Archives for May 2016

As someone who don’t like to be dictated to by others who don’t have my best interest at heart, I find constant frustration in seeing our country and its people be railroaded over and over by government bureaucracies and our leaders who want to constantly re-engineer our country rather than build on what has made us great.

It starts with a noble cause.

Urban planners trying to improve the lives of its citizens.  So grouping industrial areas together away from housing.  So people don’t have to breathe in the fumes or listen to the noise or deal with polluted groundwater, etc.

But then it moves into trying to force people into urban areas.  And as we all know, you get enough people into close proximity (think trying to live with your parents or inlaws for an extended vacation and you know what I mean) and all hell breaks loose.

Then they try to get you out of your car.

It continues with the same idealistic planners and governmental officials wanting to get us out of our cars and into buses and trains.  Now who wants to sit next to a smelly homeless person or wait hours for buses and trains and have 3 transfers just to get to work – we all work long enough hours not to want to kill our home life and our commute time as well.  We love our cars because it is like home away from home.  We choose the music or talk radio stations, we can walk out of our house, get in our car, and get out at the office – no muss, no fuss.

So here’s what happens when things don’t go in the direction the top down Washington types choose.  They get annoyed about the incompetent, stupid citizens and they go to their next tool of the trade.  Using Federal Funds (aka your money) to bend everyone to their will.

This shows up in Common Core in schools.

Sure it all sounds great.  Children being held to high standards and tested to get rid of bad schools and keep the best.  So our children win.

But then it turns into unelected officials using that funding process to mandate their various social engineering goals.  So more time is focused on spreading the mantra about multiculturalism, America is bad, there should be no judgment, etc.  And less time focused on teaching kids the basics so they can compete in the world.

So what is happening now?

Obama’s HUD is now pushing beyond the mere social engineering of Section 8 housing subsidies.  Now they are measuring and evaluating communities (starting with the wealthy ones they don’t like that they don’t live in) and trying to show that there isn’t enough diversity.  And then with that will override zoning laws, under the guise of anti-discrimination, in order to mandate more low income housing in middle and high income communities.

And where are those communities?  They may say it is communities like Westchester county.  But that isn’t all of it.

It is a war on the suburbs.  Where the middle class lives.  It is a war on the middle class.

And why would they do that?

They want to kill the middle class.  

Because those in the middle class can’t be controlled through normal governmental channels.

The middle class has small businesses that don’t feed off Washington carve-outs and don’t contribute to politicians or have their own lobbyists in Washington.

And the middle class wants their children to go to decent crime free schools and live in safe communities.

And whether people want to admit that or not, they move away from the cities and the crime that comes with cities.

So what will this new approach by HUD do?

Well I live in Elk Grove, California.

And like others I’ve seen how the city has transformed over the last few years.  Section 8 housing moved in when housing crashed and now it has brought crime.  For example, at least a couple times a month there are helicopter flyovers of the community looking for people who’ve held up banks or pulled guns on kids walking down the street.  And this wasn’t happening at that level prior to that change.

Don’t all communities have crime?

To some extent, absolutely.  But to this level?  No.  It has essentially brought the negative elements to city live into the suburbs.

But doesn’t bringing low income people into the community help them get ahead and give them a hand up so they can move up into the middle class world?

If low income was largely due to bad circumstances or things outside a person’s control, then yes that would work.

But what really happens is generations of bad choices and training by the government to distrust those who have made something of themselves as assuming they got it by stepping on the downtrodden.  And you find that they just drag their bad habits and bad associates with them.  And then they set up shop with their next criminal enterprise down the street with a new crop of people to prey on.

As a basis of comparison, do you tell your kids it is fine to hang out with the drug dealers and problem children and the bad boy?  Do you tell them that they need to hang around those cretins so your kids’ goodness will help improve the negative types around them?

Hell no!  You’d never voluntarily let that happen.  You know you’d then be dealing with your kids acting up and taking their cues from the bad boys.

And you’ll pay the consequences in a dysfunctional household and kids whose grades slip.

Am I just an uncaring conservative?

Or am I shedding light on a problem that is being swept under the rug?

The over-micro-managing of our lives by government is taking away our ability to make wise decisions for ourselves and live with the consequences of those good (and sometimes bad) decisions.  It is pretending that adults are really children who need a government parent.

I don’t know about you but I don’t want the government telling me where I should live, who should live next to me, and penalize me for making good decisions in life.  We saw that enough with the housing crisis that was manufactured by the government’s incompetency and greed.  At a certain point we need to grow up.

Now is that time.