I am writing in response to Zoecarnate's Blog
Obama’s Public Works & The New Secretary of Agriculture: Your Voice Matters!I have come across a book that addresses some of these points.
Saving Our Environment from Washington by David Schoenbrod
The top down dreams of the elitist establishment (left and right) are not only arrogant but ill informed. It is the job of the legislature to legislate and the people to hire and fire them. We don't need any more of this two party dictatorship; instead we need to treat our citizens like adults. Pollution can largely be controlled through current property laws and local government. We would not have such asinine practices, such as simply building longer smoke stacks (which cause acid rain and cause “interstate” pollution—which the fed should do something about but uses the EPA as a scapegoat to avoid responsibility—instead of intrastate pollution.). Congress would have regulatory authority over such matters that national power is necessary and there would be clear records as to what their votes are while their feet would be held to the fire.
Also, ever wonder why they don’t use normal sugar in anything anymore? It is because of those subsidized mega farmers that grow corn. Salt of the earth farmers don’t get that kind of help. Maximize the productivity of the farms of the world and let the market regulate who gets the money instead of these corrupt, power hungry “servants of the people”.
As for homeland security and our much loved imperial culture I must concede to Thomas Paine (even though at this point it looks as though we have less taste for liberty than his crumbled examples did). “The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind.”
I am excited about the beltline project but hope that the funding remains private and local. I wouldn’t want to be beholden to the Chicago machine or any other that happens to be running the Washington one later. Our Constitution should be {and is} based on negative laws not positive ones. In the words of Alexis de Tocqueville,
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money”
and
“A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.”
