Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 22:19:18 -0700 (MST)
From: [Vin_Suprynowicz@lvrj.com: April 8 column -- he refused to move his trees]
To: snail
Reply-To: Vin_Suprynowicz@lvrj.com (Vin Suprynowicz)
To: vinsends@ezlink.com
Subject: April 8 column -- he refused to move his trees
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 13:29:26 -0800
FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED APRIL 8, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Don't just free John Thoburn, vindicate him
The government of the Washington, D.C. suburb of Fairfax County,
Virginia, opened a golf complex a few years back, not far from the private
Reston golf driving range owned by 43-year-old native John Thoburn.
Thoburn says the tax-funded facility took away one third of his business.
But what he -- and columnists for The Washington Post -- find more
interesting are the standards which county officials have applied to their
own facility, and how they differ from the rigorous zoning regulations
enforced against Thoburn.
"To get my occupancy permit," Thoburn wrote in a guest column in the Post
March 15, "I planted over 700 trees around the range at a cost of $125,000
in 1994. But now Fairfax County demands that 98 trees be moved to different
locations, despite prior inspections and approvals. Moving the trees
provides no public benefit but would waste thousands of dollars and damage
the trees. ...
"The berm [separating Thoburn's facility from the busy Dulles Toll Road]
is a Catch-22. Two contradictory zoning conditions require tow different
heights. ... Fairfax County still refuses to say which berm height they
want. And they still haven't told me exactly which trees are in the wrong
location and need to be moved. ..."
Although he is charged with not completing the berm as required, "Anyone
who drives the Dulles Toll Road can see the finished berm, which has been
completed for over as year," Thoburn writes.
"This zoning harassment has been going on for years. One zoning
regulation ... allows a 'snack food concession.' Yet Fairfax County issued
a zoning violation for selling hot dogs and Cokes. They say we can sell
pre-wrapped roast beef deli sandwiches, but not microwave hot dogs. We can
sell Coca-Cola in a bottle or can, but not in a cup. Meanwhile my
competitors, the Fairfax County golf facilities, have carte blanche from
the county to sell beer and pizza."
Post Metro columnist Marc Fisher picks up the tale: When "the county a
couple of years ago opened its own golf complex not too far from the
Thoburn range, the county did not require itself to plant hundreds of trees
or build massive berms, and the county did permit itself to offer putting
greens and miniature golf, neither of which Thoburn is allowed to offer."
When Thoburn last year balked at spending another $30,000 to move 98
trees which the county says are in the wrong location, he was ordered to
close. He refused, was taken to court, held in contempt, and "put away
until he sees the light and repents and shuts his business, or plants the
trees," columnist Fisher reported on March 22.
That's right: Golf park owner John Thoburn, a "family man with strong
faith, an economics degree and no criminal record" has been sitting in the
Fairfax County Jail for six weeks now for refusing to move his trees.
The other inmates call Thoburn "Shrub," in acknowledgement of the nature
and seriousness of his offense, columnist Fisher reports. He hasn't seen
his kids since January (his wife and sons moved to Texas when the county
threatened to throw Mrs. Thoburn in jail, too).
The county has jailed him and is continuing to assess him fines of $1,000
per day "for operating a legal business on my own property," Thoburn wrote
to the Post on March 15. "So much for trying to live the American Dream of
being a small business owner."
"Property rights are human rights," the inmate continued. "Fairfax
County's own George Mason wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted
in 1776. It guarantees Virginians 'certain inherent rights,' including 'the
means of acquiring and possessing property.' ... If I can be jailed for not
moving trees, do I really possess my property? There are many ways to take
away property rights. My three children are part Cherokee Indian. Their
ancestors were forcibly removed from their property on the Trail of Tears.
Have we really learned anything in America?"
"I have 800 years of law on my side," Thoburn told Fisher of the Post.
"The Magna Carta says fines must be proportional to the offense. Is
incarceration proportional to not moving some trees? If they say I can't
sell Coke from a cup but only from a can, or I can't have a jukebox, or
I've got to move a tree 10 feet, then I don't own that property anymore."
Foolishly, most Americans long ago embraced planning and zoning codes --
and have given them little thought since -- on the assumption they merely
formalized what was common sense in the first place: "We property owners
mutually agree to build only residential developments up here around the
lake; those wishing to build a slaughterhouse or aluminum smelter should
locate it down by the railroad tracks."
But the bureaucrats can never leave it at that, can they? Year after year
they whine for bigger budgets, put their nephews and cousins on the payroll
as $50,000 "enforcement officers," generate ream after ream of new "code
and regulation" to keep everybody busy until shrub placement is mandatory,
and everything that isn't mandatory is forbidden.
The nature of a thing is best judged by its fruit, and the evil fruit of
planning and zoning is a law-abiding family man like John Thoburn sitting
in prison while his wife and children flee the local jurisdiction in
terror, for all the world like terrified Lincolnshire peasants fleeing the
soldiers of Prince John.
The solution here is not merely to urge the Fairfax County Board of
Supervisors to back off in this particular case, while tens of thousands of
other American property owners see their rights and freedoms similarly
stripped away in slightly less outrageous pick-and-rolls every day.
There is no compromise with creeping fascism -- defined by any decent
dictionary as an economic system in which private "owners" are allowed to
continue paying taxes on "their" property, while every major decision about
the (start ital)use(end ital) of that property is made by some government
functionary.
One does not solve the problem of "30 percent sewage in the drinking
water" by reducing the sewage level to 20 percent and announcing "There:
(start ital)much(end ital) better!" No, the solution here is to restore the
property rights which lay at the heart of the free-market system which made
ours the hardest-working, most prosperous nation in the world. Every
planning and zoning code in America must be abrogated and repealed, just as
we would hitch a tractor to the tail of a rotting whale and haul it away
from the beach where our children swim.
Don't just free John Thoburn; vindicate him.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to
Privacy Alert, 1475 Terminal Way, Suite E for Easy, Reno, NV 89502. His
book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement,
1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web site
www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html
***
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved,
asa rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V.
Debs (1855-1926)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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