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property rights regulation too much government

The Regulatory Flex

Gavin Newsom, YIMBY, California, Pacific Palisades

If you’re a homeowner devastated by wildfires, you may want to rebuild. Since you have also suffered a financial setback, especially if your property insurance was canceled just before the fire, you may also want to earn money by renting a part of your new home.

Such are the considerations that motivate some property owners devastated by last January’s conflagrations in California to want to build a duplex. 

So what’s the problem?

The governor is the problem.

That he’s listening to other property owners in your neighborhood — the Pacific Palisades — who dislike duplexes makes the problem worse. 

Your property is not their property, mind you. But they’re acting as if it were.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order letting cities ban duplex construction in neighborhoods affected by last January’s wildfires. A pro-​development group called YIMBY Law was willing to refrain from filing a lawsuit if the governor issued a new order to let property owners build duplexes after a year had passed.

But Newsom won’t budge. So YIMBY Law is suing. 

A spokesman for the governor says that letting owners build duplexes (on their own property) amounts to an “attack” on the Pacific Palisades and an undermining of “local flexibility to rebuild.”

“Local,” here, seems to mean the sum total of all neighbors who are loath to allow you to enjoy the flexibility of building on your own property. 

But the individual and his rights are as local as it gets. 

And reducing options, as a prohibition on building duplexes where single-​family homes once stood, is the very opposite of “flexibility.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Winston Churchill

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter X.
Categories
Today

Thanksgiving in December

On December 18, 1777, the United States celebrated its first official Thanksgiving, marking the then-​recent October victory by the Americans over General John Burgoyne in the Battle of Saratoga.

Categories
First Amendment rights media and media people national politics & policies too much government

Governing the News

FCC, censorship, covid, surveillance

“The Fairness Doctrine was controversial and led to lawsuits throughout the 1960s and ’70s that argued it infringed upon the freedom of the press,” explained FCC commissioner Ajit Pai for the Wall Street Journal, in an op-​ed I quoted yesterday.

“The FCC finally stopped enforcing the policy in 1987, acknowledging that it did not serve the public interest. In 2011 the agency officially took it off the books. But the demise of the Fairness Doctrine has not deterred proponents of newsroom policing.…”

Thankfully, this is old news. The former FCC commissioner’spiece was actually published nearly twelve years ago. Mr. Pai has since moved on to the private sector, in April becoming President and CEO of CTIA, the wireless industry trade association.

We can breathe a sigh of relief. The FCC is not planning on regulating the news for biased content.

Well, supposedly, anyway. 

So why rehash an old issue — why revive something from the proverbial slush pile?

To compare and contrast. Bias is a continuing problem, but the biggest threat to news reporting and dissemination since that time has revealed itself in a very different form, not as “abridgments” to press freedoms but as secret government commands and direction.

Remember what we learned in the Trump-​and-​pandemic years?

During the recent pandemic, and the release of the Twitter Files, we learned of a massive effort of government and “ex-​government” personnel directing social media outlets to platform-​censor dissent, going so far as to squelch new sources … as happened regarding the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story.

The FCC Fairness Doctrine was nothing compared to the meddling that has more recently occurred behind the scenes, but which we all experienced, on social media. It played a role in the election results favoring Biden in 2020, and in the dysfunctional, disastrous public health response to COVID-19. 

The FCC doesn’t handle that level of biased manipulation of news.

So who does?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Kenneth Arnold

They flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.

Kenneth Arnold to East Oregonian reporter Bill Bequette at the airport at Pendleton on June 25, 1947, where Arnold was refueling his private plane. Bill Bequette and editor Nolan Skiff’s front page story in the evening paper of the same day, titled “Impossible! Maybe, But Seein’ Is Believin’, Says Flyer,” started the modern Flying Saucer legend, which was widely reported and discussed worldwide in the 1950s.
Categories
Today

Official Recognition

On December 17, 1777, France formally recognized the United States of America. 

The 17th of December, 1819, was the day Simon Bolivar declared the independence of the Republic of Gran Colombia in Angostura.

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

The FCC’s Press Bias Fix

censorship, FCC, news, media, propaganda

You are operating a newsroom or, let’s say, a commentary room. Somebody accuses you of bias in how you decide what to publish.

You deflect: Of course different media organizations have different perspectives; each to its own. Sometimes, too, we choose what to run less rationally than the Platonic philosopher-​journalist would demand.

Bias is everywhere, inevitable.

Which makes the only cure maximal freedom of speech and openness of discourse. The answer to deficient speech is better speech, not either direct or indirect government censorship.

Nevertheless, the FCC has proposed to “investigate” the selection process of newsrooms.

Any such investigation is necessarily biased from the get-​go against freedom of speech and press. Even if it never gets to the regulation stage, the investigation itself constitutes interference. It is impossible for anyone being asked formal investigatory questions by the FCC to be unaware that the questioner has the power of government behind him.

How, for example, is a conscientious employee who respects the rights of his boss supposed to answer this loaded question: “Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers that was rejected by management?”?

FCC commissioner Ajit Pai reports that this is one query being considered as part of a “Critical Information Needs” study to determine how stories are selected, “perceived bias,” and how responsive a newsroom is to “underserved populations.”

Pai, who opposes the project, says: “The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.”

Or not covering others.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Winston Churchill

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

Winston Churchill, speech at Harvard University, September 6, 1943, in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999), p. 215.
Categories
Today

The Convention Parliament

On December 16, 1689, England’s Convention Parliament began, not only transferring power from one king to another, but establishing procedures and rights.

Categories
litigation property rights

Miami’s Property-​Grabbing Vice

Miami, property rights, permits, regulations

All Chad Tausch wanted to do was add a few rooms to his Miami home.

In many cities, homeowners need a permit to make such additions. But although the city had no problem with his proposed construction, it required something more than a permit fee: half of Tausch’s front yard — without even offering to pay for it. No land surrender, no permit.

The city has been making the same demand of other homeowners who need alteration permits. 

The city has a plan, a goal: Pile up land that the city might one day use to widen roads. The Institute for Justice (IJ) has identified “more than 1,000 homes threatened by this scheme across 66 streets.”

“The right to prevent the government from unlawfully taking your property is a right recognized from the very start of this nation,” says Suranjan Sen, an attorney with IJ. “The city of Miami cannot simply decide to take your property away because it wants it.”

Well, thus far, the city has thus simply decided. It’s been operating the scheme for years. The question is whether it’s constitutionally entitled to do so; obviously, no.

Tausch didn’t submit to the extortion. Instead, he turned to IJ for help in challenging Miami’s practice in court. As a result of the litigation, the city has waived the land-​for-​permit requirement in his case.

Victory! But what about all those other homes on the 66 streets, which remain in jeopardy?

Well, the Institute for Justice is continuing the lawsuit, seeking to liberate all Miami homeowners from the city’s sneaky scheme.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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