Today, in a meeting with Westchester County officials, health professionals, family advocates for people who are truly needy. So much so that they can barely take care of themselves. These are democrats and they are shocked. The health system having already taken serious cuts in NYS for a year (if you are in this field you have never seen this before). Now you will see this constituency get as mad as hell and not willing to take it any more. Good honest tax paying (they live in Westchester) citizens taking care of their own. The Rubber Meets the Road now.

Even liberals are beginning to recognize that being 'liberal' does not necessarily mean one has to be suicidal. Liberals and conservatives may yet join together to save this nation from the American Taliban in the White House.

Is Judge Smail still using the ol' Billy-beroo? Has Carl caught the gopher yet?

"What if it's the deficit and all those trillion dollar packages and the dead certainty that taxes must rise to pay for the debt? What if the general disdain for government and this leap into turmoil and anarchy has transformed itself into a tax revolt?....It was a tax revolt."

So much does Mr. Batchelor believe in what George Will might call "democracy properly understood"--which is to say, each American's God-given right to choose either a well-credentialed liberal Democratic candidate with perfect hair or a well-credentialed liberal Republican candidate with perfect teeth, who between the two of them would run the gamut of acceptable political ideas all the way from A to B--that he has attempted to reduce the remarkable election outcome in Westchester County to a mere tax revolt. According to the perceptive urban policy magazine City Journal it was rather more than that:

>Walter Olson
Revolt in Westchester
After a coercive housing settlement, angry voters toss out their county executive.
4 November 2009

Other issues, especially taxes, no doubt ranked high in the minds of Westchester County voters, who last night in a stunning upset threw out incumbent county executive Andy Spano in favor of Republican challenger Rob Astorino by an impressive 58–42 margin. But it didn’t help that county residents felt strong-armed by the federal government and private litigants into a controversial lawsuit settlement on low-income housing that cuts deeply into the county’s tradition of suburban home rule on development issues—or that Spano reacted to voter discontent by suggesting that critics of his housing plans were racist.

Announced in August, the settlement calls for the county over seven years to override local zoning and other rules to force the construction of at least 750 low-income housing units, most to be located in relatively affluent towns. The intention is to increase the number of poorer minorities living in these areas. A federal judge had sided with plaintiffs’ complaints that the county had accepted federal funds but had not lived up to its talk of combating purported “segregation” based on income. (Affluent blacks and other minorities have long been welcome in many of the communities under scrutiny; as the Manhattan Institute’s Howard Husock points out, blacks are at most slightly underrepresented in towns like Scarsdale, Harrison, and Pound Ridge compared with their overall presence in the affluent income brackets typical of those towns.) The Obama administration took credit for arm-twisting the county into going along: “This is historic, because we are going to hold people’s feet to the fire,” said HUD deputy secretary Ron Sims, who added: “It’s time to remove zip codes as a factor in the quality of life in America.”

Read that last line again: it’s pretty startling. To remove zip codes “as a factor in the quality of life” in a nation—so that 10455 (South Bronx), 91731 (El Monte, California), and 48210 (Detroit’s west side) have exactly the same implications for quality of life as 10021 (New York’s Upper East Side), 90210 (Beverly Hills), and 48009 (Birmingham, Michigan)—would require extreme, indeed utopian, ventures into social engineering. It’s certainly a result unachieved by Scandinavian social democracy (in which cities like Stockholm and Copenhagen include both chic, desirable neighborhoods and neighborhoods that are neither), or for that matter by the harder tyrannies of the Left. Even 50 years after Castro’s seizure of power in Cuba, Wikipedia describes the Miramar neighborhood as “an upscale district . . . one of the better parts of Havana.”

What kind of social engineering might be called for to remove zip code as a quality-of-life factor differentiating gritty Yonkers from leafy Yorktown, or crime-plagued Mount Vernon from calm Mamaroneck? The New York Times lays it out:

. . . the county admitted that it has the authority to challenge zoning rules in villages and towns that in many cases implicitly discourage affordable housing by setting minimum lot sizes, discouraging higher-density developments or appropriating vacant property for other purposes. Westchester agreed to “take legal action to compel compliance if municipalities hinder or impede the county” in complying with the agreement.

Not surprisingly, voters across Westchester reacted with alarm as to what this would mean. Aside from the abridgment of home rule, a requirement to accept dense development would probably bring new costs (the introduction of water and sewer systems, school expansion), which would be unlikely to be offset by property tax collections on the new developments. Planning to use a vacant parcel for new softball fields, or preserve it as open space? Sorry, but using town property for purposes that town residents favor could put the supervisors in violation of the settlement. And while much was said about how it would make sense to provide housing options for teachers, cops, and other town workers, along with downsizing retirees and others with local ties, the fact is that towns enter a legal minefield when they attempt to earmark low-income housing for those constituent groups. “Fair housing” litigants have repeatedly sued and sometimes won on the theory that such policies are unfair to other poorer people who might want to give the suburbs a try. And indeed, the settlement “requires the county to market the homes aggressively to black and Hispanic residents of the New York City area”—not just those already working or living in the county.

One question in many voters’ minds was whether incumbent county executive Spano, a Democrat, had in fact fought hard against going along, or had caved too readily to what both sides agreed were unprecedented demands (including $10 million for the plaintiffs and their lawyers). After all, the deal offered Spano certain political advantages, including relatively favorable press in both the New York Times and Gannett’s reliably liberal local Journal News, both of which predictably applauded the settlement on their editorial pages. Spano insisted that the county was yielding against its will. At the same time, he used the quiet weeks leading up to Labor Day to steamroll the plan through a compliant board of county legislators. Challenger Rob Astorino called for a slowdown to examine whether the county had really exhausted its options. Spano replied by playing the race card: he said continued delay in approving the settlement would “make us a symbol of racism.”

As it happens, a lot of Westchesterites—residents of a county known for racial liberalism from way back, and which voted for Barack Obama by a comfortable margin—don’t like being talked to that way. Now Spano, despite a well-financed campaign whose online ads were nearly as ubiquitous as Michael Bloomberg’s, and all the advantages of incumbency and union backing, is packing for his departure. Astorino, just recently written off as a long shot, will be moving into his office. And officials of other local governments have a new reason to fight, not just go along meekly, when the social engineers and lawyers come knocking at their door.

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, posts as MidWestchester on Twitter, as well as under his own name.

I guess concrete walls are the only solution for some... shouldn't have taken that money you know it ain't freeee!!! Let's vote on it! Yas or Nah

Jeez. I have a friend that paid half a mil for a shack on the beach. Beautiful scenery with imaginary no- go zones, too. We love our poor people

"Little paradises take their time" Maggie

For those still sufficiently lucid enough to care more about their neighborhoods and the safety of their own families than they do they do the location of Iran's capitol, read about Section 8 housing in the Atlantic Monthly's American Murder Mystery.

We love our poor people- the teachers of our children, our police and law enforcement tasked with protecting us, and our town workers all qualify for low income housing. And our town workers and retirees, too!!

Do these low income constituents pose a threat to the neighborhoods?

I knew something didn't sound right about this guys' story. I can't imagine that anyone cares a zip about zip codes.

You simply didn't understand the article.

"I do not understand the hypocrisy of liberals or conservatives."

Nor your own.

I for one would appreciate more directness from you. I'm sure you have some good points to contribute but I'm never sure I'm reading you right. Speak plainly, man.

I know!! I know!! They turn into a Democrat?

Personally, I believe the election process should be publicly funded somehow and incumbents and challengers cannot accept private donations and they each start with the same resources about two weeks before the voters go to the polls.

I've always wondered why and how anyone would be able to raise and spend $100 million dollars to get a 250K-400K job.

It must be the benefits package.

Thanks. I like the Talking Heads quite a bit...although not so much as does this free-spirited friend of mine who had "Road to Nowhere" at played at her wedding to a stolid engineer a couple of years back. She has since run off with a circus performer.

I'm abolutedly serious about the power of imitation. I know a guy--abolutely brilliant, an IQ that I suspect to be north of 170--who began to study that offshoot of evolutionary psychology known as Game six months ago, He says that Game boils down to acting confident long enough so that it becomes real confidence, which women respond to. And I have to believe him, given that in that short time he has gone from doing so-so with the ladies to simultaneiously dating a graduate student, a pharmaceutical sales rep, and a blonde Russian, even though he's short and doesn't really have all that much money. I just hope that his boss doesn't find out about all the other women, since he's seeing her as well.

You do have a sense of humor after all/ Great post!!!

I like the Talking Heads too... especially the concert "Stop Making Sense" and the Big Suit

Counter counter David goes solo

The collective of lobbies that run the country.

Power to the People!!

Thanks, Spenc, for devolving another perfectly interesting thread.

It's an interesting passive-aggressive style you have.

Passive-aggressive is right. Spencer likes to derail threads by combining unintelligibility with abuse, such as the time he disagreed with my worries over our post-9/11 loss of civil liberties so vociferously that he drunkenly suggested that I blow myself--and my family--up. When taken to task for this the next day, he apologized in true passive-agressive style to "all you good people," but of course not to me, since that would have meant assuming responsibility for his mistake.

Also, when criticized for his willful ignorance of a given subject, he will tearfully reference his lack of educational credentials, as though that presents him with some sort of an obstacle vis-a-vis occasionally remaining decently silent.

And you never did apologize for suggesting that I kill my family. Will you ever take responsibility for your actions, like a man?

But aren't lobbies comprised of people?

The populists refer to insurance companies as if they are run by the evil leaders of the Planet Triskellion. In fact, many of them are mutual companies and pass any savings back to their policyowners. The stock companies OTOH have stockholders, little old ladies like my Mom who invested a bunch in AIG only to find Elliot "Can I have another hour, please?" Spitzer running her shares into the ground. When are people going to wake up and realize that one man's lobby is another man's stock and trade? Lobbying and backroom muscle is exactly the way this country is SUPPOSED to work!!

I can agree with that, Lou, if it wasn't for the money factor... if it was convincing debate which won one over another, I would agree wholeheartedly.

Thank you!!

Now back to the grind!