Showing posts with label affordable housing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label affordable housing. Show all posts

Thursday, May 16, 2019

The Magical Energy of the Green New Deal


The Green New Deal proposed by radicals in Congress brought back best-forgotten memories of my life under the “paradise of socialism.” 
I am too old to live under socialism because I like simple luxuries like soap, detergent, toilet paper, electricity, food, clean water, and comfortable shoes, and being able to express my opinion in public without severe retribution.

It sums up in a simplistic way the dreary daily life of surviving under a socialist economy where the means of production were owned by the incompetent state and each citizen was at the mercy of the government centralized planners who would not know what supply and demand was if it hit them in the face.

People brought these elementary-middle school trained incompetents to power because all they’ve heard was free stuff, equality, and fleece the rich, which they were. Those who were lucky, escaped with their lives and lost everything they’ve worked hard to earn including ancestral lands and private property. You see, the massive and forced confiscation was sold to the useful idiots as “for the common good.”

I am also too old to live in stack-n-pack prefab reinforced concrete apartments, sharing bathrooms and kitchens with other families in a space no larger than the average hotel room.

Russians are demolishing many of the Soviet era grey concrete high-rise buildings, admitting that the experiment to offer “affordable housing” has failed miserably. But we are going full steam ahead with it because the Wunderkind AOC of the U.S. House of Representatives told us to – if we don’t, the planet will perish in 12 years.

I like my stellar healthcare, I do not desire Medicare for all, meaning healthcare for none, once rationing ensues. Most people don’t understand basic economics, including AOC, who is shouting in microphones every chance she gets, promoting her global communism environmental deal.

Sustainable Developers of the Green New Deal, the Agenda 2030 imposed on Americans, promises all sorts of amenities to the population at large if we are just willing to cram into high-rises and to adopt a walkability/bike life style, living like sardines in a small can, assembling and disassembling modular Bauhaus-style furniture, giving up our independence and mobility, cars, and everything that makes life fun and worth living, all because it is not deemed sustainable by U.N. planners and it is endangering the planet with global warming.

In my experience, the socialist utopia radicals in this country are promoting, was made worse in the socialist republic run by the Communist Party, by ardent apparatchiks with no formal education but the gift of gab, loquacious enough to appeal to the lowest common denominator who brought them to power in the first place (think Venezuela, Cuba, Soviet Union, North Korea, and all the Iron Curtain Soviet satellite dictatorships).

A cartoon from the Soviet Union with the following caption under one solitary brown boot in an otherwise empty display case read, “we have received a new shipment, come see the boot,” aptly describes our shopping reality and the existence of the black market and bartering in order to survive.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortes wants America to dispose of cars, trucks, boats, and airplanes.  In twelve years, her “magic energy” will replace all the dirty fossil fuel energy that is destroying the planet we inhabit.

The Green New Deal is placing solar panels on our roofs, which is a good move in the long run if taxpayers’ subsidies are paying for the installation and the panels. When the sun is out, good ole fossil fuels must supply the energy.

Let’s not mention wind turbines which are so expensive and inefficient to operate and run that they seldom provide enough energy in their lifetime to offset the cost of producing and maintaining them. When the wind dies down, the turbines move but precious little energy is produced.

How is the rest of the largest economy on the planet going to be supplied with energy? How will trucks transport our food, medicine, parts, cars, mail, and other necessities we take for granted daily? Who is going to move people when cars are gone? Buses? Trains? What is going to replace millions and millions of jobs lost? How are these people going to make a living? What is going to replace the ships and recreational boats? How are we going to cross rivers and oceans? By fast train and buses? Perhaps that IS the idea, keeping the population immobile in one large and crowded area, under the control of our all-knowing government.

How is energy going to be produced? AEI's Mark Perry explained,
“Despite a huge workforce of almost 400,000 solar workers (about 20 percent of electric power payrolls in 2016), that sector produced an insignificant share, less than 1 percent, of the electric power generated in the U.S. last year. And that’s a lot of solar workers: about the same as the combined number of employees working at Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pfizer, Ford and P&G. 
https://www.aei.org/publication/inconvenient-energy-fact-it-takes-79-solar-workers-to-produce-same-amount-of-electric-power-as-one-coal-worker/print/

In contrast, it took about the same number of natural gas workers (398,235) last year to produce more than one-third of U.S. electric power, or 37 times more electricity than solar’s minuscule share of 0.90 percent. And with only 160,000 coal workers (less than half the number of workers in either solar or gas), that sector produced nearly one-third (almost as much as gas) of U.S. electricity last year. 

In 2016, the coal sector generated an average of 7,745 megawatt hours of electric power per worker, more than twice the 3,812 megawatt hours of electricity generated per natural gas worker, and 79 times more electric power per worker than the solar industry, which produced only 98 megawatt hours of electricity per worker. Therefore, to produce the same amount of electric power as just one coal worker would require two natural gas workers and an amazingly-high 79 solar workers.” It does not seem that AOC thought this out before she read her TelePrompTer about the Green New Deal

In Virginia, Spotsylvania, Chesterfield, Accomack and now Culpeper, solar providers have set up shop with help from generous subsidies. The proposed solar facility in Culpeper, operated by Cricket Solar of California, will install panels on 800 acres of agricultural land and provide 80 megawatts of power. Who will produce our food each time agricultural land is taken out of commission for solar panels and wind turbines? Socialist co-operatives here or China? https://freebeacon.com/issues/virginias-push-for-solar-panels-offers-few-rays-of-hope/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=0af9d2d776-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_05_08_19_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-0af9d2d776-45619005

There is no other country in the world where I can seek the best health care right now, go to a hospital and be treated the same day, have medical tests relatively quickly, buy what I want to eat right now, cooked or uncooked, find a pharmacy open that would fill the prescription I need, walk into an abundant grocery store at all hours of the day and night and find what I want to buy without standing in line and fighting other shoppers for the last potato. There are myriads of choices provided by capitalist supply and demand, by freedom, by mobility, by entrepreneurship, and by the much-maligned fossil fuels which brought us out of the dark ages of poverty, want, and disease and into a successful western civilization that everyone envies and risks life and limb to get here.

But we should not let reality and truth stand in the way of corrupt politics. Every time AOC opens her mouth to speak, more pearls of communist wisdom roll out onto the floor. They spread in all corners of the country and disappear, never to be found again. Her socialist ardent supporters just hear “free, free, free for all.”






Friday, January 10, 2014

The Government 200 Square Feet "Stack and Pack" Concrete A-Podments

An American diplomat who flew over communist Romania during Ceausescu’s reign of terror asked the innocent question, where are the farmers and their homes, I see nothing but fields of green everywhere?

The accompanying hosts looked at each other embarrassed and nobody answered the question. It was too undiplomatic and dangerous to explain to this westerner coming from the land of freedom and private property that the farmers’ land had been confiscated, collectivized, and the former owners moved by force to government assigned concrete block apartments ranging in size from 200-400 square feet.

These apartments were located in blocks with 2-4 entrances depending on whether they were five or nine stories high. The five-story buildings did not have elevators; the nine-story buildings had lifts that could safely carry two individuals at a time and were seldom operational. Renters of various ages and physical abilities had the joy of climbing stairs every day.

Social engineers had decided that land was better used in co-operative farms owned by the communist government. Private homes located on farm land were bulldozed and people were moved either in a compact village attached to the collective farm, with little room between single homes, or in the densely populated cities with grey concrete apartments mushrooming overnight.

The communist party elites had decided that having too much private space was bourgeois, the socialist men needed just enough space to eat and sleep, the rest of the time had to be spent at work.

This brings me to the current trend in the U.S. to reduce Americans’ living space to as little as possible by changing zoning laws without their consent, using visioning committees composed of local agreeable supervisors and outside non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with lots of available grant money from HUD and other government agencies.

U.N. Agenda 21 is behind zoning, regionalism, land and water use, Sustainable Development, global warming, wealth redistribution, social engineering, Smart Growth, Green Growth, cap and trade, Smart Grid, Smart Meters, global citizens, IB World schools, Common Core standards, biofuels, the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), gun control, just to name a few. http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf

Nationally syndicated talk show hosts have finally started speaking against U.N. Agenda 21 elements. I have connected all the parts in my best-selling book, “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy.” http://www.amazon.com/U-N-Agenda-21-Environmental-Piracy-ebook/dp/B009WC6JXO/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

A political refuge appealed to the St. Lucie County Commissioners in Florida at a meeting about the U.N. environmental regionalist Seven50 plans for Florida. “I do not come here to lose my freedom; I beg you – get out of Seven50. Do not destroy our Freedom.” www.westernjournalism.com/author/suzanne-eovaldi/

A long line of citizens vociferously opposed such regionalism and pleaded with “local elected officials to reject the takeover of Florida’s private property.” “

“I am opposed to Seven50… to the loss of our property rights by U.N. Agenda 21, the new world order communist Marxist project.”

Large grants from HUD and this administration have divided our country into 11 nationwide regions, including the east coast of Florida. The Seven50 Regionalism Plan has already been adopted in the Gore triangle counties south of St. Lucie and Indian River counties. Vero Beach, IRC rejected the plan based on a “vertical authority flow chart” controlled by unelected federal bureaucrats influenced by globalist non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who plan to “stack-and-pack 200-foot dwelling spaces” and move citizens off their private property.

Suzanne Eovaldi describes the typical stack-and-pack living quarters in the 200 square foot aPodments building in Sammamish, Washington. Resident Judy Green “shares the kitchen with seven other tenants on the second floor.” To get to her loft cubicle, she must climb six flights of stairs in the absence of elevators. Cars are not allowed on account of global warming. The micro-units are the size of a hotel room and rent for $600-900 per month. The micro-housing units increase the population density of the area tremendously. http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020845443 apodmentscitycouncilxml.html

The government will impose its best practices of “Sustainable Urbanism” which will force areas to adopt “sustainable development” and “equitable communities,” changing the counties’ desired low density character and scale to high-density crime-ridden slums.

The American Coalition 4 Property Rights explains on its website why the Seven50 Regional Plan must be stopped with its Sustainable Urbanism and the Smart Code solution to urban sprawl. Regionalism will fundamentally alter the make-up of our society and of our property rights or lack thereof. http://nomoreunelectedbureaucrats.com/

“Social engineering is on the verge of being imposed on entire neighborhoods, adults, and children alike.” The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will dismantle local zoning and force people to move into certain areas in order to achieve what they consider “racial, economic, and ethnic diversity.” This is “nationalizing neighborhoods” on a grand scale. This is done for our “own good and to achieve utopia.” By obliterating zoning regulations, we will have neighborhoods by government quota. (Rush Limbaugh monologue, September 12, 2013)

Rush Limbaugh pointed out that “HUD’s power grab is based on the mistaken belief that zoning and discrimination are the same, zoning is disguised discrimination.” Introducing 200 square feet pods between single family homes is “social justice.”

The American Planning Association issued a HUD Smart Growth document, a blueprint of goals to replace single family housing. The 76-page study by APA’s Planning Advisory Service, report number 548, published on July 2007, had the “objective to examine, on a pilot basis, whether zoning impedes the development of higher-density, multifamily housing in growing metropolitan areas.”

The study presumed multifamily housing to be the most affordable type of housing yet it did not evaluate this presumption in the study. “High-density residential development is not always affordable, and low density development is not always costly. Ample high-density and multi-family zoning is neither necessary nor sufficient to produce affordable housing.”(p. iv) Why then destroy suburbia and why dictate to other people how they should live?

The authors identified other factors besides zoning that can limit multifamily housing stock such as market conditions, land availability, parcelization, provision of public services, planning goals such as protecting open spaces or rural areas, and existing land-use patterns.

The APA study recommends:

1.      Support the Regional collection and integration of land use regulatory data (maintain comprehensive data on zoning and other regulatory restraints)

2.      Encourage state and Regional governments to provide oversight of local land-use policies.

3.      Focus state and Regional oversight policies on quantitative performance measures.

4.      Continue to develop better measures of zoning barriers and support additional research on the effects of barriers on housing markets.

For these authors, “the critical question now is not whether regulatory barriers to affordable housing exist in some communities, but whether it is possible to identify such communities and craft an appropriate policy response.”

In my December 23, 2013 interview with Brian Lilley of Sun News Network in Canada, I explained the “affordable housing” fight in Fairfax County, Virginia, where almost all members of the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission are crafting a plan to place Lilliputian slum dwellings in every area of the county. They are the size of shipping containers or jail cells. These are called Residential Studio Units (RSUs) with a total surface of 220-320 square feet. Each high-rise would contain 75 such units and one parking space per unit. Such units would reduce property values, change neighborhoods, increase population density, cause more traffic congestion, and increase crime in the name of “affordable housing” for the poor, low wage workers, and “diversity.” http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/2966593149001#.Ur0anuoYeJA.facebook

 
Further reading:

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/58022 (Are We Too Late to Stop UN Agenda 21?)

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/59206 (Environmental Conservation Easements Trump-ing Property Rights)

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56894 (Harriet’s Fictional America Post Agenda 21)

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56246 (Virginia is for Food and Farm Freedom Lovers)