Deplorable Democracy Part II

The Planning Commission refused to rezone from AG to R3!  The developer will doubtless appeal to the County Commission (what would be called the Board of Supervisors in California).

Deplorable Denocracy

I attended a meeting of the Canyon County Planning Commission this evening. 

Why?  A developer wants a big parcel rezoned from agricultural to R3 (three homes per acre).  This is contrary to the County's Master Plan and directly contrary to the Canyon County Zoning Ordinance.  The roads leading to this 500+ home development are two lane and sometimes suffering from cattle and sheep problems.  These roads are already pretty busy as this area has grown, with the occasional gruesome traffic accidents. Construction trucks are already a problem because they sometimes jackknife making the turn from highway 44 to Lansing Drive.

So, the developer and what were obviously but not openly his employees spoke first, about eight witnesses only one from Canyon County.

Then many dozens of opponents spoke.  Who would have known what skilled researchers and eloquent speakers a bunch of farmers can be?

"On p. 510 of the Middleton Memorandum of Understanding" one speaker identified what was a curious and suspicious sentence.  Another farmer explained how she and her parents for "entertainment" would spend winters watching cars attempting to climb Lansing's hill.  (It is pretty steep and when semis try to haul building materials in, it will be similarly entertaining or perhaps terrifying.)

I think the Planning Commission got the message and they were asking good questions.

They may be deplorables wearing baseball gaps, worn blue jeans, and ZZ Top beards but the local schools clearly accomplished something.

I Seem to Remember a Protest on a Bridge Involving Race

Selma?  Today we have this racist madness at play in the People's Republic of California:

Students at the University of California, Berkeley held a violent protest on campus Friday to demand additional segregated “spaces of color” for non-white students.

A video of the protest shows demonstrators repeatedly heckling white passersby, barring them entry to a key bridge on campus by forming a human chain while simultaneously allowing students of color to pass unmolested.

At one point, the video even shows a protester refusing to allow an older white man to cross the bridge, eventually directing him to cross by way of a creek that flows underneath the bridge.

Just a few moments later, another white man attempted to cross the bridge by forcing his way through the crowd, only to be surrounded by a mob of students who began shouting expletives at him as they pushed him back in the direction he had come from.

Time and again, white students and professors were denied entry to the bridge as they were surrounded by aggressive protesters shouting “go around!”

Apparently, protesters were angered because one of their “safe spaces” was relocated to the basement of a building where it had previously occupied the fifth floor. When protesters were asked about the motive for their demonstration, though, they refused to be recorded, leaving little to no explanation for the rationale behind such an aggressive protest.

Witchcraft in Paraguay

No more insults about Puritan New England,  From November 5, 2014 Fox DC:

ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) -- An indigenous woman has been burned alive in Paraguay after being accused of witchcraft.\

Officials said Wednesday that members of the Mbya Guarani community tied 45-year-old Adolfina Ocampos to a wooden pole and shot arrows at her before they burned her alive.

Ocampos was sentenced to death last week by the community's chief in Tahehyi, a village some 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of the capital, Asuncion.

Local prosecutor Fany Aguilera has charged nine men in the village with first-degree murder, and they have already acknowledged killing the woman.