... it's in The Washington Post. Well, not always. But the Post does have a front page article in Monday's paper on the decline of Oregon's once stringent land usage laws. In "Anti-Sprawl Laws, Property Rights Collide in Oregon", Blaine Harden writes:

The property-rights law, which was approved overwhelmingly by voters last fall and is known as Measure 37, is on the brink of wrecking Oregon's best-in-the-nation record of reining in sprawl, according to state officials and national planning experts. They say the new law illustrates a nationwide paradox in public opinion: While voters tend to favor protection of farmland and open space, they vote down these protections if they perceive them as restrictions on personal rights.

[...]

Measure 37 was sold to voters last year as a matter of fairness. On ubiquitous radio ads, the frail, woebegone voice of Dorothy English, who bought land in 1953, explained how land-use laws had blocked her from dividing up her 40 acres for her children. "I'm 91 years old, my husband is dead and I don't know how much longer I can fight," she said. The ballot measure won with 61 percent of the vote.

State financial records, though, show that small family farmers contributed virtually nothing to the Family Farm Preservation political action committee that bankrolled Measure 37. Most of the money came from timber companies and real estate interests that stand to profit if, as many here expect, large tracts of forests and farmland are unlocked for development.

This mirrors a national pattern, according to Jacobs, at the University of Wisconsin. He says that property rights campaigns are often sold to voters as compensation for struggling small landholders, while the support money comes from large companies seeking ways around regulations that limit resource extraction and property development.

Right wingers shrouding their support of anti-government measures under the banner of "the litle people." That's something new.