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Officials Sue Couple Who Removed Their Lawn
Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that Orange County officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for replacing the grass on their lawn with wood chips and drought-tolerant plants, reducing their water usage from 299,221 gallons in 2007 to 58,348 gallons in 2009. The dispute began two years ago, when Quan and Angelina Ha tore out the grass in their front yard. In drought-plagued Southern California, the couple said, the lush grass had been soaking up tens of thousands of gallons of water — and hundreds of dollars — each year. 'We've got a newborn, so we want to start worrying about her future,' said Quan Ha, an information technology manager for Kelley Blue Book. But city officials told the Has they were violating several city laws that require that 40% of residential yards to be landscaped predominantly with live plants. Last summer, the couple tried to appease the city by building a fence around the yard and planting drought-tolerant greenery — lavender, rosemary, horsetail, and pittosporum, among others. But according to the city, their landscaping still did not comply with city standards. At the end of January, the Has received a letter saying they had been charged with a misdemeanor violation and must appear in court. The couple could face a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for their grass-free, eco-friendly landscaping scheme. 'It's just funny that we pay our taxes to the city and the city is now prosecuting us with our own money,' says Quan Ha."
That the prospective jail time is from contempt of court and that it is not actually a criminal offense to cover your yard in woodchips..
Right? Right?
As long as it's not presenting a danger to neighbors, they should be able to do whatever the hell they want with it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Well, it's nice to know that the city of Orange won't let residents save water while the rest of the towns on the same water system are offering bumper stickers that say "I killed my lawn.. ask me how"
Now get off my lawn
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
They should have watered their lawn with Brawndo. It's got what plants crave.
... the law requires 40% live ground cover, so they should be given a citation.
They think that law is unjust, so they are doing their duty by not following it.
The correct outcome is for the law to be changed.
The requirement is that they have LIVE plant landscaping. Dead grass wouldn't qualify, and would be violating the code also.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Limited powers not no powers. Somalia is a great example of what happens when the state is so far weakened that even property rights/life are not protected. At the opposite end of the scale, you might see something like North Korea which is not much of an improvement over what Somalia has. The idea is not to go to either extreme and maintain a reasonably rational government is large enough to cover the basics but not so big that people start to be strangled by it.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
They get to vote on how much the private property fiction applies in their community.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I've always hoped that these sorts of ordinances are made up. Just scary stories you city folk tell us country bumpkins to keep us out.
Right?
Right??
hush, don't force reality on him. He thinks he's going to be one of the warlords as opposed to the plebes
Je ne parle pas francais.
Yeah, tell that to Rosa Parks.
LA Offers upto a $2000 rebate for ripping up your lawn
Seems that in June of '09, LA wanted to try to catch up with LasVegas who is paying people to rip up their lawns as well.
the intent of the cash-for-grass program is to reduce the 50 to 90 inches of water routinely applied to turf every year. Drought-tolerant substitutes may require just 15 -- in keeping with L.A.'s average annual rainfall.
For information on the L.A. Department of Water and Power program, call the regional water agency rebate hotline at ..... The recording will say funding for regionwide programs is exhausted, but keep listening. DWP customers can press 3 for more details on their rebate.
Also, here's the link to the SoCal Turf Removal Program.
FTFA: "Meanwhile, the couple said they had reduced their water usage from 299,221 gallons in 2007 to 58,348 gallons in 2009."
Hmm, I wonder if this is to do with revenue from water supply.
In my town, water metering is being implemented over time. As infrastructure is serviced, new metering tech in being roled out. At some point we will have to pay when the scheme is finalized.
Coincidentily, the permit fees for watertanks has been put up, to the point it is like any of the "green" decisions: high capital outlay(factoring in the fees) to the the point one asks if financial return in 10 years is worth it.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
... you guys in the USA need a lawn czar to stop this kind of stupidity ;)
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
"...but not so big that people start to be strangled by it."
They always make new laws, and rarely get rid of old laws. The strangulation is inevitable.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The US is so far down the track towards autocracy that warning about the dangers of too weak a government is like warning a man who is dying from dehydration in the desert of the dangers of drowning if he's not careful when approaching an oasis.
I hate printers.
Wood chips are combustible. They live in a desert. That's a fire hazard. Better to pave it over and paint it green.
Speaking of which... they live in a desert. The only reason they ever had water to put on their lawn is that they import it via aqueducts over 200 miles, transforming the source from a formerly verdant valley into an arid desert.
I'm not sure where the city/county is trying to go here. Normally they pretend to try and be a little eco-friendly in granolaland.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Guess you missed this part from TFS:
Last summer, the couple tried to appease the city by building a fence around the yard and planting drought-tolerant greenery — lavender, rosemary, horsetail, and pittosporum, among others. But according to the city, their landscaping still did not comply with city standards
They tried, the county denied.
Take me where I cannot stand...
using that logic you could justify defiance of any civic ordinance. Also historically comparing yourself to Rosa Parks never looks good, it usually leads to being mocked rather quickly.
I live in a planned estate, fairly upmarket in appearance. Most of the houses have "arid landscape" themed gardens, and all plants are selected for low water requirements.
I can attest that, if done well, drought resistant garden design can look very, very nice. It's also far easier and cheaper to maintain, as weeds don't grow as readily. Our garden is made up with the hardiest plants from central Australia, thus we can literally starve weeds to death while the rest of the plants carry on fine. Having big, lush, high water gardens means that hardy weeds infest it easily and you're left fighting a losing battle.
I hate printers.
As a Radio Amateur, I continue to marvel at the range of awful looking things that one IS permitted to mount on one's roof or erect in one's back garden.
(I always thought that the fed's at the FCC had jurisdiction, at least in the case of a Radio Ham's tower issue. T or F...? Anyone know for sure?)
Anyway, the obvious difference between erecting a large tower & not buying water (which - when I come to think of this thread's details - may be the "real" reason that
the couple are being taken to task, despite their decision to do a Right Thing here) is:
A tower could fall over.
In the tower case, one could conceivably go round to all neighbors within a reasonable (eg, falling) radius of the intended tower base & get everybody to sign a "I think it's just great & wouldn't complain; I've checked with this guy's engineer (who has also inspected the work, which was done by licensed builders), all is in order, & - therefore - I support this guy's tower plans. Yada... yada..." ...and - before the tower-rise - get pre-construction approval for the project.
--
One could possibly have a similar thing here; eg, go to officials, lay out the situation (cost of water, need to redirect that $$$ to college fund for baby, etc.) & request an exemption.
THEN the story might have been:
"Officials force parents of newborn to spend money needed for baby's upbringing to buy water for their front lawn."
Now, THAT would have outraged your neighbors to come & support you.
At this stage, some of those will say, "Well, the law is the law." And, then, they'll go watch TV... :-/
Why is it your neighbor's responsibility to use their property in a way they dislike in order to bolster your property values?
I live in Virginia now, and this nonsense goes on not only in HOAs but even with city ordinances--mandating grass cutting, forbidding painting your house certain colors, etc. I just don't get it--in Maine, if you wanted a hot pink house with lines of toy soldiers and an above ground pool on your front lawn, that was your own business. It's your own property, and you have a right to use it how you want within the bounds of safety and environmental concerns.
Now, if it's a safety issue that's another thing. But the state's interest in defending property should be first and foremost to defend the right of a property's owner to use it as they see fit; if you want to have crazy aesthetic restrictions then you can move into an area with a draconian HOA.
Your water pipe issue is completely different, and I sympathize greatly.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
But as a homeowner, it's what keeps the property value going.
Sure about that?
Lots of fancy places have forest. You can't even see the house from the street. You could hide almost anything: a large boat, a helicopter, a moat, a guard house, a private lake, a tour bus...
Lawn is for shitty places where developers crap out houses onto postage stamp sized lots. You get psychotic homeowner associations and chipboard walls. Lawn says "mass production" like nothing else.
Forest looks damn lovely.
Lawns are an abomination (at least if you don't have enough rainfall to support one), and Southern California is a hellhole.
Would lichens count as live plants for the purpose of the ordinance? They take very little water and never need mowing.
There are low-lying, wide-spreading shrubs that do not require watering in even drier climates than theirs that could easily be arranged to cover 40% of that yard. They can stick with their approach and still give the finger to their city of assholes. My dad's front yard has some...not sure what they're called but the cats love them (probably because the lizards love them).
The US is so far down the track towards autocracy that warning about the dangers of too weak a government is like warning a man who is dying from dehydration in the desert of the dangers of drowning if he's not careful when approaching an oasis.
From an outsider's perspective I would diagnose the problem somewhat differently. It's paradoxical, the US is in many way under-regulated (eg. the banking system, consumer protection etc), yet on the other hand there are numerous examples of regulation like this.
But I don't think the problem is with the actual regulation. To me there seems a dangerous lack of discretion on the part of administrators, as to when laws ought, and more importantly, ought not to be applied.
It is as if the mere fact that something breaches an ordinance justifies taking action against that breach, or the mere fact that a crime has been committed means that someone ought to be charged. Or perhaps it is only that failures of discretion, such as in the present case, which are newsworthy.
It is a Constitutional Federal Republic. The difference is important. For many reasons, it was designed so it is not a simple case of majority rule, where people just vote on everything and whatever gets the most votes goes. While there are strong Democratic traditions, it was designed specifically so that there isn't a tyranny of the majority (at least hopefully not). The idea being that just because you have one more vote, doesn't mean you get to impose your will on everyone else regardless.
This applies to all sorts of things. A good extremely specific example is the Constitution itself. It cannot be amended by a majority vote of congress, nor of a majority vote by the citizens. It has to be a 66% vote in congress and then ratified by 75% of the states. There are extremely specific provisions preventing a simple majority vote of any kind from changing it, the higher requirements are spelled out.
Now more generally the Constitution (and other laws) protect various rights from mob rule. Property rights would be one of those. 51% of your neighbors can't simply vote that your house should be bulldozed and turned in to a park. Even 100% of your neighbors can't vote to make that happen. Your rights to your property supersede what the majority happens to want.
That doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want. Various HOA rules are completely legal and enforceable, and this might be one of them, but it might now.
As a practical matter if this goes to court it could well be struck down since the city may not have a right to force water usage. One argument is that potable water is a somewhat scarce resource and cities themselves don't control it (water rights are at a higher level). Thus a court could find that the city has no right to tell people they must use extra water, as that can cause harm to surrounding cities.
From the article at least one neighbour didn't mind.
Heck he even helped them:
Soon after the city complained about the yard, the Has placed wood chips on top of the dirt, with help from neighbor Dennis Cleek.
"It's their yard, it's not overgrown with weeds, it's not an eyesore," said Cleek, whose own yard boasts fruit trees. "We should be able to have our yards look the way we want them to."
And from the pic, it looks ok to me. As for wood-chips being a fire hazard, it's no big deal, before they start burning in a dangerous way due to some external cause, those wooden houses will probably be on fire first...
One day some abusive admin did a rm -rf / or deltree C:\
Those bastards... that's why root should have no powers.
And the 'rm' command needs to be redacted.
Right. How many of your by-laws do you know? I don't know your age, but I'd hazard a guess it's actually physically impossible for you to have read every law and ordinance that applies to you. You might research your by-laws if you were planning on erecting a construction, but for changing your garden? I certainly wouldn't.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Perhaps I'm not understanding something here, but why should your neighbor care about your home's value? Of course, in the case of a shared resource like a water pipe, it's a different matter but if it's my house and I want to fill my front yard with grey paint, why should anyone object. The whole "it's not aesthetic" argument is similar to the Taliban preventing women from wearing jeans because they don't like to see it. So where does it stop?
consolidation of the powers of various warlords
No, warlords do not share or consolidate power. It's not the African way.
This will probably be interpreted as a flame, but it isn't meant to be one. The _reason_ these kinds of city ordinances exist is because people wanted them - and they wanted them because they help protect property values.
No matter how noble or righteous you might think ripping up your lawn and replacing it with wood chips is, it is still violating the ordinance.
If I lived next door I frankly wouldn't give a crap how Eco-friendly the sea of wood chips next door was - if it looked like crap and it was next to my house I would be pissed off. I'm all for creative ways to help the environment and save money - but not if it means violating ordinances that exist for very good reason.
Doing things like this is frankly makes you look like a child acting out... "The environment is more important than these stupid rules and there are just too many people that don't care about the environment so I will defy them in a effort to get the rules changed. So there!"
Yes, in the grand scheme of things the environment is more important. So what does that have to do exactly with this particular ordinance? Nothing, zip. The point is if you actually wanted to change the ordinance the way to go about it is to convince your neighbors its a good idea and go to the city council. Its done ALL THE TIME all over the country. Good luck with that in this particular case - people LIKE grass.
- sigs are stupid
by doing what you should have the gawddamn right to do on your own property!
It's not your property. Here is a somewhat humorous parody that happens to illustrate the point and even addresses the topic of this thread:
"The Peasant's New Property"
Not so many years ago lived a peasant, though he didn't think of himself as such, who thought so much of real property ownership that he spent most of his time slaving away in his cubicle at work to acquire enough money to purchase some. He had little time for friends, family, or other amusements; in fact, the only thing he thought much about was his bi-weekly paycheck. His schedule contained labor for almost every hour of the day, and as one would say of a peasant, "He is out in the fields", so one could say of him, "He is in his cubicle".
The suburb where he desired to own property was very gay; every day many strangers from all parts of the globe arrived. One day two swindlers came to this suburb; they made everyone believe they were real estate agents and declared that they could sell the finest property one could own. Their architecture and design, they said, were not only exceptionally beautiful, but the homes and land possessed the wonderful quality of having its ownership unperceivable by any man who was irrational or unpardonably stupid.
"That must be wonderful property," thought the peasant. "If I were to own such property I should be able to find out which of my fellow men are irrational, and I could distinguish the clever from the stupid. I must have this property without delay." And he gave a large sum of money to the swindlers, in advance, that they should set to work without any loss of time. They prepared lots of paperwork and pretended to be very hard at work. They asked for commissions and all sorts of fees which were quickly drawn from the man's bank accounts, and they appeared to work until late at night.
"I should very much like to know how they are getting on with my purchase," thought the peasant. But he felt rather uneasy when he remembered that he who was irrational or stupid couldn't perceive its ownership. Personally, he was of the opinion that he had nothing to fear, yet he thought it advisable to send somebody else first to see how matters stood. He told everyone he knew what remarkable quality the property possessed, and all were anxious to see how bad or stupid their neighbors were.
"I shall send my friend who is an accountant to the agents," thought the peasant. "He can judge best the ownership, for he is intelligent, and nobody understands his office better than he."
The accountant went to the property where the swindlers sat, perused the paperwork and asked lots of questions. "Heaven preserve us!" he thought, and opened his eyes wide, "I cannot see any ownership at all," but he did not say so. Both swindlers requested him to come near, and asked him if he did not admire the exquisite deal they were offering, pointing to the paperwork on the desk. The accountant tried his very best, but he couldn't see it. "Oh dear," he thought, "can I be so stupid? I should never have thought so, and nobody must know it! Is it possible that I am irrational? No, no, I cannot say that I was unable to perceive the ownership."
"Now, have you got nothing to say?" said one of the swindlers, while he pretended to be busily punching numbers into his calculator.
"Oh, it is quite the deal," replied the accountant looking through his glasses. "To finally own real property! I shall tell my friend that I like the deal very much."
"We are pleased to hear that," said the two agents, and described to him in great detail the minutiae of property ownership. The accountant listened attentively, that he might relate to his friend
"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. " ---Henry David Thoreau
You don't own your land ever. Stop paying your (rent) property taxes to the government and you will find out how much that land is yours.
By not maintaining grass they are only worsening region's drough issues.
Importing water and evaporating it (which is what a lawn does) is an ineffective strategy in desert regions. The slightly more humid air will be blown away.
Besides the ocean is right next door in this case. Air humidity measured in g/m3 must be quite high, even though the relative humidity is low.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
There is no such thing as a reasonable request when someone is trying to force someone to make their own property appear the way YOU want it to. No, not even "no broken windows" or even "no purple 10-foot lawn gnomes".
Don't give me that filthy lie about how "wah, they lowered my precious property values!" can provide even the most remote excuse. You don't have a right to high property values. Period. And you know it.
You, and anyone else who is less than 100% against the city on this issue, are violently anti-freedom and cannot possibly die painfully enough or soon enough.
Discretion? By the very nature of the law it should be applied all of the time indiscriminately, anything else is corruption.
"property rights"? What property rights? I don't see any in the USA. When you pay property tax, it isn't yours anymore. You rent it.
and I can tell you all from personal, first-hand knowledge, that California, collectively and in general, has lost its goddamned marbles. This is exactly the kind of stupid shit that helped me conclude I should live somewhere not-foaming-at-the-mouth insane, and it's why I moved away, and why I will never move back. Should call it Crazyifornia. I know this sounds like a rant, but I can back this up. Ever heard of Proposition 65? For over a decade now, any business that uses ANY chemical or compound which is on this miles-long list of substances "known" to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defect, or other reproductive harm, has to post notices (known as Prop. 65 Warnings) in prominent locations around their businesses. So a restaurant which cleans its windows with an ammonia-based cleaner has to have a warning, same as the business which uses such things as hydrofluoric acid, 95% hydrogen peroxide, radioactive materials, etc. This is just GREAT, because those signs are EVERYWHERE and it does no good, because you can't tell from them which businesses are displaying the sign because of a single little bottle of blue cleanser, and which ones have 50 barrels of phosgene (COCl2) in the basement. This is but one of a hundred examples of Calinsanity. Sadly, I can't think of any viable solution to the problem.
And by trying to dictate that he have a conventional lawn, his neighbors (through the government) ignore that they are devaluing his property for his own use as well. The difference is he actually paid for his property and so has bought the moral right to maintain it in a way that makes sense for him. He appears to not be unsympathetic and has demonstrated a willingness to find a compromise. It seems that he is not the one being unreasonable.
The next time L.A. cries about water allocations, this should be trotted right out and they should be told to suck it up.
then any law which, when enforced, would have insane consequences (like this) must be abolished.
Let's try and tot up what would survive...
FGD 135
Plant Yucca. Nothing but big giant pointy nasty sharp Yucca plants. Bonus points for a Cactus or two. No water required and that 40% requirement will be a cinch to meet.
If I could, I'd astroturf my lawn.
A guy in a suburb of Sacramento (Natomas) did just that and had a better looking yard than many of his neighbors but the city cited him anyway.
"You [...] are violently anti-freedom and cannot possibly die painfully enough or soon enough."
I don't think you know what the word violently means.
You don't have a right to high property values, and they don't have a right to have flaming crosses on their lawns 24/7. That right is exactly as made up as the right to high property values. It turns out that the neighbourhood was set up with strings attached, and either you accepted those strings by moving in there (and thus have nobody to blame but yourself), or this came up after the fact and you didn't agree to it, in which case you probably do have some recourse to complain.
And actually, with broken windows, that actually is known to increase crime in the area. I *do* have the right to security of person.
By the way, I'm DEFINITELY against the city on this issue. But you can take it too far. It seems that a lot of people maintain a childish notion of what legal property rights are and won't let go of it in the face of overwhelming countervailing evidence. Note that I'm sure a good argument could be made that property rights should be different, I'm just complaining about what is.
After Somalia's former government collapsed, it didn't take long for warlords to consolidate power
sigh. You do realize that the worlds biggest warlord was behind the Somali gov "collapse" and for several years now has been illegally invading the country on the sly.
At first glance you may think that the US invasion will be a good thing for Somalia... but then the horrific details of the methods used might give pause to that romanticized "It'll be good for 'em" notion of war and invasion.
. Of course, It's all about oil, again. Won't someone invent a replacement already.
LA is solidly blue on a political demographic map. OC is bright red.
An infomercial to those inexperienced in USA politics: blue is to the left of red in the political palette (Democrats=blue vs. Republicans=red). And it's not because they place the communist party mirrored relative to the rest of the world ^_^
See also "Hey, it's the same guy controlling both the puppets!"
Laws made to that effect are either communist (enforcing a community good over personal freedom)
Just to clarify your definition of communism, then, I have a few questions.
I live in Denmark. As a consequence, I pay high taxes.
In return, I get free health, free tuition at universities, free public libraries, almost free public service television with no ads, welfare you can live on (if only barely) and a mythical free lunch ;)
Yes, I give up the personal freedom to spend my tax money the way I like. But in return, I get (more) healthy, educated and informed compatriots. This is a benefit to me, just as it's a benefit to my compatriots that their tax kroner was invested in my education---otherwise I might not have gotten it, but now that I have it I can return more tax money to the community pot.
Yes, the tax-paid benefits have their biggest effect on the recipients of those benefits; but the second-order effects are valuable to us all.
Is that communism? If so, I want more of that :-)
Discretion? By the very nature of the law it should be applied all of the time indiscriminately, anything else is corruption.
So the choice is between corruption and mindless stupidity? When a law clearly has harmful consequences, you should revise the law, not cling to it against all common sense.
Enforcing laws does require discretion and common sense. I think your attitude is exactly what's wrong here.
In the end, rules are meant to be broken. As long as you do it openly and for well-specified reasons, there's nothing wrong with it. (Then again, I'm Dutch, and we're famous for structurally and intentionally not enforcing our own laws. Pot is technically illegal here. Governments just decided not to enforce those laws in the case of pot.)
I agree with Sitting Bull on this. Nobody owns land. It belongs to everybody. When you use it, you rent it from the community.
Homeowners care about their neighbors' home values because they greatly affect their own home's value. If your neighbor turns his once nice yard into a horror, the appraised value of every home in the area will decrease. People who intend to live in their homes until they die care the least, and at the opposite end of the spectrum speculators have conniption fits.
You'd be amazed how much water people pour on their lawns in OC (where I currently live). It spills out onto the street in great floods when the sprinklers are going in some places - and they run them *every night*. Of course, we're in a desert here, so it makes sense if one must have a lawn - most of it evaporates in the daytime.
Therefore, the GP's assertion that no one in this area should have a lawn - why this isn't obvious to more people who live here, I don't know. Perhaps this case - if properly publicized - will get people to realize that. But who are we kidding? Most people in OC couldn't care less about anything, except their appearance to others - and a lush lawn is a big part of that, apparently.
Just a word of warning - native Australian plants are often highly flammable. Big, lush, high water gardens are reasonably fire protection. Gravel (or pretty stones) is better. (That's a little debatable, as greenery can shield a house as long as it doesn't ignite). Bamboo burns like the oversized grass it is.
Also, woodchip is dry wood. It's not remotely safe in a fire.
There are some hardy (but not flammable) plants that are good - some succulents will only burn if there's a blow torch on them, but be very picky with drought-resistant plants.
Also, avoid natural (uncleared) bush like the plague. A combination of trees, shrubs, and undergrowth can melt aluminum, especially if it's on a hill. It looks nice and environmental to be living amongst trees, but the environmental footprint is horrendous (they clear *how many* acres for their driveway?), and it's a deadly place to be if a fire starts. Imagine 10-20m flames from the natural bush, then think about the showers of embers (including burning branches carried in the fire-fueled tornado - yes, the energy from a fire can create a tornado).
I prefer to live in a low-impact cluster of cement boxes, and go to the bush when I want to enjoy it. Maybe when I have a family I'll look at something with a bit of a yard, but only one that's big enough to play in.
Outside the Anglo-Saxon world, liberal actually means right-wing. The economic and political doctrines are the same but the liberals don't care so much about religion and family values and advocate personal liberty on those matters.
And then there are the Communists, Socialists and Social Democrats that we consider left-wing, but those don't exist in the USA.
Since the Conservative Revolution in the 80s we've had most major political parties converting to liberalism in Europe. This means less regulations (for corporations), less taxation (for corporations), less government (translation: less social spending), privatisation of public services, etc.
In short, the common people pay more taxes and receive less from the State, the corporations and the ultra-rich are free to fuck everybody in the ass and make all the money they want.
Funny thing, everybody talks about the government expense these days. It's like the Devil itself. But the current free-market doctrine does nothing then making it worse and worse. As an example, the government builds a new public hospital, then gives it to a private corporation for management because "private is more efficient". The service is worse, the costs (supported by the State) are huge, but they move on as if this was a good idea. The same for everything you can imagine, from schools to public transportation, to roads. All the right wing pundits on TV and papers (they're all right wing, anyway) bitch and bitch and bitch about taxation and government spending, but they all defend this absurd model of the government handing millions to privates for (mis) managing public services and facilities. It's pretty clear to somebody owning a brain that this is a doomed model, but it's the standard in the Western world, nowadays.
Does /. now have a gardening section? How is this article news for nerds? Yes, I get there's a grasping at straws relationship to YRO -- but surely this is too far removed from nerd news even for that? Was it a virtual lawn? Did the lawn run linux? Was the lawn someone's overlord?
I'm surprised at kdawson, this looks more like the kind of crap article that samzenpus regularly inflicts on us.
sigh. You do realize that the worlds biggest warlord was behind the Somali gov "collapse"
I don't know if the nytimes.com is the world's biggest warlord. Sure, it's annoying to have to register to read the article, but warlord?
they were violating several city laws that require that 40% of residential yards to be landscaped predominantly with live plants.
Maybe theirs is one of the 60% that don't have to be landscaped with live plants.
"You can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them." [Condoleezza Rice]
That is so wrong for many reasons. Discretion in applying the law may result in corruption, but it is necessary for justice, and is built into the system.
Discretion is applied at all levels - from the policeman giving you a warning (you went through a red light in an empty intersection after a full stop but you are rushing to the hospital), to the prosecutor (yes, you bounced a check (a felony) but it was an accident and you made good on it right away), to the jury (I will not convict the white man for marrying a black woman no matter what the law says), to the judge (case dismissed or probation for a man who murdered his wife- they were both 90 and she had painful cancer and he failed when trying to commit suicide).
The no discretion, Zero Tolerance (zero intelligence) application often results in injustice.
I suspect that you mean that, despite it being my business, too bad. That's fine -- that's your opinion. That doesn't change the reality that many things that could happen on your property impact my quality of life.
American (and, I suspect, Western) law has a long history of recognizing the impact we have on each other with respect to property. It's not just zoning laws, which limit everything from the shape of the building to where it's located on the property to what uses are permitted on the property and inside the building. Building codes require your building to meet standards with respect to safety, energy, accessibility, etc. Environmental laws prohibit certain dumping and other activities on your property, as do agricultural laws. Other laws prevent you from prohibiting for-profit companies (aka utilities) from seizing parts of your land above or below ground for their benefit. Still other laws can force you to sell your land to the government without your consent. Naturally, you're not free to do certain things to other animals, humans included, just because it's on your property -- even with their human adult sober consent. Heck, in most places you're not even allowed to be naked on your property if visible from the street.
Your property is not a sovereign land -- it's part of a larger community and jurisdiction.
Here's the thing: if you don't like the law, lobby to get it changed. Changing local law isn't hard. You've got to learn about the law, learn why somebodies thought it was a good idea in the first place, and then rally for support for the change. It takes work, but it isn't hard.
You can either throw your rant on slashdot, even though your extreme property rights viewpoint doesn't mesh with the vast majority of property owners or citizens in the western world, or you can find a specific law that you think is unjust and go out and get popular support for changing it. Me: I'm doing the latter, as I'm interested in reducing the minimum parking lot requirements in my town (eliminating the requirements aren't going to happen anytime soon, so I'll work on making things better even if the end result still isn't as perfect as I'd like).
P.S. Your "beef" is that the public doesn't vote on every law directly? Are you kidding? Welcome, welcome to American government at all levels, for the past 200+ years. Hint: politicians like being elected. If you want the law changed, make it clear to them that voters want the law changed. If the politicians don't change the law, change the politicians. That may be hard on a national level, but it's wonderfully easy on a local level.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Whatever the silly laws say, you should NOT be entitled to keeping or increasing value of your property. Others may not damage or steal your property, but the value of your property should be totally your problem.
In the end, rules are meant to be broken.
Rules aren't created for the sole purpose of being destroyed (like crash test dummies or firearms targets). Rules are meant to be followed. Breaking them sometimes makes sense if the rules are written poorly. Creating laws with an intent to enforce them randomly invites corruption on the part of the state (they can supress one class of people or specific people), and invites disregard for law and society in citizens. Observe U.S. traffic patterns for an example: driving 10-15 miles per hour over the speed limit is common, even in 15/20/30mph zones.
I also live in VA and the mandating of lawn mowing is for safety. It's tough seeing a Copperhead or other poisonous snake when you can't see the ground. You didn't have that problem in Maine because there are no poisonous snakes in Maine.
3 TONS of water. For one house. No wonder the US uses close to 10 times the amount of resources of decent human beings.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
From an outsider's perspective I would diagnose the problem somewhat differently. It's paradoxical, the US is in many way under-regulated (eg. the banking system, consumer protection etc), yet on the other hand there are numerous examples of regulation like this.
On this particular issue, I think it's worth mentioning that regulation doesn't inherently do certain things. For example, US banks were required to make a certain amount of loans based on ethnicity (I don't know much about it except it's generally not considered a significant contributor to the recent banking collapse). They're also required to report all money transfers near or over $10,000. These regulations don't help make banking a sounder industry.
Your words imply that one needs merely to add regulation. I'm just pointing out that one can add regulation generously and not improve (perhaps even make the problem worse!) the situation.
Consumer protection seems quite adequate in the US. Sure, maybe idiots aren't sufficiently protected from the consequences of their actions, but you'd improve that by regulating the idiots not the producers.
But I don't think the problem is with the actual regulation. To me there seems a dangerous lack of discretion on the part of administrators, as to when laws ought, and more importantly, ought not to be applied.
I see a lot of discussion on the "need" for discretion. But as another replier notes, administrators should not have discretion. There is a saying here, "the US is a nation of laws not men" (see here for the orginal use). The meaning is that laws should be consistently and fairly applied else it is an avenue for tyranny. The discretion to apply law means that law enforcement can be selectively applied to political opponents, people who refuse to pay bribes/extortion, or other undesirables. Certain parties have to keep their activities scrupulously clean while others can be far more lax in their observance of law. This is the result of discretion and why it is considered an avenue for corruption.
It is as if the mere fact that something breaches an ordinance justifies taking action against that breach, or the mere fact that a crime has been committed means that someone ought to be charged. Or perhaps it is only that failures of discretion, such as in the present case, which are newsworthy.
Yes. That is exactly how it should be. It doesn't make sense to leave enforcement of an ordinance or criminal code up to the discretion of some agency or official with their own interests.
That's a long, well thought out reply for not reading the article.
They don't have a dead, ugly lawn. They removed the lawn and added plants that don't need a lot of water. You know, the kind of stuff that naturally belongs in California. The city IS coming after them for not making it a lush, green, expensive and environmentally negative artificial oasis.
Yes, and in the case of speed limits I would argue that the rules themselves are broken and in need of being fixed to match real world driving patterns. If enforcing a law requires that a majority of the citizens be prosecuted, then something is wrong with the law itself.
All those evil bankers were motivated by a quick payoff that was enabled by not owning the loans anymore.
Racist nonsense really has nothing to do with it.
The financial crisis was caused by bankers being insulated from the consequences of their actions.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> What makes you think the price you paid for the property included those rights?
The property is in the United States of America.
It's time to stop all of this HOA and similar nonsense.
It doesn't actually do anything positive. All it does is prevent those in the neighborhood with any clue or taste from improving their property. Ultimately you're saddled with BS restrictions that don't do anything productive. They have no impact on property values and actually make the neighborhood uglier and look more "manufactured".
"Borgville" doesn't enhance property values. Out of state real estate speculators do.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
what a contrived story - you have a couple valid points but your property tax amount is ludicrously above any real property tax.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I don't really want to get into a global warming debate; but there is a distinction:
Certain things that I might do affect your property. If I start Fuzzyfuzzyfungus' Quality Mycotoxin Smelter(come to us for all your cyberpunk vengance needs!) next to your house, your property will be directly affected. Within a few years, your kids will have some exotic flavor of cancer, and EPA dudes in moonsuits will be scraping off your topsoil for incineration. I am causing your property(and, in this example, you) direct damage for fun and/or profit. It isn't really different, ethically speaking, than my breaking into your store and stealing or smashing your merchandise.
Other things that I might do affect your property value. If my taste in yard decoration runs toward bestiality-themed lawn gnomes, the market value of your property will likely fall substantially; but I will not have altered your property itself one iota. Here I am doing you no direct harm, I'm just altering market conditions in a way that happens to reduce the value of your holdings. The analogy would be my introducing a new product X that is shinier and cooler than your product Y, forcing you to liquidate your stock on Woot.com at a substantial loss.
The forecast effects of global warming pretty much fall into the first category. If sea levels rise and your beachfront property becomes a tidal marsh, your property has been directly affected. If changes in precipitation patterns turn your farm into a dust bowl, you've been directly affected.
Now, in practice, this sharp distinction is not nearly as useful as it sounds. Indirect damage hurts, just like direct damage does, and(in the vast majority of cases) people set up society in part to ensure at least some measure of security for themselves. Being vulnerable to substantial indirect harm at the drop of a hat is a form of insecurity. For this reason, virtually all societies regulate indirect harm to some degree(either through law, social convention, or both). However, while it increases personal security, regulation of indirect harm is a direct attack on property rights and(all too frequently) can take the form of anticompetitive pro-incumbent measures.
(Incidentally, this is the part of libertarianism that I find deeply problematic on a theoretical level, and the thing that has caused me to be a great deal more skeptical of it than I used to be. The notion that the state should exist merely to protect its members from aggression against their persons and property by others sounds really simple and elegant. However, because of this uneasy matter of direct and indirect harms, as well as direct and indirect bonuses which are equally tricky though probably not as morally urgent, it gets really hairy in practice. Does the state protect only against direct harm? Are there any indirect harms sufficiently harmful that the state should protect me from them? If so, what criterion is used to distinguish them? Are there any direct harms modest enough that I don't need the consent of everyone affected in order to inflict them? If so, where and how do you draw the line? If not, how "free" can I be when I'm not allowed to make any noise that travels off my property without the express consent of anybody whose sleep might be disturbed by it? That would be pretty onerous. In the end, while libertarian ideals are a valuable protection against certain obvious abuses, I'm not sure that they actually tell you anything useful about all these little edge cases, and the edge cases are where most of life occurs. In practice, you pretty much fall back on a mixture of tradition, "common sense", and majoritarian standards setting, whether it be through a public sector mechanism like zoning, or a private sector mechanism like HOAs.)
This sounds like turning government into a giant game of flux, which is great until someone plays the "pass all bills" card.
You must hate it when highway patrol lets you off with a warning.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Are you insane?
I'll be shortly "buying" a house myself. The monthly cost of the property tax on it is equal to 80-90% of the monthly cost of the mortgage! Property tax is practically DOUBLING my monthly out-of-pocket expense for "owning" the home. If anything, the GP's property tax amount is too low to reflect reality in many places!
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Discretion? By the very nature of the law it should be applied all of the time indiscriminately, anything else is corruption.
I must applaud the genius of Gary Gygax and Dave Aronson who has the insight to place Good vs. Evil perpendicular to Law vs Chaos on the alignment charts. It gives you the kind of mental flexibility to realize that there can be good corruption and bad corruption. Looking the other way to save hundreds of thousands of gallons of water during a drought falls under Chaotic Good, in my book.
to the jury (I will not convict the white man for marrying a black woman no matter what the law says),
That's called Jury nullification, and jurors are rarely informed of their right not to convict. I've read about an instance or two where judges specifically inform juries that they cannot do this (although this is really, really illegal)
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Damnit! You KIDS GET OFF MY... I mean THE GOVERNMENTS LAWN!
then any law which, when enforced, would have insane consequences (like this) must be abolished.
No, any law which, when enforced, would have insane consequences, should be fixed. Most laws really do have good intentions. (I'm sure you'll disagree with this but you'll be wrong.) The problem is that those who draft the words of the laws are often insufficiently intelligent or learned to be able to envision consequences such as this. That is why there is this concept called a "revision."
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
The US is so far down the track towards autocracy that warning about the dangers of too weak a government is like warning a man who is dying from dehydration in the desert of the dangers of drowning if he's not careful when approaching an oasis.
You realize "autocracy" means one person has all the power, right? In what parallel universe does the congress, courts and the voluntary military cede all of their power to (presumably) President Obama? Did you mean "authoritarian"? That's were the govt ignores the will of the general public and does whatever it wants. If so, I would suggest that you don't really understand US politics. Our biggest problem right now is that politicians are far too responsive to the whims of the people. To wit, the Dems were riding high last year, but descended into a state of self-destructive panic after a single special election that didn't go their way.
And how does this compare to an actual authoritarian govt like China or Russia? People are regularly beaten, arrested and never heard from again (and that's just for sending emails calling for democracy). In Russia, journalists are publicly assassinated for exposing govt misconduct/corruption. By contrast, last August people in the US were carrying automatic weapons and burning the president in effigy outside - of all things - town hall meetings about healthcare reform. And what was the govt reaction? Nothing. And rightly so. (Though I don't agree with allowing people to wield assault weapons anywhere but in the armed services).
I would suggest that you have a look at what the world is really like before you puff up your chest and spout ignorant nonsense.
There are less than 10 deaths a year in the US from snake bites; frankly that seems a little hysterical to me. You're probably more likely to die in some kind of freak lawnmower accident.
When you pay property tax, it isn't yours anymore. You rent it.
Ridiculous. Somebody has to pay for the services that maintain your rights as a property owner -- things like police, fire, courts, etc. Property ownership does not exist in a vacuum, and somebody has to pay for those most basic social services. Thus, property tax.
Your argument is as ludicrous as suggesting that you don't own your car because you have to pay to put gas in it.
-- Old Man Kensey
What on earth makes you think it would be about YOU getting money from the oil? Are you in power? Do you have the authority to trump up excuses and start wars? Didn't think so.
The United States didn't go to war, people in the United States government sent the United States to war, those people profited to the tune of billions from the economic implications of the Iraq war.
You as a citizen of the United States didn't get any oil, you weren't supposed to. You were supposed to pay more for oil because of the instability in the large oil producing regions of the world. Of course the oil you paid a higher price for didn't come from said unstable regions so it simply garnered a higher profit.
People who benefited from the Iraq war include soldiers (lots of soldier/mercenary pay and spoils), U.S. contractors (we used Iraqi oil to pay U.S. contractors rather than Iraqi's to rebuild Iraq) and their employees, Defense contractors and their employees, and anybody who has a stake in oil produced anywhere other than Iraq.
Biggest losers? Iraq of course, european nations that had previously been purchasing oil from Iraq like France, and the people of the United States who aren't in one of the previously mentioned groups.
You didn't look at the picture in the article did you?
They have a big dead lawn with 6 plants planted between a fence and the sidewalk. It's the most god awfull thing I've ever seen and I'm a HUGE fan of Xeroscaping. They didn't Xeroscape, they let the lawn die then planted half a dozen plants along the sidewalk, in fact the bare dirt behind the fence is going to be a dust hazzard in the summer. They could have easily Xeroscaped and hit the 40% plant rule. Try opening the article and looking at the picture.
the coalition and the northern sector were filled Islamists with al Quada ties. Funny you didn't mention that.
Yes he/she did. The Independent references that angle extensively. The references also happen to mention the relative stability Somalia enjoyed under Islamic rule just before the 2006 invasion - something that you seem to selectively ignore to support your point... whatever your point is by the way - it is not clear. You seem to be saying that Somalia is better off for being invaded. I am sorry, you haven't convince me. Every reference from Amnesty down to the GP's post all point to pretty convincing evidence that Somalia is now a "catastrophe" zone, genocide you name it - because of the US backed invasion. Even the US admitted as much (From the GP's reference):
In a rare moment of candour earlier last year, the US special envoy to Somalia, John Yates, admitted to fellow diplomats that their strategy had failed. "We set the agenda and then we lost control," he said. One diplomat present at the meeting said the US was finally beginning to realise that the insurgents were winning.
If you know they are all lying, your point would be better supported if you referenced something a little more authoritative than just yourself.