Bureaucrats Crack Down on Windmill

11 Dec, 2009 by Dave Blount

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There isn’t much you can do without major hassles in a world micromanaged by petty tyrant bureauweenies — even if you’re a moonbat just trying to be green. Larry Walth put up a $10,000 wind turbine to help meet his electricity needs in Wishek, North Dakota. He righteously bleats:

It’s energy and it’s not coming from coal, which is not clean. I’ve got grandchildren and I’m concerned about their future and our environment.

You might think authorities would be pleased. But no:

In April, he was denied a permit to put up the wind turbine because it does not meet zoning codes for residential districts. But, in defiance of city officials, he put it up two months later anyway. And now he intends to keep it standing on his two-lot property on the edge of town.

Walth believes he is on firm legal ground since he put up the structure five months before city officials passed a new city zoning ordinance last month banning wind turbines in all non-commercial districts. Walth believes he is exempt from the ordinance, because it would have to be applied retroactively to his turbine. …

He said he was fined $50, roughly what he estimates the 2.6-kilowatt turbine saves him each month, after he put up the $10,000 turbine without permit. But the fine could increase to $500 per day if he disregards the city’s order to remove it.

It doesn’t pay to go up against City Hall, even in Wishek, ND. Walth scoffs at bureaucratic claims that people have complained about his windmill.

“People in this town can’t figure out why they’re spending all this time to tear it down,” he said. “It’s on my property. I don’t care what they do, even if they get signatures from everyone in town.”

That’s where Walth went wrong: thinking that it’s his property. If it were, everyone would agree that it’s none of government’s business what he does with it — just like if the wealth you create at your job were your property, the government wouldn’t seize whatever percentage of your paycheck greedy bureaucrats deem fit.

Only in a free country like the late great USA do private citizens own property. In today’s USSA, all property is effectively owned by the government, to be managed and even redistributed according to bureaucratic whim. Fortunately for Walth, no Kennedys can see his windmill from their seaside mansions, or he’d really be in trouble.

Walth is still hoping that Big Government will give him a 30% energy tax credit for his forbidden turbine.