Luke Rosiak Investigative Reporter
December 23, 2019 3:52 PM ET
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- Virginia House Del. Ibraheem Samirah introduced a bill that would override local zoning officials to permit multi-family housing in every neighborhood, changing the character of quiet suburbs.
- Oregon passed a similar bill, following moves by cities such as Minneapolis; Austin, Texas; and Seattle.
- Proponents say urban lifestyles are better for the environment and that suburbs are bastions of racial segregation.
Democrats in Virginia may override local zoning to bring high-density housing, including public housing, to every neighborhood statewide — whether residents want it or not.
The measure could quickly transform the suburban lifestyle enjoyed by millions, permitting duplexes to be built on suburban lots in neighborhoods previously consisting of quiet streets and open green spaces. Proponents of “upzoning” say the changes are necessary because suburbs are bastions of segregation and elitism, as well as bad for the environment.
The move, which aims to provide “affordable housing,” might be fiercely opposed by local officials throughout the state, who have deliberately created and preserved neighborhoods with particular character — some dense and walkable, others semi-rural and private — to accommodate people’s various preferences.
But Democrats tout a state-level law’s ability to replace “not in my backyard” with “yes, in your backyard.”
House Delegate Ibraheem Samirah, a Democrat, introduced six housing measures Dec. 19, coinciding with Democrats’ takeover of the state legislature in November.
“Single-family housing zones would become two-zoned,” Samirah told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Areas that would be impacted most would be the suburbs that have not done their part in helping out.”
“The real issues are the areas in between very dense areas which are single-family zoned. Those are the areas that the state is having significant trouble dealing with. They’re living in a bubble,” he said.
He said suburbs were “mostly white and wealthy” and that their local officials — who have historically been in charge of zoning — were ignoring the desires of poor people, who did not have time to lobby them to increase suburban density.
In response to a question about whether people who bought homes in spacious suburbs have valid reasons, not based on discrimination, for preferring to live that way — including a love for nature and desire to preserve woods and streams — he said: “Caring about nature is very important, but the more dense a neighborhood is, the more energy efficient it is.”
He said if local officials seek to change requirements like setbacks to make it impossible to build dense housing in areas zoned to preserve a nature feel, “if they make setbacks to block duplexes, there’d have to be a lawsuit to resolve whether those zoning provisions were necessary.”
He wrote on Facebook, “Because middle housing is what’s most affordable for low-income people and people of color, banning that housing in well-off neighborhoods chalks up to modern-day redlining, locking folks out of areas with better access to schools, jobs, transit, and other services and amenities.”
“I will certainly get pushback for this. Some will call it ‘state overreach.’ Some will express anxiety about neighborhood change. Some may even say that the supply issue doesn’t exist. But the research is clear: zoning is a barrier to more housing and integrated communities,” he continued.
He tweeted Sunday that that would include public housing. “Important Q about new social/public housing programs: where are we going to put the units? Under current zoning, new low-income housing is relegated to underinvested neighborhoods, concentrating poverty more. Ending exclusionary zoning has to be part of broader housing reform,” he said.
Tim Hannigan, chairman of the Fairfax County Republican Committee — in one of the areas Samirah represents — said that urban Democrats were waging war on the suburbs. (RELATED: As School District Implements Busing Over Near-Unanimous Opposition, Immigrants From Communist Countries Fear Socialism Has Followed Them)
“This could completely change the character of suburban residential life, because of the urbanization that would develop,” he told the DCNF. “So much of the American dream is built upon this idea of finding a nice quiet place to raise your family, and that is under assault.”
“This is a power-grab to take away the ability of local communities to establish their own zoning practices … literally trying to change the character of our communities,” he said.
He said suburbs were not equipped to handle the increased traffic, and “inevitably it will just push people to places where they feel they’ll get away from that, they may move to West Virginia to get their little plot of land.”
Minneapolis became the first city to eliminated single family zoning in December 2018, after a push by progressive advocacy groups promoting “equity.” Austin, Texas, and Seattle soon followed suit.
But those cities were amending zoning codes that have always been the domain of local governments. Oregon passed state legislation blocking local governments’ single-family zoning in July, CityLab reported.
It quoted Alex Baca, a Washington, D.C., urbanist with the site Greater Greater Washington, saying that single-family zoning is a tool for wealthy whites to maintain segregated neighborhoods and that the abolition of low-density neighborhoods is necessary for equity.
CityLab acknowledged that “residents might reasonably desire to keep the neighborhoods they love the way they are,” but said that implementing the law at the state level makes sure that those concerns can be more easily ignored.
“By preempting the ability of local governments to set their own restrictive zoning policies, the state policy would circumnavigate the complaints of local NIMBY homeowners who want to block denser housing,” it wrote. (RELATED: Dem Prosecutors Fear For Suburbs’ Safety As Radical District Attorneys, Fueled By Soros Cash, Take Control)
While he implied that suburbs are prejudiced, Samirah himself has a history of anti-Semitic comments, including saying sending money to Israel is worse than funding the Klu Klux Klan.
“I am so sorry that my ill-chosen words added to the pain of the Jewish community, and I seek your understanding and compassion as I prove to you our common humanity,” he said in February.
He interrupted a speech in July by President Donald Trump in Jamestown, Virginia, and said, “You can’t send us back! Virginia is our home.”
His father is Jordanian refugee Sabri Samirah, who authorities banned from the U.S. for a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, in part because of his membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, the Chicago Tribune reported in 2014.
This post was updated with comments from Ibraheem Samirah.
This is a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day. There is no doubt that the single family residential zoning, especially along with the rise of HOAs, is designed to create economic segregation, and often also achieves racial segregation. This results in poorer people living in bad neighborhoods raising kids that go to bad schools so they end up living in bad neighborhoods, and the cycle continues. It shocks me that a Democrat came up with this, since it would spell the end of the gated developments that they love to use to keep out the hoi-polloi. There is no reason why there should not be small apartments and duplexes in all residential areas, it would improve diversity and both the low and higher income people might learn something about other world views.
Diversity (and exclusion) is a color judgment including racism. The correct resolution is not to share or shift responsibility (and leave people behind a la immigration reform), but to address the problems in place including progressive prices, planned parenthood (e.g. debasement of human life), diversity, social justice (or relativistic justice), etc.
Don’t abolish ghettos. Build them.
So long as the first 500 are built directly adjacent to these sitting Senator/Representative’s personal properties (their back yards first)
I think we should abolish democrats.
In the UK it became obvious that no matter how well built, areas of municipal housing soon became ghettos (20-30 years on average).
The Thatcherr government solved this by giving longstanding municipal tenants the right to buy at large discounts. The only condition being that the right of resale was restricted for five (?) years. Where more than a few tenants exercised the right to buy the quality of the properties improved significantly. Even those who did not buy took more care of the dwellings in which they lived.
The mistake that he government made was not to permit the local authorities to use the money raised to build more affordable housing.
That and many years of unrestricted immigration has caused a serious housing shortage,
Thing 1 – The left wing love of abstraction blinds them to reality. Poverty is moving to the suburbs. link Affluent white folks are moving back to the cities, gentrifying neighborhoods and making it so the poor former residents can’t afford to live there any more.
Thing 2 – The assumption that low density housing is bad for the environment is probably wrong. As far as I can tell, my low density neighborhood has greater biodiversity than the neighboring forest, with the sole exception of large mammals (ie. deer, wolves, and coyotes).
CB, I’ve got all the large mammals you mentioned, plus Bobcats and Cougars leaving tracks on my land, and I’m an hour’s drive north of St. Louis, MO.
The average tract of land in my township is 10 acres and the only environmental problems are when land owners rent their property for squatters in camping trailers to form a bivouac of underground society, or decide to collect one of every mechanical device ever made and store it on their lawn for progeny to dispose of.
We enforce low density in my township that borders on one of the fastest growing MSA’s in the U.S., and it’s exactly as Comrade Robert says. Open space, bio-diversity, healthy old trees, (some as much as 400 years old, many over 100 years old). It also makes it possible for a moderate to middle income family to by a one acre lot and have a decent 1600 sq foot home, in a great school system, for an affordable price. We also have a great brew pub in our little village, which is where most of the local politics happen, but that’s a different story.
Salute!
TNX Commie, go look at the eastern slope of the Ramparts in Colorado.
The realtors and county officials that became wealthy after a few elections ( imagine that!?) kept on permitting and building more and more homes so close to each other that I could actually pee out my bathroom into the neighbor’s toilet!
The worst thing was not rising property value ( and all the taxes to be given away to social programs and bike trails), but no fee for the new electric and water and sewage infrastructure. Then we saw the multiplex developments, aka ‘apartments’, and now we have 6 or 8 families using the sewage and water supply originally engineered for 1 or 2 families.
Fer chrissakes, if you wish to live in the quiet country, then move there. If you are not as well off as many politicians that only had salaries of $150,000 ( gasp) but now buy waterfront places in New England, then get an RV or find a small lot and camp out until you can bring in your small home.
Excessive state-controlled or built or mandated is the hallmark of the state-controlled everything. ’nuff of my philosophy.
Gums sends….
Just apply a little Iron Heat
Energy efficiency as a reason for zoning regulations is absurd.
That may be true, but does that justify the government regulating who can live where?!?
What model automobile does the delegate drive? I bet I can find many alternate automobiles or other modes of transportation for him that are much more energy efficient.
I also object to the very racist assumption that minorities are uniquely incapable of purchasing a home in the “suburbs”. “Redlining” indeed was racist and was appropriately abolished by law.
The question more accurately should be articulated as to whether every community should contain a mixture of incomes (regardless of race) that mirrors the general population. That argument can fairly be made, but the discussion isn’t as one sided without the racial overtones.
(Full disclosure: I believe that my ability to afford to live in some residential communities are no different than my ability to afford different automobiles. I am proud I can drive a Sport model Honda, and pleased one of my grandsons tools around in an M series BMW. If someone wanted to pass a law that I should be able to drive the same car as Bernie Sanders, I’d be very appreciative.)
I descend from Italian and Irish grandparents who populated the tenements of NYC and New Haven Conn. They made the sacrifices (despite clear discrimination – “Irish and Italian need not apply”) to give their children an education and a chance move out of the inner cities and into what was considered the Shangri La of the suburbs.
The delegate needs to focus his attention on the causes of poverty, and not on the rewards one attains from escaping it.
For the most part, so called redlining never existed. It is a figment of left wing imaginations.
The same effect is easily explained by income differences.
Realtors want their clients to buy the most expensive home they can qualify for.
Banks are in the business of lending money to anyone who can pay it back.
The reason why racists had to pass the Jim Crow laws was because businesses were doing business with blacks.
George! What were you THINKING????
Bernie Sanders doesn’t DRIVE. He has a pool of professional chauffeurs to carry him around.
Sheesh!
I think the majority on this post are missing the real reasons behind this.
The racism issue raised is a smokescreen, its not about that at all, it is clearly an implementation of the requirements spelled out in agenda 21 for cities to be composed of high density housing whether the locals want it or not.
We have seen this in Australia (NSW) where the incoming Liberal government of Barry Ofarrell (thats the Australian equivalent of the Republicans) overode all the state laws giving councils the ability to conduct their own zoning, now the developers can do what they want and there is no effective way to challenge them.
The aim of this change of legislation was to force suburbs to have high density housing whether the locals wanted it or not.
In fact whilst in opposition the Liberals voted with the Labour party to introduce legislation that makes it possible for developers to force landholders to sell to them, something that until then could only be done by the government in having land resumed for the public good.
The result has been a deliberate and massive mushrooming in Sydney of flashy but generally poorly built skyscrapers with units (mainly occupied by mostly Chinese and Indian migrants), in suburbs with the traditional 1/4 acre block.
Most people hate it but we have been made powerless to stop it.
This is absolutely in line with long term outcomes outlined in Agenda 21 (available free from the U.N).
In addition we are now seeing our state government wasting billions on light rail (electric trams) in areas where bus services would have been much cheaper and just as fast, this also is in line with the objectives contained in Agenda 21.
So there you have it both major parties quietly but remorselessly implementing legislation in line with Agenda 21 which the political left signed us up to, and almost no politician will ever admit they have heard of Agenda 21, (they are able to do that because its implementation is under a variety of Australian laws introduced to achieve its objectives).
Never forget once it is enshrined in law, public servants also will always recommend its implementation, that”s their job.
Pete
God forbid people be allowed to live in neighborhoods of their choice.
The Democrats’ collectivist, totalitarian intent is right out there in the open now:
(1) Gather everyone into max-density cities where we’re easiest to control.
(2) Eliminate private means of transportation.
(3) Eliminate ownership of weapons for self-defense.
(4) Force everyone onto an inadequate diet to induce docility, infertility and chronic illness.
(5) Keep the populace therefore dependent on pharma drugs, dispensed by the government.
(6) Nationalize the means of production, the banks and the markets.
(7) Control what we’re allowed to think, say, write, and teach our children.
‘Bout time we start pushing back, don’t you think? We’ve seen this movie before, and it doesn’t end well at all. I really hope Americans aren’t THIS stupid. Guess we find out in 2020!
yep. Agenda 21
And the more dense a person is the more likely they will be elected to public office
Governing against the will of the people has long been the MO of the Democrat party, but it usually isn’t so obvious. Making it more obvious has the effect of allowing voters to cast their vote based on how much they like such anti-democratic policies. If the people wanted such policies in their communities they wouldn’t need the state government to impose them, would they?
The problem is that white, suburban neighbourhoods don’t vote Democrat, therefore the Democrats must flood them with Democrat voters.
They’ve already done it at a state level in many places, now they’re working on the county level.
Democratic gerrymandering, yes. There is also social and monetary profit in subsidizing “living wages” etc. in high cost… price of living jurisdictions. In fact, public smoothing functions (e.g. welfare, redistributive change) are a multi-trillion dollar business on a forward-looking basis.
Could you repeat that, in standard English this time please.
What is your question?
There are a lot of words there, however they never seem to arrive at an actual point.
To boil it down, they money to be made advocating for the poor. Have you ever wonder why leftist countries always end up with the very rich(the political class) and the very poor(the people the political class is watching out for) and not much in between(God forbid the political class spend their money fixing a problem.)
You obviously think everyone who lives in suburbia is constantly living in fear of “diversity.” And HOA creation, which is relatively new, had as its purpose the shift of costs from the govt (street repair, police patrolling, street lights, etc) directly to the homeowner, often so thar housing developments could be more easily approved by local officials. As for understanding world views, I’d bargain that the suburbanites know a lot more about the evils of “diversified” and govt housing than they would ever want to know. And any school system depends upon the quality of its studenyts. Introducing low income, low IQ students into those “better schools” will quickly produce bad schools. And the idea that betteer jobs are available in the suburbs is mostly nonsensical,since most suburbanites have to commute to work. Along with low income Blacks comes high crime. Whoever wrote this silly trash obviously knows very little about the subsurbs.
low income, low IQ students
Objection! Sorry, can’t follow you on this. : >(
Why not?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2015/09/16/is-iq-a-predictor-of-success/#3469f0323604
https://pumpkinperson.com/2016/02/11/the-incredible-correlation-between-iq-income/
Now, you could pursue a track that IQ is not heritable. That would mean that the children of low IQ parents are equally as likely to have high IQs as low IQs. Of course, we have plenty of exceptional examples to point to support the idea that high IQ individuals can arise from low IQ pairings. However, what does the data say when we look at populations as a whole (i.e., large numbers). I’ll offer a few different POVs based on study data:
1. IQ heritability is a function of both genetics and societal norms (i.e., culture) and are interrelated. This is the nurture argument – that IQ outcomes are shaped by the environment.
This is a pretty sophisticated finding in that it suggests that people brought up in environments that are less cognitively demanded tend to develop lower general intelligence over time than those people raised in environments that demand high cognitive load. This is the closest argument in favor of forced intermixing of the social strata, however making this case suggests that taking lower IQs parents out of poorer, less cognitively demanding environments will reshape their home environments (and socials norms) into ones that now demand higher cognitive load and subsequent rise in general intelligence of the entire family unit.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-heritability-of-intelligence-not-what-you-think/
But, then there are the genetic studies that do throw a massive wrench in the works, so:
2. IQ is Largely, but not completely, a genetic trait. This is nature argument, that environments are largely shaped by the IQ of the people who are creating them:
“Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%[6] with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%[7] and 86%.[8]. IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with age and reaches an asymptote at 18–20 years of age and continues at that level well into adulthood. This phenomenon is known as the Wilson Effect.[9] Recent studies suggest that family and parenting characteristics are not significant contributors to variation in IQ scores;[10] however, poor prenatal environment, malnutrition and disease can have deleterious effects”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
The above presents a “chicken and egg” problem. Are the children of higher IQ parents likely to develop into smarter people over time due to a function of their environment? Data seems to say “yes”. However, how did those children “find” themselves in these environments in the first place? The liberal (more accurately termed “Modern Stalinist”) knee-jerk response to this would be institutional racism. There may be some truth to that. But it doesn’t explain why Ashkenazi Jews tend to, as a population, outscore the entire world on IQ tests while Western Subsaharan Africans massively underperform on these same (and most neutrally biased we have) tests.
Genetics must play a part here as I think it would be hard to argue that white German non-Jews were more subject to malnutrition and privation than their white Ashkenazi neighbors. Data lends support for this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/
In the above, read especially about the strength of the role IQ plays in assortive mating (e.g., smart people tend to marry other smart people, and vice versa).
So, again, I ask why you can’t follow on this? Data lends support to the idea that society is at least partially (and likely significantly) stratified by IQ (or general intelligence), that IQ correlates strongly to cultural and educational outcomes, and that these traits are extended over generations.
If we value intelligence, advancement, the pursuit of knowledge, discovery and research – we should strongly consider how to best provide the best resources to those at the top of the intellectual strata to flourish. Forced intermixing of social strata will result in “better schools” becoming “worse schools” and “better neighborhoods” becoming “worse neighborhoods”. If we value intelligence and advancement (and view this as “better” than “worse” on a purely subjective basis), we should encourage social mobility and free segregation.
If equality of outcomes is our primary goal, then what this particular Democratic politician has proposed is a good idea as it will, over time, work to tighten the distribution of IQ and cultural norms, and the educational and societal outcomes that result from them.
“If we value intelligence, advancement, the pursuit of knowledge, discovery and research – we should strongly consider how to best provide the best resources to those at the top of the intellectual strata to flourish.”
Good question. So what say you?
If IQ is as important a focus as you claim, and those of high IQ should be subsidized, then surely you’d agree that the “top of the intellectual strata” would include the intelligentsia in charge of the curricula at such universities as Stanford, Berkeley, M. I. T., Harvard, Princeton, Yale and the like. I assume you’d also agree that the curriculum at these universities (and surely most of the American university system at present) is overwhelmingly philosophically progressive.
Thus, I’m also assuming you would argue that post-modern, progressive philosophical conclusions regarding the state, society, science, etc., is the proper path to “advancement, the pursuit of knowledge, discovery and research”? After all, the highest IQ among us must inhabit the halls of the most respected institutions of higher learning according to your theory, and those institutions are overwhelmingly progressive philosophically.
So what say you? What’s the best way to provide resources for the advancement of society in order to, for example, further the AGW agenda and refocus the means of economic production and distribution from the private sector to the state?
Funny I grew up poor, did not make a lot of money yet I am retired and have enough to live on until I die. Yep I was in the bottom 5% and now I in the top 20% of household wealth. Just because you are poor does not mean you are stupid, it often means that you parents may had made some poor choices or were not willing to put up with a life style where you have highway six lanes on each side full of car at the beginning and end of the day. Rural America has plenty of poor most are not stupid, if they were they would not survive, even in this country.
Intelligence is only half the equation competence is the other, poor households often do not teach competence, does matter how smart you are if you don’t get something done you are not going to do well. Today school also don’t teach competence either, so most poor children are screwed regardless of IQ.
I’m afraid I’m getting as bad as Mosher in posting cryptic and inscrutable comments. So let me expand on what I wrote above. I now have almost 30 years experience teaching low income, largely limited-English elementary students. I do not need an IQ test to report that these students are as intelligent as they come.
Aside from that, I probably agree with BFL, above, about other factors that are dragging us down.
Juan:
And the same for the 30 years that I helped run, or ran, a basketball program for inner city young males who were a mix of black, white, Hispanic and Asian Americans. ALL of them were intelligent, funny, and polite! But not a fan of these laws attacking single family neighborhoods. Multi-family housing is fine but plenty of places exist to build such outside of single family zones. As others have said, seems more a political maneuver than meeting a need.
I hear you and agree with you. Particularly if you are dealing with large immigrant populations who are at a structural disadvantage in our society – particularly intercontinental immigrants from our southern neighbors (e.g., not our immigrants from across our western shores!). Same goes for Americans of African descent who have suffered under apartheid until only relatively very recently in our nations history here in the US.
However, if our system is working as it should (more accurately said as “could”), the cream of the crop will rise. I have plenty of examples of this, including some my of nearest and dearest friends over my life. My point isn’t to be an elitist asshole, my heart is strongly behind allowing anyone from any background to rise up and aspire to build environments that maximize their potential as free individuals to contribute their talents as they see fit and position their children for even better success. IMO, forcing cultural (not heritage race cultural, but cultures in the sense that we use the word to describe corporate cultures – common beliefs, norms and valses) intermixing by forcefully reshaping our communities according to grand master plan is a bad idea for all of the reasons stated above.
@syscomounting – sorry, can’t reply to you directly as the thread got too deep, so replying here:
Another very good and deep question, and one I struggle to reconcile. This is sort of a Kirk and Spock problem. The absolute logical extreme is to create a technocracy where the elites rise to the very top of society based on their comparative advantage, but this contradicts my personal adversity to nihilism and post modernism.
I’m also not so certain our institutions of higher learning – particular the elite universities – are doing much to promote learning, thinking and progress as much as forcing indoctrination and group think. Plenty of high IQ people can be conditioned into brainless, awful, dangerous thought. I present early twentieth century Germany and the rise of their Hitler as exhibit A.
So, let me try again to explain myself in this way. I believe strongly that we as a society should allow people to freely assemble and form communities that meet their needs and support their abilities. I don’t want to see the smart, promising young engineering candidate subject to the forces of privation, degradation and insult brought about by kids who can’t comprehend that bright kid’s reality (and, frankly, vice versa). I lived this personally growing up in our public schools and have worked to my place my children in a better environment more conducive to academic growth to hopefully provide better for them than I had (I digress).
Universities aren’t necessarily the media for allowing people to pursue their maximum selves and actuate their potential. Plenty of very smart and hard working, “high EQ” people rise in society without any university education. Read about the hiring practices of Google for instance.
No, elitism is a scourge. The romans and British embraced elitism and shut down the churn of their societies to the point that their interbreeding led to degradation of their genetic lines and the decline and eventual destruction of their societies. Our founding fathers sought (despite their apparent flaws) to build a better way. I fear our modern day progressives seek to repeat the mistakes of our Roman and British ancestors (among many others) and will stop at nothing in the end to see it through (e.g., Stalinism).
So to state my point more clearly: central planning (the state) is not the way. Distributed power with freedom to move socially, economically, and form communities free from oppression (from the top or the bottom) appear to provide the better opportunities for people to continue our advance. Yes, some new ideas as we grow will challenge accepted precepts (enter Christ)… but progressivism in it postmodern application of the term in the US is the opposite of this. My point about “best resources” is to say – Allow for free assembly and association, including the formation of “better schools” to promote the aptitudes of their children.
I’m rambling now, but I hope I was at least somewhat better clarify the intent of the data I presented above.
FD: I’m an engineer by pedigree and training. So my biases are undoubtedly shaped toward STEM and the pursuit of real science and factually based understanding (as best as we can achieve, free of group think, propaganda and emotion). Emotions drive our life, but should not drive our discovery nor all of our decision making. Live long and prosper 😊
“@syscomounting – sorry, can’t reply to you directly as the thread got too deep, so replying here:”
In these cases you simply do as you did here – reply on the last available reply. In our example you would reply to yourself as I did.
“Another very good and deep question, and one I struggle to reconcile.”
Glad to see you’re thinking about it. One obvious reconciliation would be to abandon the notion of the “Intelligence Quotient” as unfit for purpose in it’s current form. For whatever good it can do, it certainly doesn’t do what it claims to do, i.e., provide any valuable insight into determining an individual’s ability to reason. You make my point for me with the following observation:
“Plenty of high IQ people can be conditioned into brainless, awful, dangerous thought. I present early twentieth century Germany and the rise of their Hitler as exhibit A.”
Indeed. And a less extreme example is the philosophical state of American universities, who push post-modern, subjectivist, epistemological suicide as academics. Since this type of thinking is by definition irrational, the argument that an IQ test provides any reliable basis by which to determine an individual’s ability to reason contradicts itself, and thus should be abandoned.
Brandon said “No, elitism is a scourge.” yes it become rather obvious of lately that the US is no longer a meritocracy, if it every was. You only have to look at out so call elite schools and what they are putting out to know that. In the seventies Mash touch on that all the the character that was from Harvard was competent but not as competent as he thought. It look to me today good number of Harvard graduates are not competent, and I am not talk about those that were let in due to Harvard entrance polices biased against Whites and Asians, no its the children of the elite Harvard alumni that are less than average yet don’t know it. I won’t go into how incompetent our elitist media is.
You’ve never been much of a follower!
Hi to you and yours.
Happy New Year.
to J & N from J & N
And a happy new year to you!
to J & N from J’ & N’
(from Central Point, OR, this year)
The root of the problem of systemic poverty in the US is the rate of unmarried motherhood. Being born of an unemployed single female on the dole is practically a GUARANTEE of a life of poverty and probable resort to crime. With that many strikes against a child, it takes enormous self-awareness, realistic thinking and self-discipline to overcome the disadvantages which usually include inadequate nutrition, high-crime areas, unwholesome influences, often physical or sexual abuse by the mother’s serial “partners,” and the cumulative effect of all of these factors on the student body of increasingly lousy, gang-ridden and violent schools.
Until SOMEONE in this country has the cojones to address this issue honestly–the fact that in the late 60’s we replaced “Daddy” with “Sugar Daddy” LBJ and his “war on poverty;” it’s just going to continue to snowball. It’s NOT about “race,” it’s about sub-CULTURES that reward personal irresponsibility and passing the bill for it to the taxpayers.
Law of Nature: Whatever you subsidize, you’ll get more of. Duh.
IMHO, you have it nailed, Goldrider. Therefore, your comment will be mostly ignored.
“low income, low IQ students”
These have always been there, it’s just that now not allowed to fail them or repeat grades. But the major (undiscussable) problems causing major education inefficiency are all the new rules like allowing misfits/disrupters and students with no mental or English language ability instead of having them in special schools/classrooms and an inability to offer even the most basic punishments without being sued. Add these issues onto junk social courses, new math and pushing advanced courses like calculus into high school (not very useful in work not requiring a STEM degree) or insisting on college prep when trade schools may be just as appropriate. Basic life necessity courses like budget planning, relationship management, personal safety and emergency procedures are ignored, but sex procedures are a must. Probably why home schooling and charter schools are becoming ever more popular.
Bad schools are not due to the students, it bad administration that have low expectations from their students. The minute that you expect kids to misbehave and not perform and you are unwilling to make them behave and learn you will have a bad school, the only difference between a poor neighborhood and a rich one, is in a rich one such a school will not survive. The rich have school choice.
The new management seminars tell them chefs “intelligence is not needed.
What’s needed is emotional intelligence
– so everyone gets replaceable by any / everyone” :
https://www.google.com/search?q=emotional+intelligence&oq=emotional+intelligence&aqs=chrome.
The correct question is, what’s the Muslim Brotherhood angle here, because everything they do is well planned. Either they’re trying to burnish Samirah’s leftist bona fides, possibly for a future run at higher elected office, or they’re doing this to increase the Muslim population beyond current boundaries. Whichever the case, this is well-planned, deliberate, and serves the Brotherhood’s long-term purposes, which were detailed in Holy Land trial. Don’t be fooled.
“It shocks me that a Democrat came up with this, since it would spell the end of the gated developments that they love to use to keep out the hoi-polloi.”
If you think that this would affect the elite in power (and their supporters) I’m sure that you would be wrong as they would, of course, be exempt..
They build a 3 story apartment complex next to a new single family neighborhood in S. California. A local B&E gang took advantage of it by renting an apartment on the third floor with a balcony that overlooked the SFR neighborhood. They would post a lookout on the balcony and use radio’s to notify gang members when residents had exited their homes to go to work. The lookout would also notify the members when a patrol car turned into the neighborhood. They finally got caught when a complaint was registered with the police over a ‘peeping tom”, the lookout. BTW this was a well integrated SFR neighborhood.
You are showing your own bias when you make comments about improving diversity(?) and the other part about world views. You assume people aren’t aware of other world views.
You need to get out of the city. When affluent neighborhoods in the deep south like mine have multiple races and ethnic groups, then your concept of a racially segregated suburbia is outdated and wrong. There are 115 homes in our subdivision, but we have Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and atheists, and ethnic groups including whites, blacks, hispanics, Eastern Europeans, and Asians.
Call it economic segregation if you wish, but that is the rule in a capitalist free market society. Restaurants, shopping, and entertainment are similarly segregated. It is a motivational force for working and succeeding. Take that away and you have the failed economies of Venezuela, Cuba, N. Korea, and the former USSR.
The insistence that someone growing up in a bad neighborhood is consigned to that fate for life is insulting to the great many who have left those neighborhoods for a better life. The opportunities are there. The left needs to stop telling them they are victims, and instead help them recognize those opportunities.
Mandatory busing to achieve suburban cultural school integration didn’t work so maybe mandatory housing assignments by zoning will work to achieve suburban multi-cultural integration while, hopefully, precluding no-go-zones, even though most penal institutions, especially the super max ones, still segregate housing units by cultural gang and tribal affiliation, especially for the occasional prisoner that comes from Beverly Hills or Chappaquiddick or even a violent pressure cooker bomber from Damascus Syria. As with France, apparently we’re all going to be prisoners now living with more no-go-zones.
Andrew. This is Agenda 21, the plan to do away with home ownership and move all into those high density buildings near transit that are going up all over….it’s a globalist agenda for total control…
Salute!
It’s like this story describes:
https://understandrussia.com/soviet-apartments/
Gums sends…
I agree, assuming it is not the construction of high rise apartments.
… and it spreads out lower income housing and reduces urban sprawl which is better for everyone.
This change in zoning has already happened for the regions that are close to city’s cores.
Home values will drop, schools will go to crap and crime will increase. Those that can afford to will leave. If this looks like it will pass move to another state if you can.
Virginia voted themselves this Nanny State government. Now they will reap what they sown. We rarely get the government we want, but we always get the one we deserve
The rural areas did not vote for this, or gun confiscation. They will comply with neither. It is that simple.
Bogus claim(s).
e.g. ” rise of HOAs”; rise!? Home owner associations are as old as housing developments in the 1800s and 1900s.
e.g. 2; “There is no doubt that the single family residential zoning, especially along with the rise of HOAs, is designed to create economic segregation”; designed!?
Designed by whom, exactly.
Otherwise it is a vague proletariat type accusation that is without merit. More accusations, usually made by those raised in bourgeois circumstance and thrown at the fan hoping something sticks, without any chance.
ATheoK,
You sure like to use a lot of “Communist Manifesto” words.
Who the hell are you to tell other people how to live? Would you like it if I told you to live in a house trailer in a trailer park because I think that would be good for the environment and good for you to get to know how people in trailer parks live?
Let’s keep going down your line of logic, perhaps I should have you tested for intelligence and skills and assign you to a job that I think will best serve society. Perhaps my assessment is that the job that best suits you is in rural Mississippi, and it will be good for you to learn to appreciate the culture in rural Mississippi.
I vehemently reject your totalitarian approach to government, and will do everything I can to ensure that you and your communist fellow travelers are never elected to dog catcher
What a load of crap. Nothing is ‘designed’ – it’s families with means trying to move out of urban shit-holes. See THAT’s where you get the filthiest environments, AND where you encounter the lowest forms of human life, both in decadence and destitution.
Good for the Democrats. The sooner their actions actually impact people, the sooner people will wake up to what is being forced on them.
Exactly. They need to stop sharing/shifting responsibility a la Green Blight, Obamacare/single/central solutions, immigration reform, social justice-mongering (e.g. elective wars, elective regime changes, catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform), gcd social economics, conflation of logical domains (e.g. [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] global… climate change), etc.
“The world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change”
Hmmm…
Yeah, I wish they would cut these Democrat Eeeeevil clickbait articles based on tabloid drivel and instead focus on the climate.
In this case, “my bill explicitly states that single-family housing types are still allowed on the lots that are zoned for them. My bill does not mandate anyone do anything with their housing—it’s up to property owners to decide what they want to do.”
“My bill does not mandate anyone do anything with their housing”
That comes next.
The connection to climate was explicitly made. Increasing housing density is supposedly “more efficient”.
Isn’t this called “Single issue politics”?
Very narrow minded, short sighted, ignorant of any other issues.
A lot of leftists hate it when their core tenets are disputed, but they are not able to defend them, so they demand that we stop talking about them.
IF the quote of …
“my bill explicitly states that single-family housing types are still allowed on the lots that are zoned for them. My bill does not mandate anyone do anything with their housing—it’s up to property owners to decide what they want to do.”
…is actually true then there would be no point in proposing the bill now, would there? Why propose legislation that has no provisions for implementing what is being legislated? If the property owners WANT to build high density housing then they would certainly move to change the zoning laws in place at a local level. So, it makes no sense unless the legislation is there only to open the door for an organized campaign, by outsiders to the community, to purchase properties and build high density housing to ‘pack’ small communities and change their demographic profile in a desired direction.
Cheers
Max
Oh, of course it doesn’t “mandate” anything. Just that when a crony slumlord builds “public housing” right next to their single family house, the value of that property suddenly goes upside down. Then the only option is to sell it to either the same or a different crony for building another slum (if you are agile enough, and aren’t upside down on a mortgage too).
In my single family zoned cul-de-sac, there are eight houses. THREE of those houses are occupied by “people of color.” That’s 37.5% of my neighbors – and they are perfectly good neighbors. They have NO desire to have the slums come after them, after they or their parents escaped them.
These schemes are nothing more than the time-honored “block busting” tactics of yesteryear – just rather more blatant. The only ones to benefit are the corrupt politicians and their cronies.
Not only that, but consider the central stupidity of the whole idea – the notion that adding higher density housing to single family zoned suburbs will be “better” for “the environment” is a 180 degree wrong colossally stupid joke. The ‘burbs lack the transportation infrastructure to move lots more people, and essentially what adding high density housing to the ‘burbs would do is INCREASE urban sprawl, NOT (as these IDIOTS claim) decrease it.
Adding more personal auto trips onto roads that lack the capacity for them is a great recipe for traffic jams and pollution – NOT exactly “environmentally friendly.”
[catastrophic] [anthropogenic] climate change a la UN sociopolitical prophecy, activism, and resolutions. You operate tin the frame of reference forced upon you. To ignore it is to live in a dictated democracy (i.e. majority rule).
Climate change is one of the excuses being used for this bill.
Diversity at all costs because we know that’s the best for everybody. Ann all black neighborhood is diversity, but an all white is racist. Got it.
The poor people will not be able to afford the duplex or apartment in the suburbs, as the rents will be high due to higher real estate taxes and maintenance costs. Is it it going to be cheaply built subsidized housing. Oh, joy, people who have no skin in the game do not take care of the buildings and property.
Then, there is the cost of transportation to and from work and for shopping. There will have to an expansion in public transportation. Who is going to pay for this? The suburbs, of course.
When my kids were growing up, a group of 6 or 8 of our local children, kids included, would roam the neighborhood, dropping into one of their homes occasionally for refreshments. They learned to be free range and look out for each other. Move in a proportion of poor people with less sense of neighborhood and which might attract others less desirable and free range and locked doors will follow. I grew up in Philly and it was common knowledge that one went out to the suburbs for quality burglary results. Most burglars went back to the city as there was no place to stay in the burbs. Expect breaking and home invasions to increase. This is not to say that all poor are not good people but the undesirable element will indeed follow.
It is also clear that suburban land owners tend to take care of their land than any state bureau does. It is a joke that it is back for the environment. This is only true from the UN Agenda 21 point of view in which they want everybody forced into the cities so that they can rebuild and make most of the land off limits to humans altogether or in most ways.
I live in a suburban city that includes approximately the following populations: 21% white, 8% African-American, 60% Asian, 6% from two or more races, and 14% Hispanic or Latino. And guess what: over 90% of the residential structures are single familyhomes. So much for the idea that suburbs are necessarily white enclaves.
Character matters.
Diversity (i.e. color judgment) and exclusion denies individual dignity, infers character… casts aspersions, really, a projected bigotry, that rabid diversitists (e.g. racists) exploit for leverage and suppression.
That said, just when people manage to escape the urban jungle, the caretakers manage to force them back inside by hook and crook. Here’s to progress… one step forward, two steps backward.
In Germany these discussions started weeks ago, reasons are reduce land-use, questions of energy use, less streets and cars, shorter ways for shopping, schools, kindergarten, all for climte change.
Yes, the Greens want to prohibit single family houses.
Also, to clear the land for the Green Blight… low density energy solutions. It’s happened in America, too, notably pasture land, with sometimes deadly consequences. China is infamous for their “Green New Deal” and collateral damage.
It’s about the motive behind the contrived hysteria since there is no evidence supporting catastrophic man-made climate change. So much of the liberal policy wish list would be furthered by “action” on climate change, to say nothing for what else they would do with the new levels of control they could realize.
The simple, undeniable fact is that if catastrophic man-made climate was proven beyond any shadow of a doubt, but it instead favored advancement of conservative policies, we’d never hear a word about it from the Democrats of in the mainstream media.
Mike,
This story is about Climate Change…Political Climate Change
I live in a fenced, gated, security-controlled private barrio. It’s not as secure as you think, sure, the security keeps simple thieves out, but the children of the politicians who are living here don’t have any respect for anything. I am in favor of Block Watch Organizations, especially those favoring armed patrols. I am also sure my private barrio is responsible for more than our share of carbon pollution (must be why it is so green here).
My daughter lives in what used to be a gated community. Unfortunately, a few years ago, some woman from outside the community, was not keeping track of her very young daughter, and her daughter got caught in the security gate, and was injured. So (obviously) a lawsuit against the HOA ensued, and after a lengthy period of legal wrangling, the HOA’s insurance coughed up a monetary award.
IMO, tracking daughters is what you expect from people from Iraq. Here, we take care of ourselves. Injuring girls is not a guardy task, so I’m not surprised the HOA got in a legal trouble. It is America after all.
What buggers me in this post:
in a free country, there is no urban planning at a level that tells if you may build a duplex on your property or not. Urban planning is a leftist tool used to limit free market (which I value more than my quiet mostly single housing based zone I live on).
The first comment talks about diversity. Pffft. We need no diversity. It is the ‘diverse’ neighbourhoods that have most problems, so the reason is the opposite: to have less diversity concentrated so that the market value loss is spread to all the taxpayer peons.
No go zones are a result of extreme diversity and to get rid of that, progressives want to give us all a share of it. Duplexes are not an issue at that sector. The natural segregation keeps that trouble away. The real issue is cheap housing at an expensive area via subsidies. Cheap, government owned rented houses. Owners care. People who got a roof over their head without really paying for it are a pain to neighbours who care.
I’m living in a single family house in a two building HOA setup. I’m happy but I hate the urban planners for both limiting how much we can build and not limiting the property opposite to our place. Either you have rules that are same for everybody, or no rules, but no different rules for the municipality and private small owners. This is crucial in a dynamic, growing place like ours.
…aren’t these the same people that raise hell about gentrification of inner city black neighborhoods….pricing blacks out historic black neighborhoods?
why yes they are………….
They’re stuck with a doctrine of diversity (e.g. racism, sexism) that denies individual dignity and rights. They don’t see people… persons, but rather race, sex, gender, colorful clumps of cells, and other low information attributes. A likely consequence of their quasi-religion (“ethics”) selective and opportunistic, faith (Twilight or conflation of logical domains), and ideology (i.e. monotonically divergent), which are first-order forcings of catastrophic anthropogenic climate (e.g. social, economic) change.
“They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.”
Margaret Thatcher – in an interview in Women’s Own in 1987
I like the cut of her character. The axioms of my religion (i.e. moral philosophy): Individual dignity. Intrinsic value. Inordinate worth. Reconcile.
I’ve always gotten a kick out of listening to a bunch of white liberals declare that a black or hispanic is a traitor to their race merely because they don’t agree with the white liberals.
There was a time when thinking that you knew all about a person just because you knew their skin color was called racism.
Okay, so let’s make every neighborhood that is nice and quiet, where the kids can play safely outdoors and not worry about predators and gangbangers – let’s turn all those nice, quiet places into Englewood and other such hellholes, where kids can’t even unwrap Christmas presents without in their own homes without getting shot by some drive-by gangbangers.
Let’s just do that.
And let’s get some fashion laws on the books too: … no more fitted cloths with pants on the waist — all men will be required to wear baggie, shin-length, silky pajama pants with their asses hanging halfway out to show off their stylish tacky underwear. All women must maintain plus-size body types, over which they wear tacky-print leggings and flip flops. Anything else, after all, is clearly racist. Oh, and everybody must don at least one tat and one piercing. Plain, well-cared-for skin is also racist or, at least, prejudiced.
What this will do almost immediately is reduce the value of single family neighborhoods. Yet, the day of reckoning with regard to wealth sunk into homes is coming anyway. Millennials don’t much care for the responsibilities of home ownership, which probably translates into a lot of property owned by boomers won’t maintain its value and will end up as rental property.
What this will do, almost immediately, is cause people to move out of state.
Happening right now in NY, CT, CA. VA is next.
People vote with their feet, too.
This does not mean that new single family houses are out-lawed. That will come later. And demolition of single family residences will soon follow. The ultimate goal is for everyone to be forced to live in a high rise and ride the bus and show up at the euthanization center on their 65th birthday. Climate deniers an other undesirables sooner than that
“Climate deniers and other
undesirablesdeplorables sooner than that”Fixed!
Thanks (-:
That will solve the Social Security problem of running out of money.
Ha – ha!! – Next, legislation will be introduced which forces individuals to frequent only with a defined mixture of different personalities, cultures, ages, personal interests, skin colour, personal charm, human attractiveness, academic qualifications, etc. And why not also make sure that some of your friends and acquaintances are thieves, murderers and paedophiles – it is just so important for our development that we come to terms with, and learn from, the reality of humankind.
‘But the research is clear …’ I smell a model here.
Reads like a copy-paste from the German and Swiss communist party manifesto.
Urban concentration, less travel, less infrastructures, less heating, less life.
Something Ceaușescu tried in Romania decades ago by dozering hundreds of villages and stuffing their population in humongous apartment blocks. Ghettos with their own laws, often referred to as “crime university campuses”.
Socialist France still goes strong in that sense. Their HLM (moderate rent blocks) zones are crime citadelles where police rarely shows and never lingers unless ambushed and forcibly immobilized by stones or burning cars/tires.
Something Ceaușescu tried in Romania decades ago by dozering hundreds of villages and stuffing their population in humongous apartment blocks. Ghettos with their own laws, often referred to as “crime university campuses
I wrote that above to be sarcastic, I hadn’t realized left wing a$$holes had done it already.
Communism is an old plague based on total control religiously recycled by the greens as a potential means to achieve world dominance.
I’m told that in old communism inspired regimes, intercity travel was subject to permits. Which is BTW still the case in North Korea.
Forcibly electrified transport is the easiest means to block an entire country at the flip of a switch. Can’t store electrons in jerrycans.
Another reason they also preach driverless autonomous cars.
Cabrini-Green II: Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
Oregon’s latest zoning changes are on top of 40 years of chaos making. Haphazard & needless overcrowding of communities without any regard for function. Planning strategies have crammed up neighborhoods without sufficient parking and choked commerce mobility with obsolete street and freeway grids. Made worse with traffic calming insanity and irrational reliance on transit.
Apartment bunkers have sprouted up like weeds in most neighborhoods (many with tax subsidies) with foolish planner fantasies and pretenses occupants won’t drive cars.
There is a deliberate ongoing cover up all of the detrimental outcomes while bureaucratic propaganda machines churn out false perpetual claims of success.
The total absence of any official dissent or change of course in sight means our major cities are doomed to another decade or more of more of the same.
Don’t forget the urban growth boundary, which creates a top-level change in the price of land (often a factor of 10 or more) from stepping across the magical UGB.
There is for and against mixed neighborhoods, but the real question here is if authorities shall dictate this.
The stupid excuse that it may be more energy efficient with apartment buildings is not relevant when all the energy comes from wind and solar before the world ends in 2030 according to high voices in government.
” the real question here is if authorities shall dictate this”
It is the zoning laws themselves that are the “dictation”. They tell you what the authorities will allow you to build on the land you own. This is a proposal to remove that dictation.
They aren’t removing that “dictation”, they are just eliminating the part of it that disagrees with their religious beliefs.
I thought dictation was what the boss gave to a secretary.
PS: Keep your minds out of the gutter guys.
Nick,
You know what the zoning laws are when you buy your property or your house. You have freedom to choose what kind of neighborhood to live in.
This is a dictatorial cram down to change zoning from single family to multi family etc by totalitarian minded thugs who think that the rest of us should live according to their world view. You would not like it if I came along and told you that your house was too big, you have too many bathrooms and use too much water to suit me, and you must relocate to a smaller home in a neighborhood that I think is best for you.
Yes, I know this is not what is proposed, but freedom once taken away can be very difficult Or impossible to regain. Just ask the Venezuelans.
No one in Virginia “owns” property. We rent it from the government, with property taxes as our rent payment.
There will be no diversity and no sense of home. The urban lifestyle is about social engineering and state control. And if you had forgotten that the environment is an excuse for the left to control your life, consider yourself reminded.
No sense of home is correct.
Oregon was the first to implement zoning over all aspects of life; the stated goal being to protect the environment/resources & to make things more efficient.
But the planners get out of school with their new degree and want to make a difference … any difference. The result being all types of differing attempts at making neighborhoods for specific peoples needs. The problem being that the people moving in all see each area as transitional housing … they only plan on being there for the short term, until they can move on to the next stage of what they really want.
There is not a publicly employed planner in Oregon that has had the sense (or inclusive mindset) to try to get out of the way and allow for NEIGHBORHOODS that people that want to buy into as soon as they can, and stay there until their kids have kids.
Transitory housing … for all.
Hmmmm, I thought the story rang a bell, 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematization_(Romania)
China, too, in what may have been the inspiration for the “Green New Deal”, where it serves the Party and patrons’ interests.
China destroyed ages old communities and built tower blocks that nobody could afford to live in. These are called Ghost Cities, and there are many of them.
There is something very strange about properties, blocks of apartments, like this in China. Basically, it’s worth more with nothing done to the interior of the apartments, they are left untouched after construction, so no-one moves in to use them. The country is littered with them and they keep building more.
From your link:
“the Ceaușescu family home was the only older building left standing.”
Just gotta love left wing a$$holes
Put up a low income housing development next door to Obama and get back to me with the results in 10 years.
Build a 200 unit Low Income section 8 Apartment Complex between his house and the beach.
And another 400 units surrounding the remainder (North, West & South)
“Some will call it ‘state overreach.’”
Others might point to UN Agenda 2013/2030…
Agenda 2030 is looking more every day like Chinese-model communism inflicted worldwide.
When is the West going to wake up?
Maurice Strong… wasn’t he the guy that called us all ‘useless eaters’?
Like most things, Maurice Strong, being a rich jerk, was wrong about:
“consumption of large amounts of frozen and ‘convenience’ foods,”
Vegetables and fruit now go from the tree or plant to frozen in a very short time.
Grown in your local State, or area, doesn’t mean “better” so much as it does mean more costly.
And eating only locally sourced food means, for many, a very restricted diet.
Also, can “sustainable” be defined in a meaningful way?
Same can be said about the “best” CO2 concentration.
Are there any photographic examples of changes wrought in Oregon as a result of passing a similar bill?
Tonyb
it’s only been a few months …
And how much longer will it be that they seek to outlaw even rural homes & require everyone to live in crowded urban row-apartments? And then eventually surround those “apartments” w/barbed-wire?
Somewhere sometime ago I read a left wing editorial that said exactly that. Uh no mention of barbed wire or euthanization centers or forced diets of tofu.
This will also have an immediate environmental impact and will do the exact opposite of the stated goal. The single family owners will sell their property to developers and move. Then both parties will consume more resources to build what they want or what the government tells them to do. The relocated family will build the house they want away from this nonsense. This will increase the industrialized and urbanized footprint not decrease it.
This is just another case of using guilt driven identity politics to advance otherwise unsupportable agendas. This demonstrates how easy it is to manipulate weak minds and unfortunately, weak minds are the product of our ‘progressive’ education system that pushes conformity to the exclusion of individuality.
Empathetic appeals that fail to reconcile.
Straight out of Agenda 21.
heres the problem….its a big cycle. jobs will move to where people/employees want to live. if you change towns and neighborhoods, people will leave, jobs will leave and you are left with towns that stagnate, shrink, turn into slums and inner cities. Just look at the jobs/growth/vitality in many cities like Baltimore and Detroit (and many others) that now are half the size of what they used to be. no jobs, no economic vitality, welfare, drugs, crime, vacant land. But look at places like Boise, Denver suburbs, Salt Lake City and others. the people and jobs will move and leave behind what cant or wont move. But its a great planners dream. Densify, buses, light rail, live/work units, no cars, no driveways or garages, no big yards to play in, just parks for recreation that fill with homeless tent cities. Pocket parks, what a homeless dream…your own little space to set up a tent. Downtown san Francisco, Oakland, Anaheim, seattle, LA….are full of disease and smell of human waste. Why would money/jobs/people/travelers want to invest/visit those places?
I’m assuming these new projects will also be all-electric…
“My home us my castle” was s.th. I learned in
school about England, has that any value for the USA ?
Most of these Democrat nuts can’t even control their own lives. But they’re darned sure they should be in control of our lives.
Guaranteed vote loser for the Dems. The inhabitants of these new dwellings don’t exist or if they do, they don’t know that they are beneficiaries. Meanwhile yer average detached yard-owning string development suburbanite will be spooked irrespective of the facts.
Reminds me of China, where every city is ringed with tall concrete apartment blocks into which all the farmers and people from small villages have been herded. It doesn’t look pleasant.
Love the way our progressive comrades are taking off the mask.
They hate the Suburbs,for these are inner city residents who voted with their feet.
Escaping the suffocating corrosive “help” of these politicians.
The mantra of the Demon Rats is clear'”We will manage your lives,regardless of how you feel about it”
“We are superior ”
As I have taken to repeating,our current “Liberals” are power mad incompetents,who could not grow,build or successfully manage any operation.
But they KNOW BEST,for all.
From the article: “Democrats in Virginia may override local zoning to bring high-density housing, including public housing, to every neighborhood statewide — whether residents want it or not.”
If you don’t like it then vote the authoritarian Democrats out of office at the next opportunity.
“If you don’t like it then vote the authoritarian Democrats out of office at the next opportunity.”
1. The places the Democrats want to wreck don’t vote Democrat.
2. The votes of those places are outweighed by the urban vote and electoral fraud.
In many places, ‘voting the bastards out’ is no longer possible.
A year of ineffective climate madness looms (my latest)
By David Wojick
https://www.cfact.org/2019/12/26/a-year-of-ineffective-climate-madness-looms/
The year 2019 saw the rapid rise of climate hysteria, but as the saying goes: “You ain’t seen nothin yet.” Now that the hysteria is firmly established and well organized, it is sure to get bigger and louder. But I see very little coming from it except the noise, as long as skeptics keep up the good fight.
This is especially true in the U.S. Presidential race, which is climate policy-wise by far the biggest thing going on in the world. Many of the Democrat candidates are going to try to ride the hysterical wave to victory. Their winning is not likely.
My take is the further left you go the fewer votes you get, and these folks are going far left on climate. In my view the only viable candidate in the pack is Biden and he may not be crazy enough to get the nod. Nor can he beat Trump, so things are looking good on that front.
Another big unknown is what the hysterical demonstrators are going to do. Bigger marches? More disruption? (The police now have glue remover.) Or maybe something we have not seen before, hopefully not more violent. I am sure the advocacy insider email traffic is buzzing over this. (Maybe some new wacky signs. “I don’t want to die!” seems to be catching on.)
For that matter, will the hysterics endorse specific candidates for the Democrat nomination? Or perhaps get active in specific Congressional races? They might even form their own party (but Greta Thunberg cannot run, more’s the pity). Political action seems like the logical next step for the extremists, which could further destabilize the green movement, given that most of the political action groups are moderates.
There are lots of other climate crunch points in progress as well. In a recent meeting the EU failed to come up with a more ambitious emission reduction goal for 2030, despite its hysterical leadership calling for one.
The next meeting on this proposal will be in June. No doubt we will see lots of “Action Now!” marches and demonstrations then, but ambition may well be lacking at the EU national member level, which is all that counts. Several countries are already missing their 2020 target and there are anti-action demonstrations too boot, from yellow vests to farmers and coal miners. The political leaders are running a bit scared of this stuff.
The UN will have several semi-summits, leading up to the grand COP 26 in Glasgow, beginning in November. Given what happened in Madrid’s COP 25 we are likely to witness the progressive collapse of the entire UN climate action process.
The UN’s Paris Accord process is entirely too slow and compromising for the Action Now! hysterics to tolerate. This will be especially certain if the Action Now! hysteria builds during 2020, which is very likely. That the mythical $100 billion a year promised to the developing countries does not show up in Glasgow will compound the collapse.
Then too there is a lot going on at national levels around the world. Especially promising is the rapid rise of new populist parties that oppose the drastic actions demanded by the Action Now! radicals. Left wing hysteria typically generates a conservative reaction. How could it not? Angry mobs are dangerous.
Mind you I expect to see a lot of meaninglessly symbolic green action in response to the hysterical noise-making. This includes toothless declarations of “climate emergency” and pointless promises of zero emissions by far off 2050. Politicians promising the impossible, to be delivered in the far distant future, do no harm. Hence their popularity.
My definition of winning the great climate change debate is that no serious harm is done by the alarmists. While I expect an escalating crescendo of hysterical shrieking during the course of 2020, the reason will be that my side is winning and the loud side is losing.
As things stand now, skeptics have a chance to win big in 2020, but we must keep the pressure on. Hold your nose, plug your ears, and hit them hard. You ain’t seen nothin yet.
Please share this strategic analysis.
David
David,
What concerns me is that a misinterpreted tweet becomes a bogus October surprise that sways enough people to flip the election. The gullibility of the public to inflammatory rhetoric is clear based on polling data that shows Trump loosing support from independents after each lie told by the left, only to regain that support when the lie is exposed. There may not be sufficient time to expose lies that drive an October surprise and how the election will unfold depends on a relatively small number of fungible voters.
Most of us know that any politician running on a promise to change the weather through taxation is either a cynically sneering useful idiot, or a TRUE idiot if he actually believes the alarmist hysteria for which there is ZERO real-world evidence.
I think by now most of us realize the Green Emperor has no clothes and is damned ugly without them.
There are alot of useful-idiots out there (from generations of indoctrination) that do indeed believe taxes would change weather.
One rapid-effect action politicians in the EU might take, especially in the Netherlands where the supreme court has mandated a 25% emissions cut in a year, is to highly tax ICE vehicles. But this might lead to yellow-vest type pushback.
I think (hope) they are too late for this.
As I stated in an earlier post, I live in an affluent, multi-cultural, multi-racial neighborhood (in the deep South, no less). Many have worked their way up from poorer neighborhoods; many are refugees, economic and otherwise, from other countries. They have fled from the conditions these politicians want to impose on them, and will fight the hardest to keep it from happening.
Ok, I’m going to ramble on a bit here, so skip if you wish.
RE: zoning is a barrier to more housing and integrated communities. Two issues; One, it is intended to be a barrier to more housing. It is intended to keep the houses in a community dimension so that; the cost of services (water, sewer, electricity, policing, roads, parks) is kept to a smaller manageable level. Two, integrated communities; probably true, but is that a problem?
RE: “saying that single-family zoning is a tool for wealthy whites to maintain segregated neighborhoods and that the abolition of low-density neighborhoods is necessary for equity.”
They’re just making stuff up. Why didn’t they ask the administering zoning authority WHY they imposed zoning?
Necessary for equity? They need to identify what equity is. This is a throw-away nebulous-nothing line which has no meaning. But this is the reason for trashing zoning?
The article thankfully explains some of the reason. “He said suburbs were not equipped to handle the increased traffic.” Yes, and the services as identified above. As density goes up, the need for more services also goes up. Food outlets, drive throughs, services stations ect.
If the jobs remain zoned where they are, traffic will increase going from the suburb to the industry. So buses, bus stops, taxis, and increased traffic. This increases the need to upgrade the roads and intersections. More traffic lights, larger highways and major roads.
Larger parks, and community services; food, medical, play, animals, schools, street lights, and underground services.
The zoning of an area allows control of all these issues and the cost to provide them; the consequence of having them; and how many people they are catering to.
Ignorance truly is bliss!
Yes, all true. What will actually happen is that the people who invested their life’s savings into a home intended as a long-term investment will have the value of that investment indirectly confiscated. First by the direct lowering of the market value of a home in a now less-attractive neighborhood with likely lower performing schools and worse services to attract potential buyers. Then because the original residents actually contribute to society and have jobs, they will be the only ones who are left to pay the bill for doubling the size of schools and all the other costs associated with a higher population. So taxes will go up on their property that is now worth less, maybe less than they owe on the mortgage. But of course “My bill does not mandate anyone do anything with their housing”. We welcome them staying around to get fleeced. The parasite needs its host.
I have been wondering where the line should be drawn between the new Northern Virginia and the new Southern Virginia. Now I wonder where to draw the line between Southern Virginia and Eastern California. The new idiots (my mother would not let me use that word) in control are hopefully going to get a rude awakening from the vast majority of true Virginians.
Weirdly, I haven’t seen any defense of private property rights. As in, I own it, I’ll build any damn thing I want. Instead, a lot of “conservatives” defending their “right” to tell other people what to do with their property. Zoning is about as far-left Socialist as it gets. The irony of lefties attacking something so… lefty is hilarious. Add to that the howls of protest from the so-called right, and it gets hard to breathe. Starting to wonder if this is an Onion article.
You’re thinking libertarian, but more likely anarchist (i.e. far-right). There is no Constitutional provision to force conflation of urban, suburban, farmland, and landfill zones.
There are far-left anarchists, e.g., Antifa, and far-right anarchists. Labeling them one or the othet is misleading.
Far-left is totalitarian. Far-right is anarchist. And a left-right nexus, where they feed into each other.
Wrong, Dan. Zoning laws protect property owners against externalities that cannot be avoided otherwise. If your neighbors decide to set up a junkyard on one side and dig a trench to dump septic tank contents on the other side of you, why should they not be allowed to do any damn thing they want with their property? Of course we know from the fact that you’re ridiculing private property rights that you don’t believe in private property rights. You likely want the government to make all the decisions for us, right? And give you your piece of my pie.
Ouch! No, I actually believe that respecting private property rights results in far better outcomes than trusting politicians and bureaucrats, i.e. wanting government Planning Commissions and Zoning Authorities to make all the decisions for us. Hmmm, “planning”…., where have I heard that word? It’ll come to me.
Your example bad neighbor would easily be dealt with under common law nuisance tort back in the old days. Somehow, people managed all throughout history, right up until the late 20th century, to get along with their neighbors without depending on government edicts. A few years ago, a friend spent 6 months and several thousand dollars just to get a SUP to build a garage on his acre. That’s America?
Some of the most extreme land-use authorities were (and are) in the Communist paradises. East Germany had planning up the yin-yang, yet you don’t see a lot of people trying to move there now that you can. Contrast that with Houston, where there is essentially no zoning to speak of (at least back when I used to be there fairly frequently). Absolutely gorgeous and no open septic systems that I saw!
George Washington would have been outraged if the government told him they would be building a shelter for junkies next door to him, but his reaction wouldn’t be to call for a zoning commission to fix things. Instead, he’d argue that it’s not the government’s function EVER to decide what is going where. We’ve got so far away from first principles, that now people resort to lefty arguments to try to fight the latest lefty assault on their lives. That sounds like giving up to me.
Ok my mistake Dan. You’re just a libertarian. I sympathize with some of your viewpoint but I still prefer to have reasonable ground rules that allow everyone to know what is reasonable to the community standards. Zoning laws definitely are abused in a lot of places. It should be a given that you can put up a garage or an addition where you know in advance that your plan conforms and will certainly be approved promptly and at minimum cost. But if your neighbor wants to put up a straw bale house that’s an eyesore, you shouldn’t need to waste a lot of your time and money with lawyers fighting it, or just passively watch the value of your home drop.
Obama said, “You didn’t build that.” Yeah, that was popular.
At Lexington they said, “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here!”
The USA has no cultural tradition (such as Confucianism) of collective thought, ownership, cooperation with the needs of the collective overriding the property and liberty of the individual.
We DO have one helluva rep. as rugged individualists who’ve watered the Liberty Tree as needed.
If the Dems push this in VA, along with their 2A shenanigans, they may bring on the next watering.
Beware the man who is slow to anger . . . when he finally goes off, it’s often a doozy!
The dems want to end private property rights.
Their world says the collective owns everything and private property
discriminates against the poor. The dems of course decide who has better claims.
Wonder how many refugees it takes to create a housing crisis that can only be fixed through Big Government?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Somalis_in_Minneapolis%E2%80%93Saint_Paul
Nothing new here. This is the normal liberal agenda, adopted from the Communist Manifesto. Liberals want to control education and government. They want to control where and how you live, what you drive, what you eat, etc.
Sure hope we have a civil war I’m my lifetime. America is in desperate need to rid ourselves of these weeds.
Everyday socialist democrats attempt to move us closer to revolution. First they are trying to disarm the people in Virginia. The spark that started the Revolution was a mission who’s primary goal was confiscation of arms stored near Concord. Now they want to dictate where and how they live. What’s next? An equivalent to the Quartering Act of 1765? Another act which was part of the tinder for the revolutionary fire.
The title is incorrect. No talk of outlaw anything.
Makes sense, I mean public housing high rises like Cabrini Green in Chicago did so well for so long in lower crime, and bringing peace and integration!
Because I am a profound sexist I say this.
Liberals have liked to say that the oil companies created the suburbs by deep-sixing wonderful interurban rail after WWII. But I have another idea.
People starting families and raising children like the suburbs because women like leafy green suburbs. Women like to strut their stuff in the city when they are looking for a partner, but once they get married they want to get out of the male gaze, and put a little greenery between themselves and the cold hard world.
E.g., you don’t see nesting Mallard ducks sitting on their eggs. You only get to see them once the eggs are hatched and their ducklings are ready for swimmin’. I wonder why?
So if liberals start banning suburbs they may find they have a problem with educated suburban women.
Just sayin’.
The bigots (i.e. sanctimonious hypocrites) should not receive a pass. Allegations of diversity (e.g. racism) require extraordinary proof. They may… try to infer the future, but to infer character is deplorable. #HateLovesAbortion
They have this ass backwards. Cramming more people into less area creates grid lock and over use of local resources.
Bloomberg, Soros and Steyer heavily funded democrats and just recently taken majority position in Virginia.
Their collective first attempts this upcoming year is a full assault against the USA Constitution, Bill of Rights and the rest of the Amendments.
Sadly, they’ve failed to read Virginia’s own Constitution and Bill of Rights. That these democrats will pass laws against the America’s Constitution is not a surprise. That they pass laws against Virginia’s Constitution is surprising, as the State Supreme Court is likely to dismiss.
e.g.: From Virginia’s Bill of Rights.
Virginia considers government, NGOs, groups, etc. that come between a person and their property had better be prepared to pay very well for the action or be denied. The state incurring millions of dollars in charges for devaluing property will not go over very well with the voters.
Due process is also very well guarded.
Democrats are showing their Authoritarianism right out in public more often these days.
There is something new going on…they never used to voice their CRAZY desires. Why start telling the truth all the sudden?
And it doesn’t seem as though any of it would be that popular:
• They want Open borders AND free Health Care for those illegals (4 -6 million more people competing for your jobs while you help pay the “up to” $200 Billion healthcare costs annually compounded @ 100% rate annually (from the 4-6 million new every year) = $10 Trillion over 5 years.
• There’s more than 2 sexes…AND the actual 2 sexes are not real…only social constructs. Biology is wrong about the 2 sexes. Trans athletes are allowed to dominate women’s athletics…and share their facilities. A guy can choose to enter the rest room that your daughter or granddaughter is using.
• Wipe out Fracking killing millions of jobs and driving up energy costs and creating shortages. Close down Nuclear plants while ramping up costly renewable energy. Adding several $Hundreds to every family’s monthly energy bills (heating, gasoline, electric).
• Pay off ALL school loans.
• Confiscating guns (Virginia)
• Abortion @ 9 months and even after birth (Virginia Gov.)
• Advocating censorship…for hate speech, and THEY tell you what is and isn’t hate speech.
• Eliminate internal combustion engines by 2030…when over 300 million of those vehicles will have a decade of service left in them. Agriculture done with batteries is NUTZ and could never happen in 10 years…tractors often last 30 years and up to 50.
• Tax wealth…and all the wealth flees to China.
• Zero CO2 Emissions by 2050 While China triples their levels…and India doubles. Costing us $5 Trillion annually.
What’s going on? This stuff could only win elections in a few whacko Counties around the country. Why are they saying these crazy things out loud…in public all the sudden?
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.” – Maurice Strong, Rio Earth Summit
Thanks Maurice
It should be upto a local community what type of housing they choose to allow in their community. Its that simple. Idealogues in central government telling folks who they must have as neighbours is wrong. That way lies tyranny.
Race baiting to promote totalitarianism, and destroy our way of life.
Progressives are the enemy of anything good in life.
In San Francisco single-family neighborhoods are mainly non-White. The City is around 40% White non-Hispanic. On average single-family neighborhoods are around 20% White.
it’s only been a few months …
I think the majority on this post are missing the real reasons behind this.
The racism issue raised is a smokescreen, its not about that at all, it is clearly an implementation of the requirements spelled out in agenda 21 for cities to be composed of high density housing whether the locals want it or not.
We have seen this in Australia (NSW) where the incoming Liberal government of Barry Ofarrell (thats the Australian equivalent of the Republicans) overode all the state laws giving councils the ability to conduct their own zoning, now the developers can do what they want and there is no effective way to challenge them.
The aim of this change of legislation was to force suburbs to have high density housing whether the locals wanted it or not.
In fact whilst in opposition the Liberals voted with the Labour party to introduce legislation that makes it possible for developers to force landholders to sell to them, something that until then could only be done by the government in having land resumed for the public good.
The result has been a deliberate and massive mushrooming in Sydney of flashy but generally poorly built skyscrapers with units (mainly occupied by mostly Chinese and Indian migrants), in suburbs with the traditional 1/4 acre block.
Most people hate it but we have been made powerless to stop it.
This is absolutely in line with long term outcomes outlined in Agenda 21 (available free from the U.N).
In addition we are now seeing our state government wasting billions on light rail (electric trams) in areas where bus services would have been much cheaper and just as fast, this also is in line with the objectives contained in Agenda 21.
So there you have it both major parties quietly but remorselessly implementing legislation in line with Agenda 21 which the political left signed us up to, and almost no politician will ever admit they have heard of Agenda 21, (they are able to do that because its implementation is under a variety of Australian laws introduced to achieve its objectives).
Never forget once it is enshrined in law, public servants also will always recommend its implementation, that”s their job.
Pete
Virginia House Del. Ibraheem Samirah introduced a bill that would override local zoning officials to permit multi-family housing in every neighborhood, changing the character of quiet suburbs.
Oregon passed a similar bill, following moves by cities such as Minneapolis; Austin, Texas; and Seattle.
Proponents say urban lifestyles are better for the environment and that suburbs are bastions of racial segregation.
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Mediation means Sharia. Listen to
Ibraheem Samirah!
Virginia House Del. Ibraheem Samirah
“said if local officials seek to change requirements like setbacks to make it impossible to build dense housing in areas zoned to preserve a nature feel, “if they make setbacks to block duplexes, there’d have to be a lawsuit to resolve whether those zoning provisions were necessary.””
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A lawsuit to resolve whether those zoning provisions were necessary won’t make it.
What Virginia House Del. Ibraheem Samirah asks for is a complete new or at least complete retreaed constitution.