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The Power Line crew joins the Coalition of the Unwilling in finding nothing to cheer in the Iran nuclear arms deal that was announced today. But the first half of the show features a conversation with Stanley Kurtz, author of several important books including, most recently, Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. Stanley has been all over the unfolding stealth regulations to extend the culture of Alinskyite “community organizing” to the suburbs through federal power. This ought to be a big issue in the next election campaign on all levels, but will only happen if people find out about it. There’s a reason Obama is being very quiet on this initiative.
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Mr. Kurtz has fairly well convinced me of the danger of this stealth attack on the American system. But there’s something missing: history and perspective. The urbanist fascism so well described is, in fact, a reaction against a suburbanist fascism which goes unnoticed.
“Spreading the Wealth” dismisses postwar pro-suburban zoning and tax policies as a leftist fantasy and doesn’t even mention the destruction of interurbans or the governmental financing of suburban infrastructure. The reality is, American suburbs are largely a governmental creation. We can’t whitewash that reality when we’re decrying governmental urbanism.
The destruction of interurbans – the forgotten American mass transit system which was mostly free market and the best mass transit system at the time, and better actually than any system in our modern world – was facilitated by “free” infrastructure for automobiles. It’s hard to compete with free. Free car roads, btw, was a progressive project intended to release us from the evil clutches of railroad capitalism, a project which was subsequently dropped by progressives and adopted by conservatives.
And no mention either of the rest of the vast government-financed suburban infrastructure – water treatment plants and all the rest – which, according to free market Republican town planner Charles Marohn, is a giant Ponzi scheme on the verge of collapse as it approaches the end of its sixty year cycle.
We’re not limited to choosing between two forms of govt control based merely on whether we happen to prefer the suburbs or the city. Instead of choosing between Fascism A or Fascism B we can choose between fascism and freedom. There IS a free market alternative. Check out:
strongtowns.org
marketurbanism.com
I’ve only read the free download part of Spreading the Wealth, so apologies if I’ve jumped to conclusions. The book looks to be fascinating, though, and I have it lined up on my to purchase list.
Good old yankee ingenuity will solve this. You have your town meeting and you get a few families to self identify (ala Rachelle) as whatever race the town needs. Bang – 15 families change from white to black.
Need more multi family housing? Get the kids and pets to marry – bang you got a duplex.