THE LATEST PROJECT OF THE ELITE

The Sunday edition of the Press published an essay by Susan Lovell.  Ms. Lovell works with local rich guy and environmentalist Peter Wege.  (You might remember that Wege pulled out of the Clearwater Plaza deal pitched by the Global Enterprise for Water Technologies after its contamination by Berkey & Gay waste became public.)  In her essay she scolded those who oppose using taxpayer dollars to fund “Purchase of Development Rights” deals in Kent County.

A PDR is a transaction in which the Kent County Farm Preservation Board buys the development rights of a farmer’s land for $4,000 an acre.  The farmer pockets the cash and then either keeps farming the land or lets it goes untended back to nature.  Or he can sell his land or pass it on to heirs, who can either farm it or let it go wild.  However, none of them can develop the land for residential, commercial, or industrial use, because the preservation board has purchased those rights.  The purpose of a PDR program is to stop dead in tracks any further suburban development in Kent County.

Fortunately, the Kent County Board of Commissioners has refused to fund PDR deals with taxpayer dollars.  (Unfortunately, our federal tax dollars are still going into this program.)  Ms. Lovell continues to express her disgust with the commissioners, because she deems any suburban development of farmland as “urban sprawl”.  (A nicely loaded term to vilify what a working stiff does when builds a ranch house on an acre or two in the sticks.)  She believes that everyone except farmers ought to remain packed in our cities instead of having the opportunity to buy a modest home out in the country.  She has no sympathy for the fact that taxpayers would be forced to pay for land they cannot have any access to, either directly or through their government.  The property remains in private hands.  Disingenuously, she argues that would be the same result if a private developer bought a farmer’s land to build a subdivision.  Sure, except that the developer is using his own money, not ours.

Furthermore, Ms. Lovell argues that taxpayers then have to pay for new roads, sewers, schools, etc., to support new subdivisions which they wouldn’t if they funded a PDR instead.  Well, yeah, except that the taxpayers must pay for these things whether inside or outside the city, and besides they get to use this public infrastructure.  This is not true of the PDR’s that Ms. Lovell would force them to buy.  The taxpayers can’t develop the land – despite having paid for the very right to do so.  Indeed, they cannot even use it.  The farmer they paid $4,000 an acre gets to keep using the land for his own personal benefit.  The taxpayers get nothing for their money.  Nothing!  Ms. Lovell no doubt believes that the taxpayers get some sort of intangible benefit from all the farmland that would forever be locked up from development, but exactly what is not clear.  After all, any attempt by a taxpayer to enjoy in any concrete way this allegedly precious open space he was forced to purchase would likely be met with a backside full of buckshot from the farmer.

Ms. Lovell then indulges in the scaremongering that has become of hallmark of the environmentalist crowd:  “We all suffer the environmental and social damage of urban sprawl.  More traffic, more asphalt, more polluted air, more dirty water.  This push farther out of the city leaves behind lower-income households, meaning fewer tax dollars to fund the city’s schools and fewer students to attend them.”  Of course, facts don’t matter in an environmentalist crusade.  The population of the City of Grand Rapids has increased at the same time more people have moved out into suburbia.  The reason the city’s school district loses students is because of competition from suburban districts, charter schools, and parochial schools.  Moreover, after four decades of suburban development perhaps an area equivalent to six townships in Kent County are urban or suburban in character.  That leaves three-quarters of the county as farmland and wilderness!  Ms. Lovell is playing Chicken Little.

In short, Ms. Lovell is a member of the elite who has decided for the rest of us how we should live, what we should or should not like, and how we should enjoy “open spaces” that would actually be closed to us.  Plainly she is unhappy that people of modest means have, in increasing numbers, been able to buy a couple of acres of countryside to raise a family or enjoy a peaceful retirement.  She doesn’t like the fact that not all of us are happy to be city-dwellers under increasingly mismanaged governments, excessive taxes, brutal crime, and rotten schools.  (Living in Heritage Hill, I obviously revel in the urban rot and decay around me, but I unlike Ms. Lovell don’t expect everyone else to share my tastes.)  It takes a certain arrogance for a person to think that her particular choices should be mandated by the force of law.  Six decades ago, F.A. Hayek in his seminal book “The Road to Serfdom” explained that arrogance well by describing the tyranny and folly of central planners.  If Ms. Lovell wants to persuade people to voluntarily contribute to her cause, great –- but leave the rest of us out of the plan.

Oh, by the way, Ms. Lovell doesn’t live in the city.  She resides in Grand Rapids Township.  ‘Nuff said.

Comments

[Steve Smith]

Let us see what the crystal ball tells us of our future... I see a vast metropolis, tall skyscrapers,a Jetsonesque light rail system... why, this must be Kent County 100 years from now... let's fly over... oh, look, right in the middle of a high rise district that used to be Alpine township, there's a .. a.. a FARM! Looking for all the world like Central Park ringed by tony apartment buildings, this is the home of the 12th generation of the Dinkelhoffer family, who live in simple harmony with nature on the most valuable real estate in notoriously overcrowded Kent County... just think, it says "forever"...

[Steve Goulet]

You state that Susan "believes that everyone except farmers ought to remain packed in our cities instead of having the opportunity to buy a modest home out in the country." Did she state that somewhere? Do you have a link? My guess is that she would limit sprawl but not eliminate suburbia entirely.

The tone of your posting makes me wonder what you are thinking about her motivations. Is she an evil person out to punish suburbanites? Would you characterize all wealthy environmentalists as arrogant and elite?

I disagree with your statement that "facts don't matter in the environmentalist crusade". The environmental movement is based on scientific consensus building and it's not a religion. I would welcome a debate on the facts regarding this issue, and I do appreciate the factual information that was provided in your posting. But the name calling and hyperbole I could do without.

I think it's disingenuous when you pretend that the suburban boom hasn't hurt the GR public schools. Are you serious? Again, I would welcome a debate on the facts surrounding this issue.

Sprawl may become a huge problem if gas prices continue to rise and global warming disrupts our food supply. The debate over these possibilities is not a crusade, it is a serious responsibility we all share.

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Steve S.

That was good for a belly laugh. Thanks.

Regards, Bill

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Steve G.

I didn't call Ms. Lovell evil. I did call her arrogant for good reason. She vilifies suburban development as "urban sprawl" without any consideration of the beneficiaries of that development who are for the most part ordinary people who want a better life for their families than they can find in urban centers like Grand Rapids. I find it obnoxious, to say least, that a person who now has her nice patch outside the city would begrudge others the same.

And we must disagree about the nature of the environmentalist movement. Science has little to do with it and a misanthropic social agenda has most everything to do it. The fraud and propaganda surrounding the global warming scare is an excellent example of this. Conservation is a worthy pursuit. Environmentalism is the ideological corruption of it.

And please do not accuse of me of dishonesty because you disagree with me, Steve. The growth in suburban Grand Rapids has nothing to do with the decline of the Grand Rapids public schools. The population of the city has actually increased to over 200,000. There are more children in the city than before the suburban boom began.

So there is a reason other than suburbia for the failure of the city schools to retain students. Indeed, the continuing outflow of students to other districts is a sympton of the failure, not the cause of it. The real cause is the stranglehold special interests have on the public schools. It is their interests and not the students' that come first, and this overly bureaucratic and regulated system has evolved over the years to comply with the demands of those who have the power, starting with the teacher unions.

The bottom line to all this is that Ms. Lovell advocates taking the hard-earned dollars of taxpayers to buy from private parties a land use right that the taxpayers can neither use or obtain any benefit from -- and she advocates it for no other reason than her preference for how land should be used in Kent County. Frankly, I don't think that is her decision to make and it demonstrates a lust for power that she wants to make it for all of us.

Regards, Bill

[Steve Goulet]

I am sorry if it came off that way, but I did not mean to accuse you of dishonesty. My use of the word "disingenuous" was meant to be synonymous with "insincere". I doubt that many thoughtful souls will take you seriously when you assert that the suburbs haven't hurt GR schools via white flight and per pupil budget reductions. You state a list of "real causes", but those same causes exist in the suburbs while suburban public schools are exploding in size and numbers, and doing well academically.

However, I do agree that Ms. Lovell is on thin ice as a resident of GR Township trying to promote the reduction of sprawl.

You say that the global warming scare is an excellent example of the fraud and propaganda surrounding the environmental movement. It would not be easy to debunk the global consensus of climatologists and scientists who have overwhelmingly endorsed the reality of anthropomorphic global warming. Are you relying on any particular source of information to back up your claim? Hopefully not Rush Limbaugh ;)

Even Gregg Easterbrook is admitting now that global warming is real given the latest round of data: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,197070,00.html

[The Executive Director]

Steve,

Insincerity is a form of dishonesty, so I don't know where you are going with that, but I'll let it pass because you are generally thoughtful in your remarks.

I am a bit surprised that your attribute the decline of Grand Rapids public schools to "white flight". Have you thought through the implications of that statement? If you really believe the absence of white students in city schools is why they do not perform well, what are you saying about the children of color who now composed most of the student population?

Let me be clear, Steve, I don't think you're a bigot. I don't think you intended to say anything bigoted. I think your concern for the students in our rotten city schools is sincere. I do think you haven't considered what you are saying, however.

As for "anthropomorphic global warming", there is absolutely no scientific evidence for it. You are wrong that climatologists have "overwhelmingly" endorsed the idea. The popular media only runs the scaremongering reports. You need to look at the scientific literature to see that there is a deep split among climatologists, and that split correlates with who is after government funding of their work and who isn't.

Plus you need to read the UN's IPCC reports carefully. Even the climatologists who have agreed to propagandize global warming for the UN hem and haw about the reliability of evidence linking global warming (assuming that it is actually occurring) with human activity.

Furthermore, there is some commonsense that needs to be applied. For example, during the Medieval Climate Optimum it was warmer then than it is now. In fact, tree rings and sediment sampling show there is a six-century cycle of warming and cooling since the last ice age. Since the early nineteenth century we have been pulling out of a fairly severe cool period, even though over the past six decades that rate of warming has decreased or even stopped in many areas. (And this is contrary to the rapid industrialization that has occurred throughout the world since then.)

The fact is that the Earth has rhythym to it, and all of the climate changes we have measured are well within the range that is natural to our planet.

Regards, Bill

[Steve Goulet]

Maybe the words "white flight" mean more than I am aware, but I was only pointing out the pain of declining enrollment in the GR city school districts due to white flight to the suburbs, and I was not implying that the quality of those students is any different than their counterparts. Thank you for not painting my statement as racist.

Here is a chart of global temperatures including the period known as the Medieval Climate Optimum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

Looks like we've pretty much blown right past that anamoly, just as scientists predicted we would. Do you think it's coincidence that CO2 has risen dramatically, which climatologists have warned would cause warming, and at the same time temperatures have risen in parallel? This chart shows the CO2 levels over time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png

But you're right, there is a deep split between climatologists. The 10% who aren't convinced of anthropomorphic global warming are typically given equal weight in most main stream media portrayals to the 90% who are. If creationists and evolutionists were given the same treatment we'd still be arguing whether or not the earth is 4,000 years old.

[The Executive Director]

Steve, Steve, Steve!

The Wikipedia is unreviewed. Anyone with an agenda can post an article on it. The principle behind it is that the battle of ideas will sort out the truth. Maybe so, but it puts the onus upon the reader to think critically about what has been posted.

For example, take the CO2 chart. Let's assume it's accurate. Because it is so coarse, what it doesn't show is that most of the spike upward has occurred during the past fifty years. However, most of the increase in temperature that is cited as evidence of human-induced global warming occurred prior to that. So where is the cause and effect?

As for the temperature chart, the compiler makes no statement as to the accuracy of any of the figures he used. Indeed, only one study shows current temperatures to be significantly higher than the Medieval Climate Optimum, and what basis is there for relying upon that? And once again, the chart is too coarse to show that rate of increase has slowed and even leveled out during the past half-century.

Moreover, any statistician will tell you that extrapolating temperatures a century out from only century's worth of reliable data (and in most places, much less than that -- for example, over the open ocean for which we have had no data until satellite coverage started a couple decades ago) yields rubbish. Generally, a statistically valid estimate requires six points of data for every point to be predicted. In other words, a forecast a century from now needs six centuries of data. So what global warming warnings amount to is garbage-in, garbage-out.

Furthermore, we can't even assume the methodology of the modeling is sound. Studies of the computer models used to produce these scaremongering predictions consistently fail by a wide mark to reproduce the actual historical temperature record let alone other meteorological data like rainfall and cloud cover.

The fact is the weather is far too complex for us to model accurately. That's why forecasts more than a few days out are next to worthless. The standard unit of area the National Weather Service uses to average out atmospheric data to make its forecasts is the size of Kansas! Talk about crude, and the climate models used for global warming predictions are even cruder.

Regards, Bill