Wendell Cox, an "analyst" concerning himself with growth patterns and suburbanization, joined the panel this morning on MSNBC's "Up with Chris Hayes". Currently onboard with something called the "Reason Foundation", Cox has also been active with both the Heartland Institute and ALEC.
Cox thinks it's a grand idea to repeal Smart Growth plans in cities. Why is this, you might ask? He says that "if you draw a line around cities you drive up housing costs". I say it's because he wants to keep his fossil fuel pals in business by keeping us automobile dependent. Cox tried to belittle Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, a Democrat, when he spoke to the hope of aligning his city with a future that will bring in the "Creative Class" with its mobile intellectual property. Cox accused the mayor of favoring fountains over jobs. When Buckhorn came to his own defense, brilliantly, he reminded his detractor that the jobs of the future will not be found solely in mills, plants, and assembly lines but in technology and innovation.
So when exactly did it become okay to want to continue to kill the planet? I'll try REAL hard not to make assumptions here, but I did come up in the South and grew up in an era of "white flight" and "forced bussing", so there's my full disclosure. And I know, living in a rural area, that there are those--ALEC love 'em--who want to live out in No Covenant Land where they can shoot off their guns whenever they choose. But looking beyond those--let us hope--extremes, why must our ideological choice as it impacts this issue be between living in the dirty, industrial 1900s or in the progressive future President Jimmy Carter tried to help us find in the 1970s? Are we really so black-and-white on this issue that we have only two boxes on our interior landscape form from which to decide to place our check: David Koch or Al Gore?
I don't want to tell anyone how or where to live, but I also understand that as a society we can choose to have one nation or 312,780,968 mini-nations. We have to learn to live together so that all can express their individuality in a way that does not negatively impact the others. Unlike the Tea Party Lady I told you about earlier this weekend, I do not want 312,780,968 little sidewalks, 312,780,968 little schools, 312,780,968 little fire hydrants, 312,780,968 little streets, and 312,780,968 little hospitals. My town is tiny, but you cannot enter it from any direction without discovering that it has won numerous awards/grants for being a Tree City USA and for implementing Smart Growth. If we can do it in a very Republican town of less than 10,000 people, in a very Republican county of less than twice that number without a revolt, can it be such a Communist or Socialist boondoggle?
I recall those Republican Primary Debate folks cheering death-by-no-insurance and the death penalty itself, and booing an American Hero who just happens to be gay and I wonder why there aren't obvious places where we can come together as human beings. My dogs love their chewies, but just this morning one of the bigger dogs took the remainder of a chew he'd made softer and dropped it at the feet of one of the smaller dogs. He might have been full, but he was still creating doggie community.
So I would ask Mr. Cox how many of us will indeed "win" when our planet decides our living patterns rather than our own notions such as Smart Growth. How many of us will have a choice of job types and housing locations when we're just trying to breathe without coughing and drink the water without lighting it on fire? How in this wonderful world can we continue to be reactive rather than proactive? When will we ever abandon the false security of the short-term fix for the long-term solution?
Sometimes we have to make an upfront investment in times of great need or great change and this is one of those times. The government is not desirous of taking over our lives, and we should not want to take over the government in an effort to split it into 312,780,968 people-states with 312,780,968 flags. Corporations have their place, Unions have their place, Government has its place, and so should all of us. There's no me in success, but there sure is an "us".
And no, Fox Bidness, our President is not planning on the cities taking over the suburbs. But if the empty buildings are in the cities, then we should use those already-built resources for good. Cox says we should just keep on building new houses to our liking and wherever we choose. Where he sees "freedom", I see "waste". But I'm a bleeding heart anti-hunting gal who'd just as soon buy the dead animals already in the grocery store...and the fraction of my heritage that is Native tells me to never forget the images of huge piles of the Great American Bison.
What's so wrong about considering others before deciding something for ourselves? Wasn't that the whole point of the Golden Rule? Of "I am my brother's keeper"? Of not drinking and driving? Some things we must decide as a collective: teachers need degrees, paramedics need training, restaurants need inspections, pilots need licenses. I really don't want to yank all the regulations that keep us alive day in and day out.
Can we please get the big money out of our political process so that we don't come down as members of the anti-Earth Party or the pro-Earth Party? I want GREEN to be the new BLACK, and that doesn't make me RED.
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