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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (711478)	4/23/2013 7:11:18 PM
From: THE WATSONYOUTH	Respond to of 1571688

Zoning man...you wrote against controls...zoning as in regulatory controls aimed at keeping dangerous industrial complexes out of residential areas or viceversa to try to prevent what happened inTexas... go to Google Maps.....620 Bergen St. Harrison NJ........look at satellite view at high mag........this is Democratic local zoning .........New Jersey style.......note the row of TWO family homes on Bergen St. If you lean out your side window far enough, you could shake hands with your neighbor......Given the two car garages in each, there is not room for even ONE parked car on the street. Prior to these homes being built, the ENTIRE area was industrial.......probably no homes within 1000 yards. An abandoned factory was bulldozed and the homes were built. At that time (now gone), across Bergen St was the specialty gas supplier (occupied the entire block) There was enough rude stuff stored on that site...... had it gone up, both blocks would have been just a hole in the ground. Fortunately, the gas company moved away about 12 years later. The people who bought the two family homes were mostly Portuguese immigrants eager to get out of Newark and buy their piece of America. The developer surely paid off the local Democratic officials in order to jam those homes into that place. I never forget speaking to him one day and he told me how he would spend 8 hours on a Saturday counting small bills. These immigrants would bring in shoe boxes full of cash to pay for the homes. Just incredible. Would the same have happened with Republicans in charge?. Other than the fact it would be impossible for Republicans to control that town, the likelihood is YES. PS.....note the new Red Bulls Soccer Stadium about 500 yards to the south.

To: Alighieri who wrote (711478)	4/23/2013 9:35:59 PM
From: Bilow	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571688

Hi Alighieri; Re Zoning and all that. Like pretty much all government controls, zoning has its good points and bad points. It's quite local. I generally believe that local government control is better than federal. But no matter who controls zoning, there are going to be problems. Typical totalitarian instinct is to make every (minor) tragedy into an excuse to give more power to the government. This is a basic idea that I disagree with. If you want to live next to a fertilizer plant I say "more power to you", and "ignorance is bliss". The fact that the plant caught fire and blew up is excellent evidence that they were in violation of more laws than just "zoning". Last I heard it's illegal to cause fatalities in the US by explosions without a license. If that didn't stop them, why should zoning laws stop them? Same with filling out the proper licenses for ammonium nitrate. The US has millions of laws, it would be a miracle company that was in compliance with all of them. Similar laws didn't stop the Boston explosions either. I'm guessing that the US has a couple thousand illegal IED explosions per year, that is, things on the order of a pipe bomb rather than just oversize fireworks. And I've seen plenty of problems with zoning. Can't see why Democrats would argue that zoning is always a good thing. Democrats are supposed to be in favor of the little guy but zoning is a policy that is almost always enforced by the people in power against small guys. Try reading this: The Racial Origins of Zoning in American Cities, Christopher Silver "What began as a means of improving the blighted physical environment in which people lived and worked," writes Yale Rabin, became "a mechanism for protecting property values and excluding the undesirables." The two interest groups that were regarded as the undesirables were immigrants and African Americans.[3] asu.edu No matter where you look, you'll always find that giving large amounts of power to the government will result, eventually, in that power being used against people who are out of power. This is just how humans operate. -- Carl