Where the Leftist Central Planners Want to Force Us To Go

While small businesses, including restaurants, were locked down by government force, Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom partied with a group at an expensive restaurant. The California Democrats have decreed gasoline-powered automobiles won't be sold in California in a little over a decade from now, while the state's power infrastructure can't handle current demand for electricity. In the county of Los Angeles, freeways can't handle existing traffic, but the "road fund" is regularly spent on buses, rail, and non-transportation projects and programs.

What the Leftist Democrats are doing in California - which they'd love to take national - might not make sense to someone who has common sense, who doesn't seek to control others. But what the power-hungry social engineering central planners are doing makes sense when you realize what they want, and they've publicly said so and/or demonstrated, is to:

• Install most of our children into government-controlled institutions from six weeks of age into their twenties.
• Get those children dependent on government for most of their meals, served at or distributed by the schools.
• Move most of us into large apartment buildings, especially ones with commercial space on the first level or three.
• Ensure those apartment units will have water and power controlled and limited by remote, and waste (like the trash you throw away) controlled, limited, and analyzed.
• Force us out of automobiles we control into government-run mass transit.
• Discourage entrepreneurship and small businesses so that we're all working for government or large businesses, which can be more easily controlled by government, or dependent on government redistribution of money.
• Get most of us dependent on the state for health care.
• Disarm private citizens when it comes to defending themselves, their family, or their property.

We can see this at the state level and with the counties and cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles. They are constantly seeking to make government bigger, more intrusive, and more controlling, and get as many of us dependent on government as they can.

They hate liberty for anyone other than their own little clique.

Resist Leftism. Defeat Leftism. Defend Liberty.

How Needs Get Met

Nature, or Nature's God, has provided us with, among other things:

• Water in certain places
• Plants, animals, and edible fungi in certain conditions
• Some caves in certain places

Without work, only a few people could live in a few places on Earth: any place in which 1) a cave, free of venomous animals, will provide sufficient shelter; 2) edible plants/plants with edible parts/fungi grow in sufficient abundance; 3) potable water is available in sufficient abundance. Has there been such a place outside of Eden?

Even then, there would likely still be work in obtaining the water to drink and the plant/fungus material to eat, and the plant/fungus material would likely not have all the nutrients we need to thrive. And you're out of luck if your eyesight needs correction, or you get a serious injury or infection that requires medical care.

Here's the point.

Everything we have is ultimately the result of work and trading. Even things we have inherited or someone has gifted/donated to us are the result of work and trading. 

Very few people drink all their water, untreated, directly from, and at, a stream. 

Just about everything we eat, no matter how "natural," has been cultivated for beneficial changes over hundreds or even thousands of years, and is provided by many people working.

Whether we live in a hut, recreational vehicle camper, a tiny apartment, or a palatial estate, the shelter exists because of work.

Clothes, medical treatments, transportation, energy, mass communications, entertainment, art galleries, museums - everything is a result of work and trading.

The exception involves a non-consensual transfer, through things like force, extortion, confiscation, plunder, enslavement, and various forms of theft not yet mentioned. That still involves work. It is just that there isn't a voluntary trade.

Working and trading is how needs get met.

The more interference in these things, the more theft and destruction, the fewer needs that will be met. 

Example: Printing money or confiscating it from people who are working and using it to pay people to NOT work.

If you want food, you either have to grow it and prepare for it yourself, or trade for it. Or, someone else has to work and provide it to you out of charity or force.

Who is best at knowing what you need? You. Maybe your spouse. Not some strangers in Washington, D.C., not some strangers in New York, not some strangers in Europe.

It should be YOUR responsibility to look after your needs and those of anyone for whom you responsible, like dependent children. The less those strangers in D.C., NYC, or Europe interfere in your work and trading, the better.

Cracking Down on Section 8 Fraud is Racist?

Carol J. Williams and Ann M. Simmons report in the Los Angeles Times on the latest whining by tax-takers and their Lefitist activist group friends.

As many as 200 local minority families have lost their federal housing assistance each year, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court by the National Assn. for the Advancement of [Leftist and Dependent] Colored People and unnamed victims of the alleged harassment.

If they didn't meet the criteria, they shouldn't have been getting the funding.

Most of the families have been cut off following surprise "compliance checks" by housing authorities and police, aimed at rooting out fraud in the federal housing assistance program known as Section 8.

Civil rights advocates say the crackdowns amount to racial discrimination, as 85% of the Section 8 households are black or Latino.

So cops should never pull over cars that are more likely to be driven by women, because that would be gender discrimination?

Residents have also complained that the inspections often involved armed Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies, which they said adds a level of intimidation to the checks.

Well, yeah, when you're going into someone's home in high-crime areas, and they may be hostile, it is a good idea to be armed, no?

The lawsuit says the crackdown has created a climate of fear among minorities in the Antelope Valley and may have influenced vigilante attacks and hate crimes.

A climate of fear? Why? Are most of them defrauding taxpayers? My guess is that minorities who aren't defrauding the system aren't in fear of enforcement.

Palmdale's First African Methodist Episcopal Church was firebombed in August, and garages and other property of Section 8 renters have been vandalized with graffiti including racial slurs, swastikas and "I hate Section 8." One mother of four reported in the complaint that a carload of white youths shouted racial epithets at her children and threw a bag of urine at them.

Who knew that enforcing nonracist laws could do so much?

Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said there is evidence that crime in Lancaster tends to "cluster around Section 8 housing." Since Lancaster began its stepped-up enforcement, crime stemming from Section 8 housing units has "dropped dramatically," Parris said.

Too bad! Wanting less crime is racist, even when reducing crime is likely to help racial minorities the most.

Palmdale recently renewed the contract for its special investigator for Section 8 fraud, whose work over the last two years has resulted in a termination of benefits for one in 12 residents in the housing assistance program. In Lancaster, which also hires its own enforcer for the federal program, one in 21 beneficiaries was cut off in 2009. The two cities accounted for 51% of terminations in L.A. County.

You know what that means? Other cities need to step up enforcement.

Those who claim to have been unjustly terminated contend that the two cities are trying to drive out Section 8 tenants and that the county rubber-stamps the cutoff requests.

I'm sure they have detailed knowledge of the process, right?

The article got some good comments.

Tommy99 at 9:15 PM June 7, 2011:

Wow, a race-based group accuses other people of racism! Big news.

He asks a good question.

How can something be racial discrimination simply based on the fact that a large percentage of the participants of the program are a minority? In other words, no one can enforce section 8 rules without being racist?

And:

"what is going to stop them from coming to your house"

Well, I am not a tax-taker. I own my house. I don't beg for handouts and then cry when the authorities make me live up to agreements.

"they had no right to enter any one house"

But it is not their homes. The homes belong to the landlord and the landlord is obeying the rules of the program. If the section 8'ers don't want to comply with the rules of the program, move out and don't participate. Beggers cannot be choosers.

The Left wants other people to pay, but then it doesn't want verification or standards.

Surprise! Fraud Alleged in “Low Income” Housing Development

"Affordable housing" is one of those euphemisms that need to be exposed and knocked down. "Low-income" housing is often subsidized, too. So this story by Jessica Garrison and David Zahniser in the Los Angeles Times got my attention.

The cities of Los Angeles and Glendale have filed fraud lawsuits against one of the region's biggest developers of low-income housing, revealing new details about how the politically connected firm allegedly misappropriated public money.

This is one reason why the government should be involved in as few things as possible. There is always a risk of fraud. Is there fraud in private transactions? Yes, but if a business screws me over, I can take my business elsewhere, as can all of my friends. But we're pretty much stuck with our government. Businesses, especially big ones, may manipulate the government system to their unfair advantage over taxpayers and competition. If the actions are actually criminal, they still have to be exposed and then prosecuted. If I suspect a business is screwing me over, I can take my business elsewhere without having proven anything.

When Advanced Development and Investment Inc. used $2.6 million in L.A. housing funds to build apartments known as The Mediterranean, the company reported spending $396,000 for framing. The real cost, according to a lawsuit filed late last week, was $50,000.

In East Hollywood, where the developer built Harvard Circle using $3.9 million in city funds, the company reported $190,000 for glasswork. The city contends that work cost $75,600.

And so it went, according to the suit, in 15 low-income projects paid for with $29 million in city funds over roughly a decade: ADI allegedly reported much higher construction costs than it actually incurred, pocketing the difference. Lawyers estimate that the city could be on the hook for losses between $30 million and $180 million.

The city of Glendale, from which ADI received roughly $34 million since 2005 for four projects, also filed suit, accusing the company of millions of dollars more in fraud.

We don't need a government program to build affordable or low cost housing.

1. All housing that sells or rents is affordable to someone.

2. Housing is made lower cost, and thus affordable to more people, through supply & demand and the costs to produce the housing. All of the costs a company incurs in gaining government approvals, buying the land, designing the development, constructing the housing (materials, labor), and selling the housing must be passed along to the buyers.

Housing prices rise when there is less supply, when it is more difficult to gain approval for building it, and when labor costs are increased. The least expensive housing will be the housing that is in the least desirable location, smaller, and made from less expensive materials.