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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (15686)	11/9/2003 4:20:53 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793681

Here's a Liberal with a good idea for the Dem Party. "Don Conley's Journal" ____________________________________________ Why go south? Conventional wisdom is that the Democratic Party needs to compete at least in some southern states to win the Presidency. The 2000 election is a case in point -- any Southern state would have been enough to put Al Gore over the top, including his home state of Tennessee. But perhaps Democrats are simply barking up the wrong tree. The South has become so socially conservative that perhaps it is time to give it up altogether and focus on other traditional Republican strongholds that could be more fertile ground for Democrats. I'm referring to the Plains and the West. Typically, while Democrats tend to do well in all the states that border the Mississippi, they get crushed in the states immediately to the West -- the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma (never mind Texas, it's truly lost.) And while Democrats have won Washington, Oregon and California in the last three elections, the Rocky Mountain states have been harder to round up. However, I get the feeling that the Plains and West -- which have always been less militaristic than the South and where racial issues typically aren't as explosive -- are a closer cultural match for Democrats than the Southern states. Westerners aren't as caught up on Biblical moralism as Southerners, especially in states like Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. Furthermore, the growing Hispanic populations in these states give the Democratic Party a natural base that didn't exist 20 years ago. This isn't to say that the Democratic nominee has a realistic hope of winning Idaho, Wyoming or Utah, but I would feel much better about investing campaign time and money in Nevada, Arizona, Kansas, South Dakota, Colorado and Montana than I would in any of the Southern states outside of Florida. It wasn't too long ago that Democrats dominated statewide offices in Colorado and Montana. South Dakota has two Democratic Senators, including the Senate Minority Leader, and Kansas has a Democratic governor. If the national party can't win in those states now, find out why and fix it. We can't write them off anymore. Instead of asking what we need to do to appeal to the guys with Rebel flag decals in their trucks, maybe we need to start asking how we win the farm states and appeal to people who liked the skiing so much that they stayed. I think a certain doctor in the race knows something about that. danconley.com

To: FaultLine who wrote (15686)	11/12/2003 4:03:21 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793681

I am sure your property value is skyrocketing, FL. But your Grandchildren will have to live elsewhere. ___________________________________________ Dubious disclaimer By Thomas Sowell THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published November 12, 2003 One reason given by California's liberal Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein for opposing the confirmation of state Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the federal judiciary is that Justice Brown has refused to put property rights on a lower plane than other constitutional rights and has criticized the destruction of property rights in San Francisco. Mrs. Feinstein has said it is "simply untrue" that property rights have been sacrificed in San Francisco. According to Mrs. Feinstein, private property "is alive and well" in San Francisco, "with property values making it one of the highest cost-of-living cities in the United States." It might be humorous, if it were not so sad, that a senior United States senator has so completely missed the point of discussions about the destruction of property rights that have been going on for decades in legal and intellectual circles. One of the main reasons for the outrageous housing prices in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay area is precisely the overriding of property rights. Endless restrictions, obstructions, and bureaucratic delays face anyone building anything on his own property in this area and have forced housing costs to astronomical levels. The issue is not the prosperity of property owners, many of whom benefit enormously from the restrictions on building that cause the value of their own existing property to skyrocket. San Francisco property owners like Mrs. Feinstein have made out like bandits from these restrictions on property rights. Justice Janice Rogers Brown noted pointedly during her nomination hearings that she cannot afford to live in San Francisco, but has to commute from far away for court hearings held there. That is part of the cost of politicians ignoring property rights and courts letting them get away with it. The costs are even higher when rent-control laws override property rights and create housing shortages in the process. Homelessness is particularly acute in cities with severe rent control laws, such as San Francisco and New York. People sleeping on the sidewalks in Manhattan during the winter can die of exposure, despite far more boarded-up apartment buildings than would be required to house them all. Yet those buildings are boarded up because rent-control laws make them uneconomical to operate. The main victims of the politicians and courts overriding property rights are people who own no property. The main proponents of these violations of property rights are often people who do. None of this is peculiar to San Francisco or New York. Wealthy property owners in Loudoun County, Va., have passed laws restricting the building of housing on less than a one-acre lot in some places, and five- or 10-acre lots elsewhere. These laws destroyed plans to build tens of thousands of housing units in that county. Violations of property rights allow the affluent to keep out ordinary people. This is the ugly reality behind the sweet liberal rhetoric. It was Page One news recently that an 18-story condominium building is to be constructed in South San Francisco. It took two decades for the builders to fight their way through all the politicians, courts, bureaucracies and environmental activists. All this costs money, and all that money is going to come out of the hides of the people who move into that building. Meanwhile, the value of Mrs. Feinstein's home in San Francisco will keep on rising, which she regards as proof that property rights are being protected. REST AT dynamic.washtimes.com