No one cares about Local Control any more than they do about State's Rights. It's 100% where you think it will aid your cause. I want Austin to be able to do things the Texas Legislature doesn't want, and I want Huntington Beach to be prevented from doing things the California Legislature doesn't want. I make a limited exception for things with minimal affect on vulnerable people or anyone out of their jurisdiction - say, what flag they fly.
Preemption makes a lot of sense theoretically with zoning and land-use power specifically because that's a delegation of authority from the state to the cities and they can take it back any time they want. I suppose that's probably true of most or all other city authorities too but it's particularly clear-cut in this case.
Is 2 universally true? States vary in how much & which power is "inherently" vested in cities. Home rule states, Dillon's Rule states, lots of in-betweens. In California charter cities have home rule in principle - but in practice that's highly worn down, because the state can preempt them in anything it deems a matter of statewide importance.
That said, that's my legalistic take, and even in states with home rule, the state is arguably the organic entity and the natural level where these relationships can be altered, e.g. via state constitutional amendments. No one would say a city cannot lose home rule without its consent.
Commomwealths are more powerful than states, but states have more power than cities.
Is this correct: The origin of all of this is the constitutional enumeration of rights and responsibilities of state governments (no mention there of cities or localities) inherited from a British colonial power structure where colonies' governors were basically local representatives of royal authority.
Heebie, I know this sounds horrible and I don't mean it that way, but Texas and Oklahoma do not make me optimistic about the future of the US. Leaders of large American cities are not exactly Guan Yu figures-- Brandon Johnson sucks, NYC is going to get Cuomo again, Cherelle is honestly pretty recognizable in the principal of Abbott Elementary, Michelle Wu is good but has kind of an easier problem to solve. California is apparently seriously handicapped by Californians. How is Houston's mayor? Demographic changes are not helping the cause of civilization either,
Yours in good cheer,
Yeah, Home Rule versus Dillon's Rule makes a difference in how much inherent power cities have and I don't know how that affects specific powers. Zoning is definitely a specifically delegated power in every state, though, except Hawaii which does it at the state level. There's a model act that Herbert Hoover championed when he was Commerce Secretary that's the basis for these delegations.
That is, I don't know to what extent Home Rule affects other powers, but it doesn't really affect zoning, which is a specific delegation of power from the state in every case.
We have a home rule charter. I have no idea what it means. But we have very low housing prices compared to California.
We have home rule. I don't think the state cares though.
6/7: Oh, I see - yes, Hoover provided a more consistent model.
I'm just a common tater, from a common wealth.
Common, common, common, chameleon.
12. Remember in Little Town on the Prairie, when Pa impales two potatoes on the blade of an axe, and wins at charades? It took me like ten years to get that joke.
Castration jokes aren't for the kids.
The clue was "Charles Spudslice," the Civil War general.
I don't remember it from the books but is the answer agitator? (Hatchet tater)
I want to live like commentators
I want to do whatever commentators do
I want to live like commentators
IYKWIM (AITTYD)
14: is this from the book or the TV show?
We had most of the books when I was a kid - I was very fond of them. Not shy about depicting exactly how much work was needed to live off a farm in those days, and how violent and dangerous life could be. The scene in "Farmer Boy" in which some of the older pupils at the school regularly attack the teacher (having beaten the previous teacher to death) and the teacher comes in the next day with a fifteen-foot bullwhip and gets his revenge, comes to mind.
16,17: Commentators on the Acts!! HAHAHAHA
23. The books struck a really good balance -- they acknowledged the perils of farm/frontier life, but stopped shy of actually depicting the worst of it, so that the books were still enjoyable for children. (Mary goes blind, for example, between Plum Creek and Silver Lake, so you don't have to read the harrowing blow-by-blow of the illness that took her sight. By the time you meet her again in Silver Lake, she's already cheerfully adjusted to her disability.) But The First Four Years, a posthumously-published manuscript adapted from LIW's diaries, is brutally sad. Without the optimistic narrative overlay, their lives just seem cursed.
How else is life in Minnesota going to be?
My family stories talk about being unable to build a fire strong enough to keep warm (due to the lack of wood) and being delighted that the railroad stoker knew they would be freezing and spill coal for them as he passed.
If your family had read The Long Winter they would have learned how to make sticks to burn, out of twisted hay.
They were burning cow chips. The hay was for the chew cows.
We spent the long winter making sick burns instead.
26: My understanding is that a bunch of this is driven by the books having essentially two authors: Rose Wilder Lane who a Randian nutcase who thought that Pa was a libertarian hero, and Laura Ingalls Wilder who lived a rather unhappy life. Pa is bad!
Views are mixed, like those on Michael Landon. He appeared nice, but trashed a hotel room in Neligh.
Pa (Michael Landon, not the real one) didn't wear underpants, because he knew the ladies at home loved to watch him swing free in his britches. That's the main thing I remember from Alison Arngrim's memoir.
Wow. That would be a good meaning for the euphemism "local preemption".
Worth looking at "Prairie Fires" by Caroline Fraser, which debunks a lot of the Wilder legend. I haven't read it, but I read the chapter by chapter commentary by Jude Doyle, which appears to be no longer searchable online (I think Doyle took a bunch of stuff offline when they were getting dogpiled online for other reasons). The commentary is probably still available through The Wayback Machine if I could remember the original URL, and it was really good. Part of what I remember is that the Wilders were never really able to make an economic go of farming, and that Laura's husband's disability was actually a blessing in disguise by forcing her family to concentrate on business in town, her teaching salary, and later her book revenues.
That was a great book! The social-historical background of the Little House stories was so fun to read about. IIRC the second half of the book was mostly about Rose Wilder Lane, and a lot less interesting.
If I ever read a celebrity bio, it will be one of the Brady Bunch.
I kinda want to read "Say Everything" because it's such a brilliant name for Ione Skye's memoir.
It is. I just realized that yesterday, it was our mayor presumptive who asked me to vote for him at the polling place. I thought it was just some guy. I told him I'd think about it, which was an obvious lie because what was I going to think about in the 100 feet I had left to walk.
39: Arrgh! After posting, my memory made another connection, and I now think the commentary I was remembering was by Ana Mardoll, not Jude Doyle. Crossed memory wires. Still not searchable, though. Apologies for any confusion.
In my defense, the guy clearly picked his campaign photos to make him look older and handsomer than he does in real life.
They tell you to do that in candidate training.