Jumping To Conclusions

Headline in the New York Times: Era of Uncontrolled Growth Is Ending at a California Lake.

The lake, 120 miles east of San Francisco, is one of the few in California with private houses on its shores, and therein lies a problem with which residents and local officials are only beginning to grapple.

In the last few years, with little planning and without a single environmental impact review, hundreds of houses and piers have been built on Lake Tulloch, and developers are eyeing more territory.

Oh, my god! Developers! And this is being done without planning! Actually, developers presumably do plan before they build. Or, at least the ones who want to stay in business do. What the Times means, of course, is that there hasn't been much centralized planning by the government. And you can just see the horror on the Times' editors' faces at the thought of that.