"Planners" Are Fascists

The term gets tossed around a lot, but in the case of "planners", it's accurate. Who says so? A former Director of "Planning" at Metro:

Here is exactly what former Metro Planning Director, Rich Carson, wrote about planners:

No, they are not all terrorists. But they do make pretty good communists and fascists. Planners want organization and for all things to be predictable. The profession came into being in the 1960s. So they tend to believe in the issues spawned in the day. They are environmental socialists. In other words, they believe in collective environmentalism (Gore) and not individual environmentalism.”  

from 9/11: Richard Carson PDX Is Ready for a Bike Ride but Not an Emergency

Well, he's probably just a disgruntled former manager.

On the other hand, Julie isn't.

Julie Bass of Oak Park, Mich., battles officials over her decision to grow vegetables in her front yard, a space that, according to city ordinances, is reserved for 'suitable' things like trees, grass and shrubbery.

Julie Bass, an Oak Park, Mich., resident may face jail time — 93 days in the slammer to be exact — for her decision to landscape her front yard in a matter that Oak Park City Planner Kevin Rulkowski finds to be “uncommon.”

Neighbors don't mind that Julie's replaced her front lawn with raised beds, nor that those beds sustain food plants. But the city "planner" does mind - and he's gone after her with a vengeance. It doesn't bother the neighbors, the place hasn't gone to weeds, it's "her property", and she's chosen to grow food. So, what's the problem?

"Planner" fascism.

So what exactly are Oak Park officials looking for in a suitable front yard? Rulkowski, a man with entirely too much time on his hands, explains: "If you look at the definition of what suitable is in Webster's dictionary, it will say common. So, if you look around and you look in any other community, what's common to a front yard is a nice, grass yard with beautiful trees and bushes and flowers." 

Rulkowski not only has too much time on his hands, but his claim regarding the definition of "suitable" is not found in Webster's dictionary - nor any other. Webster's does, however, include the entry: obsolete : similar, matching. So what Julie is faced with is a "planning" fascist who figures that words mean what he damn well wants them to mean, and if he chooses to use obsolete terms, that ain't his problem. She will conform to his standards, or else.

We're being over-run by these types - they're like walking kudzu - and you can see it everywhere around you, no matter where you live in the USA. They fester and boil in government agencies at all levels: local, state, federal. As far as they're concerned, you have no rights whatsoever: you can "buy" property, and they'll tax you for "owning" it - and then, they'll tell you what you can't do with it, though they'll likely charge a hefty fee for deigning to consider your silly little question.

They're really big on telling you where to live, and how to live, and they do their best to ensure that you have no recourse. Moreover, they do everything they can to bankrupt you if you're foolish enough to object.  As Justice Alito commented earlier this week on the E.P.A.: "You think maybe there is a little drainage problem in part of your lot, so you start to build the house and then you get an order from the EPA which says: `You have filled in wetlands, so you can't build your house; remove the fill, put in all kinds of plants; and now you have to let us on your premises whenever we want to,'" Alito said. "You have to turn over to us all sorts of documents, and for every day that you don't do all this you are accumulating a potential fine of $75,000. And by the way, there is no way you can go to court to challenge our determination that this is a wetlands until such time as we choose to sue you."

At the local level:

Clackamas County’s board of commissioners voted a year ago to provide the money to TriMet to fund its share of the $1.5 billion project. After a packed three-hour public hearing on July 28, commissioners voted 3-1 against referring the county’s commitment to the project to voters.

Amazingly, people still talk today about TMI - the Three Mile Island nuclear plant - as though it constituted some horrible disaster. TMI harmed nobody.

Fascist "planners", on the other hand, harm many people, every day.

It seems unquestionable that the herd of "planners" - and their symbionts - is in need of some serious thinning. The longer you allow the herd to expand unchallenged, the more difficult the eventual culling becomes.

 

 

 

Comments

[ZZMike]

Planners are one of the groups Hayek warned against in "Road to Serfdom".

Planners are sort of like rulers - if you have a good one (or a few, in the case of planners), things go really well. If you get a bad lot, it's Misery City all over.

Planning should be a good thing. ("A man, a plan, a canal - Panama" [palindrome].)

There's the guy who planned Washington, D.C. Some Frenchman - just a minute ... Pierre L'Enfant, 1791; that worked out pretty well, even though he fell into disagreements with Commissioners and didn't get paid for his efforts.

The difference seems to be that planning has to take place from the ground up, otherwise planners are Procrustes.

[Max]

We are overrun with highly-compensated "planners". At Tri-Met alone, planners may be paid as much as $93,360.00 - $140,038.00 Annually, plus benefits.

Tri-met has tons of "planners. So does Metro. So does Multnomah County. So does the City of Portland.

How many do we need, and how much does it cost to maintain these parasites?

[Ian Random]

I heard that principals make a ton of cash, now I have to add shi!@y planner to that. I'd love to know if planners subscribe personally to the same things they do for a living. I think it would be funny to see zips of environmental contributors and planners. See if they really enjoy densifying the urban core.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos057.htm

[Max]

That's kind of a scary link, Ian. Appreciated, but scary.

Metro's Rex Burpholder, a vocal advocate of density, lives in a house with a yard.