"Code Enforcement" and "Planning and Zoning", threats to private property rights.

I live in San Juan County, New Mexico, way up in the rural Four-Corners region where wide open spaces and vacant land far exceeds any urban sprawl or development.  Minimally maintained, and even non-maintained, dirt roads outnumber paved routes by hundreds of miles, and where some folks are stuck at home after heavy rains or snowstorms because the county simply doesn't have the resources to be everywhere at once with their graders or snow plows to re-open those routes blocked or washed away.

Recently, what appeared to be a small rainstorm completely washed away a bridge that served as the only crossing of a very large "wash", known locally as a "arroyo".  Several families were temporarily cut off from "civilization" until a temporary road could be built pending repairs.

Just yesterday (8/17/10), New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson declared Farmington a "disaster area" due to flooding which occurred two weeks ago.  (Incidentally, I drove through some of the affected "disaster area" the day after the flooding, and there was no "disaster".  Farmington merely was seeking, and will receive, a state "bailout").

On the very same day the area was approved for it's government bailout, the County where I live, despite supposed "disaster", held a meeting of the county commission and approved the creation of a "Code Compliance Department", with a quarter million dollar per year budget, a new full time employee, and the approval of the use of expensive-to-operate heavy equipment to "help" the county's new department accomplish it's goals.

And what are those goals?  No one really knows yet.  The county enacted a trash ordinance, but did not act on any other matters that require a Code Compliance Department.  As far as I can tell, they are planning to spend $250,000 a year to hire someone to drive around and tell people they can't burn their garbage, but must have it hauled to the local dump or a waste transfer station.  I guess they plan to use the "heavy equipment" to help haul that trash if a landowner cannot, or will not, do it him or herself.

I've lived here 8 years, and have yet to see a burn barrel  (They were a standard fixture in the back yards of homes when I lived in southern Illinois 25 years ago), or anyone burning their garbage. Awareness of the possible negative environmental results of burning such things as plastics have pretty much taken care of such issues.

So, like most governments, it would appear that they plan to spend a lot of tax dollars stretching an already stretched budget,  to address a nonexistent problem.  And they are doing it during a time when that very same government is professing to be broke, and is supposedly scrambling to find ways to raise taxes or fees to cover current revenue shortfalls, and existing problems such as the "disaster" of a few washed out roads.

However, as onerous as that is, the bigger issue here is the creation of a "Code Compliance Department" in the first place.

Private property rights have always been one of the main tenets of our free society.  People who own land have traditionally been able to do with that what they wish to do, within reason.  As long as those actions do not negatively effect their neighbors.  And there are limits to even this.  Obviously, some uses of land, such as for agricultural purposes like farming the raising of livestock, are going to effect the neighbors through increased heavy equipment traffic, or the associated odors or dust that occur.  Allowances are usually made for such things, as they are merely unavoidable aspects of such industries, and have been proven relatively harmless.

Health and sanitation codes already exist in most developed areas, which cover things such as sewage disposal, garbage and refuse, etc.

When cities and counties create "Code Compliance Departments", they are usually created to address the merely visual aspects of peoples private property.  Just like with any other government agency, it is always first created with the idea of benevolence and advertised as a way of "helping" people achieve some goal.  But helping them do what? In reality, what happens is someone, usually a government entity, must set "standards", and then force everyone to live within those standards.  And therein lies the danger:  Who creates the "standards"?  And what limits will be put on them?

Does government merely say "clean up your land" and then go away?  No.  What usually happens is once government gets their foot in the door, in it's every increasing desire for authority, government will gradually increase and tighten those "standards" until like in many cases, the citizens become servants of government, rather than the other way around.

First, they will regulate common sense issues like accumulated refuse such as household trash.  Next, someone decides it would be a good idea to pass an ordinance against weeds growing on private property. Never mind that the very same government might never mow the weeds along road "rights of way". (I've lived in the same house in my county for 8 years, and the county has NEVER mowed the weeds along the dirt roads in my neighborhood.  I've taken care of them myself)  Next thing you know, you cannot leave your shovel and rake, or lawnmower sitting outside where people can see them.  Then it escalates into the government telling you what color you can paint your fence, or your house.  And then they tell you you cannot keep a vehicle on your property unless it is "operational", and being "operational" includes being registered and insured to drive on a city street, not merely a vehicle capable of starting up and driving.  Eventually, the code enforcement inspector becomes bold enough to start interpreting the rules him or herself.

I once lived in a community where a Code Enforcement Officer told me it was illegal to change the oil in your own car, on your own property.  The reasoning?  She said inoperable vehicles were not allowed to be stored on private property, and during the time the oil was drained from the vehicle, the vehicle was inoperable, thus, the land owner could be cited for having an inoperable vehicle on his or her property.  I seriously doubt that when the ordinance was passed which outlawed inoperable vehicle on private property, that the folks who wrote the law, nor the folks who voted to pass it, had any idea that the law would one day be twisted like a pretzel into something that would make it illegal to do routine auto maintenance on one's own property..but so it goes.

In that same community, I used to hang my laundry up on an outdoor clothesline because the weather was so hot in the summer that clothes dried as fast outside on the line as they did in an automatic dryer.  Drying your clothes using completely solar power sounds like an environmentally responsible act, right?  Well, I was once cited by the city Code Compliance Officer for keeping a "dish full of miscellaneous objects" on a table in my carport.  The "dish" was a stainless steel hubcap, and the "miscellaneous objects" were clothespins used to hang up my laundry.  Not only was I utilizing solar power to dry my clothes, I had recycled an old hubcap into a rust free container for my clothespins, but that was not allowed.  I wonder what the city would have thought about one of those cloth hanging bags for clothespins that you hang right from the line.
It is ridiculous stuff like this that makes "Code Enforcement" so dangerous to private property rights.  What starts out as regulating what should be common sense issues, which can be taken care of with existing sanitation ordinances, eventually grows to become some bureaucrat's excuse to perpetuate their own job. After all, it's tough to find a reason to maintain a quarter-million dollar per year "Code Compliance Department" once everyone has taken out the trash.

Beware of out of control government.  Beware of "Code Enforcment" Officers, who come to your home and say "We're from the Government, and we're here to help you."  Once the government tells you how to live on your own property, is your home really your own?

Whitman, Fiorina, Angle and Martinez: The rise of conservative women

As if to say "We REALLY want Hope and Change this time!" voters have launched the candidacies of an amazing group of conservative women over the last couple of months.  All across the nation, historic battles are shaping up, which promise to make for quite an interesting November, politically speaking.

In New Mexico, Republican Susana Martinez has become the first Hispanic woman to be nominated by a major political party to run for the governorship of any state.  If that weren't enough, New Mexican Diane Denish ran unopposed on the Democrat ticket, guaranteeing that New Mexico will elect their first female governor this year.

In California, Republican Meg Whitman handily won the nomination of her party to run for Governor of California, and will run against, of all people, Democrat Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown, a longtime politician who has held many offices in California, including being Governor himself from 1975 to 1983.  Carly Fiorina beat all challengers by a mile to win the nomination of the Republican party to run for Senator against long time Democrat politician Barbera Boxer, who likely will face the first tough challenge of her political career.

And in somewhat of a surprise, TEA Party candidate Sharron Angle has become the conservative choice to fight Harry Reid's uphill battle to retain his Senate seat in Nevada, a state that has been severely damaged by the economic meltdown, and is seeing little, if any, relief from the failed policies of Democrats in Washington, D.C.  In fact, it was probably failed economic policies, more than anything, that drove Angle to victory.

It is also interesting to note that both Martinez and Fiorina were endorsed by former Alaska Governor and Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  It would appear that despite mainstream media bias, and the left's general derogatory attitude towards Palin, her appeal to actual American voters remains undiminished.

It's been a while since states like California, Nevada, and New Mexico, not to mention states all across American, have had such a clear single issue driving their politics:  Jobs.

At this moment in history, there is no greater indication of the failed policies of  the past than the current high unemployment rate.  Decades of fiscal mismanagement, confiscatory taxation, over-regulation, and an an attitude of political entitlement have led to our current crisis, and it's a crisis that just doesn't seem to be going away, as long as unemployment remains at today's high levels.

The people of the United States are ready for a massive shift in political ideology, and apparently for a massive shift away from the "old boy network" which has run policy for as long as anyone can remember.  If modern politics matters, and some would debate that issue, then there are no more clearer choices than what are being presented in California, Nevada, and New Mexico today.

California was once the "land of opportunity" for millions who traveled there during the dust bowl era.  It seemed at one time the state had limitless potential.  Agriculture, mining, petroleum, technology, and to lesser extents timber and manufacturing, all seemed to hold the promise of economic bounty for generations to come.  California's politicians, however, seemed to have other ideas, and they have turned a once thriving state into a mass of job killing regulations and incentive killing social programs that fundamentally transformed the state form one of the richest in the nation, to one that is the most threatened by massive debt.  Perhaps the people of California have finally figured out that driving jobs away, putting more people on welfare, and taxing the hell out of those left who still have a little money, is not the way to greatness.  Meg Whitman, as former CEO of Ebay, and Carly Fiorina, who once ran Hewlett-Packard, are both real-wold job creators, exactly the opposite of their opponents, who have made their living as politicians for as far back as almost anyone can remember.  There can be no clearer choice between real "new thinking", and the failed policies of the past.

Nevada, which for much of the 1980's and 1990's supported massive growth, with cities such as Las Vegas and Henderson sporting the distinction of being the fastest growing in the nation, has utterly collapsed.  It would seem Nevada is a victim of it's own success, as droves of Californians fleeing increased taxation, joblessness, and inflated property values, moved to Nevada, and then brought their ideologies with them.  Is it any wonder, then, that after a couple of decades of transplanted California voters instilling California's failing policies onto once libertarian Nevada, that Nevada would then suffer similar economic issues?  With unemployment higher than the national average, a state government that has grown entirely out of proportion to the mostly rural state (there are almost three times as many people in the Las Vegas Metro area than in the entire rest of the state, combined) and an inflated housing market that more and more mimicked California's as more Californians moved in, Nevada has some big problems.  Couple that with an industry, gambling, that relies almost entirely upon discretionary income, which has been in short supply lately, and Nevada has problems.  There is nothing like financial crisis to bring people home again..and it would seem with Sharron Angle being chosen to potentially upset long time politico Harry Reid's apple cart, there could actually be "change" in the desert wind.

New Mexico, with it's joblessness and nearly billion-dollar state budget shortfall, is still not in nearly the same dire straits as either Nevada or California, however, there is obvious signals that the state could be teetering on the brink if the direction of state is not changed towards a more fiscally balanced program.  Governor Bill Richardson, a Democrat who is "term limited out" and cannot run again, is hoping to hand the reins of state to Diane Denish, who has been Richardson's lieutenant governor for nearly 8 years, has a tough legacy to live down.  Richardson, after all, inherited a state budget surplus, and promptly went to work figuring out how to spend it.  Along came projects like a state-funded train that only travels between Santa Fe (the seat of New Mexico government, imagine that!) and Albuquerque, the largest city in the state, which set the state back a cool billion dollars (and at last report was losing an additional $16,000 a day), and a "SpacePort" that "promised" to launch New Mexico into the forefront of high tech space travel, but which in reality is mostly known for being at the end of a dirt road, and for launching the ashes of Star Trek's "Scotty", James Doohan, towards space, only to have them crash back to earth, where they were lost for some time in the New Mexico desert.  Add to that Bill Richardson's at least 40 percent growth in state government, his support of the Hollywood movie industry with taxpayer dollars, and his "Pit Rule", an unnecessarily strict, not to mention expensive, environmental restriction and fee program which succeeded in driving away the one industry that most benefited New Mexico's economy, natural gas, at the very same time the economy worldwide was imploding.  So much so, that New Mexico was the only natural gas producing state in the nation that did not see an increase in production in 2009..

It's no wonder Bill Richardson is spending so much time out of state, on "business travel".  He's trying to stay out of Diane Denish's way so she can attempt to distance herself from Richardson's irresponsible and failed policies, trying to pretend she was nowhere in sight when Richardson was squandering the state's money for the last eight years, but that somehow, all of a sudden, she's the political "outsider" who can step in and fix Richardson's bungling of his responsibility.  Sure she is.

Susana Martinez, on the other hand, is a newcomer to the stage of state politics, and appears to have the conservative ideas that can change New Mexico's direction for the better, if she is able to follow through on them, by reducing job-killers like over-regulation and high taxation on industry, and at the same time halt the wild spending spree instigated by Bill Richardson and his willing cohorts in the New Mexico legislature.

Perhaps not only are the people of the United States tired of politics as usual, perhaps they are getting tired of the same old MEN politicians.  I for one am "all for" allowing the other gender a chance to make the changes that this nation needs to make.  Perhaps women, for a change, will not be swayed by the culture of government, which seems lately to turn a lot of men into self-serving shadows of the creatures who we saw during their campaigns, and whom seem to leave their promises in the dust when they hit their respective state capitals, or the city limits of Washington, D.C.

Bangladesh blocks Facebook - A lesson against government control

The Nation of Bangladesh's chief telecommunications regulator, Zia Ahmed, has ordered the social networking site Facebook blocked within his nation, because he says the site allows the publishing of caricatures of Islam's prophet Muhammad. Bangladesh is a Muslim majority nation.

Pakistan, also a predominantly Muslim nation, has previously blocked Facebook for the same reason.

In the United States, citizens have free access to the internet, with no central government control. If the public isn't vigilant, this may not always be the case. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced legislation last year that would give the President "emergency control" over the internet within the United States, with the ability to completely shut down the medium during a "declared emergency".

I'm not certain that a "declared emergency" would be the right time to shut down what has become an important source of information and communication in the United States, and I'm not certain any President should have that power.

Rockefeller's bill has recieved stiff opposition, and has been taken to back to the "drawing board" several times for re-write with the hopes that revised versions will be better accepted by congress. Still, the threat of government control of the internet remains.

As recently as this month (May, 2010), the Federal Communication Commision (FCC), which currently controls broadcast television and radio, and the nation's telephone system, made moves to assert control over the internet by declaring it a public utility. This clears the way for FCC control over the internet, which is a clear "end run" around both Congress and Federal Courts, which have taken a "hands off" approach to the internet.

Allowing government control of the internet sets a dangerous precedent. Imagine logging on and finding the President or some Federal agency has declared an emergency, and you are no longer able to access your email, work files, business records, pay bills, handle your bank accounts, etc. Shutting down sites like Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg.

Is it any wonder most people don't trust our government?

Polls consistently indicate that the people's trust in government is at the lowest levels ever, and still falling.  Admittedly, our level of trust in the vast bureaucracy, which we, the taxpayers, finance, can't fall much further before there will have to be finer standard of measurement invented than what currently exists on our planet.

However, when the government can't seem to get even the simple stuff correct, and no one appears to answer for it, is it any wonder people don't trust?

In January of this year, our family took over the adoption of a wild mustang horse from the previous adopters who could no longer care for the animal, for whatever reason.  Adoption of wild horses in the United States is managed by a couple of agencies of our government, the Bureau of Land Management is by far the largest manager of the United State's wild horse herds.  There are also wild horses on U.S. Forest Service lands, and they are managed through a much smaller program which to a large degree emulates the BLM program.

I happen to be one who believes that our public lands are for the most part "over managed" by what amounts to be a huge group of pencil-pushing bureaucrats who are most interested in perpetuating their own sense of self-importance.  If you've ever visited any of the large regional offices of the Federal agencies who oversee our lands, you've no doubt noticed there are plenty of folks hanging out in air conditioned comfort of their offices and cubicles, busily pushing papers around their desks, or starting at computer screens.  In the meantime, there might be one or two people actually out in the field, spending time on the lands they are the caretakers of.  Just like any other government agency, our public land managers are far and away more involved with managing the bureaucracy of managing our public lands, than in actually managing the lands themselves.

Fine.  If the government is going to pay a bunch of people government salaries to handle the paperwork involved with managing our lands, so be it.  But shouldn't the government demand that the people they pay salaries and pensions to actually know what they are doing?

Well, I'm sure at this point you know that I'm asking way too much of our government employees.  You've all dealt with enough government agencies, from your local department of motor vehicles, to social security offices, welfare offices, licensing agencies, etc. etc. to know that for me to expect any straight, truthful, and efficient service from our government is unreasonable on my part, to say the least.

Which brings me back to why I've gotten yet another lesson in not trusting government to handle even the simple things.  In the case of adopting this wild horse, we were told at the time, this past January, that we would merely be taking over the unexpired adoption term of the previous adopters of this horse.  That since there are too many horses that nobody wants, they (being the Forest Service in this case) were more than happy to have someone take over the remaining adoption period, and that ownership would be transferred to us upon completion of the original adoption term, and that if I just signed on the dotted line, all would be "hunky-dory".  After all, they do this horse adoption stuff for a living, and they've handled cases like this in the past.  It was "not a problem".

So here it is, the end of May, 2010, and only now do we find, once again, we were misled, albeit in a small way, by government representatives who either did not know what they were talking about, or were purposefully being deceitful so they could make their jobs easier.  We dealt personally with the previous adopters of the horse, they checked out our location, stables, equipment, etc. so that they were sure the horse was going to a good home.  We handled the transport of the horse from their location to ours, with absolutely no oversight by the government.  Indeed, no one from any government agency was involved in any way with the actual, physical horse....only with the paperwork involved, which everyone from the government knows is the "real important" part.

So now, months later, when we are supposed to take over legal ownership of the horse, we are told that, "whoops!" with their apologies, the transfer of  ownership of said horse (which is still considered "government" property, on loan to us) cannot take place until January of 2011, one year after the paperwork was transferred to us.  The time the horse spent with the previous adopter doesn't matter as we were originally told.  The original circumstances of the situation are null and void, and we will continue to be bound by all the rules and regulations involved with adopting "government" horses for another 8 months.

O.K., not a big deal really.  We love the horse.  The horse is a good horse, who loves being around people.  When I was building it's shelter, it was so unafraid of all sounds of hammers, saws, drills, and other tools, that the horse would actually come over and pick up whatever I wasn't using at the moment with it's teeth, and walk off with it.  I would have to go hunt for my hammer, cordless drill, or tape measure, as the horse would leave them scattered all over the corral. Also, we get a huge kick out of watching the horse eat an orange (which she loves), or stick it's head into a sack of something it thinks must be feed (and isn't) and then look at us and lift it's upper lip so far it looks like it's curling back into a huge smile, as if to let us know: "The joke's on her".  She notifies us if one of her two big plastic water troughs is empty by picking it up with her teeth and tossing it around until someone goes and fills it up again.  If animals have "personalities", this horse definitely has one.  We have no intention of ever giving the horse back to the government, or selling it, or giving it away.  Our horses are part of the family, and this one became an important part of the family real quick.

But getting back to the government and the trust issue..sure, people make mistakes.  Even government employees.  But when nearly every level of government appears to be plagued by mistakes, mis-statements, mis-speaking, misinformation, mishandling, mis-"this" or mis-"that"..is it any wonder the public at large cannot maintain trust in government, even when it comes to the little stuff?