A Specter is Haunting San Diego

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism.

The Communist Manifesto, 1848.

Consider this tale.  You and your spouse buy an older (circa 1920s) home you wish to remodel as your dream home. You hire a lawyer, you go before the historical review board. You go before the community planning commission and the city planning commission.  This is a lot of work and a lot of money.  Maybe you don't like it, but we are a society with rules of law, so you follow the law.  Citizens, through their city council voted that we would protect historical landmarks and ensure proper land use.  So we expect a predictable outcome based on the rule of law with decisions made with due process.  But the mayor gets some emails and his chief of staff intervenes and sends the case back.  Who knows why?  But the mayor is under investigation for a pay to play scheme.

This is the product of leftism and the mayor of San Diego is undeniably a man of the left.  This is the end result of putting politics over process.  This is the road to serfdom.

The leftist playbook seeks to seize upon all the levers of government for the sole purpose of expanding the power of government and the left.  Getting corporations into line by threatening them with regulation, not enforcing the law when politically inconvenient, getting your pet projects delivered on the backs of developers needing your approval, buying votes by intervening against unpopular but lawful projects are all means to the end of unchecked power.  This is no different than leftism's predecessor of socialism and communism.  The reason that such isms result in tyranny is that they seek to so expand the role of the state that abuse and corruption are too powerful of temptations to resist.  The leftists seeks the power and riches that they can not obtain, because they lack the skills and entrepreneurial spirit to compete in a capitalist society.  They denounce society as evil, when their intent is to appropriate riches for themselves.

The U-T has done a public service by chronicling the multiple interventions by the mayor's office in land use decisions since he was sworn in last December.  Just like the Obama administration, which thinks it must enforce the Affordable Care Act only when convenient to its political interests, the mayor has used land use for his own political convenience.  The left has become more open about their goals and more blatant in the grab for power.  Liberals, as opposed to leftists, should be appalled and fight back if they value democracy.

Here is the 10 News video of the lead story.