Lady Bird Johnson is being honored this month with a set of stamps commemorating her beautify America campaign.
In 1965 then First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson successfully championed federal legislation named The Highway Beautification Act (HBA). A legacy organization from that cause Scenic America is still active. According to the organization’s website ” The HBA was intended to protect natural and scenic beauty along federal-aid highways by, among other things, controlling billboards in rural, scenic and agricultural areas.”
Besides being continuously active in proposing stricter provisions to that law or fighting what they feel are aspects and proposals that have weakened it as regards billboards, Scenic America has also been active over the years with great success in regulating placement and construction of cell towers. Their main focus is aesthetic in nature. Given such success in motivating the populace and legislative bodies to such effect we wonder why their aesthetics has not caught on with regards to wind farms. Really we do.
Now recognizing the dangers of expansive language and corruptions of liberal interpretations, as with some other zoning regulations, we hold that a conservative case can still be made for limited aspects of regulation relating to “scenic conservation.” While discussion of such limits are outside the scope of this article, suffice it to say that liberals would no doubt claim a lot more ground so to speak for such regulations and be less respective of private property considerations. Aesthetics is often a motivating force for liberals, particularly the strident and potent environmentalist component.
Liberals care nothing about tax abuse in furtherance of pet projects or favored concepts. The tax abuse argument falls on deaf ears, it provides no internal limitation on them to live by. However they do pride themselves in their supposed appreciation for the superior beauty of vistas provided by pristine nature or horizons not blighted by man’s presence?
With that in mind, but especially our interest in protecting taxpayers from the assault on their pocket books by the special interest boondoggle of subsidies and legislative mandates supporting wind mill farms, we propose implementation of Rule 4 of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals directed at liberals: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
Indiana wind farm — aesthetically like dandelions in an otherwise manicured lawn.
Liberals are oblivious to facts that devastate the existence of any substantial economic or environmental merit to wind farms overall. Those facts they just deny or ignore. But we think they must be conflicted by the aggressive posture of those churning monstrosities on the horizon . . . the extensive land scarring matrix of roads and otherwise extraneous power lines necessary to sustain or exploit them . . . the audible and inaudible disruptive emissions of noise and other tranquility ending and health degrading wave forms they produce . . . the virtual Cuisinarts they mimic confronting bats and raptors and song birds which they worship.
Wind farm despoiling a lengthy mountain ridge line in Maine
Or maybe not given liberals propensity for stupidity and hypocrisy. But it is appropriate to rub their noses in it even if they have no shame. We propose it because others in the general populace affected (victimized) by them might. Thus our endorsement of the rhetorical application of Alinsky’s Rules for radicals number four. R Mall
This piece makes an excellent point. However, the environmentalists’ weird lack of concern for aesthetics and the protection of our feathered friends, you can be assured is only temporary. We can all be assured that when this crowd has succeeded in destroying ou nation’s most effective, efficient energy producing industries, they will rediscover the glories of pristine landscapes. It is then they will turn on their current abettors…politicians like Iowa’s current congressional delegations from both parties. Are you listening, Tom and Chuck?