LA basin never materialized.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
We must examine the degree to which we coddle middle-class girls. There is
something sick about it. The girls I see on campuses are often innocuous, with
completely homogenized personalities, miserable, anorexic and bulimic. The
feminist movement teaches them that it's men's fault, but it isn't. These girls
go out into the world as heiresses of all the affluence in the universe. They
are the most pampered and most affluent girls on the globe. So stop complaining
about men. You're getting all the rewards that come with the nice-girl persona
you've chosen. When you get into trouble and you're batting your eyes and
someone is offending you and you are too nice to deal with it, that's a choice.
Assess your persona. Realize the degree to which your niceness may invoke
people to say lewd and pornographic things to you--sometimes to violate your
niceness. The more you blush, the more people want to do it. Understand you
part of it and learn to parry. Sex talk is a game. The girls in the Sixties
loved it. If you don't want some professor to call you honey, tell him.
--Camille Paglia
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed
In article <32EB64...@hevanet.com> Guerilla <guer...@hevanet.com> writes:
|Joyce Reynolds-Ward wrote:
|>
|> In article <32E991...@hevanet.com>, Guerilla <guer...@hevanet.com>
|> wrote:
|> >13% of the land in this country is in private hands. IE: private
|> >property. In OR, the figure is 6%. The rest of this land is considered
|> >by the govt to be their private property. You want that land taken care
|> >of? Sell it. Most people dont deficate in their yards. The govt does
|> >only because it doesnt sleep/live there, and have to smell it in the
|> >morning. Im gettin my land soon, and Im outraged at the prices.
No, it's called public land. That's supposed to mean that it belongs to all
of us, not some entrepreneurial resource extractor or BLM bureaucrat who sells
the timber for less than the development costs.
|> Snort. Go cruise around in the state of Washington. Some of the biggest
|> land rape around up there is on privately owned logging lands, because
|> Washington has had fewer state logging restrictions than Oregon over the
|> years.
|
|Trees are a crop. To be harvested. So you govt worshipping goons use a
|title like 'rape' to justify your [argument]. You are much smarter than
|the rest of us, and we should just trust you.
Only to the narrow-minded. Though some trees certainly fall into that
category, especially in manicured, mono-cultured, private second growth tree
farms, old trees are so much more than mere fiber sources. They're water
reservoirs, soil stabilization anchors, habit, temperature controls, and food.
Crops are plants under cultivation, fiber-in-a-stick in the case of commercial
forests, while ancient forests are genetic storehouses, biodiverse resource
reserves, intrinsically valuable rather than of value only as raw material.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
Once the people begin to reason, all is lost.
--Voltaire
________________________________________________________________________________
HAW
Larry Caldwell wrote:
>... Or consider
> most of Texas, where there's no particular intrinsic worth to the
> land.
The University of Texas is the richest public school in the country
because it owns alot of Texas land. Remember Texas Gold? Bubblin'
crude? Made alot of people, and UT, rich!
HAW
[I don't speak for my employer; they don't speak for me!]
wbg
HAW (Holly_...@ccm.ra.intel.com) wrote:
wbg added:
Yeah, Larry, and how about that stretch for a hundred miles or so west-SW
of Houston along the Gulf where they grow rice - supposed to be some of
the finest farmland in the U S of A. And I ain't even from Tay-hahss.
But I've driven that stretch, and that soil is as fine, deep-colored
stuff as any I've seen in my native Willamette Valley.
Brewster
Larry Caldwell
I did say *most* of Texas. There are some parts that are fertile.
You point to one dinky little strip no bigger than the Willamette
Valley. Well, that ain't much in Texas. For that matter, it ain't
much in Oregon. There are huge parts of Oregon where there isn't
any particular intrinsic worth to the land. Unfortunately, that
is not the part of Oregon that people want to build on.
Once you use the good land up, it's gone. They aren't making any more.
As far as oil wells, that isn't the land, it's just an oil well. After
the oil is gone, the land is still there, for whatever it is worth.
-- Larry
In article <5cu5lm$i...@glisan.hevanet.com>, w...@hevanet.com (wbg) wrote:
> HAW (Holly_...@ccm.ra.intel.com) wrote:
: Larry Caldwell wrote:
: >... Or consider
: > most of Texas, where there's no particular intrinsic worth to the
: > land.
: The University of Texas is the richest public school in the country
: because it owns alot of Texas land. Remember Texas Gold? Bubblin'
: crude? Made alot of people, and UT, rich!
Bob Tiernan
On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Robert Reed wrote:
> The Oregon alternative is to manage growth to coordinate decisions about
> land use and hopefully make more efficient use of the land, providing
> adequate space for housing, retail and industrial development while
> preserving agricultural land. It's not denying growth but planning
> for it.
Planning means denying at times. Besides, you all seem to forget that
private property is NOT, I repeat, NOT, in the hands of other people to
make future plans for. You might as well go in these houses and
re-arrange the furniture to you liking as well.
> Let's see what it looks like in another 5 or 10 years. The problem with
> unregulated growth is that it's a Pandora's box, a genie uncorked from the
> bottle.
So? Sounds like the dynamics of freedom to me, something that you are
apparently *afraid* of. What we are talking about is *control*. Not
visions of Oregon, or safety, but *control*. Some people in this
country want to control what two men do behind closed doors, what a man
and a woman do behind closed doors, what tv programs they watch, what
books people can read, what they can drink or smoke, and some people want
to control what you can do with your land. Say hello to Lon Mabon for me.
You're both for *control*. It's anti-American, it's anti-freedom.
Bob T.
Bob Tiernan
On 5 Feb 1997, wenchpoet wrote:
> Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> wrote in article
> > Planning means denying at times. Besides, you all seem to forget that
> > private property is NOT, I repeat, NOT, in the hands of other people to
> > make future plans for. You might as well go in these houses and
> > re-arrange the furniture to you liking as well.
> So, say you live on a hill, and I buy the property surrounding your
> property. Say I clear-cut *my* property. Say, thereafter, every winter your
> property floods from the erosion from *my* property, and eventually your
> house slides down the hill, totalled.
>
> Would you still be waving the flag for "freedom" then?
Why? You're the one who'd be liable.
Bob T.
wenchpoet
Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> wrote in article
> Planning means denying at times. Besides, you all seem to forget that
> private property is NOT, I repeat, NOT, in the hands of other people to
> make future plans for. You might as well go in these houses and
> re-arrange the furniture to you liking as well.
>
So, say you live on a hill, and I buy the property surrounding your
property. Say I clear-cut *my* property. Say, thereafter, every winter your
property floods from the erosion from *my* property, and eventually your
house slides down the hill, totalled.
Would you still be waving the flag for "freedom" then?
T.L. Kelly
Robert Reed
In article <5ciuep$f...@glisan.hevanet.com> w...@hevanet.com (wbg) writes:
|Robert Reed (rob...@slipknot.rain.com) wrote:
|: In article <5cbjpr$2...@glisan.hevanet.com> w...@hevanet.com (wbg) writes:
|: |Robert Reed (rob...@slipknot.rain.com) wrote:
|: |
|: |: If rents and housing prices are climbing, it's more likely due to other
|: |: factors than the regional planning process, one of which's goals is to
|: |: ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing.
|: |
|: |wbg responds:
|: |If we should have learned anything in the last 40 or 50 years (let alone
|: |the preceding centuries) it is that a planning bureaucrat's having
|: |trumpeted a "goal" bears little relationship to the eventual realization
|: |of anything approximating that "goal".
|
|: Maybe in your philosophy. I certainly don't agree. Planning is a process
|: that serves a beneficial role everywhere in our personal, public and
|: financial lives and in our government. Surely you're not ranting against
|: the planning process in general?
|
|Surely not. Just that as typically performed by (mostly) unelected
|visionairies who have the presumption that they know better than we do.
|And I'm critical of "goals" precisely because that terminoligy is
|generally employed as a euphemism for something that "we'd really like to
|see happen but have not idea whether it ever actually will". And because
|our history is replete with examples of where planners' "goals" turned
|out to be unfulfillable.
I don't know what's typical, or what you perceive as typical, but city planning
is an old science with lots of successes and a few failures, some quite
dramatic. Planning departments employ professionals just like foreign offices:
they are responsible to their superiors who are generally elected, and it is
those elected officials do (or should be) setting the policy. It is an
inexact, science as I said before, because their's is only one voice in the mix
which shapes development. That's why planning incorporates alternatives and
contingencies. You say our history is replete with failed goals but offer
none in example, though I myself know of a few. But I know of a lot more
successes.
| And Oregon's land use goals have had a
|: substantial impact in shaping the development of our region, an impact
|: that most people recognize as beneficial.
|
|I would challenge the "most" portion of that :-)
Of course you would ;-)
|: |Robert continued:
|: |: If anything, regional planning's contribution is likely to be a
|: |: lowering of housing costs,
|: |
|: |wbg rejoins:
|: |Hard to imagine how, since a large portion of the regional planners'
|: |impact involves the UGB, which axiomatically drives up the price of land.
|: |Surely I don't need to belabor explaining how that happens.
|
|: Well, if you truly believe the effect on land prices of the UGB to be
|: axiomatic then I might as well save my breath because you're arguing
|: from dogma <snip>
|
|If believing that the laws of supply and demand border on being as
|immutable as the laws of physics, (neither of them 100%, of course :-) )
|then perhaps some would consider that dogma. I don't.
One can be dogmatic about the laws of supply and demand and still not see
an independent relation between UGBs and land prices, let alone declare
that relation an axiom. There is at best a partial relation and other
variables must be considered to be predictive. If as an example, despite
the UGB you have a lot of available interior land and low growth, there's
no implication that the mere presence of the UGB enforces rising property
prices. In any case, axioms are declarative, not deductive conditions.
|: |Robert explicates (weakly):
|: |
|: |: through expedited approvals in designated zones,
|: |
|: |Perhaps, in a small way,
|: |
|: |: oversight to ensure land availability,
|: |
|: |I doubt it very much,
|: |
|: |:and coordinated planning with infrastructure development.
|: |
|: |Maybe. A little. But most of this is far outweighed in the final mix of
|: |housing costs by the cost of the land.
|
|: I take it you don't like me because of my viewpoint, thus the subtle mockery
|: of my arguments.
|
|Au contraire, Robert. First, there's nothing personal in any of this.
|Second, I believe you're reading mockery (not intended) into what I
|intended as straightforward refutation.
Well, I admit that you have not resorted to any of the ad hominem attacks
these news-pages are so famous for, and for that I thank you. And it may
be sensitivity on my part to read a patronizing tone albeit subtle. In
the future I'll try to give you the benefit of the doubt.
|: In the early '90s a Rutgers University study found that building in more
|: compact development patterns could save state and local governments in New
|: Jersey $8-9 billion over 20 years in building, operating and maintaining
|: roads, water, sewer and school facilities. Sprawl added $12-15,000 to the
|: cost of serving every new household. In 1989 the Urban Land Institute
|: noted that homes on 1/3 acre lots 10 miles from job centers are twice as
|: costly to serve as "urban villages" located closer in. (figures from the
|: Sept 1995 issue of Landmark.) With the savings pressures of measure 47
|: bearing down on municipalities, can we seriously consider any alternatives
|: to reducing average lot sizes and restricting devlopment within our UGBs?
|
|I guess my point is that they seem not to have also estimated what amount
|land scarcity added to that same set of household costs. And what a great
|deal of this debate overlooks is that people, if _allowed_ to, will often
|cheerfully pay more in infrastructure costs if (a) they are partially or
|wholly offset by lower land costs, and (b) it means that they can have a
|little dirt around their castle instead of a neighbor on a common wall.
|The utopian planner mentality seems to be bent on removing that as a
|choice because of a yet-unproven set of assumptions that we're all
|somehow better off with increased density, or that we are preserving a
|(yet-unproven) vanishing farmland resource.
Wait a minute. You suggest an error in this study I refer to merely on
the basis of its conclusion? Would you believe ANY study that came to
similar conclusions? And I don't think we're overlooking the willingness
of people to pay more in infrastructure for the benefits you suggest. It's
natural for most people to want a little space and privacy. The conflict
here is because population continues to rise without a commensurate increase
in land area, say, here in the Willamette valley. With that trend and no
civil control, free enterprise will guarantee the eventual but complete
conversion of the entire valley into suburbs, just like the LA basin,
especially as long as our government subsidizes fuel costs. Is that a vision
of our future that appeals to you? Controlling sprawl is certainly not a
utopian ideal. How much proof do you need? Just look at the sprawl and
attendant multiplication in infrastructure costs in the urban areas I've
already mentioned. This is no speculative fantasy on the part of planners.
|Understand that I'm not necessarily objecting to density per se, just the
|the form in which it currently tends to get mandated. I live in a fairly
|close-in neighborhood, and we've seen a ton of in-fill development the
|past few years. My belief is that the majority of that would happen even
|without the planners' mandates, since many people are willing to accept
|greater density in order to live closer to the core. It's nice that they
|have that choice, but not so nice to deny the, in effect, oppposite
|choice to others, based on someone's utopian visions. My problem is,
|Robert, that the philosophical position you _seem_ to be supporting would
|make that the _only_ choice of shelter - to which I strongly object.
First of all, thank you for acknowledging that a problem does exist. And
I agree that infill would occur to some extent without planning goals. But
the predominate thrust would be outward, and I have a problem with that.
And so do many other people who live in this area. Free market forces have
been given a chance to be dominant growth factors in many places; the result
is something that nobody likes. What do you think the percent of people is
who enjoy driving the LA freeway system, or the Bay area during rush (they
still have a distinctive rush hour--now about three hours long--rather than
the continuous traffic jams that seem to inhabit the LA basin these days)?
I support Oregon land-use goals (that's plural). They require provisions
for development of multiple densities of housing. But combating sprawl does
imply higher housing densities. And the choice ultimately is between
unaffordable housing prices or unaffordable farm and forest land prices. Or
the truly utopian fantasy of a decline in population.
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.
--Mark Twain
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed
In article <Pine.GSO.3.95.97020...@kelly.teleport.com> Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> writes:
|On 5 Feb 1997, wenchpoet wrote:
|
Well, maybe, but I haven't broken any laws, and if I'm a big company which I
probably am to afford buying all the rest of your hill, I'll keep you tied up
with litagtion and appeals so long, you'll never see any money, especially
with my lobbyists fighting for tort reform to make it harder for this small
nuisance lawsuits. And you're going to have to prove that my "fair use" of
my property caused the damage to your house. Good luck!
________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Reed Home Animation Limited 503-656-8414
email: rob...@slipknot.rain.com West Linn, OR 97068
Yes, my wife's hand are very beautiful. I'm going to have a bust made of them.
--Samuel Goldwyn
________________________________________________________________________________
Mike Chapman
On Wed, 5 Feb 1997 11:04:03 GMT, rob...@slipknot.rain.com (Robert
Reed) wrote:
>Well, maybe, but I haven't broken any laws, and if I'm a big company which I
>probably am to afford buying all the rest of your hill, I'll keep you tied up
>with litagtion and appeals so long, you'll never see any money, especially
>with my lobbyists fighting for tort reform to make it harder for this small
>nuisance lawsuits. And you're going to have to prove that my "fair use" of
>my property caused the damage to your house. Good luck!
Gosh, being fair can be tough at times, can't it? Evaluating issues
on an individual basis is such a hassle, let's just lump everyone into
convenient classes and generously apply prior restraint.
wbg
Robert Reed (rob...@slipknot.rain.com) wrote:
: |: In the early '90s a Rutgers University study found that building in more
: |: compact development patterns could save state and local governments in New
: |: Jersey $8-9 billion over 20 years in building, operating and maintaining
: |: roads, water, sewer and school facilities. Sprawl added $12-15,000 to the
: |: cost of serving every new household.
wbg responded:
: |I guess my point is that they seem not to have also estimated what amount
: |land scarcity added to that same set of household costs. And what a great
: |deal of this debate overlooks is that people, if _allowed_ to, will often
: |cheerfully pay more in infrastructure costs if (a) they are partially or
: |wholly offset by lower land costs, and (b) it means that they can have a
: |little dirt around their castle instead of a neighbor on a common wall.
: |The utopian planner mentality seems to be bent on removing that as a
: |choice because of a yet-unproven set of assumptions that we're all
: |somehow better off with increased density, or that we are preserving a
: |(yet-unproven) vanishing farmland resource.
Robert fire back:
: Wait a minute. You suggest an error in this study I refer to merely on
: the basis of its conclusion?
wbg answers:
Not for a moment - I'm not disputing their conclusion, nor suggesting any
error in their study - just observing thatg they are not covering the
complete story. The conclusion that spreading habitation over more square
miles will boost infrastructure costs, since presumably there are more
miles of road and sewer, is not one I'm taking issue with. My issue is
with the mindset that would bring the force of the State to bear against
those who want to make the conscious choice to _pay_ those increased
costs in order to have the sort of living space they desire.
Robert went on:
: here is because population continues to rise without a commensurate increase
: in land area, say, here in the Willamette valley. With that trend and no
: civil control, free enterprise will guarantee the eventual but complete
: conversion of the entire valley into suburbs, just like the LA basin,
: especially as long as our government subsidizes fuel costs. Is that a vision
: of our future that appeals to you?
wbg responds:
Given that one of the major trends associated with sprawl seems to be an
increased amount of suburb-to-suburb commute, rather than
exurb-to-inner-core, it doesn't look bad, compared to being shoveled into
high-rise concrete rabbit warrens.
Robert continues:
: And so do many other people who live in this area. Free market forces have
: been given a chance to be dominant growth factors in many places; the result
: is something that nobody likes.
wbg replies:
That might be a bit sweeping an assertion for many to let pass without
challenge. Houston has operated zoning-free for a long time, and I,
among others, rather like the freewheeling character that results.
As to L.A., you might check the Forum section of yesterday's (Feb. 4th)
Oreganonian for the piece by Gordon and Richardson. As a matter of fact,
if you don't have it, _please_ email me your snailmail address and I will
mail you a copy - I think it's that important that you see this article.
Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide
Mike Chapman <mi...@paranoia.com> wrote:
>
>Gosh, being fair can be tough at times, can't it? Evaluating issues
>on an individual basis is such a hassle, let's just lump everyone into
>convenient classes and generously apply prior restraint.
Sounds like a sensible idea to me. Of course, we have this niggling
tendency to write provisions in our prior restraint laws that allow
for people to gain exceptions to the rules, or merely to show
that their project will not cause the evils and perils that the
prior restraint was enacted to restrain.
In short, we do judge issues on an individual basis, but the judging
happens before damage occurs, not afterward. Which, as anyone who's
ever spilled milk knows, is a better way to do it.
I used to buy the notion that "Freedom" was rightfully a big
worship word in this country. Extensive conversations with
libertarians have convinced me that it's not a very important
thing (at least given the definitions that libertarians use)
at all. But the most important shift is getting to the point where
you're OK with the lack of "Freedom" as defined by libertarians
and not caring who knows it. The system as we have it seems
a fine thing to me - and I'm not interested in your brand of
freedom. Now, where did I leave my shackles...
JZ
Mike Chapman
On 5 Feb 1997 18:19:35 GMT, zur...@solaris.engr.sgi.com (Jeffrey B.
Zurschmeide) wrote:
>Sounds like a sensible idea to me. Of course, we have this niggling
>tendency to write provisions in our prior restraint laws that allow
>for people to gain exceptions to the rules, or merely to show
>that their project will not cause the evils and perils that the
>prior restraint was enacted to restrain.
Oh really? Where do I get to sign up to show that growing/smoking pot
couldn't possibly harm anyone?
dR.DavE
>One can be dogmatic about the laws of supply and demand and still not see
>an independent relation between UGBs and land prices, let alone declare
>that relation an axiom. There is at best a partial relation and other
>variables must be considered to be predictive. If as an example, despite
>the UGB you have a lot of available interior land and low growth, there's
>no implication that the mere presence of the UGB enforces rising property
>prices. In any case, axioms are declarative, not deductive conditions.
Let's stay grounded in a little reality, shall we? We're talking about
Portland, and speculating on whether or not an urban growth boundary has
lots of room inside of it is beside the point. Observation: the purpose of
an urban growth boundary is to limit physical growth of a city. By
definition, that asserts that growth is of such a magnitude as needing
limits, a conclusion one would not reach if you had all the room you
needed. So an urban growth boundary presupposes that you're already pushed
for space. Observation: Portland is indeed pushed for space. We're
converting parkland into housing developments, forbidding people whose
house burns down from rebuilding, and building and paying exorbitant prices
for lots that you can't even stand on without pitching over forward.
So here is the reality: the urban growth boundary has directly caused the
current skyrocketing real estate and home prices. I don't care about dogma
or theory, that's reality as it presently exists here and now. The urban
growth boundary is what has been dogmatically adhered to beyond all reason.
The goals of Metro and the urban growth boundary and the light rail
fanatics have nothing to do with reasonable management of resources and
everything to do with environmental agendas and political power and
corporate welfare. Environmental agendas that include forcibly removing
cars from the landscape and blindly preserving open land, regardless of its
quality. Political power of those who enjoy having the power to dictate to
2 million people what they can do with their property. Corporate welfare
to the land developers (the same ones we claim to want to regulate/punish)
who enjoy enormous profits from the current arrangements that allow them to
simply pass the cost of land onto the buyer and enjoy the lack of
competition from builders who might take advantage of cheaper, outlying
land. It's also about having a 50 year plan that would not have been
created at all were it not for our civic leaders' greed for free Federal
money. More corporate welfare to the companies who would build light rail
for $1,000,000 a mile to places where people won't ride.
How can you stand there with a straight face and say that Metro has done
anything worthwhile? We don't need 5 or 10 years to see if it will work
out. We need to kill metro NOW before bureaucratic thrust and the Species
O phenomenon ensure Metro's survival indefinitely.
>Wait a minute. You suggest an error in this study I refer to merely on
>the basis of its conclusion? Would you believe ANY study that came to
>similar conclusions?
I think studies are only as good as the agendas of the people who
commission them. Studies that come out differently than what the
requestors want get quietly buried.
>And I don't think we're overlooking the willingness
>of people to pay more in infrastructure for the benefits you suggest. It's
>natural for most people to want a little space and privacy. The conflict
>here is because population continues to rise without a commensurate increase
>in land area, say, here in the Willamette valley. With that trend and no
>civil control, free enterprise will guarantee the eventual but complete
>conversion of the entire valley into suburbs, just like the LA basin,
Sometimes I think I could sell the people of Portland that we should use
babies to make hamburger and we should send all the old folks to gas
chambers if I told people enough times that it would keep us from turning
into L.A. Or perhaps not, seeing as voters saw those idiotic light rail
initative ads ("gridlock and chaos, or the Garden of Eden?") and then voted
against it like sensible people would.
I do not believe that the benefit we derive from such tight control of
growth outweighs the free market. The free market is not perfect, to be
sure, and frequently comes to conclusions that run counter to some
activists' political agendas,, but I think it reaches better conclusions
than a bunch of unelected bureaucrats who, to be honest, would be working
in the private sector if they were any good at what they did.
>especially as long as our government subsidizes fuel costs.
What fuel are you referring to? Certainly not gasoline, as better than
half of what I pay per gallon goes to one government tax bureau or another.
Perhaps you're referring to electricity, in which I agree that if it's not
privatized, it probably should be. Enlighten me.
>Is that a vision
>of our future that appeals to you? Controlling sprawl is certainly not a
>utopian ideal. How much proof do you need? Just look at the sprawl and
>attendant multiplication in infrastructure costs in the urban areas I've
>already mentioned. This is no speculative fantasy on the part of planners.
Is that they cry of the fanatical Libertarian I hear? "It's so simple, why
don't you get it?" =-) Sorry, that's not unique to Libertarians (of whom I
myself am affiliated), just to the people sound in the security of Being
Right. Have you looked for studies that reached different conclusions, or
have you done what most other political animals do and just cite the
studies that agree with you?
>First of all, thank you for acknowledging that a problem does exist. And
>I agree that infill would occur to some extent without planning goals. But
>the predominate thrust would be outward, and I have a problem with that.
>And so do many other people who live in this area. Free market forces have
>been given a chance to be dominant growth factors in many places; the result
>is something that nobody likes. What do you think the percent of people is
>who enjoy driving the LA freeway system, or the Bay area during rush (they
>still have a distinctive rush hour--now about three hours long--rather than
>the continuous traffic jams that seem to inhabit the LA basin these days)?
Los Angeles and San Francisco are hackneyed cliches that don't work with me
anymore. I grew up or lived in lots of areas with little or no planning,
and there was no great outcry from either the masses or the illuminati for
it. St. Louis, Peoria, and Orlando all seem to get along just fine, thank
you, with a minimum of central control. What do you say to those examples?
>I support Oregon land-use goals (that's plural). They require provisions
>for development of multiple densities of housing. But combating sprawl does
>imply higher housing densities. And the choice ultimately is between
>unaffordable housing prices or unaffordable farm and forest land prices. Or
>the truly utopian fantasy of a decline in population.
Does agriculture dominate Portland's economy so much that it deserves to be
subsidised by the government? If any other industry proposed what you are
proposing, the hue and cry about "corporate welfare" would drown out all
other speech. Any industry, even agriculture, will find a way to survive
if it has sufficient value. Perhaps agriculture's value to Portland simply
isn't there anymore? In which case, it is appropriate to let land use
reflect that.
--
dR.DavE....making the | David L. Vessell, Tualatin OR
world safe for | dr....@pobox.com
intelligent dance music | Powered by OS/2 Warp
Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide
Touche. It's a tendency, not a rule. FWIW, I'm all for abandoning
that particular prior restraint.
JZ
Mike Chapman
On 5 Feb 1997 22:53:46 GMT, zur...@solaris.engr.sgi.com (Jeffrey B.
Zurschmeide) wrote:
>Mike Chapman <mi...@paranoia.com> wrote:
>>On 5 Feb 1997 18:19:35 GMT, zur...@solaris.engr.sgi.com (Jeffrey B.
>>Zurschmeide) wrote:
>>>Sounds like a sensible idea to me. Of course, we have this niggling
>>>tendency to write provisions in our prior restraint laws that allow
>>>for people to gain exceptions to the rules, or merely to show
>>>that their project will not cause the evils and perils that the
>>>prior restraint was enacted to restrain.
>>
>>Oh really? Where do I get to sign up to show that growing/smoking pot
>>couldn't possibly harm anyone?
>>----
>
>Touche. It's a tendency, not a rule. FWIW, I'm all for abandoning
>that particular prior restraint.
It's all a matter of what you're willing to tolerate. At some point
you would (I assume) consider that the government had overstepped its
legitimate bounds, whether written or otherwise. Everyone has their
own issues and beliefs in rights, and limits of tolerance.
It is fair, and the American tradition, to assume that everyone is
truly innocent until proven guilty - of wronging another. This
precludes prior restraint in any matter, which is traditionally
considered to be counter to common law and fair governance. It's
never a good policy. Only those actions which are inherently wrong
should be illegal - not just the things the majority decides it wants
to eliminate from society because they "tend" to lead to true crimes.
There is a fairly objective measure of right and wrong, and law *must*
adhere to this. Have you attacked (or clearly prepared to attack)
another person or their property? If not, you haven't done anything
wrong.
A government that goes beyond this, at the whim of the majority, is a
very dangerous entity. It's only a matter of time before classes of
people are being abused without any moral justification. The proof is
in our own society.
Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide
Mike Chapman <mi...@paranoia.com> wrote:
>It's all a matter of what you're willing to tolerate. At some point
>you would (I assume) consider that the government had overstepped its
>legitimate bounds, whether written or otherwise. Everyone has their
>own issues and beliefs in rights, and limits of tolerance.
Of course. If that happened I'd campaign for and vote for a new one.
I could even see taking up arms against a government that got too
bad (e.g. Pol Pot, Vichy France, etc).
>It is fair, and the American tradition, to assume that everyone is
>truly innocent until proven guilty - of wronging another. This
>precludes prior restraint in any matter, which is traditionally
>considered to be counter to common law and fair governance. It's
>never a good policy.
Then you intend to get by on proving that someone did something that
hurt another, and letting a jury decide the matter?
That puts you at the mercy of 12 more or less random people, rather
than the majority. They can decide if you've hurt someone even if what
you did was seemingly harmless at the time. Say two men kiss in public
and someone brings them to book for "harming" his kid who saw it, and
they find 12 yoyos to agree and they put the men in jail because of it.
Or say a very popular local citizen decides a newcomer of a minority
ethnicity has built a house that harms his property value. If he can
convince 12 of his fellow citizens that harm was done, he can have
success in that case. There being no prior restraint on what constitutes
damage, wrong, or harm.
All law is in some sense a prior restraint - whether on our actions or
on what a jury or judge may do to a person found in violation of law.
And most of it has nothing to do with you or me living our lives as
we see fit. The drug laws are a travesty to be sure, but they are
an exception. The prior restraint law that tells me I can't build
a nuclear waste dump or house hazardous chemicals at my farm doesn't really
impact me, but it does impact Dow Chemical, who might do that, with
deleterious effects that *cannot* be remedied after the fact.
>Only those actions which are inherently wrong
>should be illegal - not just the things the majority decides it wants
>to eliminate from society because they "tend" to lead to true crimes.
Hmmmm....I have never heard of a society yet that didn't have its
taboos and mores. You'd be breaking very new ground with this.
>There is a fairly objective measure of right and wrong, and law *must*
>adhere to this. Have you attacked (or clearly prepared to attack)
>another person or their property? If not, you haven't done anything
>wrong.
Proving that can get awfully sticky. (Viz the contradictory verdicts
in the much-ballyhooed trials in Los Angeles of ex-football stars.)
I dunno if I want to wait to be the recipient of wrong before I
can do something. Honestly, I'd rather live with the vagaries of
majority rule - working to change the wrong decisions, of course - than
to step off into the wilderness where I have to sue Louisiana-Pacific
if they "miscalculate" and log my farm one day. I don't have your
faith in the true outcomes of all jury trials.
>A government that goes beyond this, at the whim of the majority, is a
>very dangerous entity. It's only a matter of time before classes of
>people are being abused without any moral justification. The proof is
>in our own society.
A government (even if that government is a jury, town, county, or state)
that is not subject to review by the majority is just as dangerous. It's
only a matter of time before someone gets a jury to convict someone
wrongly because the 12 people all know one party or the other, or don't
like one party's skin color or ethnicity. I think we have the law and
society our forefathers developed for a reason - and a damn good one
at that. A semblance of the rule of law is a good thing, even if the
laws are not always of solomonaic wisdom.
JZ
Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide
DrDave said:
>>Los Angeles and San Francisco are hackneyed cliches that don't work with me
>>anymore. I grew up or lived in lots of areas with little or no planning,
>>and there was no great outcry from either the masses or the illuminati for
>>it. St. Louis, Peoria, and Orlando all seem to get along just fine, thank
>>you, with a minimum of central control. What do you say to those examples?
I say that local control of government, for the most part, is a wonderful
thing and Hoo-Ray for St. Looie, Peoria, and Orlando! And Houston, which
is the Mecca of the no-zoning movement.
It's a good thing that cities are different and people can choose the
ones they like. As a former resident of SoCal and NoCal, I like the
land use laws here, and am all in favor of keeping them. I left CA
for a reason, and don't want to turn this place into a clone.
JZ
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
On 5 Feb 1997 13:32:37 -0800, drd...@teleport.com (dR.DavE) wrote:
snip
>Los Angeles and San Francisco are hackneyed cliches that don't work with me
>anymore. I grew up or lived in lots of areas with little or no planning,
>and there was no great outcry from either the masses or the illuminati for
>it. St. Louis, Peoria, and Orlando all seem to get along just fine, thank
>you, with a minimum of central control. What do you say to those examples?
Joyce's smart-assed comment of the day:
Orlando? You mean Disney East? Surely you jest...from what little I
saw, the Mouse has its own agenda/control.
And I'm not too wildly impressed with the sprawl I observed there or
in other parts of south Florida...after all, isn't excess development
part of the problem with the Everglades?
Of course, that evokes the famous paper-mill smart-assed comment:
"Stink? What stink? Smells like money to me...."
snip
>
>Does agriculture dominate Portland's economy so much that it deserves to be
>subsidised by the government? If any other industry proposed what you are
>proposing, the hue and cry about "corporate welfare" would drown out all
>other speech. Any industry, even agriculture, will find a way to survive
>if it has sufficient value. Perhaps agriculture's value to Portland simply
>isn't there anymore? In which case, it is appropriate to let land use
>reflect that.
Dave, the problem is that a lot of folks aren't going to
realize/recognize/accept the importance and value of agriculture to
the Portland economy until it is too late.
Portland and Portlanders exist in the false assumption that they exist
free of the rural Oregon population, and that the ruralites depend
upon Portland and not the other way around.
Without agriculture, what are you going to eat? It's a mistake to
become overly dependant upon imported food...even if that import is
only from the Central Valley of California.
I can contemplate a rather possible science-fictionesque scenario
where the Central Valley soil becomes so impregnanted with salt that
it's incapable of growing healthy food...and then where are we?
jrw
I spamblock.
Another Springfield refugee!
Mike Chapman
On 6 Feb 1997 01:08:34 GMT, zur...@solaris.engr.sgi.com (Jeffrey B.
Zurschmeide) wrote:
>A government (even if that government is a jury, town, county, or state)
>that is not subject to review by the majority is just as dangerous. It's
>only a matter of time before someone gets a jury to convict someone
>wrongly because the 12 people all know one party or the other, or don't
>like one party's skin color or ethnicity. I think we have the law and
>society our forefathers developed for a reason - and a damn good one
>at that. A semblance of the rule of law is a good thing, even if the
>laws are not always of solomonaic wisdom.
You raise some good issues. I'm not really arguing for a different
system than we have now, just a more careful and thurough protection
of clear rights at a constitutional level. The majority should have
no ability to review *rights*.
There certainly are dangers in very small and very restricted
governments that must be guarded against as carefully as dangers at
the other extreme. The balance we have reached in this country,
however, is wrong, and not so far from what would cause me to take up
arms against the government.
Bud Couch
In article <5dbgdg$8...@fido.asd.sgi.com> zur...@solaris.engr.sgi.com (Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide) writes:
>DrDave said:
>ones they like. As a former resident of SoCal and NoCal, I like the
>land use laws here, and am all in favor of keeping them. I left CA
>for a reason, and don't want to turn this place into a clone.
>
>JZ
Maybe living down there on that farm has blinded you to reality, but the
PDX area has already been infested with beemer-driving dinks who talk about
real estate "investment".
Fifteen years ago, a business who called itself the "California Pizza
Kitchen" would have been lucky to just go quietly due to lack of business,
rather than outright vandalism. Today, the corner of 25th and W. Burnside
has exactly that abomination, and it is doing well.
"That's just Northwest", I hear you say. No, the rot is endemic. Sunday's
Snoregonian now features a pull out ad, weekly, for Mervyn's *California*.
Ten years ago, they tried to hide the fact that they were a California
based company, for fear that their stores would echo with only the sales
clerk's quiet conversation. Today, they trumpet it mockingly in our faces.
NO, the battle is all but lost. In Salem, I hear cries that we "need" a
"full time legislature". Who already has a "full time legislature"?
(and look how much good it's done them - could Willy Brown have become a
semi-national force without it?)
Ten more years, and I retire to Montana.
--
Bud Couch - ADC Kentrox |When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.|
b...@kentrox.com (192.228.59.2) | -Tom Lehrer |
insert legalistic bs disclaimer here | ... <smirk> - me |
Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide
Mike Chapman <mi...@paranoia.com> wrote:
>
>You raise some good issues. I'm not really arguing for a different
>system than we have now, just a more careful and thurough protection
>of clear rights at a constitutional level. The majority should have
>no ability to review *rights*.
I don't know how you prevent that. I mean, really, the majority
can always change the Constitution, can't they? Or just create
a climate where judges who will slowly change the de facto
interpretation of it, which is the same thing.
That's why I like the political process - I know I can't
get my personal preferences in rights carved into
never-changing granite, so I settle for pushing my
agenda in the political arena.
>There certainly are dangers in very small and very restricted
>governments that must be guarded against as carefully as dangers at
>the other extreme. The balance we have reached in this country,
>however, is wrong, and not so far from what would cause me to take up
>arms against the government.
Well, it's not like anyone could stop you if you decided
to do so. But there's still that majority hanging out
there, and they have other ideas about the nature and
desirability of your brand of freedom. It's not so long
ago that we realized that freedom in this country included
the right to use a condom - 1965 that was, within my lifetime.
There are still many who would like to take back even that,
and impose their religious behavior creed on us all. I don't
know how to enshrine rights against them in any permanent and
non-interpretive way.
JZ
Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide
What? With Jane Fonda and Ted Turner? ;^)
JZ
Bob Tiernan
On Fri, 24 Jan 1997, Robert Reed wrote:
> In article (Mike Chapman) writes:
>> (Robert Reed) wrote:
> |>Let's see what it looks like in another 5 or 10 years. The problem with
> |>unregulated growth is that it's a Pandora's box, a genie uncorked from the
> |>bottle.
>> You could say the same thing about any other aspect of life. If the
>> government doesn't control it, anything might happen. People might do
>> what the hell they want.
>
> Well, you could. This is a free country.
ANd then you proceed to support the opposite. Read on.
> But good government is any always has been a
> delicate balance to maintain. It takes constant vigilance.
Yeah, constant vigilance to prevent the kind of controls you and Lon Mabon
support, though on different issues. The balance is not delicate at all.
It should be The People 99%, the State 1%.
> And I might amend your last sentence to "Some people might do what the
> hell they want" because I can guarantee that more people would suffer
> from the myopic greed of a few who did what the hell they wanted.
Examples, please.
Bob T.
Bob Tiernan
On Sun, 26 Jan 1997, Robert Reed wrote:
> What leftist dictators did you have in mind? Most dictators are
> extremely right-wing, typically military leaders or close to them.
And why would you call them "right" wing? Seems to me that if you take
a brutal dictator who kills anybody who disagrees with him, he's a plain
dictator. But the moment he kills somebody because of his skin color,
ethnicity, or religion, then he's a *right-winger*!!
Bob T.
Mike Chapman
On 6 Feb 1997 19:17:37 GMT, zur...@solaris.engr.sgi.com (Jeffrey B.
Zurschmeide) wrote:
>Mike Chapman <mi...@paranoia.com> wrote:
>>
>>You raise some good issues. I'm not really arguing for a different
>>system than we have now, just a more careful and thurough protection
>>of clear rights at a constitutional level. The majority should have
>>no ability to review *rights*.
>
>I don't know how you prevent that. I mean, really, the majority
>can always change the Constitution, can't they?
No, it takes 2/3rds of the states, much more than a simple majority.
Note that issues are very often split close to 50%.
>Or just create
>a climate where judges who will slowly change the de facto
>interpretation of it, which is the same thing.
Sure, this is true. Even so, constitutional protections are a very
good thing. They're much more difficult to ignore or change. If not
for the first amendment, I could be imprisoned now for saying "cunt"
on here. That's what the political process yielded. The Constitution
stopped it.
>That's why I like the political process - I know I can't
>get my personal preferences in rights carved into
>never-changing granite, so I settle for pushing my
>agenda in the political arena.
That's a poor protection of your rights. And for more likely to lead
to a need to revolt. I'll take the granite, thanks.
>>There certainly are dangers in very small and very restricted
>>governments that must be guarded against as carefully as dangers at
>>the other extreme. The balance we have reached in this country,
>>however, is wrong, and not so far from what would cause me to take up
>>arms against the government.
>
>Well, it's not like anyone could stop you if you decided
>to do so. But there's still that majority hanging out
>there, and they have other ideas about the nature and
>desirability of your brand of freedom. It's not so long
>ago that we realized that freedom in this country included
>the right to use a condom - 1965 that was, within my lifetime.
>There are still many who would like to take back even that,
>and impose their religious behavior creed on us all. I don't
>know how to enshrine rights against them in any permanent and
>non-interpretive way.
Write your rights down very, very clearly, and when they start fucking
up, give a warning and open fire if they continue. Rights are not
something to be compromised upon. If you let them "interpret" one
right away, the rest are in grave danger.
The bill of rights is a very good model for how to enshrine rights.
It has failed in many respects (the powers of states, the right to
keep and bear arms, due process and privacy protections, the unlisted
rights, etc.) but it is still a good model. It's worth doing, even if
it's not a perfect protection. It's better than having no rights, or
having to kill for them at every step.
Larry Caldwell
In article <32f9404...@news.aracnet.com>,
jrw@*nospam*aracnet.com (Joyce Reynolds-Ward) wrote:
> Without agriculture, what are you going to eat? It's a mistake to
> become overly dependant upon imported food...even if that import is
> only from the Central Valley of California.
Joyce, at current rates of urban sprawl, one third of California's
central valley will be paved over and out of production within 20
years.
> I can contemplate a rather possible science-fictionesque scenario
> where the Central Valley soil becomes so impregnanted with salt that
> it's incapable of growing healthy food...and then where are we?
Not necessary at all. Think of it as the "Attack of the Asphalt Army,"
big glops of steaming goo that sterilize everything they touch.
Farmland is a giant factory that pumps $2 billion a year into the local
economy. That's real wealth, not paper profits. Real wealth in the
sense of stuff we eat every day, that didn't exist before and now it
does, real production on a continual basis. We'd have to ship $2 billion
a year out of state every year to replace it if it was gone.
Farms are a diffuse thing, so city folks often don't realize the huge
contribution farmland makes to their collective wellbeing. I don't
know how to impress on people how vitally important it is to maintain
that giant food and clothing factory in prime working condition.
Housing is certainly important. They just need to build it in the hills
out toward Clatskinine instead of on the farmland around Wilsonville or
Hillsboro.
-- Larry
Larry Caldwell
In article <1997Feb6.1...@kentrox.com>,
b...@kentrox.com (Bud Couch) wrote:
> Ten more years, and I retire to Montana.
Could I suggest Douglas County? A pleasant 1% per year growth rate,
a slightly more mediterranean climate, and some of the greatest fishing
and hunting left in the whole northwest.
Montana winters gets kinda nippy.
-- Larry
Willamette Valley expatriate living a Quiet Life of Rural Isolation
(QLRI) about 10 miles outside Myrtle Creek.
dR.DavE
jrw@*nospam*aracnet.com (Joyce Reynolds-Ward) writes:
>On 5 Feb 1997 13:32:37 -0800, drd...@teleport.com (dR.DavE) wrote:
>>Los Angeles and San Francisco are hackneyed cliches that don't work with me
>>anymore. I grew up or lived in lots of areas with little or no planning,
>>and there was no great outcry from either the masses or the illuminati for
>>it. St. Louis, Peoria, and Orlando all seem to get along just fine, thank
>>you, with a minimum of central control. What do you say to those examples?
>Joyce's smart-assed comment of the day:
>Orlando? You mean Disney East? Surely you jest...from what little I
>saw, the Mouse has its own agenda/control.
Have you lived in Orlando or do you just like talking about it? I lived
there for three years, just prior to my moving to Portland. The fact is,
Disney does not control Orlando (it is its own independent entity, Disney
even has its own taxing district) and Orlando does little to control
Disney. But that is immaterial. The Orlando metro area copes just fine
without central control. Sure, they make some mistakes, but it's a hell of
a lot cheaper to live there than it is to live here. They think no less of
the environment down there, they're just more reasonable about it.
>And I'm not too wildly impressed with the sprawl I observed there or
>in other parts of south Florida...after all, isn't excess development
>part of the problem with the Everglades?
Orlando is not in south Florida and has little or nothing to do with the
Everglades. Just goes to show how much you know about Florida.
In the REAL south Florida, i.e. from West Palm Beach on south, yes, growth
is a problem. Growth is a problem around Tampa Bay too. But the problem
is not sprawl, but water. Increasing the density in South Florida would
solve nothing, because lack of water is the big problem. And many of the
problem with the Everglades stem from the irresponsibility of sugar cane
growers too, not just population on the coast.
Now in CENTRAL Florida, i.e. Orlando, Daytona Beach, and Cape Canaveral,
there is some sprawl, and some poorly planned sprawl to boot (ask someone
down there about the city of Deltona sometime). But on the whole, growth
has occurred reasonably. Agriculture down there has not suffered from
growth, in spite of having much poorer soil than the Willamette Valley, and
houses are actually affordable, some of the cheapest in the country.
>Of course, that evokes the famous paper-mill smart-assed comment:
>"Stink? What stink? Smells like money to me...."
I'll give you this point at least, you're good at the smart-assed
comments.
>>Does agriculture dominate Portland's economy so much that it deserves to be
>>subsidised by the government? If any other industry proposed what you are
>>proposing, the hue and cry about "corporate welfare" would drown out all
>>other speech. Any industry, even agriculture, will find a way to survive
>>if it has sufficient value. Perhaps agriculture's value to Portland simply
>>isn't there anymore? In which case, it is appropriate to let land use
>>reflect that.
>Dave, the problem is that a lot of folks aren't going to
>realize/recognize/accept the importance and value of agriculture to
>the Portland economy until it is too late.
So whose job is it to set people straight? You? Metro? You're saying
people don't have the right to be stupid, that the government must save
them?
>Portland and Portlanders exist in the false assumption that they exist
>free of the rural Oregon population, and that the ruralites depend
>upon Portland and not the other way around.
I agree that not understanding that fact is unfortunate. Does that mean we
should use force of law to make people recognize it?
>Without agriculture, what are you going to eat? It's a mistake to
>become overly dependant upon imported food...even if that import is
>only from the Central Valley of California.
Yeah, those Californian food embargoes could tear Oregon limb from limb.
>I can contemplate a rather possible science-fictionesque scenario
>where the Central Valley soil becomes so impregnanted with salt that
>it's incapable of growing healthy food...and then where are we?
Yeah, that's the only place in the nation where food can be grown other
than here. Science fiction to be sure. You're talking about scenarios so
absurd as to be completely outside the realm of reality, and yet you're
willing to use them to make laws. Sorry, I can't go for that.
dR.DavE
>Joyce, at current rates of urban sprawl, one third of California's
>central valley will be paved over and out of production within 20
>years.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Be absurd, and you will be considered absurd by those you are trying to
persuade.
>Farmland is a giant factory that pumps $2 billion a year into the local
>economy. That's real wealth, not paper profits. Real wealth in the
>sense of stuff we eat every day, that didn't exist before and now it
>does, real production on a continual basis. We'd have to ship $2 billion
>a year out of state every year to replace it if it was gone.
>Farms are a diffuse thing, so city folks often don't realize the huge
>contribution farmland makes to their collective wellbeing. I don't
>know how to impress on people how vitally important it is to maintain
>that giant food and clothing factory in prime working condition.
Do we *have* to realize it in order for it to be so? If agriculture is
such a great way of making money, then should it not be able to hold its
own and not require all this subsidation and legal protection from us evil
sprawl advocates?
Mike Chapman
On 8 Feb 1997 21:42:28 -0800, drd...@teleport.com (dR.DavE) wrote:
>Do we *have* to realize it in order for it to be so? If agriculture is
>such a great way of making money, then should it not be able to hold its
>own and not require all this subsidation and legal protection from us evil
>sprawl advocates?
While it is within the scope of national (and state) security to
ensure sufficient argicultural reserves, the government must *pay* for
this rather than stealing.
If Oregon decides that it must maintain a certain amount of farmland,
it must pay for that farmland rather than stealing it for public use.
In other words, you're right, it may not be the most profitable to
grow food around Portland now, but it is certainly in the interest of
the state to ensure that there are sufficient productive capabilities
in case of disaster in other regions. This in fact is a primary
strategic concern of the government. Through fair taxes, rather than
theft, it should provide for future production. Fairness and legality
of course are of little interest to people seeking the most efficient
and expedient way to get what they want.
Larry Caldwell
In article <32fd8976...@news.cris.com>,
mi...@paranoia.com (Mike Chapman) wrote:
> If Oregon decides that it must maintain a certain amount of farmland,
> it must pay for that farmland rather than stealing it for public use.
If developers want to take farmland out of production, they should
compensate society for the loss. A development fee equal to 100 years
production of the land should be about right, say $5,000/acre for
marginal hill ground and $50,000/acre for row crop land. At that
point, you could pretty much let market forces take their course,
and productive land would be preserved.
Society doesn't have a responsibility to let developers make a bunch
of bucks and stick everybody else with the bill. I say let them pay
if they want to play.
-- Larry
Larry Caldwell
In article <5djo44$3e5$1...@linda.teleport.com>,
drd...@teleport.com (dR.DavE) wrote:
> In <+HE/y0O5IY...@teleport.com>
> lar...@teleport.com (Larry Caldwell) writes:
> >Joyce, at current rates of urban sprawl, one third of California's
> >central valley will be paved over and out of production within 20
> >years.
> persuade.
I wasn't making that up, Dave. I read it just last week in the Capital
Press, an Ag weekly newspaper published in Salem. Oregon is not the
only state where agricultural production is being gobbled up by urban
sprawl. In fact, because of decent long term planning, the problem is
less urgent here than it is in other parts of the country.
I see no reason to doubt the Capital Press report on the eventual fate
of California's Central Valley. It's a long ways from absurd.
-- Larry
Bob Tiernan
On 10 Feb 1997, Larry Caldwell wrote:
> mi...@paranoia.com (Mike Chapman) wrote:
>
> > If Oregon decides that it must maintain a certain amount of farmland,
> > it must pay for that farmland rather than stealing it for public use.
>
> If developers want to take farmland out of production, they should
> compensate society for the loss.
What about the people who are already living on former farmland? Like
yourself perhaps. It's unfair to tax some for the alleged "misdeed"
that many more have committed.
> Society doesn't have a responsibility to let developers make a bunch
> of bucks and stick everybody else with the bill. I say let them pay
> if they want to play.
Again, it's not developers acting on their own. They respond to demand.
Why would a developer build a subdivision or apartment complex unless
they know that just about all units will be rented/purchased? That's
exactly what they do. Excuse me and others for wanting a roof over our
heads. You have one already? That's nice. Let them eat cake, I guess.
Bob T.
Mike Chapman
On 10 Feb 1997 00:25:38 -0800, lar...@teleport.com (Larry Caldwell)
wrote:
>In article <32fd8976...@news.cris.com>,
>mi...@paranoia.com (Mike Chapman) wrote:
>
>> If Oregon decides that it must maintain a certain amount of farmland,
>> it must pay for that farmland rather than stealing it for public use.
>
>If developers want to take farmland out of production, they should
>compensate society for the loss. A development fee equal to 100 years
>production of the land should be about right, say $5,000/acre for
>marginal hill ground and $50,000/acre for row crop land. At that
>point, you could pretty much let market forces take their course,
>and productive land would be preserved.
Society was never going to earn that money! A farmer might've, and
HE'S ALREADY BEEN PAID.
>Society doesn't have a responsibility to let developers make a bunch
>of bucks and stick everybody else with the bill. I say let them pay
>if they want to play.
They DO pay when the buy the land. What are you thinking? They've
ALREADY PAID FOR THE LAND, and COMPLETELY OWN IT, according to the
DEED.
If society wants to dictate that privately owned land is used for a
certain purpose in the future (a road, whatever), it is called SEIZURE
and society MUST PAY THE OWNER PER THE US CONSTITUTION. Unless of
course this usage is DICTATED BY THE DEED.
Dan
In article <TWl/y0O5IY...@teleport.com>, lar...@teleport.com says...
Larry Larry Larry,
Let me 'splain something. The market is run completely by supply and demand, not by
YOUR view of how society should be run. Therefore, if there is a need for housing, people
will be willing to buy houses, and thus, the price of land with houses goes up! Simple! Now
if there are no more houses to buy, then smart people come along and build them! Where do
they build them you ask? You already know where. As long as land with houses on it is
more valuable than land with crops, then there's going to be some enterprising person (such
as myself perhaps) who's going to come along, see the potential, and develop that land. You
could do it just as easily as I can. Anyone can do it.
As far as farmland being "gobbled up", would those farmers be so willing to sell their land if
they were making a good profit with it? Probably not. Maybe if you were willing to pay two
or three times what you currently pay for food, the land would not be developed. I agree that
we are losing farm land too fast, but that is for the individual landowners to decide. It's still a
free country for the most part and that means we can do with our land as we please (barring
local government interference a.k.a. zoning).
--
-------------------------------------------------------
*Dan Larson
*Post-farmboy and aspiring land developer
-------------------------------------------------------
Larry Caldwell
In article <Pine.GSO.3.95q.97021...@linda.teleport.com>,
Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> wrote:
> What about the people who are already living on former farmland? Like
> yourself perhaps. It's unfair to tax some for the alleged "misdeed"
> that many more have committed.
I'm not in favor of retroactive taxes. However, I am not living on
"former" farmland. I am a farmer, and manage my land for production.
I have 93 acres, which is not enough to make a living off of, but
plenty of land to manage in a productive fashion.
> Again, it's not developers acting on their own. They respond to demand.
> Why would a developer build a subdivision or apartment complex unless
> they know that just about all units will be rented/purchased? That's
> exactly what they do. Excuse me and others for wanting a roof over our
> heads. You have one already? That's nice. Let them eat cake, I guess.
If you wanted to exempt some lands from the calculated development tax,
that is certainly a possibility. You object to government fiat absolutely
forbidding development on property, and prefer a market based approach.
Fine, just don't make other people pick up the bill for your profits. Land
development is very similar to operating a car. If you had to pay the
actual bill for running your car, you couldn't do it. Even the bill that
you do pay runs to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in federal
income tax each year. Operation Desert Storm was all about keeping cars
on the road, and that little venture cost over $250 billion in just
three months.
What we need to do is quit forcing other people to foot the bill for the
profit and convenience of a small group of people. If you want to destroy
the productivity of farm land, fine. Just pay for it. This is not what
you can get away with, this is compensating the rest of society for a
resource that you are destroying. If you add in the actual productivity
of the land, market forces would do a wonderful job of preserving prime
agricultural land. Only in extreme cases would it be worth developing on
land of any true value. However, if you came up against such an absolute
necessity, you could do it with no further interference.
Sounds fair to me.
-- Larry