By Curmudgeon
It is with great sorrow that I bring to your attention this article describing yet another "Developers Dream Bill" that slid through the recently ended legislative session, and that Gov. Huntsman has signed into law. It is a law that was introduced by a Democrat, Sen. Brent Goodfellow, D-West Valley City. It pains me to point out one of the pitifully few Ds in the legislature as a compliant tool of the Developers and Real Estate lobby, but fair's fair.
Here is how the SL Trib headlined the story: "Gov signs law that curbs citizens' power to challenge developers." It is a very accurate headline.
From Cathy McKitrick's story:
A proposal limiting the public's ability to challenge city land-use decisions passed through this year's legislative session with hardly a ripple.Mr. Rees comments above make laughable Mr. Goodfellow's sniveling claim that his bill changed nothing, but merely clarified existing language in the law.
But things might not be quiet for long. Some fear the two-page SB53 - crafted to satisfy developers, Realtors and the Utah League of Cities and Towns - will tie the hands of residents who oppose controversial developments.
The bill's sponsor, Sen. Brent Goodfellow, D-West Valley City, said SB53 was intended to clarify existing law. "You can petition against the ordinance but not against the process - that's what this bill says," Goodfellow said during Senate floor action last month. Salt Lake City land-use attorney says the bill is more than just a clarification - and the public has lost its voice in the process. "It introduces land-use language that was not included anywhere before," said Jeff Owens, a land-use attorney with the Salt Lake City-based firm of Strong and Hanni. "With SB53, voters cannot initiate any referendum to change a land-use ordinance," Owens said. "So zoning laws cannot be taken to the public at this point and time...."
Robert Rees, the legislative research attorney who helped draft SB53, confirmed that a portion of SB53 is fresh. "It is brand-new language in the code," Rees said. "The idea behind it was to codify case law that suggests that land-use initiatives are already somewhat restricted."
The truly disturbing part of all this is that it continues the trend, so painfully apparent in Utah law of late, of diminishing bit by bit the public's role in the governance of their own towns and communities, and in particular, the elimination of the referendum as a way for the public to correct excesses and over-reaching by locally elected officials, just as the public did in the statewide referendum which eliminated school vouchers. This new law gets around that by simply placing whole categories of decisions by local governments involving zoning and development beyond the reach of referendum at all.
Sickening in its own right; doubly so when the perps are aided and abetted by a Utah Democrat. Mr. Goodfellow should be ashamed of himself.
14 comments:
Now you are beginning to get the idea. Bit by bit the Realtor Association and Developers are whittling away at individual citizen's rights AND property rights. All the while claiming "We are for (defend) individual property rights." Kyler, Kohler and Ostermiller are the low life's and white trash behind the Realtor's Association, which writes laws and buys legislators to vote for the laws they write. 10,000 brokerage firms and members pay $35 a month into the "Association" to get this "favorable treatment" in Utah.($35 X 10,000 = $350,000 a month X 12 = $4,200,000 a year minimum goes into their Political Action Committee. This money is spread to "supportive legislators" in the form of yearly "campaign fund donations" and outright "gift giving" - some of us accurately call bribes. Yeah, RIGHT!
Bribery and payola---and it is LEGAL in Utah. Oh you can rationalize it all you want saying, "Oh well it is done all over the Country and in Washington DC." And this is partially true. There are places which allow this, but I like to think people believe it is unethical and immoral at every level. Polls show 3 out of every 4 believe it is so.
Can anyone spell RICO Act? Anyone in Utah with the balls to take this Statewide scam down?
Is there anyone on the Statewide Fraud Task Force with the brains, who have not been bought off by the wealthiest and most powerful lobby by far in Utah, willing and able to put a stop to this shameful corruption lead by a BYU political science grad. and lawyers?
Naaaa...I thought not!
Don't hear much about it do you? Wonder why? How much does the Standard Examiner take-in monthly from these Realotr/developer clowns? How much does the Deseret News or the Salt Lake Tribune? How much does the Ogden Valley News? What does a seven page Real Estate color spread go for, when an Obit costs about $400 a shot?
A perfect scam is one where everyone seems to win ----except the little guy. In our case, "That is us".
I am pretty sure that it's against the law to use Union or Association dues for ploitical action.
And the political action money can not be made in someone elses name, it has to be contributed by the person making the contribution.
whoops I posted the above comment
Its called death by a thousand little bites. Ultimately these leeches will bleed the host to death and they themselves will then disappear because there won't be any one left who can afford to buy real estate. It is sad to see Utah go the way of the long knives and just simple be bled out by the greed of these evil and self righteous bastards.
I could theoretically benefit in a big way from this corruption because of my property holdings, but that doesn't make it right, that doesn't make it moral.
It is also a great disappointment that these gangsters are for the most part "good" Mormons, being that the ring leaders are mostly BYU Law Grads.
Oz: Hugh Nibley once sarcastically observed that "you can get away with ANYTHING as long as you fly the flag." I think that was in the context of his southern Calif. adolescence.
In Utah, of course, as long as 10 percent of the ill-gotten fortune goes to the church you get away with anything else.
Little Big Guy
You can forget about RICO dealing with these crimes. That would require the NeoCon Bush Administration's Justice Department investigating and prosecuting. It ain't gonna happen. A Republican Justice Department is not going to investigate Republican crimes any more than the Republican Utah Attorney General is willing to investigate and prosecute alleged crimes in the Godfrey Administration.
Shurtleff has had plenty of complaints with documentation on Godfrey malfeasance and he has steadfastly refused to lift his little pinky to look into any of them. It is akin to Nazi legal officials investigating Nazi crimes.
Oops, there goes that pesky Goodwin's law again. However, I think if Goodwin were to consider Utah government he may just modify his law and make a few exceptions.
Our Tax System Explained: Bar Stool Economics
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) pay $0
The fifth would pay $1 .
The sixth would pay $3 .
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers,' he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. '
Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.
But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
'I only got a dollar out of the $20 ,'declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!'
'Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I got'
'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!'
'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia
Taxman: permit me to quietly note that while BC was in office and taxes on the wealthiest were substantially higher than they are now, our nation underwent the longest, and steepest economic expansion in modern history.
Theory, like that behind your little story, is ducky stuff to play with at bars when there are no good games on TV, but the lessons of history... aka "reality"... are generally far more instructive, and more useful.
Damn and you were just beginning to "get it" and some Southern Bar Stool economist comes along and obfuscates the whole argument into one about how our taxes work. And he, living in Georgia, has clue not one about how our Utah TNT male bovine excrement property taxes work, nor how or the why's of our Income Taxes///errr I mean "Education Taxes" are being currently collected, .... I mean being transistioned sorta.... err I mean headed for a single rate 5% tax next year with exceptions, credits, exemptions, and special dips for the Dipshit family.
Georgia is on an acquisition value type property tax system I've heard.
to on taxes
well put when it comes to federal tax system
curm
timing is everything
bc was in the office at the right time and had very little to do with what happened in the economy. very similar for godfrey.
the economy expansion you referred to was fueled by increased productivity due more to bill gates contribution and loose money created by alan greenspan, which btw we are now starting to pay for.
of all people you should know that.
things dont just develop over night or just because someone steps into office but are the reaction to actions and developments that have taken place over time.
Paying:
Sorry, I don't ascribe to the notion that presidents are in no way responsible for the state of the economy, especially at the end of their terms. BC balanced the budget by working with a Republican Congress in his final term. He cut federal spending in his first budget, working with a D Congress. Then G. Bush arrived, and trotted out the unique [and idiotic] idea that we could cut taxes and increase spending and still balance the budget. The result has been, over seven years, a near tripling of the national debt and budget deficits undreamed of by any president before. And those deficits and the metastasizing of the debt in no small way underlay the collapse of the dollar against other currencies now under way, and the resulting ballooning of oil [and therefor gas] prices, and the escalating costs of all imports, which now take more dollars to buy than they did before.
It does matter who is president and what his polices are.
curm
It does matter who is president and what his polices are. - over time youre right and not necessarily while hes in office.
bc didn’t balance the budget he was at the right place at the right time. productivity is what made that happen. i wouldn’t even try to defend gw or the way he has run this country.
what killing our economy right now is a lack of control of our monetary system by the fed (which also was going on during bc term in office) and the financing of 5 years of war.
to get back to the point that brought out my comment to your post. the tax rates cuts did not cause the ruin of our economy it was poor management. poor management of our monetary system over time, lax regulatory oversight of our bank industry and poor decisions about going to war.
paying:
Sorry, but the implementation of the paygo agreement in congress, across party lines, had a great deal to do with it as well. And Clinton was part of brokering that. Of course, it all went immediately to hell when Bush was elected and opted for lower taxes AND more spending. It was the tax cuts combined with increased spending that did it, mostly. You can't say it wasn't tax cuts and point only at the second half of the equation --- massive overspending --- and explain it away as "poor management." The deadly elixir --- lower federal revenues coupled with massively increased spending --- were both responsible. And Bush was responsible for both halves of the disastrous equation and for sinking the difficult to arrange but working in the end pay/go agreement between the parties in Congress during BCs term.
By the way, that's the same thing that produced the first of our monster deficits and huge bulge in the national debt during Reagan's term, and for the same reason. He wanted to cut taxs AND cut spending. He got his tax cuts through, but couldn't get congress to cut spending....and so when the signed the spending bills, the deficit and debt began to metastasize, just as they have under Bush and for the same reasons.
Of course, in comparative terms, Reagan was a piker.
It does matter who is in office.
Post a Comment