Obama’s War on the Suburbs
July 27th, 2012 - 12:28 pm
As I say, Kurtz’s argument is depressing. It is also infuriating. No one who reads this passionate and well-argued book would even dream of voting for Barack Obama. Which is one reason why everyone who has the franchise should read it.
ALSO READ:
Barack Obama’s Marxist Ghosts of Christmas Past
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Suburbs are produced by the tastes and aspirations of millions of insignificant little people with paltry ambitions. Intellectuals are always drawn to grand ambitions, comprehensive plans, and Big Ideas. Politicians with a taste for power like that sort of thing as well. And there is an element among the bourgeoisie who like the urban scene, dislike suburban life and harbor an unspoken conviction that everyone should live the way they do.
Mr. Fray
“Intellectuals,” such as yourself, are always drunk on their destorted sense of what’s best for others – thinking they can’t possibly know how to live their lives, so it must be left to the “intellectual” (such as you see yourself)to show the “millions of insignificant little people” with their “paltry ambitions” the way forward.
Steve – I think John was being sarcastic … read the post a little more carefully
Steve, I think John Frary’s post was intended as sarcasm. He’s projecting how the Left sees us: interchangable parts in flyover country, whose sole purpose is to labor so that the pseudo-intellectuals can enjoy a subsidized fancy lifestyle in an urban cocoon where they never run the risk of being exposed to any ideas besides their own. As such, John hit it on the nose. It’s been a long-time dream of the Left to confine the bulk of the population to very small, ultra-high-density population centers, which would make it much easier to suppress dissent. If a group of peasants starts getting uppity ideas about individual liberty, just bomb or burn them out. Problem solved. The Left thought they were going to accomplish this after WWII, but then Levittown happened. That’s why suburbs piss them off so much.
Actually, Steve, I think Frary was criticizing the mindset that produces anti-suburbanites.
Learn to infer tone before you make an yourself look like a dunce.
Well… … … not always unspoken.
People who are herded into concentration camps (oh, I mean cities) are easier to control……..
I am confused. Don’t you proofread before you publish?
How exactly does one “move to a suburban” except if one is starting to live in one’s car?
Similarly, “Moving to a suburban in pursuit of the American dream” makes no sense, unless your American Dream is to take up residence in an SUV.
Stuff like that makes it hard to read, and undermines the thrust of the otherwise important message.
Actually, it doesn’t make it hard to read, nor does it undermine the message. Getting fixated on insignificant details and missing the bigger picture is a failing of the reader, not the writer.
Also a failing of the voter, but that’s another story.
Sitting and carping rather than shouldering a share of the load is a sin that traditional America has too often indulged in. It absolves the carper from putting out any effort if the project is “hopelessly” flawed. Goodness, Roger can’t even keep “suburb” and “suburban” straight! Well, I guess I’ll sit on my duff for a while longer until someone more perfect comes along.
Get up. Get to work. Quit waiting for perfection.
An example of the ObaMaoGabe / Holder Ministry of Selective Social Justice in action – A Milwaukee suburb was forced by the feds to build down-scale apartments. Lowering property values? Boosting crime rates? A feature, not a bug!
http://www.newberlinnow.com/news/new-berlin-takes-another-fair-step-toward-affordable-housing-1n63k0s-162626626.html
In this one instance I mostly agree with Obama. He was not forcing the community to build low icome housing, he was stopping the community from forcing developers NOT to build low income housing. I dont like the extreme zoning regulations too many of these suburban communities adopt. Its like I got mine, and we dont want any of THOSE people here now do we. Of course on this front leftist communities are often the worst offenders, with places in CA and NYC with sky high property values, that wont allow high density housing, creating a situation where the people that serve the rich cant afford to live near them. I say if I can afford to buy a piece of land, then unless my plans are so extreme as to purposely constitute a nuisance, like wanting to build a pig feedlot in an urban area, I should be able to build what I wish on my own property. This “preserve my property values” stuff is basically a form of rent seeking, with present residents screwing future residents.
I assume John Frary is being ironic, considering the suburbs produced many of our ambitious baby boomer heroes (Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg, the band Rush).
I live in a suburb because I want to. I would live in the city if I wanted to. Isn’t that what it’s all about?
You could see it coming with Obama’s advocation of putting coal companies out of business, higher energy costs, mass transit and small car fixation combined with his propensity to live large at the taxpayer expense. I believe the economist Peter Morinci commented a year ago or so that pushing people into urban settings, etc. was the end goal of this political philosophy.
It is by the good will and faith of the American people that it is happening; a taken for granted worldview that no one can mess up America to where they have no choices to live where and how they would like with relatively little government interference. Large companies are a part of the equation also. Buffett and fellow travelers (like insurance and pharm involved in supporting Obamacare) are as much at fault in the current government policies. Buffett should have to defend what is going on in America. As the old wise sage, he was instrumental in giving Obama economic credibility.
Where do these people get their food and energy. ??? That’s right…. From the suburbs and the country. Idiot elitists
Wolverines!
Better to go Galt. John Galt.
21 Truths About Agenda 21 & Sustainable Development
1) From the largest metropolitan cities to the smallest towns of Main Street America, communities all across our nation are being influenced with a new political philosophy known as Sustainable Development and its primary framework for implementation called Agenda 21.
2) Agenda 21 is the global blueprint of implementation for Sustainable Development devised by the United Nations and was signed by 178 world leaders at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992.
3) Sustainable Development and Agenda 21 call for a complete re-orientation of the world system of governance in every area in which human impacts on the environment.
4) Sustainable Development, like Communism or Fascism, is a doctrine or philosophy of governance complete with its own agenda, beliefs, and goals.
5) On June 29th, 1993 President Clinton signed Executive Order 12852 creating The President’s Council on Sustainable Development. This step began the full-scale implementation of Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development within the United States of America.
6) Sustainable Development is entrenched throughout our government at every level from federal, state and regional agencies to county, city and community councils and planning boards.
7) Sustainable Development or “Sustainability” is often promoted with the environmental message of “going green”, or “being a good steward” but in reality there is actually a much, much deeper political philosophy of control and governance at work.
8) Sustainable Development is a political philosophy that is built upon three pillars. These three pillars are known as the “3E’s”, or “the triple bottom line”. The three pillars of sustainable development are Ecological Integrity, Economic Prosperity and Social Equity.
9) Sustainable Development demands that the perfect balance of “the triple bottom line” be the deciding lens through which all community development, growth, and decisions are viewed. All growth which fails to achieve this perfect balance is considered unsustainable.
10) Communities are being drawn down the path of Sustainable Development by the lure of numerous monetary grants and incentives from state and federal government agencies as well as non-governmental organizations.
11) Sustainable Development views traditional capitalism and the American way of life as a failing and inequitable system that must be replaced with a new governance system in order to achieve sustainability and a just world.
12) An overwhelming number of businesses and corporations have began shifting to a Sustainable Development operational model and in so doing have rejected the traditional “bottom line” of American Capitalism replacing it with the “triple bottom line” of United Nations Sustainable Development.
13) Almost every College and University in the nation has become indoctrinated with the philosophy of Sustainable Development. From campus infrastructure and administration to student life and the curriculum America’s Colleges and Universities are awash in this radical, collectivist philosophy.
14) The philosophy of Sustainable Development calls for a complete change in the lifestyle of the average American citizen. Numerous aspects of normal American life are subject to intense scrutiny under this radical new philosophy. Where and how we build our homes, what products we use, which foods we eat, what and how much we consume, and which methods of transportation we choose, are just a few examples of American life that United Nations Sustainable Development seeks to bring under its controlling grasp.
15) Sustainable Development and Agenda 21 promote a paradigm shift in attitudes away from the norm of national borders and individual nation-states toward a globalist, collective, one-world, interdependent, and interconnected planetary mindset.
16) Sustainable Development philosophy teaches that mankind is living beyond the “carrying capacity” of the Earth and that we are in the midst of multiple crises that are converging to create conditions that are not livable unless they are halted by a rapid global transition to a sustainable development system. Some of these perceived crises include overpopulation, global poverty and wealth inequality, manmade global climate change, and rampant environmental destruction.
17) Across our nation numerous communities of all sizes are putting into place the radical policies of Sustainable Development and United Nations Agenda 21. From new comprehensive land use plans, to smart growth, and sustainable community planning, the ideas and infrastructure of Sustainable Development are being implemented and added to daily.
18) The policies of sustainable development and Agenda 21 seek to change the way people live and build their cities and towns. Sustainable Development promotes high density, urban, pedestrian oriented, low carbon, walkable communities and discourages traditional American automobile usage, suburban lifestyles and development.
19) The Sustainable Development philosophy perceives the automobile and the ongoing use of fossil fuels as unsustainable.
20) In addition to the high level efforts within the United Nations and other similar globalist organizations, much of the work in promotion of Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development is being carried out by a massive network of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs). These organizations have been fully consumed by this radical collectivist philosophy and are working overwhelmingly to advance the Sustainable Development Agenda.
21) Sustainable Development and the implementation of Agenda 21 are not some far off future possibility. In fact, America and the world are in the midst of what the sustainable development movement calls “the great transition” to a sustainable new model of living.
As a small town village administrator the last 14 years I wear many hats, with one of them being long range planning. I’ve lost count of the number of meetings and workshops I’ve attended related to planning, and I’ve come to some disturbing conclusions, most of them affirmed in Kurtz’s book. Here is a boiled-down-to-basics summary of the “urban planner” belief system.
1. You are too dumb to know where you should live.
2. Human beings are a blight on the face of the earth, and it our job to hold their impact on our most holy Mother Gaia to a bare minimum.
3. All living space for human beings must be minimalist and scrunched together in urban beehives so as preserve the wide open spaces of the great outdoors for Mother Gaia’s wild creatures.
4. Transportation between our beehives shall be upon crowded and uncomfortable public transport, unless of course one belongs to a radical environmental group, and shall then have vactions on Maui or Tahiti 6 times per year to discuss man-made global warming.
5. Individualism is evil in any form.
6. Central planning is wonderful and always results in a paradise on earth if only people like us do the planning.
7. Non-believers shall be ruined financially and personally shat upon.
As time has marched on in my career I’ve seen the goals of the zoning and planning bunch go from protecting the investment of neighboring property owners to advancing the far left’s collectivism. This is especially true in academia.
To Hades with them. I shall fight for individual rights professionally and privately so long as I draw breath.
Do “urban planners/community organizers/et al” wear distinctive uniforms?
It would make it so much easier to pick them out from the herd.
It’s basically all about race/ethnicity. Since the US, historically has been roughly 90% White, 10% Black (until recent years), most of the wealth of the country understandbly resided with White Americans.
Obama is sseking to change that. And the RINO’s, moderates, neoconservatives, etc. all favor more, more and more immigration, which is lowering the percentage of native born, White Americans.
How’s that working out for ya?
I live in a suburb town which is a small town on the outer limits of Atlanta, Georgia. It is an upscale town with pretty high income and the SAT scores are the highest in the state. It is a planned town from the beginning so nothing here was unexpected. That being said the planners envisioned having an area of rental property that would supply the local businesses with workers. We now have a beautiful town with many things to be thankful for EXCEPT the rental area. The police have essentially encircled it and explain to us that 90% of all our crime emanates from this area. Basically this is our “City” or urban high density area and we see first hand what it breeds. The elites and the smart people can have their inner city jungles and leave the suburban Nirvana to us small idea people.
I dont like suburban planners much more than I like urban planners. I prefer freedom, people build what they wish to build where they wish to build it.
This will come as no shock to those who live in Illinois, where the state passes laws that “do not apply to cities with populations over 1 million” (Chicago). It will especially come as no surprise to the suburbs unfortunate enough to be in Cook County, where the keptocracy of Chicago has lead to some calls to split the county in two – one part Chicago, and one part sick-of-being-screwed-by-Chicago. Chicago’s history of corruption and exploitation of all areas of the state and even neighboring states goes back decades. My father sat in a meeting with Chicago reps in Canton (over 120 miles from Chicago) that were involved in a waste treatment plant. The Chicago politicians opened the meeting by demanding that all their delegation receive new cars. This was over 40 years ago. Chicago’s arrogance is amazing. They make you want to put a dome over the city and see how long they can last making their own money, food, and oxygen. The rank and file Chicagoan keeps voting for this crap because the alternative is to realize how infantile they are in terms of productivity versus demands. And no pompous Chicagoan will face that reality.
Does it shock anyone that Chicago kleptocrat Obama would extend this “Chicago Way” to the whole country?
With all due respect, I submit that it is the US government that drove people to the suburbs in the first place: it drove people to the suburbs with “free” schools and “free” roads. If people had to pay for road use, and got school vouchers for their kids, then many suburban people would choose to live in the city, so that they could spend a few hours more with their kids every working day, instead of commuting.
So this looks to me as one case in which a government-created problem leads to more government as a “solution”. What the Obama admin should do instead is heed Reagan’s wisdom: government is not the solution, government is the problem.
I agree with you on vouchers. One of the biggest reasons middle class famalies leave cities is the crappy teacher union dominated schools. Giving every parent complete school choice with couchers would help a lot.
As for roads, they are not free, we pay gas taxes for them. Government infrastructure like roads has been around from the earliest days of the repubs, and I consider it a legit function of gov. Although I would prefer roads mostly be funded at the state and local level, so the people that use them pay for them, instead of the fed system, which encourages fed supported roads and rail projects to be looked at as a way of getting pork.
My first thought was Agenda 21 as well but Suburban Capitalist did a great job with that. I would add, however, that it is worse at colleges and universities than what is being depicted. Most of their Presidents or Chancellors have signed a covenant called the President’s Climate Commitment binding their campuses to aggressively push the no carbon footprint menace. Which is nonsense and it drives up costs of construction and operation.
On the schools, Common Core was based on policies and practices originally pushed on urban schools by the Council of Great City Schools. The people who did not care if Bev Hall and her staff cheated or not in Atlanta because all standardized testing is illegitimate in their eyes. Through the Race to the Top grants, the formative assessments funded through the 2009 Stimulus Act, accreditation mandates, and those NCLB waivers the Obama Administration is forcing the non-transmission of knowledge, social and emotional learning focus on formerly high-achieving suburban schools.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/what-happens-when-a-charter-pillages-minds-and-wallets/ is a story I wrote about Fulton County in Georgia where the parents, tax payors, and school board members have been misled into agreeing to adopt every contentious idea the Council of Great City Schools ever proposed. That’s one way to equalize the number of National Merit Scholars. Get everyone to zero and Atlanta never has to improve.
It turns out the idea of using duplicitous charters for suburban schools and districts was laid out in 1988 regional ed lab report written by Ray Budde. Teachers Union Pres, Al Shanker, also pushed the same idea in a National Press Club speech on March 31, 1988. Getting ready for the previous attempt at national radical ed reform.
And now that plan is being kicked into high gear by accreditation agencies and scheming supers and principals who know the only accountability in American education for an administrator is keeping the accreditors happy. Do that and you get to live at taxpayer expense for the rest of your life.
At least that’s the current assumption.
Roger- You must know Stanley Kurtz then. Can you pass on that the template the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was funding was actually designed to be exported to the suburban schools as well?
Following up on the cited book all the teachers at a lovely suburban “21st century” model high school in California were required to read and base their classrooms on took me straight into Woods, Joyce, and CAC funding for the whole scheme at the relevant time. Birthed and designed in the windy city.
My.My.My.
The Blue States are broke. Rahm wants to absorb the collar counties into Chicago. Why did Willie rob banks again?
If obama wins despite the dozens of books written about him this year, despite the dozens of inadvetant self-revelations he has made in just the last few months, and despite the obvious overwhelming opposition to him by every grown-up in the country, then there is no chance that America will ever recover. Anybody with the means to do so should leave the country, or move toward the revolution option.
It would take a book to just list the things, but Kurtz’s new effort seems particularly well aimed. I don’t know the details, but if the title can’t wake up the adults in the country, what can? Add to that the revelations about obama’s Communist mentor, the “38 lies” that were perhaps inadvertanly revealed by his latest lapdog biographer not to speak of his mispent and illegal youth, and the revelations in “the Amateur”, and more.
At the same time, the marxist has painted his own self potrait with “the private sector is doing just fine”, “you didn’t build that”, on top of past hits “spreading the wealth around”, “flawed Constitution”, “bitter clingers” and more. And on top of that, Fast and Furious, tax/not a tax, and on and on.
Look, the point is that if anybody who cares doesn’t know by now that this charlatan is in a direct line from Lenin, then they will never know. If people aren’t fired up now, there is nothing that can fire them up.
So if he wins, it won’t matter if Republicans take the Senate, or even have veto-proof majorities (which they won’t). The country will have declared itself as the worker’s paradise.
The next move will be the peoples’.
Romney is really doing badly so far given the situation. Every night on Kudlow Report I see the same argument carry weight, i.e., that when Obama took over, the economy was losing 700,000 jobs/month. He’s right. But the stimulus was a waste and I think even the CBO now says it had a negative multiplier effect. But the point is to deftly compare Obamanomics and Carternomics (the same) to Kennedynomics, Reaganomics, and even W-nomics. I looked it up, Obama’s stimulus arguably created 2 million jobs (if it did) or as he’d prefer 4 million from the bottom (but the stimulus was supposed to prevent the decline, too). W’s tax cuts in 2003 created 6 million jobs in 3 years from the date it was passed. Obama’s stimulus created 0 jobs in 3 years from the date it was passed, although 4 million from the bottom.
This has all been a wonderful socio-economic experiment I think and worth the 2 years of Obama-Reid-Pelosi domination IF – IF – IF we get rid of Obama now.
As in, already has regulations on the books? I’ll have to read this book. My entire life has been an escape from moribund cities, to safe, stable suburbs.
I could cry. The rot would continue.
My dad is a kool-aid drinking democrat who rants about walkable neighborhoods, trolley-cars, democratic politics…when I say things like I can’t carry three small children safely on a bus- I’ve tried- somehow, I’m a failure, and I have too many kids. He doesn’t get that I had two years of vile, unsafe exposure to public transportation in his hell-hole of a city, and pretty much my definition of hell in America is an urban center.
Good grief. We have a house in a suburb with a backyard so that we don’t have to be crowded city denizens.
When can we start shaming Dems into disappearing at sunlight, like cockroaches?
“My dad is a kool-aid drinking democrat who rants about walkable neighborhoods, trolley-cars, democratic politics…when I say things like I can’t carry three small children safely on a bus- I’ve tried- somehow, I’m a failure, and I have too many kids.”
Ask your Dad which or how many of his grandchildren you should get rid of.
‘
oh, you silly person, thinking there is a limit to darkness. The second and third kid. I’ve already heard about it, at length, their whole life.
Ted Turner says stuff like this about his kids, too. Or, say, try the scene in “knocked up” where the granny councils an abortion, so the woman can wait for ” a real baby.”
I was told to get an abortion, my husband was told to get a vasectomy, his business partner said she’d rescue a kitten, before save a drowning baby.
I have healthy, bright, sheltered kids, conceived, carried and raised in a stable, religious home, under the arch of a strong, loving marriage, with a great, manly,brilliant father– and people still thought they should be tiny corpses discardedin medical waste, burned up in hinnom.
you have no idea how dark the darkness can be.
P.J O’Rourke said it best:
“Cars didn’t shape our existence; cars let us escape with our lives. We’re way the heck out here in Valley Bottom Heights and Trout Antler Estates because we were at war with the cities. We fought rotten public schools, idiot municipal bureaucracies, corrupt bureaucracies, corrupt political machines, rampant criminality and the point-headed busybodies. Cars gave us our dragoons and hussars, lent us speed and mobility, let us scout the terrain and probe the enemy’s lines. And thanks to our cars, when we lost the cities we weren’t forced to surrender, we were able to retreat.”
I just keep remembering what the sheriff investigating the Oklahoma City bombing said: “You want some more Tim McVeighs? Just keep pushing.”
You can see the “city taking over suburbs” dynamic pretty clearly in Houston.
The city of Houston periodically absorbs unincorporated suburbs in order to raise revenues by grabbing another group of predominantly white Anglo Republicans. When an area is incorporated, taxes go up and the quality of public services go down. The key to the success of the Democrats who run Houston is that they can’t be too greedy because it they pull in too many Republicans, they will be voted out of office. The other factor that allows this to continue is the system of Independent School Districts which are not affected by annexation so that the Democrat city government can’t screw up the schools the way they ruin everything else they touch.
The thing that is going to prevent the Obama team from politically merging cities and suburbs is that such a development would result in the corrupt Democrats who have been running America’s big cities being thrown out of office if suburban voters were part of the process and the big city machine politicians are not the kind of people to allow themselves to be thrown under the bus.
I live on the outskirts of a major city which is a bastion of Obama voters. I am about 100 yards outside the city boundaries.
Most of my neighbors chose to live here over the city because the school are much better outside the city’s control.
I won’t send my kids to public school anyway, so the deciding factor was property taxes. The taxes are literally twice as high in the city, and the services are worse. For an average home around here you will pay an extra $30,000 over 10 years for the privilege of being in the city with worse schools, roads and services.
So to fix this situation Obama wants to raise my taxes so the city can get that extra $30,000 from me. right.