Will Sweetwater create a residential historic overlay?

A Tommy Millsaps article in The Advocate & Democrat points that way, paraphrasing a commissioner saying the guidelines should be approved first so residents know what to expect. Amen. Others said the guidelines were "not very restrictive." Millsaps gives the Internet address where you can see for yourself.

It's good they are available, but since not everyone has easy access to the net the regulations should be printed.
Another eye-catching phrase called the restrictions "another layer of protection" for the properties. True, to some extent. But it is also true the regulations would offer a different kind of layer - one of bureaucracy between the owners' freedom to use as they see fit what they have paid for with the sweat of their brows.

Is "another layer of protection" needed? Is implying such an insult to our judicial system? If right be done, residents and owners should make this decision. If you are one, read the restrictions and decide if you are willing to pay the costs. Then have your say.

What difference a week makes.
A few days ago a government takeover of healthcare seemed imminent. (It might happen yet.) The votes were lined up, some obtained with scarcely hidden bribes and pay-offs. A ton of money secured the vote of a Louisiana senator and a sweetheart deal for a Nebraska senator exempts his state from increased Medicaid costs others would bear. (Tennessee's is $1.3 billion.)

And the most blatant bribe of all, a pay-off to unions who support the President's party, exempting their members from a tax on high-cost health insurance, a tax break for a special interest group.
So Tuesday we saw what most of America thinks of this with the election of a Republican senator, Scott Brown, in Massachusetts, the bluest of the blue states. A state where Democrats have a 3-1 majority over Republicans and for a seat held by a liberal Democrat icon, the late Edward Kennedy, for 47 years.

Did the Republican get lucky? Did the Democrat blow it? Was the vote a referendum on the president? No, no and no.
Now the two wings of liberalism, politicians and their allies in the press, are going through contortions to say otherwise, but this vote was about policy, about health care. For in polls after the election, a majority declared their vote to be a repudiation of the current attempt to take over health care and the shenanigans used to buy the needed votes.

Why would they feel so? Because Massachusetts already has government-controlled healthcare very similar to the one proposed for all. And according to Susanne King, M. D. in the "Boston Globe," citizens of Massachusetts see these results: that their healthcare costs per person are the highest in the world, that one-half of the internists in Massachusetts take no new patients and that the average waiting time to see a doctor is an incredible 63 days. They also see the 200,000 Massachusetts residents with no healthcare insurance even though there are subsidies to buy it for those making less than $31,000. And they see that the cheapest plan for a single person is $9,872 per year. And that comes with deductibles and co-pays so high many seriously ill people are doing without treatment.

Add to that the fact they are being bled dry paying new taxes because the estimated cost to Massachusetts in 2009 of $880 million was instead $1.63 billion. The sum of those things is how this election was decided.

taylormadetalk@yahoo.com