Sneaky Tricks
Fred Lanting
One of the worst and
sneakiest tricks played on Marshall County citizens is the so-called
Home Rule measure. It was a shoddy skein of wool pulled over the eyes
of most voters. Many of you will think I exaggerate if I say this is a
Gestapo tactic, but I am old enough to know something about those
heavy-handed intrusions into the lives of German citizens, which then
spread to neighboring countries like the black plague. My wife
disagrees mildly, likening the current situation more to Communist
methodology, but then she’s younger than I.
Like most thefts of
our historic and constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, this one masqueraded as a community improvement
scheme, like the Ladies Garden Club planting petunias on lawns of
businesses or hanging potted ivy along Main Street. Don’t let the
politicians fool you — this power-grab is not so benign and amiable!
Basically, the
situation is this: The “big guns” in county politics (call them Loose
Cannons?) have decided that folks “out in the county” are now allowed
to call the cops if your farm has a corn-picker visible from their
property, a machine that you have been cannibalizing for parts to use
in repairing your working farm equipment. Never mind it might take the
police away from their opportunities to go after real criminals such as
meth manufacturers — the fat cats want to come after all us members of
the Marshall County axis of evil who live in rural areas and might have
a kid’s broken tricycle in the carport or a disabled combine in the
back-40 waiting for scrap prices to rise enough to be worth filling up
a truck and hauling it somewhere.
Shades of
Kristallnacht! The commission chairman says they are going to start
with “very preliminary… courtesy calls” by county officers, who will
tell you to clean up whatever offends their sense of decorous
decoration of your farmland or country castle. Then Tommy Cole and
Susan Owens, euphemistically but erroneously called Big Brother’s
“self-governance enforcement team”, can turn the torture screws
tighter. Cannon told a Guntersville reporter that he “understood” that
each piece of junk could constitute a separate offense and that he
could foresee a $100 fine for each item cited.
One property owner,
according to a July 5, 2006 news item, offered to put up a privacy
fence, but the big gun on the commission indicated that would not
absolve him of fines and that the owner might want to apply for a
junkyard license. Fat chance! You put up a fence that costs you money,
and then the black-shirts tell you that you can’t be licensed as a
junkyard operator or get zoning for it. They have you (us) over a
barrel. It reminds me of Hitler’s era, when Jews were not allowed to
own property yet not allowed to leave the country with their
belongings, either. A catch-22.
“Home rule and
self-governance” are not simple misnomers. They are downright lies.
Words chosen to excuse government officials’ intrusions into private
lives and constitutional rights. Yes, I’m talking about life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. I have friends and neighbors who choose
not to live “in town” because they want to preserve such liberties as
not having to have close neighbors peering into their windows or
complaining about an occasional guard dog barking. They don’t want
someone else telling them how long their grass can grow or what hobbies
or business they can indulge in.
The “rule” that some
of you were hoodwinked into voting for was NOT your own rights to your
own home; rather the right of some politician to rule your home. This
new ordinance is NOT “self governance” (BY yourself), but governance OF
your self (your person) and your property by someone else. You live in
the city? Fine. That’s your decision. But it is morally wrong to
impose your personal preferences via regulations, on citizens who want
to enjoy rural life.
I take my mowers and
tiller to a gentleman who squeezes out an existence from a meager
social security check and whatever he can grow to eat. He, like many
others in the county, always has machines and parts in various stages
of repair, and degrees of usefulness whether immediate or
future-potential. He cannot afford to build enough big garages to store
all what he has, and besides, if he got the stuff out of sight, it
would eliminate many potential handyman-income dollars that now result
from people driving by noticing he is someone who might be helpful to
them. Cannon and the Toonerville Gestapo would put this man on welfare,
costing the taxpayer more, and taking a useful service away from all of
us. There are many low-income county residents like this who will
suffer once these calamitous versions of Keystone Kops come cruising up
to their cabins.
A farmer friend
(typical of many in this non-metropolitan region) has many parts of
vehicles and equipment that might serve as a source for wheels, bolts,
chutes, or anything else, yet not right away. If any of these are
visible from a public road (and they usually are), they and the farmer
will be targeted by Cole and Owens or other cannoneers looking to blow
them out of business.
On the road to Morgan
City, there’s a property on the right where someone lives who obviously
likes wildflowers and native plants. I hope he thanks the God who
created plants, that he doesn’t live within, nor is subject to, Arab
city limits and rules (I mean the man, but possibly that might apply to
both). The Dec. 30 Arab Tribune front-page photo shows a similar
“lawn”, and the accompanying article relates the city’s ridiculous
worry that tall “weeds” promote “mosquitoes or other insects”. As if
that would be even as much as a drop in the bucket. Might as well cover
with asphalt or concrete all the lovely woods and hayfields in the
county, and get rid of Guntersville State Park the same way, if
vegetation is that serious a source of skeeters.
In the January 13
Tribune, we are given the county definition of “junk” to become
enforceable February 12 as the article says. Public nuisances such as
water-filled old tires, and oil or other ground-water pollutants,
surely are potential health hazards, but we don’t need a new ordinance
and storm trooper squad to penalize those who create them. As to the
County Commission worrying about neighbors’ property values, the answer
is simple: nobody is asking you to move next door to a chicken house or
processing plant. Or next to some farmer who relies on old equipment as
a “mine” for parts, or who wants to wait for scrap prices to go up and
make a full truckload that would be worth moving. And why would anyone
living in a low-population rural area want to force increased poverty
on a man who makes a few food dollars by fixing up lawnmowers? Is that
loving your neighbor?
The Chairman says (in
that 1-13-07 Arab Tribune piece) “I don’t want anybody to have fear in
their hearts”, and passes the buck by saying “The voters chose to do
it.”
Yes, but the voters
were largely flimflammed by a dialectical term that would have made
Karl Marx proud: “home rule”. The same semantic trickery as “to each
according to his needs” that ushered in nearly a century of oppressive
communist slavery in Europe. Sounds great, but is as much a lie as the
words the serpent whispered into Eve’s ear. Bring back Harry Truman,
one of the few straightforward people in politics that I have seen in
my lifetime. The sign on his desk said “The buck stops here”, not “The
voters (or the devil) made me do it.”
