The Glade 4.0

Let her have her day in court. The executive branch is only enforcing the law that's written. Hopefully the judiciary will throw it out.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

They are enforcing their view of the law. They are attempting to exchange the word suitable for common in the law and that is not their job.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

She's going to lose.

Yup. And could have avoided the whole thing by changing things around when she was initiall confronted about it.

Plus, it's likely that her neighbors have complained. It's usually fairly rare for city officials to take the initiative on something like this without prompting from the community.

Sure, by caving in to ridiculous government demands, swallowing the loss of time, materials, and costs associated with the construction of her garden, and taking on the additional expense of removing the garden, yeah - she could have avoided the whole thing.



What the neighbors think is hugely important. It's offensive to think that I should have to view vegetables in front of someone else's house on my way out of my neighborhood. I just can't wait until the government starts paying attention to my thoughts on what clothes people should be forced to wear.

It's actually pretty attractive IMO. It's not like she didn't try to make it look nice.

It looks like everything around the planting beds is just dirt. Perhaps that is the real source of the problem?

It actually looks like mulch. I am thinking the real source of the problem is nits. And not the kind that are found in hair, either.

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That could be mulch/bark. It's hard to tell for sure from that distance and angle.

Either way, based on the story above, I'd say she's likely to lose.

(fake edit: shuyung beat me to it!)

What about the kind of nits we like to pick in each other's posts? Do those live in mulch too?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I've never seen any myself, but I wouldn't be surprised.

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Totally frackin' ridiculous. Honestly, libertarians like to complain about the federal government, but it's really local government that's the most arbitrary and tyrannical. Small people with just enough power to make other people miserable.

Yeah those damned liberturdians not taking part in local government just to ***** about feds.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Well, this hits close to home. Literally! I live in Oak Park (for now) - I'm gonna hafta seek out this house.

The neighborhood used to be nice... until the criminal elements snuck in and stole my wife's car (we got it back), her wheel/tires (we replaced them), my snow shovel (really the last straw for me ) and now randomly planting unsuitable vegetation!

Thank the maker we're moving to Beverly - Hills, that is - in a couple of weeks. We won't have to put up with such a great use of space.

Not really, but nice try. It only appears that way because it is actually acceptable for small local governments to regulate things that the federal government has no business sticking their dick in.

Take, for example, the sale of alcohol. There are municipalities who heavily regulate it and who turn down liquor licenses in order to keep certain businesses out. Does this seem arbitrary and tyrannical? Well, consider that the person living in such a municipality has options. If I don't like it, I can move. The same does not apply at the federal level. The flag-waving redneck argument of, "If you don't like it you can get the hell out," that became so popular when it was fashionable to hate towel-heads doesn't work for federal law. It's much harder and more burdensome to expatriate than it is to get an apartment on the other side of town.

Minute little things like the appearance of your yard, the possession of alcohol and tobacco, the upkeep and maintenance of automobiles, and other such things actually are under the purview of smaller local governments. That is what local government is for. As long as the bylaws do not infringe upon basic Constitutional protections, those little details are what local government is for. The only place the federal government has in such a scenario is to intercede when such laws do infringe upon Constitutional rights, such as when George Wallace decided that niggers weren't allowed to go to school at the University of Alabama.

Federal government, on the other hand, has no business dictating what my yard must look like. That isn't what they are for. The federal government exists to provide a degree of protection from foreign countries. It's sort of like how the C_O personnel of a large company are not responsible for making sure the bathrooms are clean. Furthermore, the environment of Arizona is vastly different from the environment of Alaska, and both are vastly different from the environment of Illinois. A federal government setting regulations on what my yard must look like is setting an undue burden on citizens of both Arizona and Alaska by forcing them to maintain a yard that would be reasonably trivial to maintain in Illinois. This would be unacceptable even at the state level, when one considers a state like California and the environmental differences between the northern and southern halves of the state.

So, it isn't that local governments are more tyrannical. Rather, the little petty tyrannies arise due to matters where local government actually is intended to have jurisdiction.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Any lawyer with half-a-brain gets these charges dropped, anyway. "Suitable plant material" is subjective. If you want to ban vegetable gardens in the front yard, ban them.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I'm seeing mulch around the beds, dirt in front. And, yes, it looks rather nice. I'm kind of jealous, that's a nice setup she has.

They probably get rain and stuff, too, unlike here in SoCal. I just killed goodly portions of our front lawn (which I don't really like, anyway, but it wasn't purposeful), by screwing up the sprinkler system for a week.


Seriously? You're moving to BH? If not, forgive me, I'm gullible. I didn't even know that word's not in the dictionary!

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Yeah - Beverly Hills, MI 48025.

And BTW, prior to this year, we had tomatoes planted in our front flowerbeds - they overran the sidewalk to the front porch 3x, and were a good deal more unsightly than this family's setup. Mr. Kevin never stopped by and threatened our Taamatoes.

Coro, I think your argument is actually illustrating the very problem I was pointing out. Your argument is a defense of Constitutional federalism, not liberty. The fact that the Constitution allows for municipal and state governments to regulate the minute details of citizens' lives doesn't make such regulation "acceptable" or properly "under the purview" of local government from the perspective of a philosophy focused on defending personal liberty. Hence my comment. I find that many contemporary American libertarians get hung up on complaints about the federal government overstepping its Constitutional bounds when many of the most significant, substantive encroachments on personal liberty are actually occurring at the state and local level.

While I don't agree that "many of the most significant, substantive encroachments on personal liberty are actually occurring at the state and local level", at the state and local level, the individual has a greater chance to redress what they view as encroachments on their personal liberty. Dealing with your local gov't is magnitudes easier than dealing with the Federal Gov't.

You probably find that "many contemporary American libertarians get hung up on complaints about the federal government overstepping its Constitutional bounds" because they are dealing with national level politics and you hear about it on a, well, national level. The chances you are going to hear about libertarians dealing with such encroachments on their local city council are approximately nil if you aren't in that city; just a touch higher if you are in that city and are the normal American.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Ah, too bad! You could grow stuff year-round.

_________________
This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge