Some New York liberal writer published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about losing his house to Hurricane Sandy. Funny thing, a New York liberal has to lose his house to find out how the world really works.
The House of Representatives made it official this week. They gave all the Obama tax increases for 2013 to New York and New Jersey for Sandy relief. Fifty billion in, and fifty billion out. Easy come easy go. But, here’s the joke. If one can find humor in any of this. First, the people who are having their taxes raised will just find new deductions to avoid the tax increases as history has proven. So the fifty billion “in” revenue will be much less and it won’t be paid until 2014.
But, that’s not the joke. The writer from New York provided that.
He’s trying to rebuild the house. But, FEMA and new federal laws for beachfront houses require the house to be elevated to get the people in Oklahoma to pay for this guy’s rebuilt house when Hurricane Fred comes through in 10 years and blows the new house down. Fine, he’ll put the house on stilts. Except, the local zoning authority has a height restriction which the FEMA requirement exceeds. Not laughing yet? His next door neighbor lost a house and a guest house. She lived in the guest house and rented the house to be able to afford to keep the house. Local zoning now prohibits two houses on that sized piece of property. So, while she can get the insurance from you and me to rebuild, she can’t rebuild what she had, and she can’t afford to rebuild what the local government requires. And, so it goes. Every New Yorker and New Jerseyite will have a similar story. They will run head long into local government gone wild. Did they really think liberals in Washington had a lock on controlling everyone’s lives? You don’t know what local government has done in the past 10 years until you want to do a project at your house. Build a shed, no sorry no sheds. Add on to your garage, no sorry, side-yard set-backs have shrunk.
So, much of this federal money won’t be spent until 2014, either. State, local, and homeowners’ association governments will see to that. Like the two people in New York, most will be put in some sort of trick bag. Put there by too much government. Obama may have only uttered one truth in his 4 years in office when he said: “there are no shovel ready projects in America”. Wouldn’t it be nice if he and the other blowhards who created this mess would stop uttering and start acting?
It is estimated there is more oil and gas under California than in Saudi Arabia that it can now be recovered by new technology(fracking). But, it lies there stopped by government. Government that is broke and desperately in need of the billions in tax revenue and the thousands of jobs that oil and gas would bring to the state. Fat cats in Hollywood would freak. The fat cats who say they worry so much about the little guy. There is more uranium in Virginia than anywhere in the world. But, government stops it from being mined. After all, we don’t want another nuclear power plant built here. Remember Three Mile Island? The state of Kansas just passed a law that no household can have more than four cats. The average farm in Kansas probably has 10 barn cats. What politician in Kansas is going to go to those farms and arrest those lawbreakers? Better get gun control laws tightened first.
We let them do it to us. We watch as they busy themselves at every level of government passing laws that restrict or stop progress. Like factories gone crazy, grinding them out. Gee, maybe even that writer in New York who can’t rebuild his house until one of the two restrictions is changed, required height and limited height, is coming to the conclusion that we have gone too far. And, going further faster every year. He probably misses his house more than he misses his 32 ounce soda that Bloomberg took away.