Last year, when the issue of defunding ACORN was a hot-button issue, I told countless radio talk show audiences that the focus should be on eliminating the underlying fuel that created the organization—the flow of federal subsidies.

Chris Edwards pointed this out in September. If Congress simply stops subsidizing ACORN, its activists will reincorporate under new names and again become eligible for funds. Alas, that’s precisely what ACORN is currently doing.

From FoxNews​.com:

One of the latest groups to adopt a new name is ACORN Housing, long one of the best-funded affiliates. Now, the group is calling itself the Affordable Housing Centers of America.

Others changing their names include what were among the largest affiliates: California ACORN is now Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and New York ACORN has become New York Communities for Change. More are expected to follow suit.

A comment from Frederick Hill, a spokesman for Republicans on the U.S. House oversight and government reform committee, doesn’t indicate that the GOP has quite received the message:

To credibly claim a clean break, argued Hill, the new groups should at least have hired directors from outside ACORN.

It appears that for many Republicans, attacking ACORN represented political opportunism, not a statement about the proper role of the federal government.

Further rendering the GOP’s ACORN agenda moot was last week’s ruling by a U.S. District judge that singling out ACORN for defunding is unconstitutional. It truly boggles the mind what passes for constitutional and unconstitutional in this country.

Tuesday was the birthday of James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution.” Reflecting upon Madison’s wise words, it’s hard to understand how the federal “community development” programs that have funded ACORN could pass constitutional muster:

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

“[T]he powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.”

“With respect to the two words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.”

See this essay for reasons why these HUD community development programs should be abolished.

George Avery is an assistant professor of public health at Purdue University. In today’s Daily Caller, Avery rebuts claims that the Obama health plan would improve public health:

The idea that health care contributes significantly to population health is both intuitively appealing and untrue.…

In fact, federal “reform” often hurts the public health system. Both public health and health care experts have criticized Medicare and Medicaid, enacted by Congress in 1965, for changing the focus of health care practitioners from prevention to treatment.…

Requiring all Americans purchase health insurance, which the current bills hope to do, would not address the underlying socio-economic issues at the root of most public health problems.…

Indeed, access to health care can help individual patients, but can also aggravate some public health problems.… High rates of surgical intervention increase the risk and spread of drug resistant infections like MRSA.

Avery is the author of the Cato Institute briefing paper, “Scientific Misconduct: The Manipulation of Evidence for Political Advocacy in Health Care and Climate Policy.”

New York Times columnist David Brooks, President Obama’s biggest fan among self-proclaimed conservatives, has been plunged into the depths of despair by the latest machinations of Obama and his congressional allies:

Deem and pass? Are you kidding me? Is this what the Revolutionary War was fought for? Is this what the boys on Normandy beach were trying to defend? Is this where we thought we would end up when Obama was speaking so beautifully in Iowa or promising to put away childish things?

Yes, I know Republicans have used the deem and pass technique. It was terrible then. But those were smallish items. This is the largest piece of legislation in a generation and Pelosi wants to pass it without a vote. It’s unbelievable that people even talk about this with a straight face. Do they really think the American people are going to stand for this? Do they think it will really fool anybody if a Democratic House member goes back to his district and says, “I didn’t vote for the bill. I just voted for the amendments.” Do they think all of America is insane?

On Thursday, March 18, John Stossel’s show on the Fox Business News network will feature a discussion of how taxes and regulation have prevented urban areas like Cleveland from recovering from the decline of the industries that once supported those regions.

While the “stars” of the show were Drew Carey and Reason Magazine’s Nick Gillespie, Stossel spent a few minutes on zoning and land-use regulation. When searching for someone to advocate such land-use regulation, they happened to ask James Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere, a critique of suburbia.

Kunstler’s response was emphatic. First, he called one of Stossel’s other guests (okay, it was me) “a shill for the sprawl-builders.” Then he added, “Please tell Stoessel [sic] he can kiss my ass.” He was so proud of this response that he posted it on his blog (look for it in the archive if it has disappeared from his home page).

Kunstler is biased against mobility and low-density housing, but he must be a good writer because he has lots of fans. As soon as he posted his rude reply, the blogosphere lit up with arguments from progressive, conservative, and even libertarian writers claiming that sprawl is the result of central planning and zoning and therefore libertarians such as Stossel and Cato should support smart-growth policies aimed at containing sprawl.

Sprawl is “mandated by a vast and seemingly intractable network of government regulations, from zoning laws and building codes to street design regulations,” claims conservative Austin Bramwell. As a result, “government planning makes sprawl ubiquitous.”

Anarcho-libertarian Kevin Carson quotes The Geography of Nowhere as the authority for how planners like Robert Moses forced people to live in sprawl. “Local governments have been almost universally dominated by an unholy alliance of real estate developers and other commercial interests” that insisted on urban sprawl, says Carson.

Progressive Matthew Yglesias describes sprawl as “centrally planned suburbia” and accuses libertarians of being hypocrites because they don’t oppose zoning codes that mandate sprawl. He adds that “People sometimes cite Houston as an example of a libertarian-style ‘no zoning’ city, but this is mostly a myth” (citing a paper that finds that Houston “regulates land use almost as intricately as cities with zoning”).

This is all balderdash and poppycock. People who believe it should get their noses out of Kunstler’s biased diatribes and look at some real data and see how zoning actually worked before it was hijacked by authoritarian urban planners. It doesn’t take much to show that areas without any zoning or regulation will — if developed today — end up as what planners call “sprawl.” Until recently, all that zoning has done has been to affirm the kind of development that people want.

Contrary to Carson’s claim, zoning was not invented by developers trying to impose their lifestyle preferences on unsuspecting Americans. The idea that realtors and developers could somehow force people to buy houses they didn’t want is refuted by hundreds or thousands of real-estate developments that failed financially because they did not offer what people wanted. Unlike planners who write prescriptive zoning codes, developers who risk their own money are going to make every effort to build things that people want because if they don’t, the developers themselves will be the losers.

Instead, zoning was invented by homeowners in existing developments who wanted to insure that their neighborhoods would maintain some degree of stability. When zoning was first applied, it was used almost exclusively in areas that were already developed. Those original zones merely reaffirmed the development that was already there. Single-family neighborhoods were zoned for single-family homes; apartments for multi-family; industrial for industry; and so forth.

Single-family homes in Euclid, Ohio.

The Supreme Court’s 1926 Euclid decision was not over vacant land but an existing neighborhood of single-family homes. A realtor wanted the option of building an apartment building in this neighborhood. The court realized that an apartment building could attract higher rents if it were located in a stable neighborhood of single-family homes, but conversely it could reduce the value of the nearby homes. Rightly or wrongly, the court decided that the rights of homeowners to maintain their property values exceeded the right of one property owner seeking to boost the value of his property at everyone else’s expense.

After the Euclid decision, most American cities zoned their neighborhoods. Planners criticize “Euclidian zoning” because most zones separate housing from other uses. But such separation was the prevailing standard in developments after about 1900, and zoning merely affirmed that standard because most of the land that was zoned was already developed.

Most vacant land in a metropolitan area is outside of city limits under the jurisdiction of county governments, and until the 1960s and 1970s most states did not give counties the authority to zone (some still don’t). As Robert Nelson pointed out in his book, Zoning and Property Rights, when cities or counties did zone vacant land, they generally put it in a “holding zone,” meaning that it was zoned for a low density until some developer saw a market for something else. The developer would then ask the city or county to rezone for the market, and the city or county almost always complied.

People look at these low-density holding zones and charge that they force sprawl. It would be true if the zones were inflexible, but in fact the cities and counties were responsive to market demand: when a landowner or developer came forth with a proposal, the city or county generally reclassified the land into an appropriate zone. NIMBYs who expected that the low-density zones would remain forever were doomed to disappointment, and they often accused city/​county commissioners of somehow being in the thrall of the developers. But the developers themselves were just reflecting market demand and city officials did not consider it their job to dictate what kind of homes or other buildings people should build and buy.

To his credit, Matthew Yglesias actually looks at some real data, namely the zoning code for Maricopa County, Arizona. But he misreads the code — or misleads his readers — when he implies that the densest zoning allowed is duplexes. In fact, chapter 7 of the code provides for multi-family housing with as many as 43 units per acre. An even bigger omission is the “planned area of development” (elsewhere called planned unit developments) zone in chapter 10, which allows for high-density, mixed-use developments. Every zoning code I have ever seen has included such a zoning option.

Whatever the code says, just reading it offers no idea of how flexible it is. If a significant chunk of vacant land is in one zone, but a developer thinks there is a market for another zone, most cities that haven’t yet fallen into the smart-growth fad will cheerfully change the zone or allow a variance. Obviously, this wouldn’t happen to a single vacant lot in the middle of an otherwise developed area, but would frequently happen to pieces of land that were, say, 100 acres or more. Maricopa’s PAD zone, for example, allows anyone with 160 acres to build a classic New Urban (mixed-use, high-density) development.

These homes were built in a suburb of Houston that has no zoning and no land-use regulation, so — according to sprawl critics — this must not be sprawl.

As noted, Yglesias also points to land-use regulation in Houston, which supposedly enforces sprawl. It is true that Houston regulates such things as setbacks and building heights. But it does not regulate uses: you can build a 7‑Eleven in the middle of single-family homes or an apartment building in an industrial district. To the extent that Houston has a separation of uses, it is because that is what people want. Convenience stores want to locate on busy streets where they are visible to lots of potential customers, so they don’t often locate in the middle of neighborhoods of single-family homes. People don’t want to live in industrial districts, so you don’t see too many apartments in them.

If you don’t believe Houston is unregulated, just step across the city line into Harris County or any of the eight counties adjacent to Harris County. Texas counties aren’t allowed to zone, so there you will find virtually no regulation (other than building codes), yet you still find developments with the classic separation of uses and low-density development that planners derisively call sprawl.

This subdivision is in Germany. Does that mean that German laws are also forcing people to live in sprawl?

And if you don’t believe that, take a look at Wendell Cox’s rental car tours of European (and other) cities. Few would argue that Europe has forced people to sprawl, yet Cox shows that European cities are rapidly spreading out with low-density developments that (as Peter Hall says on page 873 of his massive tome, Cities in Civilization) are “almost indistinguishable from [their] counterparts in California and Texas.” (In a more recent article, Cox also refutes the completely undocumented claim that Americans are deserting the suburbs to move back to central cities.)

American cities sprawl because Americans, like people all over the world, prefer to live in single-family homes and like to have a little land they can call their own for gardening, entertainment, and play areas. The automobile made it possible for almost everyone to achieve this dream, where before the auto only the upper classes could do so. As John Stossel noted back in 2006 (when Kunstler had accepted his invitation to be on his show), restrictions on sprawl will destroy “the lives of poor people” because they basically tell “low-income people who want back yards that they can’t have one” (to which Kunstler supposedly replied, “you can’t have everything”).

So which is the appropriate libertarian view? To tell low-income people that they have to live in multi-family housing because social policy has made single-family homes artificially expensive? Or to simply eliminate zoning codes (which, contrary to Yglesias’ claims, every libertarian I know advocates) and let people do what they want (including, if they want, living in high-density developments or low-density developments with deed restrictions providing the stability that zoning once offered)?

Sprawl is not the result of central planning and libertarians need not hesitate in their opposition to smart growth. The real hypocrites are the so-called progressives like Yglesias who claim to care about low-income and disadvantaged people yet support policies that will prevent most such people from ever owning single-family homes.

As I previously noted, one of the areas where enforcement of the right to keep and bear arms will impact states and localities is in the carrying of handguns, either open or concealed. Until then, handgun carry proponents will be forced to comply with state laws that mandate open carry where concealed handgun permits are not issued or are only issued to those who happen to have fame, money, or political connections.

Wisconsin is one of two states with no provision for concealed carry (Illinois is the other). Frank Hannon-Rock, a member of Wisconsin Carry, a pro-gun rights organization, was arrested for open carrying on his front porch. He filed suit and was recently awarded $10,000 by a federal district court.

This parallels (but does not equal) the experience of Danladi Moore, an open carry advocate in Virginia who has been harassed repeatedly by Norfolk police. Moore’s case is worse; he is black, and police behavior took a predictable turn:

Danladi Moore – whom the city paid $10,000 in July to avoid litigation after being stopped by police for suspected weapons violations – was charged with trespassing at the downtown entertainment complex Tuesday night…

Moore said a friend who was with him at Waterside also was carrying a gun and also had challenged police when asked to leave. He said his friend, who is white, was not charged.

Given the racist origins of gun control and the positive role that firearms played in the civil rights movement, you would think that this sort of thing would be frowned upon.

• Busy with an ambitious domestic agenda, the Obama administration has put trade issues on the back burner. Let’s hope it stays that way.

• A little lesson on how government works. (As opposed to how it’s supposed to work.)

• There has been talk that House Democrats are planning to “deem” the health care bill into law without calling for a vote. If you’re not sure how that process works, read this.

• Contrary to a growing belief in Washington, revaluing China’s currency will not cure the trade deficit.

• Podcast: “ObamaCare Threatens Innovation” featuring Michael F. Cannon.

David Goldhill has done it again.

You may recall his article, “How American Health Care Killed My Father,” from the September 2009 issue of The Atlantic.

Now, at HuffingtonPost, he comments on the health care legislation that may soon face a final vote (of some sort) in the House:

[C]ontinuing our Party’s almost unquestioned conflation of health insurance with health care, the central feature of the proposed “reform” is further extension of our flawed insurance-based system…[D]espite the Administration’s recent heated rhetoric, most of the entrenched health industry interests are quietly or openly in favor of this bill. Should the bill become law, I suspect we will look back at it as an industry bailout…

How…can Democrats in the depths of a recession support a massive tax increase on middle-class job creation…? How…could we justify diverting even more of middle class income to support our broken system of care, further starving families of funds for all their other needs? Most uninsured Americans lack insurance only temporarily; how many of them would trade lesser lifetime job prospects and lower disposable income for the short-term retention of health insurance?…

If the legislation had any real prospect of controlling health care spending, would the pharmaceutical industry be funding the “yes” campaign?

As a former Democrat who hung door knockers for Michael Dukakis in 1988, I know the heavy heart with which he writes. Read the whole thing.

Watch the video to hear Goldhill’s story: