Clint's Reposts

In response to the post by David: http://www.network54.com/Forum/message?forumid=79106&messageid=1097959175

I responded (David's words in italics):

Clint forgets that I helped organize an effort by the libertarians to stop coercive historic preservation in Houston before I moved to Colorado.

I didn't forget. Those you worked with in Houston were disappointed to hear of your support locally.

He also forgets that the only reason I didn't back his initiative to get rid of the Historic District in Manitou completely was that the ordinance only applied to people who newly moved into the area and those people overwhelmingly supported it. Those who have lived here for years and chosen to opt out are free to stay opted out. No one was forced to buy a building in the historic district and those who chose to knew there would be some limits on what they could do to it without a public hearing, which kept Taco Bell from tearing down a historic building without some community input.

I must be in the mood tonight. The consequence of new arrivals supporting the historic ordinance was to retrofit what is in essence a "planned community" with all of its covenenants, etc. to property owners who had been living here for decades, all making their own decisions about their property. The future destiny of over a 100 years of old growth houses, the unique product of every owner's decisions through time until now is now squarely in the hands of a handful of non-elected citizens. How one can believe that a handful of citizens (most of whom have no background in architecture, planning, etc. - in fact they're just like the homeowners they are commanding) can possibly improve on the variety that each individual owner brings to his or her own property still escapes me.

It's true, I don't know if most libertarians would buy my position. Any governmental limit to a property owner's use of his own property, even if accepted at the time the property was purchased would be considered a violation of their property rights. And sometimes I'm not sure I buy it either when I see how the Historic Preservation Commission actually operates. Needless to say, they're not much better at staying within their constitutional charter than our federal government is. I still wish Clint had proposed a more modest rollback of the district so that at least the residents, who are natural preservationists, wouldn't have to go through hearings before the town busybodies. That would have been a slam dunk, I think.

Historic Districts are like the minor league version of government "taking" - i.e., emminent domain. You've been a voice for the dangers of inappropriate emminent domain laws. To me, the HPC is inappropriate in the same way. If Burger King thinks it can make money in historic downtown Manitou, let them go for it. In fact, the other business owners in Manitou might not now be against the ropes economically if in fact we did bring more mainstream businesses to town. We don't know, and we can't know anymore, because Burger King won't touch us as a result of our anal retentive policies. All businesses have a life cycle and the HPC interferes with the natural course of that cycle in a very negative way.

Now what I'm trying to figure out is why Clint is so anxious that Burger King might have their rights trampled by an approval process for renovating a historic structure, but he thinks "messing in" in Iraq, which has utterly destroyed billions of dollars of private property and killed between 13,000 and 15,000 Iraqi civilians is a good use of government.

Heh heh heh. Always seeing the negative. You can't make an omlet without breaking eggs. Unfortunately, we don't know and can't measure how many lives and property might be saved as a result of this ugly business of war in Iraq. I'm sure Sadam would have loved for us to leave him and the real estate alone.

C