The federal government is engaged in a full-on attack on our economy, drummed up by the UN, called UN Agenda 21. The Global Warming hoax got this plan started in the US in 1992. This plan is designed to decimate our free market system to turn the US into a third world country and bring the US under UN global governance. It will destroy jobs, make houses and cars unaffordable for most and herd us into “transit villages”. There will be no private property. A totalitarian government will own all the land and will therefore control our food and water supplies. Obama has tasked all federal agencies to implement this destruction as fast as possible. Every federal department mission statement on their websites includes a high priority to combat “global warming”. If Obama is defeated in 2012, the Communists embedded in the federal government will fight to keep this infrastructure until they can reignite their destructive plan.
Homeland Security
The Department of Homeland Security has seen fit to refuse to close the Mexican border, continuing to comply with the UN Agenda 21 "open borders" rule, rather than the U.S. secure borders laws.
Immigration
The Immigration Department has decided not to deport illegal aliens unless they are dangerous criminals. These criminals are deported, join drug cartels and re-enter the U.S. a week later.
Immigration continues to admit about 1 million legal immigrants per year as they have done for decades. They ensure that these new immigrants have jobs. These are the jobs that would have gone to the 30 million US citizens who are unemployed or the 1 million US citizens a year who are attempting to enter the workforce.
FDA
The FDA is raiding milk production operations on U.S. farms. They show up and declare that the milk products are unhealthy. This is totally unfounded, but they use police powers to destroy the milk and cheese. Farmers who lost product sell cows and try to adjust their costs to offset the loss. These farmers have legal costs in the $30,000 range and are on their way to going out of business
EPA
The EPA shows up at a lot a family purchased to build a house on and declares the lot a “wetland” because it overlooks a lake. The family has already spent $20,000 for grading and materials, but they are forced to remove the materials. The family never gets to build the house on the land they bought.
The EPA has interpreted the Clean Air Act to include the permanent removal of all dust from the air on farms where dust has always been a by-product of plowing, harvesting and clearing. The Clean Air Act has prevented road development and maintenance for decades. The roads and bridges are all in disrepair because they want us to stop deiving our cars.
Labor
The Labor Department is writing regulations that would keep families from working on their own farms by tightening up child labor laws. Anyone who drives a tractor would be required to have a truck drivers license. Apparently farm kids are too capable to "fit in" with their unemployable counterparts.
Interior
The Interior Department orders farmers to stop watering their crops. The corps die and the farmers go out of business.
Interior is also also working on removing 4 hydroelectric dams in 2020 in California. There is nothing wrong with the dams, they just want to restore the Kalmath River to its previous, unproductive past. On November 10, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Representative Mike Thompson (D-CA) introduced the Klamath Basin Economic Restoration Act in Congress (H.R. 3398 / S. 1851). The bill would approve two Klamath agreements and give the go-ahead to potentially remove four hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River. This will cause the loss of 165 megawatts of power from power plants cheaper to run than coal and nuclear. Electric rates will soar.
Interior has already shut down most of the US timber and mining industries and have been seizing land to create “wildlife preserves” and “wetlands” and “buffer zones” in addition to adding to the 35% of the land mass owned by the US government.
HUD
HUD seeks agreements with apartment management companies located by public transit to reserve 20% of their units for low income subsidized housing. This distributes low income housing throughout the suburbs and wherever apartments are located or about to be built. If we abolished HUD, those “clients” would simply move in with relatives. Our economically unsustainable 1964 “great society” programs die hard.
Federal Subsidies
Ethanol – There is no reason to subsidize ethanol or even require that it be put in our gasoline. Ethanol destroys parts that need to be replaced. Our “cheap” foreign made lawnmower has a plastic carburetor that needs to be replaced every couple of years.
Import Export Bank - The Import Export bank is a welfare program for very large multi-national companies like Boeing, GE, Bechtel and Caterpillar. The bank pays subsidies directly to these large exporters.
Tax Code - The Tax Code is rife with subsidies for special interest companies and industries. It over-taxes some products and subsidizes other companies and industries.
TARP & Bail-outs - These should be repealed and the unspent subsidies returned to pay down the National Debt
Direct subsidies for industries like agriculture should not be part of federal expense at all. If states want to subsidize farmers, they can hash it out with their voters.
Indian Reservations are as productive as “wildlife preserves” or museums. What’s stopping American Indians from moving off the reservations ?
OSHA
OSHA shows up at a house owned by a homeowner and orders them to make about $30,000 worth of changes to their house to make it “more environmentally friendly”. The reasoning here is that homeowners have service technicians work in their homes occasionally and these new requirements are meant to protect these technicians.
NLRB
The failure of labor unions to organize anything beyond government workers has the NLRB going rogue. They stopped Boeing from building a plant in North Carolina. They have trumped up a new poster and are trying to trick businesses into posting it so they can advertizing unionization. They are attempting to change union election rules as much as possible to the union’s advantage. They know the only way employees would vote for a union, is if you to trick them into it.
Energy
The Department of Energy is loaning tax dollars to scams like Solyndra, a failed solar panel manufacturer Grant money is pouring out of the Energy Department to attack cost-effective energy production and promote alternative energy to achieve a five-fold increase in our electric bills.
Transportation
The Department of Transportation is giving grants to state and local governments to expand public transit and create “transit villages”. The purpose of this is to replace single family homes in subdivisions and prepare us to give up our homes and cars. They are demanding “Regional” solutions and the creation of appointed Regional Taxing Authorities to subvert city and county sovereignty. This is all outlined in UN Agenda 21.
Justice
The Department of Justice attempted to give terrorists the same trial rights as US citizens by insisting on blocking Military tribunals as “unconstitutional. They sold assault rifles to Mexican drug cartels and then lost track of them. They selectively refuse to prosecute crimes committed by black leftist activist organizations.
Courts
Federal courts are packed with “Progressives” who believe we are a socialist state. Courts have led the charge to destroy the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Legislature
The House and Senate are frozen in inaction. Socialists dominate the Senate and almost half the House. The gridlock is permanent until either the conservatives return us to a free market system or the socialists create a permanent, economically unsustainable communist gulag.
State Department
Hillary Clinton is busy agreeing to everything the UN wants us to do. Obama is happy to implement these UN initiatives by executive order. Our sovereignty is eroding and unless it stops, we will be paying taxes to the UN for the privilege of breathing their air and drinking their water.
Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve has been killing the US dollar with a host of bad moves from imposing below market interest rates for the benefit of our overspending federal government and the banks, hedge funds and international criminals. Other world currencies have followed our dollar decline and commodity prices are rising in every country.
The “Arab Spring” of uprisings was ignited by higher food prices imposed by the Federal Reserve’s dollar killing actions. When food prices rise in the US, we object; when food prices rise in third world Arab countries, they go hungry.
The government / banking cabal needs to be broken up. We need to pass a law to wind down the Fed and eventually close it. The Market would set the interest rates and the inflation caused by currency devaluation would end.
Affirmative Action
The Community Reinvestment Act coupled with HUD regulations forced banks to make bad mortgage loans. The artificially low interest rates imposed by the Fed caused home prices to rise. These loans were bundled into mortgage securities and caused the 2008 global economic meltdown. It’s time to end discrimination lawsuits and every other rip-off that pretends that some of us are victims, somehow inferior and need to be protected.
Federal Regulations
Most of these need to be repealed and replaced with effective, due process, individual culpability civil law reform. Municipal courts can hear civil small claims cases, but they won’t make the crook pay you back You are totally on your own. What use is that ? If someone gets sick or injured because of flaws in your products or processes, they should have the law on their side.
Most regulations are well crafted barriers to prevent “main street” companies from entering mega-companies markets. Safety regulations in particular are rife with abuse.
The most objectionable regulations are those that impinge on our freedoms. When the crook that takes your property is your government, it’s time to change your government.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Restoring the 10th Amendment
The excesses and corruption in the federal government have brought the global economy to its knees. Global warming is a hoax and it’s time to cancel all executive orders and return the country to productivity.
The Constitution restricts the federal government to a hand full of functions including the maintenance of our currency, national defense, granting patents, entering treaties, controlling immigration, paying its debts, imposing taxes, delivering mail, passing and maintaining laws, declaring war and maintaining courts of law..
The 10th Amendment restricts the federal government to these duties and declares that all other functions belong to the States and the People.
Unconstitutional Activities
Nowhere in the Constitution or its Amendments or the Bill of Rights will you find that the federal government is responsible for maintaining the Federal Reserve and National Banks, National Parks, Transportation, Health Insurance, Public Schools, Student Loans, Home Mortgages, Protecting Endangered Species, Supporting the Arts, Maintaining Museums,or Retirement Plans.
Nowhere does it say that the federal government should seize private property for “wetlands”, or shut off water to farmlands, or demand that perfectly good cheese and milk be destroyed or shut down production of timber harvesting or mining or oil and gas drilling or shut down our road building because of air quality or shut down our farms because of water quality
Return to Productivity
Our success as a nation has been based on putting all of our resources to work. We have enough farmland to grow all the food we need with a surplus to sell. We have enough timberland to harvest trees for all the wood we need. We have enough coal, oil and natural gas to provide energy for ourselves for a long time. We have enough talent to manufacture anything we need. If we don’t return to producing, our free market economy will die. We need sound money
Close Federal Departments
To return to productivity, we must restore the 10th Amendment. The federal government is too involved with the UN, IMF, Special Interests and Socialists to continue their current unconstitutional activities. We should quit the UN and IMF and end all foreign aid and all grant programs.
The most damaging federal departments should close first. These would include the Departments of Education, Interior, Commerce, Transportation, Labor and Energy. Federal agencies should close including EPA, FDA HUD, FHA, OSHA, NIH. NSF, NASA, Corp of Engineers, EEOC, OFCCP, TSA, National Banks and International Programs.
Next, the federal government should sell Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae and get out of the loan business. At the same time, plans to unwind the federal healthcare and retirement plan activities should be made so that eventually Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will become private programs. The federal government should plan to pay off the National Debt and the entitlement wind-down costs and close the Federal Reserve to make banking a private enterprise with no bail-outs.
Plans to deed all federal lands back to the states should follow. All of the responsibilities performed by federal departments that will close should be transferred to the States. All States have versions of most federal departments and agencies.
New State Responsibilities
States would be responsible for those Interstate highways crossing through their state. They would also inherit maintenance of all federal lands and national parks. All land in the U.S. should be sold by the states to U.S. citizens to be put into production. Foreign citizens and foreign governments should not be allowed to buy land in the U.S. States should pay off their Bonds and refrain from borrowing; all states should begin to build and maintain surpluses sufficient to handle emergencies.
New County Responsibilities
Counties should assume full responsibility for public schools, hospitals and welfare. States should cut funding for these in an orderly fashion and transfer these responsibilities to the counties. Counties could opt to use vouchers for public schools along with internet and home schooling. Counties should pay off all Bonds and refrain from borrowing.
Real Campaign Finance Reform
Legal campaign contributing should be restricted to registered voters. They would only be allowed to make legal campaign contributions to candidates who appear on their ballots.
Cost Reduction
The costs of education, health care and government are unsustainable. These industries must return to the basics and cut their costs in half in a short amount of time.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
The Constitution restricts the federal government to a hand full of functions including the maintenance of our currency, national defense, granting patents, entering treaties, controlling immigration, paying its debts, imposing taxes, delivering mail, passing and maintaining laws, declaring war and maintaining courts of law..
The 10th Amendment restricts the federal government to these duties and declares that all other functions belong to the States and the People.
Unconstitutional Activities
Nowhere in the Constitution or its Amendments or the Bill of Rights will you find that the federal government is responsible for maintaining the Federal Reserve and National Banks, National Parks, Transportation, Health Insurance, Public Schools, Student Loans, Home Mortgages, Protecting Endangered Species, Supporting the Arts, Maintaining Museums,or Retirement Plans.
Nowhere does it say that the federal government should seize private property for “wetlands”, or shut off water to farmlands, or demand that perfectly good cheese and milk be destroyed or shut down production of timber harvesting or mining or oil and gas drilling or shut down our road building because of air quality or shut down our farms because of water quality
Return to Productivity
Our success as a nation has been based on putting all of our resources to work. We have enough farmland to grow all the food we need with a surplus to sell. We have enough timberland to harvest trees for all the wood we need. We have enough coal, oil and natural gas to provide energy for ourselves for a long time. We have enough talent to manufacture anything we need. If we don’t return to producing, our free market economy will die. We need sound money
Close Federal Departments
To return to productivity, we must restore the 10th Amendment. The federal government is too involved with the UN, IMF, Special Interests and Socialists to continue their current unconstitutional activities. We should quit the UN and IMF and end all foreign aid and all grant programs.
The most damaging federal departments should close first. These would include the Departments of Education, Interior, Commerce, Transportation, Labor and Energy. Federal agencies should close including EPA, FDA HUD, FHA, OSHA, NIH. NSF, NASA, Corp of Engineers, EEOC, OFCCP, TSA, National Banks and International Programs.
Next, the federal government should sell Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae and get out of the loan business. At the same time, plans to unwind the federal healthcare and retirement plan activities should be made so that eventually Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will become private programs. The federal government should plan to pay off the National Debt and the entitlement wind-down costs and close the Federal Reserve to make banking a private enterprise with no bail-outs.
Plans to deed all federal lands back to the states should follow. All of the responsibilities performed by federal departments that will close should be transferred to the States. All States have versions of most federal departments and agencies.
New State Responsibilities
States would be responsible for those Interstate highways crossing through their state. They would also inherit maintenance of all federal lands and national parks. All land in the U.S. should be sold by the states to U.S. citizens to be put into production. Foreign citizens and foreign governments should not be allowed to buy land in the U.S. States should pay off their Bonds and refrain from borrowing; all states should begin to build and maintain surpluses sufficient to handle emergencies.
New County Responsibilities
Counties should assume full responsibility for public schools, hospitals and welfare. States should cut funding for these in an orderly fashion and transfer these responsibilities to the counties. Counties could opt to use vouchers for public schools along with internet and home schooling. Counties should pay off all Bonds and refrain from borrowing.
Real Campaign Finance Reform
Legal campaign contributing should be restricted to registered voters. They would only be allowed to make legal campaign contributions to candidates who appear on their ballots.
Cost Reduction
The costs of education, health care and government are unsustainable. These industries must return to the basics and cut their costs in half in a short amount of time.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Economic Development
Redevelopment Referendum
Unfortunately, the City of Dunwoody voted for the Redevelopment Referendum on November 8th 2011. This gives the city the power to authorize Tax Authorizing Districts (TADs). Now we have to pay careful attention to what the City Council does moving forward. Dunwoody has no blighted areas that the free market system couldn’t resolve. Dunwoody does have Master Plans that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The city will attempt to use TADs to implement these wasteful Master Plans.
The apartments that were saved by the defeat of the Park Bonds are not a blighted property. A proper rental applications process can keep felons and poor credit risks from renting there and other management actions can resolve whatever problems exist there.
PCID Transit Village
PCID however, has 5700 more apartments planned for their transit village. They should be left to make their own mistakes and not expect the city to subsidize their plans. Their transit village is built around MARTA, a failed business that spends $750 million a year, but only has $120 million in ridership revenue. The other $630 million comes from tax subsidies. PCID’s major renters are retail and they will continue to struggle in this long recession. Like the Park Bonds, if the TSPLOST fails, PCID will need to slow its expansion to match its actual revenue projections..
Property Rights Violations
When government uses the term economic development, it is referring to government intervention designed to raise the property tax on whatever they are trying to “fix”. City and county governments have been dealing with “blighted” properties for decades. At first, they resorted to condemning the property and forcing the property owner to do something with it. If it’s a downtown property, owners would pay to have the building demolished and would put in a parking lot until a buyer came along. If the property is too far from downtown office buildings, and the price was low, government might buy it and turn it into a park (a bad move). When government wants to establish a Tax Authorizing District (TAD), it authorized the TAD group to operate as an unelected government entity, with the right to issue Bonds. Like everything else government gets interested in, it will become so expensive, nobody will show up to rent the properties.
Whenever a business “partners” with government, the bail-out will be borne by the taxpayer. TADs are used by cities to attempt to increase city property taxes, usually on commercial properties. We’ve seen news stories over the years, telling about business owners, forced from their businesses by government authorized TADs, claiming Eminent Domain rights over their private property. That’s what TADs do and most of these crimes go unreported.
Free Market System
The only real economic development exists in the free market system; that is, individual owners investing their own money to build a business. If the business fails, the taxpayer isn’t on the hook to bail them out.
The most cost-effective approach to building a family business that can be passed to each generation is for the family to first purchase the land the business will occupy. Once the land and building costs are paid off, the property can operate rent-free. That gives that business a chance to become multi-generational. That’s why Republicans fight for a tax code with no “death tax”. Family farms are the prototype of the family business and when the owner dies, these farms often need to be sold to pay the estate taxes. Government has used tax policy and Eminent Domain abuse for decades to destroy family businesses to favor large corporate ownership.
Replace Elected Officials
Government should abolish the death tax and be forced to pay double the appraised value of any private property it seeks to seize. Instead, government continues to fail to do a good job with their core responsibilities. City governments involved with TADs unnecessarily put voters at risk of financial obligations and inflate prices and taxes. It is similar to public school districts building multi-million dollar school buildings, but failing to teach students basic math, reading and writing. When government authorizes a TAD to do their dirty work, they are still accountable to the voters. The same goes for a State that authorizes a Regional entity. Every State Rep who voted for the legislation and the governor who signed it and the representatives who didn’t repeal it are accountable to the voters. If the HOT lanes aren’t working out so well, the blame goes to the State Reps and the Governor. They should all be replaced in the next elections. The TSPLOST we will vote on in July 2012 has wasteful, unhelpful projects that cost too much. The blame goes to the Governor and the State Reps and Senators who voted for the creation of the Regional Commissions and the County Commissioners and City Council Reps who participated.. Those elected officials who approved and worked on the Regional Commissions should all be replaced in the next election.
The Regional entities have been authorized in nearly every state. These are unelected commissions and are not accountable to the voters for their actions or failures. The establishment of Regional entities is required by U.S. Agenda 21 to undermine city, county and state sovereignty. These commissions need to be abolished.
Private / Public Partnerships are also part of this scheme and those elected officials who allow them should be driven from office. These “partnerships” create boondoggles like Atlanta’s Toll Lanes. The HOT lanes should be dismantled and their contracts cancelled.
Cities, counties and states are being bribed with grants from every federal agency to implement UN Agenda 21. The fact that cities have grant money implicates them in this scheme. The money for these grants is being printed as we speak and will result in inflation and higher unemployment going forward. Local government gains nothing from these grants. It would be cheaper if local taxes went to fix local roads and sewers. Somehow the grants require that the local governments spend four times more than simple resurfacing would cost. These local elected officials should be fired.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Unfortunately, the City of Dunwoody voted for the Redevelopment Referendum on November 8th 2011. This gives the city the power to authorize Tax Authorizing Districts (TADs). Now we have to pay careful attention to what the City Council does moving forward. Dunwoody has no blighted areas that the free market system couldn’t resolve. Dunwoody does have Master Plans that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The city will attempt to use TADs to implement these wasteful Master Plans.
The apartments that were saved by the defeat of the Park Bonds are not a blighted property. A proper rental applications process can keep felons and poor credit risks from renting there and other management actions can resolve whatever problems exist there.
PCID Transit Village
PCID however, has 5700 more apartments planned for their transit village. They should be left to make their own mistakes and not expect the city to subsidize their plans. Their transit village is built around MARTA, a failed business that spends $750 million a year, but only has $120 million in ridership revenue. The other $630 million comes from tax subsidies. PCID’s major renters are retail and they will continue to struggle in this long recession. Like the Park Bonds, if the TSPLOST fails, PCID will need to slow its expansion to match its actual revenue projections..
Property Rights Violations
When government uses the term economic development, it is referring to government intervention designed to raise the property tax on whatever they are trying to “fix”. City and county governments have been dealing with “blighted” properties for decades. At first, they resorted to condemning the property and forcing the property owner to do something with it. If it’s a downtown property, owners would pay to have the building demolished and would put in a parking lot until a buyer came along. If the property is too far from downtown office buildings, and the price was low, government might buy it and turn it into a park (a bad move). When government wants to establish a Tax Authorizing District (TAD), it authorized the TAD group to operate as an unelected government entity, with the right to issue Bonds. Like everything else government gets interested in, it will become so expensive, nobody will show up to rent the properties.
Whenever a business “partners” with government, the bail-out will be borne by the taxpayer. TADs are used by cities to attempt to increase city property taxes, usually on commercial properties. We’ve seen news stories over the years, telling about business owners, forced from their businesses by government authorized TADs, claiming Eminent Domain rights over their private property. That’s what TADs do and most of these crimes go unreported.
Free Market System
The only real economic development exists in the free market system; that is, individual owners investing their own money to build a business. If the business fails, the taxpayer isn’t on the hook to bail them out.
The most cost-effective approach to building a family business that can be passed to each generation is for the family to first purchase the land the business will occupy. Once the land and building costs are paid off, the property can operate rent-free. That gives that business a chance to become multi-generational. That’s why Republicans fight for a tax code with no “death tax”. Family farms are the prototype of the family business and when the owner dies, these farms often need to be sold to pay the estate taxes. Government has used tax policy and Eminent Domain abuse for decades to destroy family businesses to favor large corporate ownership.
Replace Elected Officials
Government should abolish the death tax and be forced to pay double the appraised value of any private property it seeks to seize. Instead, government continues to fail to do a good job with their core responsibilities. City governments involved with TADs unnecessarily put voters at risk of financial obligations and inflate prices and taxes. It is similar to public school districts building multi-million dollar school buildings, but failing to teach students basic math, reading and writing. When government authorizes a TAD to do their dirty work, they are still accountable to the voters. The same goes for a State that authorizes a Regional entity. Every State Rep who voted for the legislation and the governor who signed it and the representatives who didn’t repeal it are accountable to the voters. If the HOT lanes aren’t working out so well, the blame goes to the State Reps and the Governor. They should all be replaced in the next elections. The TSPLOST we will vote on in July 2012 has wasteful, unhelpful projects that cost too much. The blame goes to the Governor and the State Reps and Senators who voted for the creation of the Regional Commissions and the County Commissioners and City Council Reps who participated.. Those elected officials who approved and worked on the Regional Commissions should all be replaced in the next election.
The Regional entities have been authorized in nearly every state. These are unelected commissions and are not accountable to the voters for their actions or failures. The establishment of Regional entities is required by U.S. Agenda 21 to undermine city, county and state sovereignty. These commissions need to be abolished.
Private / Public Partnerships are also part of this scheme and those elected officials who allow them should be driven from office. These “partnerships” create boondoggles like Atlanta’s Toll Lanes. The HOT lanes should be dismantled and their contracts cancelled.
Cities, counties and states are being bribed with grants from every federal agency to implement UN Agenda 21. The fact that cities have grant money implicates them in this scheme. The money for these grants is being printed as we speak and will result in inflation and higher unemployment going forward. Local government gains nothing from these grants. It would be cheaper if local taxes went to fix local roads and sewers. Somehow the grants require that the local governments spend four times more than simple resurfacing would cost. These local elected officials should be fired.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Community Development
Dunwoody Master Plan
You will find Community Development on the City of Dunwoody website. Implementation of the approved Land Use Plan is included under Community Development. As you read the Land Use Master Plan you will notice references to “community input” contributing to develop the “vision” of what Dunwoody ought to become. This process was conducted by consultants trained in the Delphi technique, designed to “guide” the outcome of the exercise. The outcomes are consistent with the current, expensive, cookie cutter “vision” of the Obama administration and UN Agenda 21. The vision the Land Use Plan was based on is a sham, but approved just the same..
U.N. Agenda 21
The goal of UN Agenda 21 is to collapse our country in debt, take the U.S. dollar to zero; then create a U.N. dollar and take over the U.S. under UN rule. This would be a global communist government. There would eventually be no private property and those who survive the de-population events would be herded into transit villages in crowded rented apartments (think Soviet gulag). Government regulations will drive the price of energy and automobiles so high that few will be able to afford cars or live in single family houses. All will be moved to 750 square foot apartments in PCID.
Obama promised “fundamental transformation” After he crashes the dollar and bankrupts the country, he will hand it over to the U.N.
Now we live in an almost free economy, soon we won’t. Many of us own cars and homes in subdivisions with yards, soon we won’t. We can currently pay our food and water bills along with our electric and gas bills, soon we won’t.
These Land Use Master Plans are being implemented by City Councils and County Commissions all across the country. They are identical, because they are pre-packaged by ICLEI, the U.N. agency tasked with implementing U.N. Agenda 21 at the city and county level. All consultants hired by cities and counties will draw up these plans. Up to now, all cities and counties have rubber-stamped them approved.
Before Land Use Master Plans, In our traditional free market system, shopping centers were planned to serve local residents. The new Land Use Plans usurp private property rights and impose a fairy-tale version of what a shopping center should be.
Recent Dunwoody history shows how a free market system worked. Publics moved in to the Shoppes of Dunwoody several years ago, demolished the existing grocery store building and build a larger building in compliance with their own corporate model. There was no Land Use Master Plan at the time to conform to. Now we have one, so how would Publics deal with the new plan ? About the same time, Walgreens moved in to Dunwoody Village, tore down the old building and built a new one according to their corporate model. If the Dunwoody Village Master Plan was implemented and the buildings built, who would the tenants be ?
If you look at the drawings of the Dunwoody Village Master Plan, you will see apartments over retail stores and none big enough for a grocery store or drug store. If all these stores are sized to be nick-nack shops, they won’t make it.
Tax Authorizing Districts
The City of Davidson N.C. got a bunch of grant money and built one of these mixed use developments 5 years ago. It still sits empty today because the rents are too high. No apartments or stores are rented except an ice cream shop.
Several developments have been built over the last decade, by cities creating tax authorizing districts (TADs), using federal grants and selling bonds based on the appraised value of the property vs. the hoped-for value of the property. The incentive for cities to do this is to generate more revenue for the city, by creating more expensive retail space they can tax at a higher value. Many of these developments missed the mark and sit empty. The developer is gone and the taxpayers of the city are left holding the bag.
All Plans are Identical
All city and county Master Plans throughout the U.S. are the same. They are multi-modal plans built around transit villages. They are the same because the agency giving the city or county the grant to develop the plans requires that they all comply with the granting agencies specifications. These plans are implemented by consultants trained in U.N. Agenda 21 implementation. These plans are all implemented the same way. The city or county appoints a Sustainability Commission. Consultants come in and organize “citizen input groups, using methods that are designed to get the answers the consultants want. This is called the Delphi Technique. The Master Plan controls everything, even privately owned shopping centers.
While this is going on, the EPA, OSHA, and the Departments if Transportation, Commerce and Interior are seizing rural land for “wildlife preserves”, state and national parks and buffer zones. Their goal is to restrict water in farming areas and force farmers from their land. If they can’t have water to irrigate their crops, they will quietly go broke and sell their land to the government or a “private partner” (think Soylent Green).
Living in the USSA
U.N. Agenda 21 calls for the government to take over all food production and control all water use. Cap & Trade schemes will raise energy rates five fold. Their goal is to make single family housing so expensive, we all move to government subsidized apartments in transit villages. Also cars will be unaffordable after this scheme drives gasoline prices up five fold and café’ standards make the average car cost $50,000. It also calls for us to transfer most of our resources to third world countries. The U.N. is made up of mostly third world countries.
Replace Elected Officials
If we don’t think this is a good deal, we can stop it. All we need to do is to fire Obama and elect all new city councils, county commissions and state legislatures in November 2012, based on how they voted. Then we need the new guys to disapprove their Land Use Master Plans. We also need to repeal the laws authorizing U.N Agenda 21, Regional Commissions, Tax Authorizing Districts and Public / Private Partnerships. We need to disband commissions and unelected groups. We need close most federal departments and agencies and send these responsibilities to the states. We need to quit the U.N and send it to Somalia. Federal grants should stop, they’re broke and should stop giving away printed money.
Dunwoody Village Plan
The approved plan to re-do Dunwoody Village Parkway is typical of the price increases associated with taking grants. This less than a half mile 4 lane road re-do will cost $2.4 million. That’s $5 million a mile to turn it into a 2 lane road. What’s the rest of the re-do going to cost ? It’s not a good time to overpay for road re-do on underutilized shopping center road.. Milling and resurfacing a road should cost $100 thousand per mile, not $5 million a mile. How about a re-do of the Chamblee Dunwoody Road / Mt. Vernon intersection first ? There are two plans afoot here. One is to break us with government overspending, taxes, a devaluing dollar and unemployment and the other is to link us with the transit village. (think multi-modal).
Economic Outlook
We have new bubbles to burst in our economy, the government debt bubble and the dollar crash are the most dangerous. The continuing dollar devaluation will bring a substantial increase in inflation from the Federal Reserve’s printing press. The toxic assets created in the 2008 Meltdown now belong to Fannie, Freddie, The Federal Reserve and the big banks; they are not going away, they are getting worse. Sallie Mae holds $1 trillion in student loan debt (think blood and turnip). U.S. consumer debt is $2.43 trillion. Government, Education and Healthcare costs are double what they should be for these industries to remain “sustainable”. The fundamentals suggest higher unemployment ahead.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
You will find Community Development on the City of Dunwoody website. Implementation of the approved Land Use Plan is included under Community Development. As you read the Land Use Master Plan you will notice references to “community input” contributing to develop the “vision” of what Dunwoody ought to become. This process was conducted by consultants trained in the Delphi technique, designed to “guide” the outcome of the exercise. The outcomes are consistent with the current, expensive, cookie cutter “vision” of the Obama administration and UN Agenda 21. The vision the Land Use Plan was based on is a sham, but approved just the same..
U.N. Agenda 21
The goal of UN Agenda 21 is to collapse our country in debt, take the U.S. dollar to zero; then create a U.N. dollar and take over the U.S. under UN rule. This would be a global communist government. There would eventually be no private property and those who survive the de-population events would be herded into transit villages in crowded rented apartments (think Soviet gulag). Government regulations will drive the price of energy and automobiles so high that few will be able to afford cars or live in single family houses. All will be moved to 750 square foot apartments in PCID.
Obama promised “fundamental transformation” After he crashes the dollar and bankrupts the country, he will hand it over to the U.N.
Now we live in an almost free economy, soon we won’t. Many of us own cars and homes in subdivisions with yards, soon we won’t. We can currently pay our food and water bills along with our electric and gas bills, soon we won’t.
These Land Use Master Plans are being implemented by City Councils and County Commissions all across the country. They are identical, because they are pre-packaged by ICLEI, the U.N. agency tasked with implementing U.N. Agenda 21 at the city and county level. All consultants hired by cities and counties will draw up these plans. Up to now, all cities and counties have rubber-stamped them approved.
Before Land Use Master Plans, In our traditional free market system, shopping centers were planned to serve local residents. The new Land Use Plans usurp private property rights and impose a fairy-tale version of what a shopping center should be.
Recent Dunwoody history shows how a free market system worked. Publics moved in to the Shoppes of Dunwoody several years ago, demolished the existing grocery store building and build a larger building in compliance with their own corporate model. There was no Land Use Master Plan at the time to conform to. Now we have one, so how would Publics deal with the new plan ? About the same time, Walgreens moved in to Dunwoody Village, tore down the old building and built a new one according to their corporate model. If the Dunwoody Village Master Plan was implemented and the buildings built, who would the tenants be ?
If you look at the drawings of the Dunwoody Village Master Plan, you will see apartments over retail stores and none big enough for a grocery store or drug store. If all these stores are sized to be nick-nack shops, they won’t make it.
Tax Authorizing Districts
The City of Davidson N.C. got a bunch of grant money and built one of these mixed use developments 5 years ago. It still sits empty today because the rents are too high. No apartments or stores are rented except an ice cream shop.
Several developments have been built over the last decade, by cities creating tax authorizing districts (TADs), using federal grants and selling bonds based on the appraised value of the property vs. the hoped-for value of the property. The incentive for cities to do this is to generate more revenue for the city, by creating more expensive retail space they can tax at a higher value. Many of these developments missed the mark and sit empty. The developer is gone and the taxpayers of the city are left holding the bag.
All Plans are Identical
All city and county Master Plans throughout the U.S. are the same. They are multi-modal plans built around transit villages. They are the same because the agency giving the city or county the grant to develop the plans requires that they all comply with the granting agencies specifications. These plans are implemented by consultants trained in U.N. Agenda 21 implementation. These plans are all implemented the same way. The city or county appoints a Sustainability Commission. Consultants come in and organize “citizen input groups, using methods that are designed to get the answers the consultants want. This is called the Delphi Technique. The Master Plan controls everything, even privately owned shopping centers.
While this is going on, the EPA, OSHA, and the Departments if Transportation, Commerce and Interior are seizing rural land for “wildlife preserves”, state and national parks and buffer zones. Their goal is to restrict water in farming areas and force farmers from their land. If they can’t have water to irrigate their crops, they will quietly go broke and sell their land to the government or a “private partner” (think Soylent Green).
Living in the USSA
U.N. Agenda 21 calls for the government to take over all food production and control all water use. Cap & Trade schemes will raise energy rates five fold. Their goal is to make single family housing so expensive, we all move to government subsidized apartments in transit villages. Also cars will be unaffordable after this scheme drives gasoline prices up five fold and café’ standards make the average car cost $50,000. It also calls for us to transfer most of our resources to third world countries. The U.N. is made up of mostly third world countries.
Replace Elected Officials
If we don’t think this is a good deal, we can stop it. All we need to do is to fire Obama and elect all new city councils, county commissions and state legislatures in November 2012, based on how they voted. Then we need the new guys to disapprove their Land Use Master Plans. We also need to repeal the laws authorizing U.N Agenda 21, Regional Commissions, Tax Authorizing Districts and Public / Private Partnerships. We need to disband commissions and unelected groups. We need close most federal departments and agencies and send these responsibilities to the states. We need to quit the U.N and send it to Somalia. Federal grants should stop, they’re broke and should stop giving away printed money.
Dunwoody Village Plan
The approved plan to re-do Dunwoody Village Parkway is typical of the price increases associated with taking grants. This less than a half mile 4 lane road re-do will cost $2.4 million. That’s $5 million a mile to turn it into a 2 lane road. What’s the rest of the re-do going to cost ? It’s not a good time to overpay for road re-do on underutilized shopping center road.. Milling and resurfacing a road should cost $100 thousand per mile, not $5 million a mile. How about a re-do of the Chamblee Dunwoody Road / Mt. Vernon intersection first ? There are two plans afoot here. One is to break us with government overspending, taxes, a devaluing dollar and unemployment and the other is to link us with the transit village. (think multi-modal).
Economic Outlook
We have new bubbles to burst in our economy, the government debt bubble and the dollar crash are the most dangerous. The continuing dollar devaluation will bring a substantial increase in inflation from the Federal Reserve’s printing press. The toxic assets created in the 2008 Meltdown now belong to Fannie, Freddie, The Federal Reserve and the big banks; they are not going away, they are getting worse. Sallie Mae holds $1 trillion in student loan debt (think blood and turnip). U.S. consumer debt is $2.43 trillion. Government, Education and Healthcare costs are double what they should be for these industries to remain “sustainable”. The fundamentals suggest higher unemployment ahead.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Friday, November 25, 2011
Run-off Election Dec 6
I urge everyone to get out to vote on December 6th for Mike Davis for Mayor and Terry Nall for City Council Rep. Their victories are critical to the future of the Council. Without them we would not have the fiscally conservative voice we need to moderate the overreach we saw when the Council voted 6 to 1 to place the Park Bonds and the Redevelopment Referendum on the ballot.
The strings attached to the federal grants the City has received contain wasteful, impractical requirements that could all go away after November 2012. The Council needs to drop the “group think” and engage in cost benefit analysis on every item.
The council needs to understand that Dunwoody is divided into two parts, PCID and the subdivisions.
PCID wants a high density transit village surrounding the MARTA stations. They support the very expensive multi-modal designs in our current Master Plans.
The subdivisions need their roads, intersections and sewers fixed and maintained and don’t need multi-modal transit improvements. If we don’t get this change on the Council, we will continue to have a Council that pretends these differences don’t exist.
The council can satisfy the needs of both groups, but that involves handling PCID as its own entity and not imposing their wishes on the rest of Dunwoody. The current council did not do this; they approved plans that impose expensive PCID multi-modal changes outside PCID.
The Redevelopment Referendum that was approved by the voters will be a source of problems in future years. We need Mike and Terry to keep the council from wasting money on boondoggles.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
The strings attached to the federal grants the City has received contain wasteful, impractical requirements that could all go away after November 2012. The Council needs to drop the “group think” and engage in cost benefit analysis on every item.
The council needs to understand that Dunwoody is divided into two parts, PCID and the subdivisions.
PCID wants a high density transit village surrounding the MARTA stations. They support the very expensive multi-modal designs in our current Master Plans.
The subdivisions need their roads, intersections and sewers fixed and maintained and don’t need multi-modal transit improvements. If we don’t get this change on the Council, we will continue to have a Council that pretends these differences don’t exist.
The council can satisfy the needs of both groups, but that involves handling PCID as its own entity and not imposing their wishes on the rest of Dunwoody. The current council did not do this; they approved plans that impose expensive PCID multi-modal changes outside PCID.
The Redevelopment Referendum that was approved by the voters will be a source of problems in future years. We need Mike and Terry to keep the council from wasting money on boondoggles.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Government’s Abysmal Judgment
The job of government is to live within its means and stick to its core responsibilities. For the past 50 years we have seen government at all levels drift from its primary duties and expand its authority beyond the levels that allow our free market to operate. We are witnessing the strangulation of our free market system at the hands of our own government. There are many reasons for this, but the fact that politicians have allowed it to happen indicts all of them.
The Piggy Bank
The first duty of government is to remain debt free and solvent. The creation of the Federal Reserve and National Banks with the power to print currency created the possibility that government could accumulate deficits. Banks and government have become so intertwined that bail-outs are now codified in the Dodd Frank law.
Constitutional Drift
Communist infiltration of many of our institutions has allowed the Judiciary to drift from the Constitution as it was written, to accommodate their objectives. The Legislative and Executive branches of government collude to assist in this dismantling of our government as it was envisioned. Our government no longer works properly as it had done in the past. Every year it gets worse. The Constitution was written to protect private property and keep government from infringing on individual rights. We are allowing Leftist elements to erode our Constitutional rights and destroy our country. We are exactly where the Germans were in 1933.
Uncontrolled immigration, if not stopped, will result in a nation of unassimilated individuals, setting the stage for the creation of a Communist dictatorship, but this time it will be global as planned.. Our Federal Government Departments and Agencies are actively working to remove our rights systematically. The combination of Federal spending, uncontrolled immigration and national welfare regulations has sapped the free economy beyond its ability to recover.
The EPA, through its Clean Air Act regulations has managed to stall road and bridge replacement and infrastructure maintenance. Carbon capture from the global warming hoax continues to fuel these regulations. Politician’s attempts to reverse damaging regulations have been unsuccessful. Over the years, State and local government has spent that infrastructure money on unproductive and damaging activities.
The EPA through its Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act regulations has began a series of water rights grabs resulting in the closure of valuable farmland.
The Interior Department has seized millions more acres of private property to create wildlife preserves, halting the timber, mining, oil and gas industries, resulting in layoffs and town closures.
The Commerce Department has used the EPA to fight making our land free and productive.
The Transportation Department hands out grants, like bribes to give State and local officials incentives to do all the wrong things. Regional governance, Public-Private Partnerships and forced Transit spending usurps city and county sovereignty and squanders tax dollars on unproductive nonsense.
The Energy Department loans billions of dollars to failed alternative energy scams. Working electrical power generating dams in the west are being torn down for no good reason other than to decimate our energy production capability and unleash devastating soil erosion.
The Education Department has rendered our public schools useless, dangerous and too expensive to maintain for much longer. Vouchers offer our best path to reform.
Our Last Chance
Our public officials at all levels have allowed this to happen. They must be replaced,.. all of them. We must select political leaders who will reverse the damage that has been done. We must dismantle the institutions and repeal the laws that caused the damage. In the process, we will cut federal spending in half and balance the federal budget. Closing the unconstitutional federal departments and returning these responsibilities to the States and the People is our best course going forward.
The cost of healthcare, education and government are unsustainable. Government must cut subsidies for education and healthcare carefully, lowering the subsidies substantially and gradually over the next decade to allow these industries to reorganize while they continue to function. All public transit must become private. All government agencies engaged in lending operations will need to sell these operations to private corporations. All government land must be sold off to U.S. citizens and U.S. corporations to increase the productive use of our land. All national parks should be transferred to the States. The functions of the Federal government must be reduced to conform to their Constitutional limits.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
The Piggy Bank
The first duty of government is to remain debt free and solvent. The creation of the Federal Reserve and National Banks with the power to print currency created the possibility that government could accumulate deficits. Banks and government have become so intertwined that bail-outs are now codified in the Dodd Frank law.
Constitutional Drift
Communist infiltration of many of our institutions has allowed the Judiciary to drift from the Constitution as it was written, to accommodate their objectives. The Legislative and Executive branches of government collude to assist in this dismantling of our government as it was envisioned. Our government no longer works properly as it had done in the past. Every year it gets worse. The Constitution was written to protect private property and keep government from infringing on individual rights. We are allowing Leftist elements to erode our Constitutional rights and destroy our country. We are exactly where the Germans were in 1933.
Uncontrolled immigration, if not stopped, will result in a nation of unassimilated individuals, setting the stage for the creation of a Communist dictatorship, but this time it will be global as planned.. Our Federal Government Departments and Agencies are actively working to remove our rights systematically. The combination of Federal spending, uncontrolled immigration and national welfare regulations has sapped the free economy beyond its ability to recover.
The EPA, through its Clean Air Act regulations has managed to stall road and bridge replacement and infrastructure maintenance. Carbon capture from the global warming hoax continues to fuel these regulations. Politician’s attempts to reverse damaging regulations have been unsuccessful. Over the years, State and local government has spent that infrastructure money on unproductive and damaging activities.
The EPA through its Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act regulations has began a series of water rights grabs resulting in the closure of valuable farmland.
The Interior Department has seized millions more acres of private property to create wildlife preserves, halting the timber, mining, oil and gas industries, resulting in layoffs and town closures.
The Commerce Department has used the EPA to fight making our land free and productive.
The Transportation Department hands out grants, like bribes to give State and local officials incentives to do all the wrong things. Regional governance, Public-Private Partnerships and forced Transit spending usurps city and county sovereignty and squanders tax dollars on unproductive nonsense.
The Energy Department loans billions of dollars to failed alternative energy scams. Working electrical power generating dams in the west are being torn down for no good reason other than to decimate our energy production capability and unleash devastating soil erosion.
The Education Department has rendered our public schools useless, dangerous and too expensive to maintain for much longer. Vouchers offer our best path to reform.
Our Last Chance
Our public officials at all levels have allowed this to happen. They must be replaced,.. all of them. We must select political leaders who will reverse the damage that has been done. We must dismantle the institutions and repeal the laws that caused the damage. In the process, we will cut federal spending in half and balance the federal budget. Closing the unconstitutional federal departments and returning these responsibilities to the States and the People is our best course going forward.
The cost of healthcare, education and government are unsustainable. Government must cut subsidies for education and healthcare carefully, lowering the subsidies substantially and gradually over the next decade to allow these industries to reorganize while they continue to function. All public transit must become private. All government agencies engaged in lending operations will need to sell these operations to private corporations. All government land must be sold off to U.S. citizens and U.S. corporations to increase the productive use of our land. All national parks should be transferred to the States. The functions of the Federal government must be reduced to conform to their Constitutional limits.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Saturday, November 5, 2011
UN Agenda 21 Implementation Detail
Sustainable Development: Transforming America by Henry Lamb
Environmental Conservation Organization
Hollow Rock, Tennessee December 1, 2005
As the "sustainable development" movement continues to gain momentum, it is worthwhile to step back and take a long look at the big picture, painted with a broad brush to reveal what the United States might look like as the movement's vision is more fully implemented over the next 50 years or so.
The picture painted here is based on official documents published by several government agencies and non-government organizations during the last decade. These documents were rarely reported in the news, and average working people have no idea what sustainable development really means, and even less knowledge of what is in store for the future. If the vision of sustainable development continues to unfold as it has in the last decade, life in the United States will be quite different in the future.
The Vision
Half the land area of the entire country will be designated "wilderness areas," where only wildlife managers and researchers will be allowed. These areas will be interconnected by "corridors of wilderness" to allow migration of wildlife, without interference by human activity. Wolves will be as plentiful in Virginia and Pennsylvania as they are now in Idaho and Montana. Panthers and alligators will roam freely from the Everglades to the Okefenokee and beyond.
Surrounding these wilderness areas and corridors, designated "buffer zones" will be managed for "conservation objectives." The primary objective is "restoration and rehabilitation." Rehabilitation involves the repair of damaged ecosystems, while restoration usually involves the reconstruction of natural or semi-natural ecosystems. As areas are restored and rehabilitated, they are added to the wilderness designation, and the buffer zone is extended outward. Buffer zones are surrounded by what is called "zones of cooperation." This is where people live - in "sustainable communities." Sustainable communities are defined by strict "urban growth boundaries." Land outside the growth boundaries will be managed by government agencies, which grant permits for activities deemed to be essential and sustainable.
Open space, to provide a "viewshed" and sustainable recreation for community residents will abut the urban boundaries. Beyond the viewshed, sustainable agricultural activities will be permitted, to support the food requirements of nearby communities. Sustainable communities of the future will bear little resemblance to the towns and cities of the 20th century.
Single-family homes will be rare. Housing will be provided by public/private partnerships, funded by government, and managed by non-government "Home Owners Associations." Housing units will be designed to provide most of the infrastructure and amenities required by the residents. Shops and office space will be an integral part of each unit, and housing will be allocated on a priority basis to people who work in the unit - with quotas to achieve ethnic and economic balance. Schools, daycare, and recreation facilities will be provided.
Each unit will be designed for bicycle and foot traffic, to reduce, if not eliminate, the need for people to use automobiles. Transportation between sustainable communities, for people and for commodities, will be primarily by light rail systems, designed to bridge wilderness corridors where necessary. The highways that remain will be super transport corridors, such as the "Trans-Texas Corridor" now being designed, which will eventually reach from Mexico to Canada. These transport corridors will also be designed to bridge wilderness corridors, and to minimize the impact on the environment.
Government, too, will be different in a sustainable America. Human activity is being reorganized around ecoregions, which do not respect county or state boundaries. Therefore, the governing apparatus will be designed to regulate the activities within the entire region, rather than having multiple governing jurisdictions with services duplicated in each political subdivision. It is far more efficient to have regional governing authorities with centrally administered services.
Sierra Club's proposal to reorganize North America into 21 Ecoregions.
The Sierra Club, one of hundreds of non-government organizations actively working to bring about this transformation, has suggested that North America be divided into 21 ecoregions, that ignore existing national, state, and county boundaries.
In 1992, they published a special issue of their magazine which featured a map, and extensive descriptions of how these ecoregions should be managed. (1) The function of government will also change. The legislative function, especially at the local and state level, will continue to diminish in importance, while the administrative function will grow. Already, in some parts of the country, counties are combining, and city and county governments are consolidating.
Regional governing authorities are developing; taking precedence over the participating counties, which will eventually evaporate. State governments will undergo similar attrition; as regulations are developed on an ecoregions basis, there will be less need for separate state legislation. The administrative functions of state governments will also collapse into a super-regional administrative unit, to eliminate unnecessary duplication of investment and services.
The Reality
This vision is quite attractive to many Americans, especially those born since 1970, who have been educated in the public school system. To these people, nothing is more important than saving the planet from the certain catastrophe that lies ahead, if people are allowed to continue their greedy abuse of natural resources. The public school system, and the media, have been quite successful is shaping new attitudes and values to support this vision of how the world should be.
This vision did not suddenly spring from the mind of a Hollywood screenwriter. It has been evolving for most of the last century. Since the early 1960s, it has been gaining momentum. The rise of the environmental movement became the magnet which attracted several disparate elements of social change, now coalesced into a massive global movement, euphemistically described as sustainable development.
The first Wilderness Act was adopted in 1964, which set aside nine million acres of wilderness so "our posterity could see what our forefathers had to conquer," as one Senator put it. Now, after 40 years, 106.5 million acres are officially designated as wilderness. (2) At least eight bills have been introduced in the 109th Congress to add more wilderness to the system. (3) And every year, Congress is asked to designate more and more land as wilderness. Most of this land is already a part of a global system of ecoregions, recognized internationally as "Biosphere Reserves.
" In the United States, there are 47 Biosphere Reserves, so designated by the United Nations Education, Science, and Cultural Organization, (4) which are a part of a global network of 482 Biosphere Reserves. This global network is the basis for implementing the U.N.'s Convention on Biological Diversity, (5) a treaty which the U.S. Senate chose not to ratify. (6) The 1140-page instruction book for implementing this treaty, Global Biodiversity Assessment, provides graphic details about how society should be organized, and how land and resources should be managed, in order to make the world sustainable.
This treaty was formulated by U.N. agencies and non-government organizations between 1981 and 1992, when it was formally adopted by the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. Consider this instruction from the Global Biodiversity Assessment:
"...representative areas of all major ecosystems in a region need to be reserved, that blocks should be as large as possible, that buffer zones should be established around core areas, and that corridors should connect these areas. This basic design is central to the recently proposed Wildlands Project in the United States." (7)
Now consider "this basic design" as described in the Wildlands Project:
"...that at least half of the land area of the 48 conterminous states should be encompassed in core reserves and inner corridor zones (essentially extensions of core reserves) within the next few decades.... Nonetheless, half of a region in wilderness is a reasonable guess of what it will take to restore viable populations of large carnivores and natural disturbance regimes, assuming that most of the other 50 percent is managed intelligently as buffer zones. Eventually, a wilderness network would dominate a region...with human habitations being the islands. The native ecosystem and the collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans." (8)
Even though this treaty was not ratified by the United States, it is being effectively implemented by the agencies of government through the "Ecosystem Management Policy." The U.S. Forest service is actively working to identify and secure wilderness corridors to connect existing core wilderness areas. (9) Both state and federal governments have enacted legislation in recent years to provide for systematic acquisition of "open space," land suitable for restoration and rehabilitation, to expand wilderness areas, and to provide "viewsheds" beyond urban boundaries.
In the last days of the Clinton Administration, the Forest Service adopted the "Roadless Area Conservation Rule," which identified 58.5 million acres from which access and logging roads were to be removed. In the West, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are driving ranchers off the land by reducing grazing allotments to numbers that make profitable operations impossible. Inholders, people who have recreational cabins on federal land, are discovering that their permits are not being renewed. The Fish and Wildlife Service is forcing people off their land through designations of "wetlands," and "critical habitat" which render the land unusable for profit-making activities. Much to the chagrin of the proponents of sustainable development, some of these policies have been slowed, but not reversed, by the Bush administration. Nevertheless, agencies of government, supported by an army of non-government organizations, continue to transform the landscape into the vision described in the Wildlands Project, and in the Global Biodiversity Assessment.
Blueprint for Sustainable Development Other agencies of government are working with equal diligence, to create the "islands of human habitation," otherwise called sustainable communities. The blueprint for these communities was also adopted at the 1992 U.N. Conference in Rio de Janeiro. Its title is "Agenda 21." This 300-page document contains 40 chapters loaded with recommendations to govern virtually every facet of human existence.
Agenda 21 is not a treaty. It is a "soft law" policy document which was signed by President George H.W. Bush, and which does not require Senate ratification. One of the recommendations contained in the document is that each nation establish a national council to implement the rest of the recommendations.
On June 29, 1993, President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order Number 12852 which created the President's Council on Sustainable Development. (10) Its 25 members included most Cabinet Secretaries, representatives from The Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club and other non-government organizations, and a few representatives from industry.
The PCSD set out to implement the recommendations of Agenda 21 administratively, where possible, and to secure new legislation when necessary. One of the publications of the Council is "Sustainable Communities, Report of the Sustainable Communities Task Force." (11) This document, in very generalized language, makes sustainable communities sound like the perfect solution to all the world's ills. Another document, however, describes in much more precise detail exactly what sustainable communities will be. This document was prepared by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as a report to the U.N. Conference on Human Settlements in Istanbul, June, 1996. This report says that current lifestyles in the United States will "...demolish much of nature's diversity and stability, unless a re-balance can be attained - an urban-rural industrial re-balance with ecology, as a fundamental paradigm of authentic, meaningful national/global human security." (12) This highly detailed 25-page report goes on to describe the sustainable community of the future:
"...Community Sustainability Infrastructures [designed for] efficiency and livability that encourages: in-fill over sprawl: compactness, higher density low-rise residential: transit-oriented (TODs) and pedestrian-oriented development (PODs): bicycle circulation networks; work-to-home proximity; mixed-use-development: co-housing, housing over shops, downtown residential; inter-modal transportation malls and facilities ...where trolleys, rapid transit, trains and biking, walking and hiking are encouraged by infrastructures."
"For this hopeful future we may envision an entirely fresh set of infrastructures that use fully automated, very light, elevated rail systems for daytime metro region travel and nighttime goods movement, such as have been conceptualized and being positioned for production at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; we will see all settlements linked up by extensive bike, recreation and agro-forestry "E-ways" (environment-ways) such as in Madison, Wisconsin; we will find healthy, productive soils where there is [now] decline and erosion, through the widespread use of remineralization from igneous and volcanic rock sources (much of it the surplus quarry fines, or "rockdust", from concrete and asphalt-type road construction or from reservoir silts); we will be growing foods, dietary supplements and herbs that make over our unsustainable reliance upon foods and medicines that have adverse soil, environmental, or health side-effects. Less and less land will go for animal husbandry, and more for grains, tubers and legumes." (13)
Sustainable communities cannot emerge as the natural outgrowth of free people making individual choices in a free market economy. Nor can they be mandated in the United States, as they might be in nations that live under dictatorial rule.
Therefore, the PCSD developed a strategy to entice or coerce local communities to begin the transition to sustainability. The EPA provided challenge grants, and visioning grants to communities that would undertake the process toward sustainability.
Grants were also made available to selected non-government organizations to launch a visioning process in local communities. This process relies on a trained facilitator who uses a practiced, "consensus building" model to lead selected community participants in the development of "community vision."
This vision inevitably sets forth a set of goals - each of which can be found in the recommendations of Agenda 21 - that become the basis for the development of a comprehensive community plan. (14)
According to the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), 6,400 local communities in 113 countries have become involved in the sustainable communities Local Agenda 21 process since 1995. (15) ICLEI is one of several international non-government organizations whose mission is to promote sustainable development and sustainable communities at the local level. Dozens of similar national NGOs are at work all across the United States. A cursory search on the term "sustainable communities" through Google or Yahoo will return a staggering number of responses.
The federal government deepened its involvement in the transformation of America by providing millions of dollars in grants to the American Planning Association to develop model legislation which embodies the principles of sustainable development.
The publication,Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook: Model Statutes for Planning and the Management of Change, provides model legislation to be adopted by states. Typically, this legislation, when adopted, requires the creation of a statewide comprehensive land use plan that defines the administrative mechanisms for regional government agencies, and provides planning models for counties to use in creating county-wide land use plans.
Municipalities within the county are required to produce a plan that conforms with, and is integrated into the county and state plans.(16)
Using the coercive power of the federal budget, which the PCSD describes as using "financial incentives and disincentives," the federal government had little trouble getting states to rush to adopt some form of the model legislation. The state of Wisconsin, for examples, says this about its comprehensive planning act:
"The Comprehensive Planning Law was developed in response to the widely held view that state planning laws were outdated and inconsistent with the current needs of Wisconsin communities. Commonly recognized as Wisconsin's "Smart Growth" legislation, significant changes to planning-related statutes were approved through the 1999-2001 state biennial budget. Under the new law, any program or action of a town, village, city, county, or regional planning commission, after January 1, 2010, that affects land use must be guided by, and consistent with, an adopted Comprehensive Plan, s. 66. 1001, Wis. Stats." (17)
The APA's Legislative Guidebook offers several forms of the model legislation. States have considerable latitude in the legislation that is adopted. Consequently, each state's legislation may be different, and may impose different requirements on county and city governments. Regardless of the difference, however, they all contain the basic principles set forth in Agenda 21, and they all require the development of plans that result in the implementation of the recommendations contained in Agenda 21. One of the fundamental elements of all the plans requires limiting development (growth) to certain areas within the county.
Planners draw lines on maps, supposedly to prevent development in "environmentally sensitive" areas, but which, in fact, are often quite arbitrary and sometimes influenced by political considerations. The value of land inside the development areas skyrockets, while the value of land outside the development areas plummets - with no hope of future appreciation.
Another common element of these plans is to limit the activity that may occur within the various plan designations. In King County, Washington, for example, property owners in some parts of the county are required to leave 65% of their land unused, in its "natural" condition.
"Known as the 65-10 Rule, it calls for landowners to set aside 65 percent of their property and keep it in its natural, vegetative state. According to the rule, nothing can be built on this land, and if a tree is cut down, for example, it must be replanted. Building anything is out of the question." (18)
These plans also focus on reducing automobile use. Measures sometimes include making driving less convenient by constructing speed bumps and obstructive center diversions on residential streets, prohibiting single occupant use of certain traffic lanes, as well as a variety of extra "tax" measures for auto use. Oregon is experimenting with a mileage tax, based on miles driven. London has imposed a special tax on automobiles that enter a designated "high traffic area." Several U.S. cities are studying this idea. Santa Cruz, California's plan seeks to ban auto use in certain municipal areas. Hundreds of NGOs have popped up to form a "World Carfree Network" (19) which lobbies local officials to reduce or eliminate auto use. Alternative transportation is another common element of these plans. Light rail is a favorite, even in communities that have no hope of achieving economic viability.
Proponents of sustainable development argue that even if a light rail system has to be subsidized forever, it is a bargain just to get automobiles off the streets. Bicycle paths and "Trails" are always a substantial part of sustainable community plans.
Housing in sustainable communities presents special problems. Space limitations, imposed by growth boundaries, force higher densities and smaller housing units.
The term "McMansions" has been coined to describe new homes that are larger than necessary, as determined by sustainable development enthusiasts. Multiple housing units are preferred over single-family structures. Since sustainable communities cannot grow horizontally, they must grow vertically - if they grow at all.
These problems have produced a variety of responses. Some of the new terms that are becoming common in sustainable communities are: Limited Equity Co-ops; Resident-controlled Rentals; Co-housing; Mutual Housing; and many others. (20) Invariably, these schemes are alternatives to the conventional single-family home.
Most often, these schemes vest ownership in a corporation that owns the housing units, and residents may, but not always, own shares of the corporation. Living conditions are determined, not by the individual resident, but by the corporation.
Financing for the construction of these units, typically requires construction to meet "sustainable" standards, if federal money is used, either directly or indirectly, as in a mortgage guarantee. Single family homes and business structures that already exist when a community is transformed to sustainability are a special problem, since they rarely meet the criteria required by the comprehensive plan.
APA's Legislative Guidebook offers a new solution for this problem: "Amortization of Non-Conforming Uses." This means that a city or county may designate a period of time in which existing structures must be brought into conformity with the new regulations.
"But for homeowners who live in a community that adopts the Guidebook's vision, the APA amortization proposal means the extinguishing, over time, of their right to occupy their houses, and without just compensation for loss of that property. How long they have before they must forfeit their homes would be completely up to the local government." (21)
Eminent domain is another tool used by government to bring their communities into compliance with the sustainable communities vision. With increasing frequency, governments have used this technique to take land, not for "public use," as required by the U.S. Constitution, but for whatever the government deems to be a "public benefit." (22)
Governments may condemn and seize the private property of an individual, and then give, or sell it, to another private owner who promises to use the property in a way that satisfies the government's vision. Plans adopted at the local level can have extremely detailed requirements. It is not unusual for these plans to specify the types of vegetation that must be used for landscaping, the color of paint to be used - inside and outside the structure, and even the types of appliances and fixtures that must be used. Businesses can be required to use signs that conform in size and color to all the other signs in the neighborhood. There is virtually no limit to the restrictions that these plans may impose.
These comprehensive plans are often complicated by an assortment of sub-authorities, such as Historic Districts; Conservation Districts; Economic Development Districts; Scenic Highways and Byways; Scenic Rivers and Streams; and more. These quasi-government agencies are most often created by ordinance, and populated with political appointees.
They are frequently given unwarranted authority to dictate the use of private property within their jurisdiction. Individuals caught up in conflict with these agencies are often frustrated by the indifference of elected officials, and financially drained by the legal costs required to resist their dictates. In one form or another, sustainable development has reached every corner of the United States. It has impacted millions of Americans, most of whom have no idea that their particular problem is related to a global initiative launched more than 15 years ago, by the United Nations. Many, if not most of the bureaucrats at the local and state level, charged with implementing these policies, have no knowledge of their origin. What's worse, few people have considered the possible negative consequences of these policies.
Consequences of Sustainable Development What is perhaps the most serious consequence of sustainable development is the least visible: the transformation of the policy-making process. The idea that government is empowered by the consent of the governed is the idea that set the United States apart from all previous forms of government. It is the principle that unleashed individual creativity and free markets, which launched the spectacular rise of the world's most successful nation. The idea, and the process by which citizens can reject laws they don't want, simply by replacing the officials who enacted them, makes the ballot box the source of power for every citizen, and the point of accountability for every politician. When public policy is made by elected officials who are accountable to the people who are governed, then government is truly empowered by the consent of the governed.
Sustainable development has designed a process through which public policy is designed by professionals and bureaucrats, and implemented administratively, with only symbolic, if any, participation by elected officials. The professionals and bureaucrats who actually make the policies are not accountable to the people who are governed by them. This is the "new collaborative decisions process," called for by the PCSD. (23)
Because the policies are developed at the top, by professionals and bureaucrats, and sent down the administrative chain of command to state and local governments, elected officials have little option but to accept them.
Acceptance is further ensured when these policies are accompanied by "economic incentives and disincentives," along with lobbying and public relations campaigns coordinated by government-funded non-government organizations. Higher housing costs are an immediate, visible consequence of sustainable development. Land within the urban growth boundary jumps in value because supply is limited, and continues to increase disproportionately in value as growth continues to extinguish supply.
These costs must be reflected in the price of housing. Add to this price pressure, the regulatory requirements to use "green seal" materials; that is, materials that are certified, either by government or a designated non-government organization, to have been produced by methods deemed to be "sustainable." Higher taxes are another immediate, visible, and inevitable consequence of sustainable development. Higher land values automatically result in higher tax bills.
Sustainable development plans include another element that affects property taxes. Invariably, these plans call for the acquisition of land for open space, for parks, for greenways, for bike-and- hike trails, for historic preservation, and many other purposes.
Every piece of property taken out of the private sector by government acquisition, forces the tax burden to be distributed over fewer taxpayers. The inevitable result is a higher rate for each remaining taxpayer.
Another consequence of sustainable development is the gross distortion of justice. Bureaucrats who draw lines on maps create instant wealth for some people, while prohibiting others from realizing any gain on their investments. In communities across the country, people who live outside the downtown area have lived with the expectation that one day, they could fund their retirement by selling their land to new home owners as the nearby city expanded.
A line drawn on a map steals this expectation from people who live outside the urban growth boundary. Proponents of sustainable development are forced to argue that the greater good for the community is more important than negative impacts on any individual. There is no equal justice, when government arbitrarily takes value from one person and assigns it to another. Nowhere is this injustice more visible than when eminent domain is used to implement sustainable development plans.
The Kelo vs. The City of New London case brought the issue to public awareness, but in cities throughout the nation, millions of people are being displaced, with no hope of finding affordable housing, in the new, "sustainable" community.
In Florida, this situation is particularly acute. Retirees have flocked to Florida and settled in mobile home parks to enjoy their remaining days, living on fixed incomes, too old or infirm to think about a new income producing career. Local governments across the state are condemning these parks, and evicting the residents, in order to use the land for development that fits the comprehensive plan, and which produces a higher tax yield. These people are the victims of the "greater good," as envisioned by the proponents of sustainable development. Less visible, but no less important, is the erosion of individual freedom.
Until the emergence of sustainable development, a person's home was considered to be his castle. William Pitt expressed this idea quite powerfully in Parliament in 1763, when he said:
''The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the crown. It may be frail - its roof may shake - the wind may blow through it - the storm may enter, the rain may enter - but the King of England cannot enter - all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.'' (24)
No more. Sustainable development allows king-government to intrude into a person's home before it becomes his home, and dictate the manner and style to which the home must conform. Sustainable development forces the owner of an existing home to transform his home into a vision that is acceptable to king-government. Sustainable development is extinguishing individual freedom for the "greater good," as determined by king-government.
Conclusion The question that must be asked is: will sustainable development really result in economic prosperity, environmental protection, and social equity for the current generation, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs? (25) Even in the early days of this century-long transition to sustainability, there is growing evidence that the fundamental flaws in the concept will likely produce the opposite of the desired goals.
Forests that have been taken out of productive use in order to conform to the vision of sustainable development have been burned to cinders, annihilating wildlife, including species deemed to be "endangered," resulting in the opposite of "environmental protection." Government- imposed restrictions on resource use in land that is now designated "wilderness," or "buffer zones" have resulted in shortages, accompanied by rapid price increases that result in the opposite of "economic prosperity." In sustainable communities, it is the poorest of the poor who are cast out of their homes to make way for the planners' visions; these victims would not define the experience as "social equity." Detailed academic studies show that housing costs rise inevitably as sustainable development is implemented.
Traffic congestion is often worsened after sustainable development measures are installed. (26) And always, private property rights and individual freedom are diminished or extinguished.
Sustainable development is a concept constructed on the principle that government has the right and the responsibility to regulate the affairs of people to achieve government's vision of the greatest good for all.
The United States is founded on the principle that government has no rights or responsibility not specifically granted to it by the people who are governed. These two concepts cannot long coexist. One principle, or the other, will eventually dominate.
For the last 15 years, sustainable development has been on the ascendency, permeating state and local governments across the land. Only in the last few years have ordinary people begun to realize that sustainable development is a global initiative, imposed by the highest levels of government. People are just beginning to get a glimpse of the magnitude of the transformation of America that is underway.
The question that remains unanswered is: will Americans accept this new sustainable future that has been planned for them and imposed upon them?. Or, as Americans have done in the past, will they rise up in defense of their freedom, and demand that their elected officials force the bureaucrats and professionals to return to the role of serving the people who pay their salaries, by administering policies enacted only by elected officials, rather than conspiring to set the policies by which all the people must live.
Endnotes
1. Sierra Club ecoregions: http://www.sierraclub.org/ecoregions/
2. Wilderness.net (http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=fastFacts), a project of the Wilderness Institute, the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center, and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute. (October 27, 2005)
3. Campaign for America's Wilderness (http://www.leaveitwild.org/psapp/view_art.asp?PEB_ART_ID=397) (As of May 1, 2005)
4. See Eco-logic Powerhouse, November, 2005, and http://eco.freedom.org/el/20020302/biosphere.shtml
5. Agenda Item 1(7), Report of the First Meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice, Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, Second Meeting, 6-17 November, Jakarta, Indonesia, (UNEP/CBD/COP2/5, September 21, 1995).
See also: http://www.freedom.org/prc/legis/hr901test.htm.
6. "How the Convention on Biological Diversity was Defeated," Sovereignty International, Inc, 1998 -http://sovereignty.freedom.org/p/land/biotreatystop.htm .
7. "Measures for conservation of biodiversity and Sustainable Use of its Components," Global Biodiversity Assessment, Cambridge University Press for the United Nations Environment Program, Section 13.4.2.2.3, p. 993.
8. Reed F. Noss, "The Wildlands Project," Wild Earth, Special Issue, 1992, pp.13- 15. (Wild Earth is published by the Cenozoic Society, P.O. Box 492, Canton, NY 13617).
9. Report to the Interagency Grizzly Bear Working Group on Wildlife Linkage Habitat, Prepared by Bill Ruediger, Endangered Species Program Leader, USDA Forest Service, Northern Region, Missoula, MT, February 1, 2001. See also: http://www.eco.freedom.org/el/20020202/linkage.shtml.
10. See: http://clinton4.nara.gov/PCSD/
11. See: http://clinton4.nara.gov/PCSD/Publications/suscomm/ind_suscom.html
12. "Community Sustainability; Agendas for Choice-making and Action," U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, September 22, 1995. See also: http://eco.freedom.org/reports/sdagenda.html
13. Ibid, pp 21f.
14. See http://eco.freedom.org/col/?i=1997/9 And http://www.sovereignty.net/p/sd/suscom.htm For a discussion of the consensus process, and sustainable communities.
15. International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives web site, October 28, 2005 (http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=798)
16. Summary of the Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook, 2002 Edition, (http://www.planning.org/growingsmart/summary.htm)
17. State of Wisconsin, Department of Administration web site:http://www.doa.state.wi.us/pagesubtext_detail.asp?linksubcatid=366
18. FoxNews.com, July 10, 2004 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,124358,00.html
19. See http://www.worldcarfree.net/links/traf.php.
20. See http://www.worldcarfree.net/links/traf.php for descriptions of these housing alternatives.
21. "Forfeiting the American Dream: The HUD-Funded Smart Growth Guidebook's Attack on Homeownership," The Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org/Research/SmartGrowth/BG1565.cfm), July 2, 2002.
22. "Eminent domain; eminent disaster," Eco-logic Powerhouse, August, 2005 (http://www.eco.freedom.org/articles/maguire-805.shtml) , for a discussion on this issue.
23. President's Council on Sustainable Development, We Believe Statement #8http://sovereignty.freedom.org/p/sd/PCSD-webelieve.htm
24. William Pitt, the elder, Earl of Chatham, speech in the House of Lords.--Henry Peter Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen Who Flourished in the Time of George III, vol. 1, p. 52 (1839). (http://www.bartleby.com/73/861.html)
25. Sustainable Development as defined by the U.N.'s Bruntland Commission report, Our Common Future, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 43
26. This website, http://www.demographia.com/dbr-ix.htm provides an abundance of reports and studies that challenge effectiveness of sustainable development.
Copyright (C) 2005 Freedom.org, All rights reserved
Environmental Conservation Organization
Hollow Rock, Tennessee December 1, 2005
As the "sustainable development" movement continues to gain momentum, it is worthwhile to step back and take a long look at the big picture, painted with a broad brush to reveal what the United States might look like as the movement's vision is more fully implemented over the next 50 years or so.
The picture painted here is based on official documents published by several government agencies and non-government organizations during the last decade. These documents were rarely reported in the news, and average working people have no idea what sustainable development really means, and even less knowledge of what is in store for the future. If the vision of sustainable development continues to unfold as it has in the last decade, life in the United States will be quite different in the future.
The Vision
Half the land area of the entire country will be designated "wilderness areas," where only wildlife managers and researchers will be allowed. These areas will be interconnected by "corridors of wilderness" to allow migration of wildlife, without interference by human activity. Wolves will be as plentiful in Virginia and Pennsylvania as they are now in Idaho and Montana. Panthers and alligators will roam freely from the Everglades to the Okefenokee and beyond.
Surrounding these wilderness areas and corridors, designated "buffer zones" will be managed for "conservation objectives." The primary objective is "restoration and rehabilitation." Rehabilitation involves the repair of damaged ecosystems, while restoration usually involves the reconstruction of natural or semi-natural ecosystems. As areas are restored and rehabilitated, they are added to the wilderness designation, and the buffer zone is extended outward. Buffer zones are surrounded by what is called "zones of cooperation." This is where people live - in "sustainable communities." Sustainable communities are defined by strict "urban growth boundaries." Land outside the growth boundaries will be managed by government agencies, which grant permits for activities deemed to be essential and sustainable.
Open space, to provide a "viewshed" and sustainable recreation for community residents will abut the urban boundaries. Beyond the viewshed, sustainable agricultural activities will be permitted, to support the food requirements of nearby communities. Sustainable communities of the future will bear little resemblance to the towns and cities of the 20th century.
Single-family homes will be rare. Housing will be provided by public/private partnerships, funded by government, and managed by non-government "Home Owners Associations." Housing units will be designed to provide most of the infrastructure and amenities required by the residents. Shops and office space will be an integral part of each unit, and housing will be allocated on a priority basis to people who work in the unit - with quotas to achieve ethnic and economic balance. Schools, daycare, and recreation facilities will be provided.
Each unit will be designed for bicycle and foot traffic, to reduce, if not eliminate, the need for people to use automobiles. Transportation between sustainable communities, for people and for commodities, will be primarily by light rail systems, designed to bridge wilderness corridors where necessary. The highways that remain will be super transport corridors, such as the "Trans-Texas Corridor" now being designed, which will eventually reach from Mexico to Canada. These transport corridors will also be designed to bridge wilderness corridors, and to minimize the impact on the environment.
Government, too, will be different in a sustainable America. Human activity is being reorganized around ecoregions, which do not respect county or state boundaries. Therefore, the governing apparatus will be designed to regulate the activities within the entire region, rather than having multiple governing jurisdictions with services duplicated in each political subdivision. It is far more efficient to have regional governing authorities with centrally administered services.
Sierra Club's proposal to reorganize North America into 21 Ecoregions.
The Sierra Club, one of hundreds of non-government organizations actively working to bring about this transformation, has suggested that North America be divided into 21 ecoregions, that ignore existing national, state, and county boundaries.
In 1992, they published a special issue of their magazine which featured a map, and extensive descriptions of how these ecoregions should be managed. (1) The function of government will also change. The legislative function, especially at the local and state level, will continue to diminish in importance, while the administrative function will grow. Already, in some parts of the country, counties are combining, and city and county governments are consolidating.
Regional governing authorities are developing; taking precedence over the participating counties, which will eventually evaporate. State governments will undergo similar attrition; as regulations are developed on an ecoregions basis, there will be less need for separate state legislation. The administrative functions of state governments will also collapse into a super-regional administrative unit, to eliminate unnecessary duplication of investment and services.
The Reality
This vision is quite attractive to many Americans, especially those born since 1970, who have been educated in the public school system. To these people, nothing is more important than saving the planet from the certain catastrophe that lies ahead, if people are allowed to continue their greedy abuse of natural resources. The public school system, and the media, have been quite successful is shaping new attitudes and values to support this vision of how the world should be.
This vision did not suddenly spring from the mind of a Hollywood screenwriter. It has been evolving for most of the last century. Since the early 1960s, it has been gaining momentum. The rise of the environmental movement became the magnet which attracted several disparate elements of social change, now coalesced into a massive global movement, euphemistically described as sustainable development.
The first Wilderness Act was adopted in 1964, which set aside nine million acres of wilderness so "our posterity could see what our forefathers had to conquer," as one Senator put it. Now, after 40 years, 106.5 million acres are officially designated as wilderness. (2) At least eight bills have been introduced in the 109th Congress to add more wilderness to the system. (3) And every year, Congress is asked to designate more and more land as wilderness. Most of this land is already a part of a global system of ecoregions, recognized internationally as "Biosphere Reserves.
" In the United States, there are 47 Biosphere Reserves, so designated by the United Nations Education, Science, and Cultural Organization, (4) which are a part of a global network of 482 Biosphere Reserves. This global network is the basis for implementing the U.N.'s Convention on Biological Diversity, (5) a treaty which the U.S. Senate chose not to ratify. (6) The 1140-page instruction book for implementing this treaty, Global Biodiversity Assessment, provides graphic details about how society should be organized, and how land and resources should be managed, in order to make the world sustainable.
This treaty was formulated by U.N. agencies and non-government organizations between 1981 and 1992, when it was formally adopted by the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. Consider this instruction from the Global Biodiversity Assessment:
"...representative areas of all major ecosystems in a region need to be reserved, that blocks should be as large as possible, that buffer zones should be established around core areas, and that corridors should connect these areas. This basic design is central to the recently proposed Wildlands Project in the United States." (7)
Now consider "this basic design" as described in the Wildlands Project:
"...that at least half of the land area of the 48 conterminous states should be encompassed in core reserves and inner corridor zones (essentially extensions of core reserves) within the next few decades.... Nonetheless, half of a region in wilderness is a reasonable guess of what it will take to restore viable populations of large carnivores and natural disturbance regimes, assuming that most of the other 50 percent is managed intelligently as buffer zones. Eventually, a wilderness network would dominate a region...with human habitations being the islands. The native ecosystem and the collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans." (8)
Even though this treaty was not ratified by the United States, it is being effectively implemented by the agencies of government through the "Ecosystem Management Policy." The U.S. Forest service is actively working to identify and secure wilderness corridors to connect existing core wilderness areas. (9) Both state and federal governments have enacted legislation in recent years to provide for systematic acquisition of "open space," land suitable for restoration and rehabilitation, to expand wilderness areas, and to provide "viewsheds" beyond urban boundaries.
In the last days of the Clinton Administration, the Forest Service adopted the "Roadless Area Conservation Rule," which identified 58.5 million acres from which access and logging roads were to be removed. In the West, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are driving ranchers off the land by reducing grazing allotments to numbers that make profitable operations impossible. Inholders, people who have recreational cabins on federal land, are discovering that their permits are not being renewed. The Fish and Wildlife Service is forcing people off their land through designations of "wetlands," and "critical habitat" which render the land unusable for profit-making activities. Much to the chagrin of the proponents of sustainable development, some of these policies have been slowed, but not reversed, by the Bush administration. Nevertheless, agencies of government, supported by an army of non-government organizations, continue to transform the landscape into the vision described in the Wildlands Project, and in the Global Biodiversity Assessment.
Blueprint for Sustainable Development Other agencies of government are working with equal diligence, to create the "islands of human habitation," otherwise called sustainable communities. The blueprint for these communities was also adopted at the 1992 U.N. Conference in Rio de Janeiro. Its title is "Agenda 21." This 300-page document contains 40 chapters loaded with recommendations to govern virtually every facet of human existence.
Agenda 21 is not a treaty. It is a "soft law" policy document which was signed by President George H.W. Bush, and which does not require Senate ratification. One of the recommendations contained in the document is that each nation establish a national council to implement the rest of the recommendations.
On June 29, 1993, President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order Number 12852 which created the President's Council on Sustainable Development. (10) Its 25 members included most Cabinet Secretaries, representatives from The Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club and other non-government organizations, and a few representatives from industry.
The PCSD set out to implement the recommendations of Agenda 21 administratively, where possible, and to secure new legislation when necessary. One of the publications of the Council is "Sustainable Communities, Report of the Sustainable Communities Task Force." (11) This document, in very generalized language, makes sustainable communities sound like the perfect solution to all the world's ills. Another document, however, describes in much more precise detail exactly what sustainable communities will be. This document was prepared by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as a report to the U.N. Conference on Human Settlements in Istanbul, June, 1996. This report says that current lifestyles in the United States will "...demolish much of nature's diversity and stability, unless a re-balance can be attained - an urban-rural industrial re-balance with ecology, as a fundamental paradigm of authentic, meaningful national/global human security." (12) This highly detailed 25-page report goes on to describe the sustainable community of the future:
"...Community Sustainability Infrastructures [designed for] efficiency and livability that encourages: in-fill over sprawl: compactness, higher density low-rise residential: transit-oriented (TODs) and pedestrian-oriented development (PODs): bicycle circulation networks; work-to-home proximity; mixed-use-development: co-housing, housing over shops, downtown residential; inter-modal transportation malls and facilities ...where trolleys, rapid transit, trains and biking, walking and hiking are encouraged by infrastructures."
"For this hopeful future we may envision an entirely fresh set of infrastructures that use fully automated, very light, elevated rail systems for daytime metro region travel and nighttime goods movement, such as have been conceptualized and being positioned for production at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; we will see all settlements linked up by extensive bike, recreation and agro-forestry "E-ways" (environment-ways) such as in Madison, Wisconsin; we will find healthy, productive soils where there is [now] decline and erosion, through the widespread use of remineralization from igneous and volcanic rock sources (much of it the surplus quarry fines, or "rockdust", from concrete and asphalt-type road construction or from reservoir silts); we will be growing foods, dietary supplements and herbs that make over our unsustainable reliance upon foods and medicines that have adverse soil, environmental, or health side-effects. Less and less land will go for animal husbandry, and more for grains, tubers and legumes." (13)
Sustainable communities cannot emerge as the natural outgrowth of free people making individual choices in a free market economy. Nor can they be mandated in the United States, as they might be in nations that live under dictatorial rule.
Therefore, the PCSD developed a strategy to entice or coerce local communities to begin the transition to sustainability. The EPA provided challenge grants, and visioning grants to communities that would undertake the process toward sustainability.
Grants were also made available to selected non-government organizations to launch a visioning process in local communities. This process relies on a trained facilitator who uses a practiced, "consensus building" model to lead selected community participants in the development of "community vision."
This vision inevitably sets forth a set of goals - each of which can be found in the recommendations of Agenda 21 - that become the basis for the development of a comprehensive community plan. (14)
According to the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), 6,400 local communities in 113 countries have become involved in the sustainable communities Local Agenda 21 process since 1995. (15) ICLEI is one of several international non-government organizations whose mission is to promote sustainable development and sustainable communities at the local level. Dozens of similar national NGOs are at work all across the United States. A cursory search on the term "sustainable communities" through Google or Yahoo will return a staggering number of responses.
The federal government deepened its involvement in the transformation of America by providing millions of dollars in grants to the American Planning Association to develop model legislation which embodies the principles of sustainable development.
The publication,Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook: Model Statutes for Planning and the Management of Change, provides model legislation to be adopted by states. Typically, this legislation, when adopted, requires the creation of a statewide comprehensive land use plan that defines the administrative mechanisms for regional government agencies, and provides planning models for counties to use in creating county-wide land use plans.
Municipalities within the county are required to produce a plan that conforms with, and is integrated into the county and state plans.(16)
Using the coercive power of the federal budget, which the PCSD describes as using "financial incentives and disincentives," the federal government had little trouble getting states to rush to adopt some form of the model legislation. The state of Wisconsin, for examples, says this about its comprehensive planning act:
"The Comprehensive Planning Law was developed in response to the widely held view that state planning laws were outdated and inconsistent with the current needs of Wisconsin communities. Commonly recognized as Wisconsin's "Smart Growth" legislation, significant changes to planning-related statutes were approved through the 1999-2001 state biennial budget. Under the new law, any program or action of a town, village, city, county, or regional planning commission, after January 1, 2010, that affects land use must be guided by, and consistent with, an adopted Comprehensive Plan, s. 66. 1001, Wis. Stats." (17)
The APA's Legislative Guidebook offers several forms of the model legislation. States have considerable latitude in the legislation that is adopted. Consequently, each state's legislation may be different, and may impose different requirements on county and city governments. Regardless of the difference, however, they all contain the basic principles set forth in Agenda 21, and they all require the development of plans that result in the implementation of the recommendations contained in Agenda 21. One of the fundamental elements of all the plans requires limiting development (growth) to certain areas within the county.
Planners draw lines on maps, supposedly to prevent development in "environmentally sensitive" areas, but which, in fact, are often quite arbitrary and sometimes influenced by political considerations. The value of land inside the development areas skyrockets, while the value of land outside the development areas plummets - with no hope of future appreciation.
Another common element of these plans is to limit the activity that may occur within the various plan designations. In King County, Washington, for example, property owners in some parts of the county are required to leave 65% of their land unused, in its "natural" condition.
"Known as the 65-10 Rule, it calls for landowners to set aside 65 percent of their property and keep it in its natural, vegetative state. According to the rule, nothing can be built on this land, and if a tree is cut down, for example, it must be replanted. Building anything is out of the question." (18)
These plans also focus on reducing automobile use. Measures sometimes include making driving less convenient by constructing speed bumps and obstructive center diversions on residential streets, prohibiting single occupant use of certain traffic lanes, as well as a variety of extra "tax" measures for auto use. Oregon is experimenting with a mileage tax, based on miles driven. London has imposed a special tax on automobiles that enter a designated "high traffic area." Several U.S. cities are studying this idea. Santa Cruz, California's plan seeks to ban auto use in certain municipal areas. Hundreds of NGOs have popped up to form a "World Carfree Network" (19) which lobbies local officials to reduce or eliminate auto use. Alternative transportation is another common element of these plans. Light rail is a favorite, even in communities that have no hope of achieving economic viability.
Proponents of sustainable development argue that even if a light rail system has to be subsidized forever, it is a bargain just to get automobiles off the streets. Bicycle paths and "Trails" are always a substantial part of sustainable community plans.
Housing in sustainable communities presents special problems. Space limitations, imposed by growth boundaries, force higher densities and smaller housing units.
The term "McMansions" has been coined to describe new homes that are larger than necessary, as determined by sustainable development enthusiasts. Multiple housing units are preferred over single-family structures. Since sustainable communities cannot grow horizontally, they must grow vertically - if they grow at all.
These problems have produced a variety of responses. Some of the new terms that are becoming common in sustainable communities are: Limited Equity Co-ops; Resident-controlled Rentals; Co-housing; Mutual Housing; and many others. (20) Invariably, these schemes are alternatives to the conventional single-family home.
Most often, these schemes vest ownership in a corporation that owns the housing units, and residents may, but not always, own shares of the corporation. Living conditions are determined, not by the individual resident, but by the corporation.
Financing for the construction of these units, typically requires construction to meet "sustainable" standards, if federal money is used, either directly or indirectly, as in a mortgage guarantee. Single family homes and business structures that already exist when a community is transformed to sustainability are a special problem, since they rarely meet the criteria required by the comprehensive plan.
APA's Legislative Guidebook offers a new solution for this problem: "Amortization of Non-Conforming Uses." This means that a city or county may designate a period of time in which existing structures must be brought into conformity with the new regulations.
"But for homeowners who live in a community that adopts the Guidebook's vision, the APA amortization proposal means the extinguishing, over time, of their right to occupy their houses, and without just compensation for loss of that property. How long they have before they must forfeit their homes would be completely up to the local government." (21)
Eminent domain is another tool used by government to bring their communities into compliance with the sustainable communities vision. With increasing frequency, governments have used this technique to take land, not for "public use," as required by the U.S. Constitution, but for whatever the government deems to be a "public benefit." (22)
Governments may condemn and seize the private property of an individual, and then give, or sell it, to another private owner who promises to use the property in a way that satisfies the government's vision. Plans adopted at the local level can have extremely detailed requirements. It is not unusual for these plans to specify the types of vegetation that must be used for landscaping, the color of paint to be used - inside and outside the structure, and even the types of appliances and fixtures that must be used. Businesses can be required to use signs that conform in size and color to all the other signs in the neighborhood. There is virtually no limit to the restrictions that these plans may impose.
These comprehensive plans are often complicated by an assortment of sub-authorities, such as Historic Districts; Conservation Districts; Economic Development Districts; Scenic Highways and Byways; Scenic Rivers and Streams; and more. These quasi-government agencies are most often created by ordinance, and populated with political appointees.
They are frequently given unwarranted authority to dictate the use of private property within their jurisdiction. Individuals caught up in conflict with these agencies are often frustrated by the indifference of elected officials, and financially drained by the legal costs required to resist their dictates. In one form or another, sustainable development has reached every corner of the United States. It has impacted millions of Americans, most of whom have no idea that their particular problem is related to a global initiative launched more than 15 years ago, by the United Nations. Many, if not most of the bureaucrats at the local and state level, charged with implementing these policies, have no knowledge of their origin. What's worse, few people have considered the possible negative consequences of these policies.
Consequences of Sustainable Development What is perhaps the most serious consequence of sustainable development is the least visible: the transformation of the policy-making process. The idea that government is empowered by the consent of the governed is the idea that set the United States apart from all previous forms of government. It is the principle that unleashed individual creativity and free markets, which launched the spectacular rise of the world's most successful nation. The idea, and the process by which citizens can reject laws they don't want, simply by replacing the officials who enacted them, makes the ballot box the source of power for every citizen, and the point of accountability for every politician. When public policy is made by elected officials who are accountable to the people who are governed, then government is truly empowered by the consent of the governed.
Sustainable development has designed a process through which public policy is designed by professionals and bureaucrats, and implemented administratively, with only symbolic, if any, participation by elected officials. The professionals and bureaucrats who actually make the policies are not accountable to the people who are governed by them. This is the "new collaborative decisions process," called for by the PCSD. (23)
Because the policies are developed at the top, by professionals and bureaucrats, and sent down the administrative chain of command to state and local governments, elected officials have little option but to accept them.
Acceptance is further ensured when these policies are accompanied by "economic incentives and disincentives," along with lobbying and public relations campaigns coordinated by government-funded non-government organizations. Higher housing costs are an immediate, visible consequence of sustainable development. Land within the urban growth boundary jumps in value because supply is limited, and continues to increase disproportionately in value as growth continues to extinguish supply.
These costs must be reflected in the price of housing. Add to this price pressure, the regulatory requirements to use "green seal" materials; that is, materials that are certified, either by government or a designated non-government organization, to have been produced by methods deemed to be "sustainable." Higher taxes are another immediate, visible, and inevitable consequence of sustainable development. Higher land values automatically result in higher tax bills.
Sustainable development plans include another element that affects property taxes. Invariably, these plans call for the acquisition of land for open space, for parks, for greenways, for bike-and- hike trails, for historic preservation, and many other purposes.
Every piece of property taken out of the private sector by government acquisition, forces the tax burden to be distributed over fewer taxpayers. The inevitable result is a higher rate for each remaining taxpayer.
Another consequence of sustainable development is the gross distortion of justice. Bureaucrats who draw lines on maps create instant wealth for some people, while prohibiting others from realizing any gain on their investments. In communities across the country, people who live outside the downtown area have lived with the expectation that one day, they could fund their retirement by selling their land to new home owners as the nearby city expanded.
A line drawn on a map steals this expectation from people who live outside the urban growth boundary. Proponents of sustainable development are forced to argue that the greater good for the community is more important than negative impacts on any individual. There is no equal justice, when government arbitrarily takes value from one person and assigns it to another. Nowhere is this injustice more visible than when eminent domain is used to implement sustainable development plans.
The Kelo vs. The City of New London case brought the issue to public awareness, but in cities throughout the nation, millions of people are being displaced, with no hope of finding affordable housing, in the new, "sustainable" community.
In Florida, this situation is particularly acute. Retirees have flocked to Florida and settled in mobile home parks to enjoy their remaining days, living on fixed incomes, too old or infirm to think about a new income producing career. Local governments across the state are condemning these parks, and evicting the residents, in order to use the land for development that fits the comprehensive plan, and which produces a higher tax yield. These people are the victims of the "greater good," as envisioned by the proponents of sustainable development. Less visible, but no less important, is the erosion of individual freedom.
Until the emergence of sustainable development, a person's home was considered to be his castle. William Pitt expressed this idea quite powerfully in Parliament in 1763, when he said:
''The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the crown. It may be frail - its roof may shake - the wind may blow through it - the storm may enter, the rain may enter - but the King of England cannot enter - all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.'' (24)
No more. Sustainable development allows king-government to intrude into a person's home before it becomes his home, and dictate the manner and style to which the home must conform. Sustainable development forces the owner of an existing home to transform his home into a vision that is acceptable to king-government. Sustainable development is extinguishing individual freedom for the "greater good," as determined by king-government.
Conclusion The question that must be asked is: will sustainable development really result in economic prosperity, environmental protection, and social equity for the current generation, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs? (25) Even in the early days of this century-long transition to sustainability, there is growing evidence that the fundamental flaws in the concept will likely produce the opposite of the desired goals.
Forests that have been taken out of productive use in order to conform to the vision of sustainable development have been burned to cinders, annihilating wildlife, including species deemed to be "endangered," resulting in the opposite of "environmental protection." Government- imposed restrictions on resource use in land that is now designated "wilderness," or "buffer zones" have resulted in shortages, accompanied by rapid price increases that result in the opposite of "economic prosperity." In sustainable communities, it is the poorest of the poor who are cast out of their homes to make way for the planners' visions; these victims would not define the experience as "social equity." Detailed academic studies show that housing costs rise inevitably as sustainable development is implemented.
Traffic congestion is often worsened after sustainable development measures are installed. (26) And always, private property rights and individual freedom are diminished or extinguished.
Sustainable development is a concept constructed on the principle that government has the right and the responsibility to regulate the affairs of people to achieve government's vision of the greatest good for all.
The United States is founded on the principle that government has no rights or responsibility not specifically granted to it by the people who are governed. These two concepts cannot long coexist. One principle, or the other, will eventually dominate.
For the last 15 years, sustainable development has been on the ascendency, permeating state and local governments across the land. Only in the last few years have ordinary people begun to realize that sustainable development is a global initiative, imposed by the highest levels of government. People are just beginning to get a glimpse of the magnitude of the transformation of America that is underway.
The question that remains unanswered is: will Americans accept this new sustainable future that has been planned for them and imposed upon them?. Or, as Americans have done in the past, will they rise up in defense of their freedom, and demand that their elected officials force the bureaucrats and professionals to return to the role of serving the people who pay their salaries, by administering policies enacted only by elected officials, rather than conspiring to set the policies by which all the people must live.
Endnotes
1. Sierra Club ecoregions: http://www.sierraclub.org/ecoregions/
2. Wilderness.net (http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=fastFacts), a project of the Wilderness Institute, the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center, and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute. (October 27, 2005)
3. Campaign for America's Wilderness (http://www.leaveitwild.org/psapp/view_art.asp?PEB_ART_ID=397) (As of May 1, 2005)
4. See Eco-logic Powerhouse, November, 2005, and http://eco.freedom.org/el/20020302/biosphere.shtml
5. Agenda Item 1(7), Report of the First Meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice, Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, Second Meeting, 6-17 November, Jakarta, Indonesia, (UNEP/CBD/COP2/5, September 21, 1995).
See also: http://www.freedom.org/prc/legis/hr901test.htm.
6. "How the Convention on Biological Diversity was Defeated," Sovereignty International, Inc, 1998 -http://sovereignty.freedom.org/p/land/biotreatystop.htm .
7. "Measures for conservation of biodiversity and Sustainable Use of its Components," Global Biodiversity Assessment, Cambridge University Press for the United Nations Environment Program, Section 13.4.2.2.3, p. 993.
8. Reed F. Noss, "The Wildlands Project," Wild Earth, Special Issue, 1992, pp.13- 15. (Wild Earth is published by the Cenozoic Society, P.O. Box 492, Canton, NY 13617).
9. Report to the Interagency Grizzly Bear Working Group on Wildlife Linkage Habitat, Prepared by Bill Ruediger, Endangered Species Program Leader, USDA Forest Service, Northern Region, Missoula, MT, February 1, 2001. See also: http://www.eco.freedom.org/el/20020202/linkage.shtml.
10. See: http://clinton4.nara.gov/PCSD/
11. See: http://clinton4.nara.gov/PCSD/Publications/suscomm/ind_suscom.html
12. "Community Sustainability; Agendas for Choice-making and Action," U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, September 22, 1995. See also: http://eco.freedom.org/reports/sdagenda.html
13. Ibid, pp 21f.
14. See http://eco.freedom.org/col/?i=1997/9 And http://www.sovereignty.net/p/sd/suscom.htm For a discussion of the consensus process, and sustainable communities.
15. International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives web site, October 28, 2005 (http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=798)
16. Summary of the Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook, 2002 Edition, (http://www.planning.org/growingsmart/summary.htm)
17. State of Wisconsin, Department of Administration web site:http://www.doa.state.wi.us/pagesubtext_detail.asp?linksubcatid=366
18. FoxNews.com, July 10, 2004 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,124358,00.html
19. See http://www.worldcarfree.net/links/traf.php.
20. See http://www.worldcarfree.net/links/traf.php for descriptions of these housing alternatives.
21. "Forfeiting the American Dream: The HUD-Funded Smart Growth Guidebook's Attack on Homeownership," The Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org/Research/SmartGrowth/BG1565.cfm), July 2, 2002.
22. "Eminent domain; eminent disaster," Eco-logic Powerhouse, August, 2005 (http://www.eco.freedom.org/articles/maguire-805.shtml) , for a discussion on this issue.
23. President's Council on Sustainable Development, We Believe Statement #8http://sovereignty.freedom.org/p/sd/PCSD-webelieve.htm
24. William Pitt, the elder, Earl of Chatham, speech in the House of Lords.--Henry Peter Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen Who Flourished in the Time of George III, vol. 1, p. 52 (1839). (http://www.bartleby.com/73/861.html)
25. Sustainable Development as defined by the U.N.'s Bruntland Commission report, Our Common Future, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 43
26. This website, http://www.demographia.com/dbr-ix.htm provides an abundance of reports and studies that challenge effectiveness of sustainable development.
Copyright (C) 2005 Freedom.org, All rights reserved
Friday, November 4, 2011
UN Agenda 21 Implementation
THE FOUR PART PROCESS LEADING TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT By Tom DeWeese
So how is this wrenching transformation being put into place? There are four very specific routes being used.
In the rural areas it’s called the Wildlands Project. In the cities it’s called smart growth. In business it’s called Public/Private Partnerships. And in government it’s called stakeholder councils and non-elected boards and regional government.
The Wildlands Project was the brainchild of Earth First’s Dave Foreman and it literally calls for the “re-wilding” of 50% of all the land in every state – back to the way it was before Christopher Columbus set foot on this land.
It is a diabolical plan to herd humans off the rural lands and into human settlements. Crazy you say! Yes. Impossible? Not so fast.
From the demented mind of Foreman, the plan became the blueprint for the UN’s Biodiversity Treaty. So now the scheme is international in scope.
But how do you remove people from the land? One step at a time. Let’s begin with a biosphere reserve. A national park will do. A huge place where there is no human activity. How about Yellowstone National Park? Then you establish a buffer zone around the reserve. Inside the buffer only limited human activity is allowed. Slowly, you squeeze until you squash that human activity.
Once accomplished, you extend the area of the biosphere to the limits of the former buffer area – and then you create a new buffer zone around the now larger biosphere and start the process over again. In that way, the Biosphere Reserve acts like a cancer cell, ever expanding, until all human activity is stopped.
And there are many tools in place to stop human activity and grow the reserve.
Push back livestock’s access to river banks on ranches. 300 feet ought to do it. When the cattle can’t reach the stream, the rancher can’t water them — he goes out of business. Lock away natural resources by creating national parks. It shuts down the mines — and they go out of business. Invent a Spotted Owl shortage and pretend it can’t live in a forest where timber is cut. Shut off the forest. Then, when no trees are cut, there’s nothing to feed the mills and then there are no jobs, and — they go out of business.
Locking away land cuts the tax base. Eventually the town dies. Keep it up and there is nothing to keep the people on the land – so they head to the cities. The wilderness grows – just like Dave Foreman planned.
It comes in many names and many programs. Heritage areas, land management, wolf and bear reintroduction, rails to trails, conservation easements, open space, and many more. Each of these programs is designed to make it just a little harder to live on the land – a little more expensive – a little more hopeless. Now tell me how they can deny that the process is herding people into human habitat areas?
In the West, where vast areas of open space make it easy to impose such polices there are several programs underway to remove humans from the land. Today, there are at least 31 Wildlands projects underway, locking away more than 40 percent of the nation’s land. The Alaska Wildlands Project seeks to lock away and control almost the entire state. In Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, Montana parts of North and South Dakota, parts of California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming, Texas, Utah, and more, there are at least 22 Wildlands Projects underway. For example, one project called Yukon to Yellowstone (Y2Y) – creates a 2000 mile no-man’s land corridor from the Arctic to Yellowstone.
East of the Mississippi, there are at least nine Wildlands projects, covering Maine, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Watch for names of Wildlands Projects like Chesapeake Bay Watershed, Appalachian Restoration Project and Piedmont Wildlands Project.
The second path is called Smart Growth. After they herd you into the city, they have more plans for you in regimented and dense urban communities.
They put a line around the city and tell you no growth can take place outside that line. Urban sprawl, they say disdainfully. They refuse to build more roads as a ploy to get you out of your car into public transportation, restricting mobility.
Because there is a restriction on space inside the controlled city limited there is a shortage of houses, so prices go up. That means populations will have to be controlled, because now there is a shortage of land.
Cities are now passing “green” regulations, forcing homeowners to meet strict guidelines for making their homes environmentally compliant, using specific building materials, forcing roof replacements, demanding replacement of appliances, and more.
In Oakland, California, such restrictions, with compliance demanded in just a matter of a few years, will cost each homeowner an estimated $36,000. The Cap N Trade bill contains a whole section on such restrictions for the nation.
Third, inside the human habitat areas, government is controlled by an elite ruling class called stake holder councils.
These are mostly Non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, who, like thieves in the night, just show up to stake their claim to enforce their own private agendas. The function of legitimate government within the system will be simply to enforce the dictates of the councils.
The councils are unelected, but all powerful. They are controlled by a small minority in the community, but they are all powerful. They will make you ask permission (usually denied) for anything necessary to live in the community.
They destroy business. They dictate the number of outlets a business may have in a community, not matter what the population demands. For example, in San Francisco there can only be seven McDonalds. Period.
They can dictate the kind of building materials you can use in your home – or whether you can build on your property at all. Then, if they do grant a permit for building, they might not decide to let you acquire water and electricity for your new home – and they may or may not give you a reason for being turned down.
They can dictate that you get the proper exercise – as determined by the government. Again, San Francisco is building a new federal building – the greenest ever built. The elevators will only stop on every third floor so riders are forced to use stairs – for their own health, of course.
These councils fit almost perfectly the definition of a State Soviet: a system of councils that report to an apex council and then implement a predetermined outcome. Soviets are the operating mechanism of a government-controlled economy.
The fourth path is Public/Private Partnerships. Today, many freedom organizations are presenting PPPs as free enterprise and a private answer for keeping taxes down by using business to make a better society.
In truth, many PPPs are nothing more than government-sanctioned monopolies in which a few businesses are granted special favors like tax breaks, the power of eminent domain, non-compete clauses and specific guarantees for return on their investments.
That means they can charge what they want and they can use the power of government to put competition out of business. That is not free enterprise. And it is these global corporations that are pushing the green agenda.
For example, using government to ban its own product, General Electric is forcing the mercury-laden green light bulb on you, costing 5 times the price of incandescent bulbs. Such is the reality of green industry.
PPPs are building the Trans Texas Corridor, using eminent domain to take more than 580,000 acres of private land – sanctioned by the partnership with the Texas government. And PPPs are taking over highways and local water treatment plants in communities across the nation. PPPs controlling the water can control water consumption – a major part of the Sustainable Development blueprint.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the root of the “Free Trade” process and the fuel for PPPs between international corporations and government, thereby creating an “elite” class of “connected” businesses – or what Ayn Rand called “the power of pull.” Success in the PPP world is not based on quality of product and service, but on who you know in high places.
To play ball in the PPP game means accepting the mantra of Sustainable Development and helping to implement it, even if it means going against your own product. That’s why Home Depot uses its commercials to oppose cutting down trees and British Petroleum advocates reducing the use of oil.
It is not free enterprise, but a Mussolini-type fascism that will only lead to tyranny. And it’s all driven by the Agenda 21 blueprint of Sustainable Development
So how is this wrenching transformation being put into place? There are four very specific routes being used.
In the rural areas it’s called the Wildlands Project. In the cities it’s called smart growth. In business it’s called Public/Private Partnerships. And in government it’s called stakeholder councils and non-elected boards and regional government.
The Wildlands Project was the brainchild of Earth First’s Dave Foreman and it literally calls for the “re-wilding” of 50% of all the land in every state – back to the way it was before Christopher Columbus set foot on this land.
It is a diabolical plan to herd humans off the rural lands and into human settlements. Crazy you say! Yes. Impossible? Not so fast.
From the demented mind of Foreman, the plan became the blueprint for the UN’s Biodiversity Treaty. So now the scheme is international in scope.
But how do you remove people from the land? One step at a time. Let’s begin with a biosphere reserve. A national park will do. A huge place where there is no human activity. How about Yellowstone National Park? Then you establish a buffer zone around the reserve. Inside the buffer only limited human activity is allowed. Slowly, you squeeze until you squash that human activity.
Once accomplished, you extend the area of the biosphere to the limits of the former buffer area – and then you create a new buffer zone around the now larger biosphere and start the process over again. In that way, the Biosphere Reserve acts like a cancer cell, ever expanding, until all human activity is stopped.
And there are many tools in place to stop human activity and grow the reserve.
Push back livestock’s access to river banks on ranches. 300 feet ought to do it. When the cattle can’t reach the stream, the rancher can’t water them — he goes out of business. Lock away natural resources by creating national parks. It shuts down the mines — and they go out of business. Invent a Spotted Owl shortage and pretend it can’t live in a forest where timber is cut. Shut off the forest. Then, when no trees are cut, there’s nothing to feed the mills and then there are no jobs, and — they go out of business.
Locking away land cuts the tax base. Eventually the town dies. Keep it up and there is nothing to keep the people on the land – so they head to the cities. The wilderness grows – just like Dave Foreman planned.
It comes in many names and many programs. Heritage areas, land management, wolf and bear reintroduction, rails to trails, conservation easements, open space, and many more. Each of these programs is designed to make it just a little harder to live on the land – a little more expensive – a little more hopeless. Now tell me how they can deny that the process is herding people into human habitat areas?
In the West, where vast areas of open space make it easy to impose such polices there are several programs underway to remove humans from the land. Today, there are at least 31 Wildlands projects underway, locking away more than 40 percent of the nation’s land. The Alaska Wildlands Project seeks to lock away and control almost the entire state. In Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, Montana parts of North and South Dakota, parts of California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming, Texas, Utah, and more, there are at least 22 Wildlands Projects underway. For example, one project called Yukon to Yellowstone (Y2Y) – creates a 2000 mile no-man’s land corridor from the Arctic to Yellowstone.
East of the Mississippi, there are at least nine Wildlands projects, covering Maine, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Watch for names of Wildlands Projects like Chesapeake Bay Watershed, Appalachian Restoration Project and Piedmont Wildlands Project.
The second path is called Smart Growth. After they herd you into the city, they have more plans for you in regimented and dense urban communities.
They put a line around the city and tell you no growth can take place outside that line. Urban sprawl, they say disdainfully. They refuse to build more roads as a ploy to get you out of your car into public transportation, restricting mobility.
Because there is a restriction on space inside the controlled city limited there is a shortage of houses, so prices go up. That means populations will have to be controlled, because now there is a shortage of land.
Cities are now passing “green” regulations, forcing homeowners to meet strict guidelines for making their homes environmentally compliant, using specific building materials, forcing roof replacements, demanding replacement of appliances, and more.
In Oakland, California, such restrictions, with compliance demanded in just a matter of a few years, will cost each homeowner an estimated $36,000. The Cap N Trade bill contains a whole section on such restrictions for the nation.
Third, inside the human habitat areas, government is controlled by an elite ruling class called stake holder councils.
These are mostly Non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, who, like thieves in the night, just show up to stake their claim to enforce their own private agendas. The function of legitimate government within the system will be simply to enforce the dictates of the councils.
The councils are unelected, but all powerful. They are controlled by a small minority in the community, but they are all powerful. They will make you ask permission (usually denied) for anything necessary to live in the community.
They destroy business. They dictate the number of outlets a business may have in a community, not matter what the population demands. For example, in San Francisco there can only be seven McDonalds. Period.
They can dictate the kind of building materials you can use in your home – or whether you can build on your property at all. Then, if they do grant a permit for building, they might not decide to let you acquire water and electricity for your new home – and they may or may not give you a reason for being turned down.
They can dictate that you get the proper exercise – as determined by the government. Again, San Francisco is building a new federal building – the greenest ever built. The elevators will only stop on every third floor so riders are forced to use stairs – for their own health, of course.
These councils fit almost perfectly the definition of a State Soviet: a system of councils that report to an apex council and then implement a predetermined outcome. Soviets are the operating mechanism of a government-controlled economy.
The fourth path is Public/Private Partnerships. Today, many freedom organizations are presenting PPPs as free enterprise and a private answer for keeping taxes down by using business to make a better society.
In truth, many PPPs are nothing more than government-sanctioned monopolies in which a few businesses are granted special favors like tax breaks, the power of eminent domain, non-compete clauses and specific guarantees for return on their investments.
That means they can charge what they want and they can use the power of government to put competition out of business. That is not free enterprise. And it is these global corporations that are pushing the green agenda.
For example, using government to ban its own product, General Electric is forcing the mercury-laden green light bulb on you, costing 5 times the price of incandescent bulbs. Such is the reality of green industry.
PPPs are building the Trans Texas Corridor, using eminent domain to take more than 580,000 acres of private land – sanctioned by the partnership with the Texas government. And PPPs are taking over highways and local water treatment plants in communities across the nation. PPPs controlling the water can control water consumption – a major part of the Sustainable Development blueprint.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the root of the “Free Trade” process and the fuel for PPPs between international corporations and government, thereby creating an “elite” class of “connected” businesses – or what Ayn Rand called “the power of pull.” Success in the PPP world is not based on quality of product and service, but on who you know in high places.
To play ball in the PPP game means accepting the mantra of Sustainable Development and helping to implement it, even if it means going against your own product. That’s why Home Depot uses its commercials to oppose cutting down trees and British Petroleum advocates reducing the use of oil.
It is not free enterprise, but a Mussolini-type fascism that will only lead to tyranny. And it’s all driven by the Agenda 21 blueprint of Sustainable Development