Down The Sewer Pipe – Politically Speaking

When decisions are made at the governmental level there is a sort of arrogance by some elected officials to the point that consulting the electorate is considered evil.  After all, they reason, they were elected to make decisions and consulting the people isn’t needed. This sounds well and good and would be true but that same arrogance Leeds to policies and procedures that only a third of any given community can afford to do.  We are all aware of such blatant arrogance when a housing development is given a pass on street standards but an athletic field is prevented from bypassing the same standard.  Using the test of “good governance” the housing development and the athletic field would either both have to meat the same standard or they would both be given a pass.  Not either or, not highest rule, not importance of some other sort.

The Constitution of the United States in a matter of fact way stipulates that the laws Congress makes shall apply equally to all states.  So what happens then when Congress makes a law that harms some and does well to others?  This was the issue with slavery when Congress decided that the individual states did not have the right to limit, prohibit, or expand on that repugnancy.  The new territories could make self-determination, other states had already passed laws probating the practice but Congress weighed in with laws, which placed some citizens in perpetual slavery and others in perpetual freedom.

A war was fought and constitutional amendments passed because the majority of the members of Congress were so arrogant as to assume that slavery was good for the country.  The same arrogance appears to day at every level of government when something is contemplated but the citizens not consulted or if they are individuals are given less weight than groups.  So fees, taxes, fines are increased or created and the people creating or amending them look in their pocket book and  decide that they can “afford it” so everyone can.

So what about the people that cannot afford what ever it is that is being done, what about them?  There are some elected office holders that ask such questions but they are fare and few.  The need to increase or create a new tax or fee is sometimes questioned but the question of how someone that makes a quarter of the average wage in your community affords housing or transportation is never given serious weight by the bulk of office holders. Arrogance is the chief cause of this and in point of fact if a developer building a building consuming a square block of town is not required to provide off street parking why would single family housing be required to provide off street parking?  The Constitution of the United States no longer makes such differences why should state and local laws?  

When such differences are made an unconstitutional move is made that some people, businesses or industries are better than others.  If such differences are to be made then clear and logical arguments also ought to be made.  Land use planning is neither unless manufacturing is held to a separate location from housing.  Portland Oregon, Gresham Oregon are but two communities where industrial and commercial uses are butted directly up against single family housing offering no protection from noise and pollution at all hours of the day or night. 

The only logical explanation for this disparity is plane and simple, elected official arrogance. An arrogance that erodes the very ideals of Liberty as it relates to freedom applied to the citizens of the United States and detailed in the preamble to the US Constitution.

Sherman