Land use planning isn’t a United Nations plot

Many of the right-wing land use zealots who brought Oregon the mess that was Measure 37 have some very strange fantasies.

One is that the United Nations somehow is behind land use planning in the United States – fitting in with the notion that the Secretary General of the U.N. is the antichrist and black helicopters are positioned to take over this country once the liberals have succeeded in handing over the keys to the Constitution.

Gee. Who knew? Guess I was crazy to think that zoning was a good idea. Apparently it's all-American to have gravel pits in residential neighborhoods and chemical plants next to elementary schools.

Today, a letter to the editor in the Salem Statesman Journal spewed out some untruths that led me to fire up Google and uncover some reality. Arlie W. Freauf wrote about a decision by the City Council to stop a helicopter flying school from (noisily) using the Salem airport:

I've lived for many years where I suspect the Leading Edge Aviation helicopters may fly.

When I read that the FAA is threatening to withhold airport money for Salem if the city council doesn't approve the helicopter school, I was reminded about then-Gov. Tom McCall's visit to Washington, D.C., on Feb. 7, 1973, to testify before the Interior and Insular Affairs committee on U.S. Senate S. 268 regarding U.N. land-use planning, which he was promoting.

Environmentalist Tom wanted the federal government to become more intrusive into state land issues. While admitting it was a "cop-out," he recognized local officials could blame the feds because grass-root opposition made it difficult to do certain things.

"So we need the strong sword of Damocles that the federal government can provide," he said. He also advocated putting sanctions on the states that "wouldn't break them" but that they should "sting like the devil."

Socialism requires a powerful central government. People do not easily or naturally adapt themselves to socialism, so it must rest upon force.

Force? Oh, Freauf must mean democracy.

Last time I looked the Salem City Council was elected. So were the state legislators who passed Oregon's pioneering land use legislation, SB 100. And Oregon citizens overwhelmingly voted to roll back the excesses of Measure 37 when they passed Measure 49 last November.

My Googling revealed that another Freauf, Betty, had expressed some remarkably similar sentiments to Arlie's in "Socialism Must Rest Upon Force." Methinks these Freauf's are related.

And equally mistaken.  Because when I did some research on Senate Bill 268, which supposedly was about "U.N. land-use planning" that Oregon Governor Tom McCall was promoting in 1973, the truth turned out to be quite different.

Forking out $3.95 to get an article from the New York Times archive (a small price to pay to demolish right-wing falsehoods), I learned that S. 268 was a bipartisan proposal backed by the Nixon administration. Click on the image to read the beginning of the story. Full PDF file is here:
Download s. 268 article.pdf

Later in the story, there was a summary of S. 268. Nothing to do with the United Nations – just an effort to get states to set up land use planning programs of their own choosing.

Well, I'm sure Arlie Freauf would have some explanation. Maybe Tricky Dick was in cahoots with the United Nations. After all, he proposed the Environmental Protection Agency, didn't he? That shows how low he'd go to take away our freedoms.

Bottom line: don't believe what you read in letters to the editor. Especially if they mention "U.N." and "land use" in the same sentence.

Comments

[Samuel John Klein]

It's not even surprising that they would go on so. Just tiresome.

In the conservative/neoconservative world, nothing ever fails because it's a bad idea. It fails because someone stabbed them in the back, undermined them, and stack the deck. Of course, they will claim this injury whilst stabbing everyone else in the back, undermining everyone else, and stacking the deck in their favor, and being willfully blind about the whole thing.

Although they've been doing it so long now that maybe it's not willful anymore. Maybe it's just in the conservative DNA now.

If it weren't so tragic it would be to laugh, also, that the label "socialist" is used to create boogiemen ... just like it was, oh, thirty years ago, when people thought socialism was just some soft sort of communism. Tragic because so many people are willing to be gulled by it.

[Harry Vanderpool]

Driving a truckload of bees back from Madras this evening and listening to the ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra, left wing views on KGO, I heard an interesting point:
The caller said that in his view, in almost all instances where abortion is brought up, it is for the purpose of dividing rather than to seek a solution.
This seems like the obvious, but we have become a nation of pointless bickerers and finger pointers.
I do not place the blame on the "right" or the "left" but rather the ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra, right or left nuckleheads that fuel this stuff.
One thing I really enjoyed in the Land Use Fairness hearings was listening to the folks from the other side and trying to understand their position.
My conclusion is that almost all of those that spoke at the hearings just wanted to place a house on the corner of their property for their son or daughter to help out.
Unfortunatly for them, they were taking REALLY bad advice from OIA along with,,thats right,, the ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra, knucleheaded right wing goof balls.
While waiting to enter the hearing room at one of the Land Use Fairness hearings, I overheard a most telling conversation:
So here is a 50s gal with the beehive hair do, the boob-job, the pancake batter face, and the "I love M-37" sticker etc....
She was bragging to a seething, frothing, angry circle that she had decided to turn her farm into a trailer park.
"By God that'll show them!"
She was moving forward on converting her farm to a trailer park. And in listening in on her remarks, I could only list one reason for her doing so; to show THEM"
I think that we should wise up and not focus so much on our reasonable differences in point of view, but rather target extremism.
It is pretty easy to spot if your only interest is finding a basis for truth.

[Chris W.]

Um, I could be wrong, but it probably wasn't anything in the NY Times they were talking about. It was more likely this document directly from the UN that says that private land ownership should not be allowed, and in the event that it is allowed, any value in the land should be taxed out of it...

http://www.un-documents.net/vp-d.htm

P.S., Reading an archive of a highly editorialized newspaper is not the same as doing research...

P.P.S. No, I and not a "Republican" I am an independent. The reason Pelosi didn't impeach Bush is because, in the end, they are on the same team.