UPDATED: The whole Sustainable Development, eco-police Audi advertisement thing. Michelle Malkin covers it.

The old saying “all politics is local” is absolutely true. A local politician affects the quality of life on each and every citizen, often in personal ways.

When the left poo-poos Sarah Palin’s experience as mayor, they reveal themselves in a couple ways. One, they’re statists. That is, they want the state, the Federal government, to control everything, so they diminish the achievements of those who succeed locally. Two, they despise the policies it normally takes to make governance work–like no debt.

However, for Republicans and conservatives to succeed, they have to embrace the mantle of local leadership and extend it to the national scene. That means that development isn’t wrong, per se, it’s how development is conducted that is key. Conservatives and Republicans need to stop ceding local governance issues from the school board to the city council to big-government local overlords.

How to do it once in office? This is how:

Mississauga, Ontario mayor Hazel McCallion demonstrates good governance: She has been re-elected 11 times, served for 31 years, maintains a debt-free city with a 700 million safety net.

Watch this video:

You can also go here for the PDF of the city’s finances.

The great thing for America, is that Barack Obama is demonstrating the limitations of statism. It simply doesn’t work. Michigan has tried it. California has tried it. And even still, in those states, there are pockets of growth and development and that’s likely because the local leaders kept taxes low, attracted jobs and created a civic environment conducive to growth.

A big discussion, too, has been circulating about sustainable development. Some conservatives are balking because of a UN plan to enforce worldwide.

But the argument is more nuanced than that. Sustainable development is a good thing–as long as it’s controlled locally. We want the power to be in the local citizen’s hands not in some corruptocrat’s in New York or Washington.

Conservatives need good development plans and need to help define the argument. Dismissing this issue just gives the Democrats and leftists more power.

Local. Local. Local. The strength and power of community starts there so that’s where conservatives should be.

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