Posted by
Playful Walrus on Monday, January 28, 2008 6:44:08 PM
Amy Taxin of the
Orange County Register reports on the usual band of “I want you to pay for me” protestors in Anaheim. If you go the story, you can see by the pictures that the groups love to exploit children.
Whipped by chilling winds and rain, about 150 community activists and residents marched Sunday to urge the city of Anaheim to provide affordable housing and park space in a new development slated near Angel Stadium.
The rally, organized by a coalition of community groups, churches and unions, aimed to pressure the city Anaheim to include a "community benefits agreement" in its plans for a 51.4-acre city-owned plot north of the stadium where developer Archstone-Smith plans to build hotels, offices and retail space.
So why don’t these groups buy the land and do with it what they want? Why do they demand that “someone else” do it for them? Churches have a command from Jesus Christ to care for the poor, not government. Let’s remember - separation of church and state.
There would be more people counterprotesting, but they are too busy being productive. Notice how much time unions have to protest.
The groups want the agreement to include child care facilities, park space, adequate wages and low-cost housing.
Child care? Why are these people having children they won’t raise themselves? Who defines “adequate wages”? It seems to me that if someone agrees to the wages, they must be adequate. Why aren't the unions negotiating "adequate" wages? “Low-cost housing” almost always means high-cost housing that
someone else subsidizes.
"This is to show our strength, to give us a voice so the council will listen to us," said Jaime Ramirez, an unemployed auto parts distributor from Anaheim who joined the march.
Unemployed, huh?
Archstone-Smith, which is in an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city to buy the property, has met with members of groups that have been lobbying for these standards, but has not promised to follow their criteria. Archstone-Smith expects to forge a purchase agreement with the city early this year.
The only reason the company should meet with the group is if the group is willing to buy the rights to the site.
Councilman Harry Sidhu said the city was better off selling the site for between $150 million to and $200 million and then using a portion of these funds to build affordable housing and park space elsewhere in Anaheim – in large part because the Angels' lease on the stadium forbids the construction of any residences on the property.
Angels' owner Arte Moreno has refused to alter the agreement to allow any housing there.
"You cannot force us to do certain things right on this piece of property because we have no control," Sidhu said. "We have a certain lease and we will honor that."
Most of the whiners can’t think critically, though, so they fail to grasp such realities.
"When this property is sold, we will have quite a bit of money in the redevelopment agency and we will take that money and build somewhere else in the city a redevelopment project," he said.
How about using the money to fight crime, boost emergency services, and fix infrastructure?
Eric Altman, executive director of Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development, said the coalition's hope is to be included in talks between the city and Archstone-Smith.
How annoying. What’s with people who insist on letting other people do the work and put up the money, and then butting in where they have no right to?