Welcome Once Again to the July Edition of the Libertarian Perspective. For this episode we talk almost exclusively about a proposed amendment to Florida's constitution. On the ballot it will be Amendment #4 but it's more widely known by the name given to it by it's proponents "Hometown Democracy".
Our guests for the show are Janet Stanko who thinks Amendment #4 is a good idea and Chuck White who thinks it is a bad idea. For the show we tried to be fair and give each guest equal time but I want to be clear PLEASE VOTE NO ON AMENDMENT #4. It has a friendly sounding name..who doesn't like democracy right? If this thing gets passed it will stall economic growth in Florida. Just imagine that you decide to start a small business or work for a company that wants to come to Jacksonville and build a new: hospital, automobile factory, insurance company, computer software firm. So you do all the work and have everything in place but low and behold you're plans are outside of what was planned for by a local centralized planning czar twenty years ago. Well no problem right you will go in front go the LUZ committee and ask for a land use change, it will put you behind schedule a month but everybody in the community wants this to happen so no problems right. Wrong, now that you have your zoning change passed you have to wait 2 years to have the zoning change voted on by the general public, either that or have a special election which will cost taxpayers millions of dollars and still delay the project by six months.
What this amendment does is make it so if some bureaucrat didn't plan for your business you will not only have to go through the normal process of getting a change to the plan but also have to win a political election to get things done.
The proponents of this idea try to say that they are not against growth but I have talked with 2 leaders in this group and within 5 minutes of talking to them they started talking about how there is too much growth. While their advertising talks about democracy this doesn't have anything to do with democracy it is meant to stop economic growth. They talk about choice but the only choice that will be made will be the choice of business owners to choose NOT to locate their brand new company headquarters in Florida. Either that or businesses that want to locate in Florida will start meeting with the city planner and before you know it Wal-Mart will have a stake in where our cities parks, schools, and roads are located. This will result in even more urban sprawl than we already have.
Also the supporters of this amendment are all anti-growth groups, and small towns that don't want to grow. If you live in a small town on the beach and want to halt growth so you can enjoy the beach I get it but don't shut down the whole state based on your local political desires.
A better solution would be to get rid of the central planners all together. Sound like I'm talking about a philosophical solution to a pragmatic problem, not really. Central planning has been tried and failed already in Russia, Venezuela, China, Florida and Cleveland Ohio. While there is a city with no centralized planning right here in America called Houston Texas. below is a link to a YouTube video about the differences between living in a city with and without central planning. Just imagine how much worse Cleveland would be if after going through all the red tape you had to win an election just to start your own business.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ReasonTV#p/u/ACB2B97FD63A63BE/3/9xSesnJlFr0
For more information about this issue please visit
http://www.florida2010.org
http://www.floridahometowndemocracy.com
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Part 1 July 2010 Libertarian Perspectiveby NEFLLibertarians75 views
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