Greg Swann, real estate blogger, writes:
The “cap and trade” bill that passed in the House of Representatives last week contains within it the seeds of a national building code.
It rarely rains in Phoenix and it rarely fails to rain in Portland, but both cities will build new structures according to the dictates of some Washington bureaucrat.
Drive along 19th Avenue in Phoenix and you’ll pass block after block of condemned houses. They were taken by the city for the planned light rail expansion, now delayed. The neighbors are left to fight off the kind of vermin vacant homes attract while they worry what that blight is doing to their home values.
In Glendale, the city government is doing everything it can to prevent the Tohono O’Odham tribe from developing its own sovereign land as a casino.
The essence of the freedom we celebrate on Independence Day is the free ownership of the land…
***
Of course, here in Canada, the right to private property isn’t enshrined in our Charter (although oddly enough gay “marriage” is, according to our robed betters).
It’s not like Canadian medicare is related to the risk-averseness, deference to authority, and cultural grayness that makes all the funny creative people leave, right?
