Saturday, December 31, 2011

Presidential Candidates I

Everyone is asking me which Presidential candidate I am going to vote for. The simple answer is that it is too early to know who will be on the ballot. A better question is who am I voting for in the daily polls that come in my email. For that, I finally have an answer. First I had to find out what the candidates said about the ISSUES. As I was scouring the internet to find out, another email arrived with the link to a questionnaire that would help me determine how to compare what I wanted to see done in Washington DC with which candidates favored the same changes. The email link sent me to is a website called Vote Smart Vote Easy. So, join me now to take this questionnaire for yourselves.

Google: Vote Smart Vote Easy. You will get a website playing "Hail to the Chief" The faces of all Presidential Candidates will appear. Click on each tab and give your answers on each tab. It will give you a percentage on each candidate based on how well they line up with your views on the ISSUES. Write down the candidates names and the percent calculated.

For me, it allowed me to simply respond to what I believe should happen in Washington DC. I didn’t have to think about the candidate’s experience or skills or standing in the polls. It did help me identify who saw the ISSUES the same way I did. When I recorded my list of candidates and percentages, I realized that ISSUES are the primary reason to vote for a candidate. If all candidates come to close enough agreement with me on the ISSUES, then I can choose who among them has the best experience, skill and electability.

My strategy is to let the other candidates know how far they will need to move toward my candidates’ positions on the ISSUES for me to consider them. I will do this by continuing to vote for MY BEST MATCHED CANDIDATE in every poll I vote in until the convention.

This questionnaire, short as it is, really helped me decide to stick with ISSUES for now. You may be surprised at the percentages you get from the candidates, but you can Google the answers you need from the internet on short questions easy enough. In future posts, I will tell you who I chose and fill in details about the ISSUES.

I highly recommend that you take this and write down your results. Let me know what you think about this process by leaving a comment or sending me an email.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader ntl@mindspring.com

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Stop Kicking the Can

We thought a Republican House could stop federal spending. Despite the fact that the House really could stop this spending, it doesn’t. Instead, the House passed increases in the debt limit and trillion dollar Omnibus spending bills in trade for minor amendments like the pipeline. These are things the Whitehouse should be doing anyhow. What is going on ?

Excess federal spending and Federal Reserve money printing are artificially propping up the stock market and this bubble economy and wasting trillions of printed and borrowed dollars to perpetuate the bloated federal bureaucracy and its giveaway schemes. The surreal part of this is that most of the current wave of government harassment was started by the U.N. to mitigate the global warming myth. Our borrowed and printed dollars are funding this attack on us. The USDA is receiving comments on it’s proposed Environmental Justice program authorized by Obama Executive Order 12898. This is part of Obama’s U.N. Agenda 21 implementation plan.

We saw the federal spending go from $3.45 trillion in 2010 to $3.59 trillion in 2011. This is a far cry from the $2.6 trillion we spent before 2008. We see Obama spending an extra trillion on U.N. Agenda 21 implementation with useless transit grants and productivity robbing regulations. The EPA, Air and Water Quality Act, Endangered Species Act, and Wetlands, Buffer Zones and new Federal Land acquisition actions and regulations are allowing the USDA, FDA, Interior, Commerce to trample private property rights. Federal Departments and Agencies are terrorizing residential lot owners, food producers and dairy farmers, shutting the water off on California crop growers. The energy department is planning to destroy 5 hydroelectric dams in the West. The Transportation Department is sending grant money to States including Georgia and its counties and cities to implement U.N. Agenda 21, ICLEI Master Plans. On balance, a federal government shutdown would be heaven.

We are more than ready to demand that the federal government begins to comply with the Constitution and the 10th Amendment, as written and shut down most of its departments and agencies. We would send everything to the States. We would quit the U.N, and all globalist organizations, end all foreign military and other aid, close most of our foreign military bases. We would set up a transfer of Social Security and all entitlements to the States. We would push for a 6% import tariff and a 5% corporate tax for manufacturers who have plants in the U.S. We would suspend legal immigration to prevent another trillion a year from entering the country. We would close the Mexican border and fire and expel all illegal immigrants. We would cede all federal land to the States. We would drill, mine, pipe and harvest everywhere to return productivity. We would repeal Obama-care and end bail-outs by repealing Dodd-Frank. We would end all subsidies and tax loopholes. We would cut federal spending to match its $2.2 trillion revenue. We would give corporations and special interests no reason to ever visit Washington D.C. again. We should direct the Federal Reserve to pull back the 300% money supply increase it created to avert hyperinflation and submit to a congressional audit. We will vote for whoever will really do all of the above.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Sunday, December 25, 2011

2012 Election Issues

We will need to turn over the Whitehouse and Senate and remove elected officials, who have refused to live within their means, exceeded their legitimate authority and weakened our economy.

Cut Spending

Cut federal government spending to match revenue as quickly as possible. Ron Paul’s pledge to cut $1 trillion the first year is the kind of progress we need. Immediately cut all military and other foreign aid, quit the U.N. and all other globalist organizations. Reverse all U.N Agenda 21 implementation from all levels of government. Eliminate all federal grants. In 2013, eliminate all constitutionally non-compliant federal departments and agencies and give these responsibilities to the states. This would restore the 10th Amendment limits to the federal government. Give all federal lands back to the states.

Cut Unemployment

Immediately cut legal immigration for 2013 from 1 million a year to under 100,000 a year allow states to enforce their illegal immigration laws and secure the Mexican border. Raise import tariffs to 6%. Reduce corporate taxes to 5% for manufacturing companies who manufacture in the U.S.

Increase Production

Remove all regulations prohibiting or obstructing U.S. oil and natural gas drilling, mining and tree harvesting. Build the oil pipeline from Canada. Drastically reduce the endangered species list and cease government enforcement. Sell all wildlife preserves, wetlands and buffer zones to U.S. citizens to be put back into production.

Other Reforms

Repeal Obamacare, Dodd – Frank and any other Constitutionally non-compliant federal laws. Direct the Federal Reserve to submit to an audit, cease all money printing and begin to pull back the 300% increase in the money supply it created. Pass “no bail-out” laws. Subsidies should be reduced and ended.

Entitlement Reforms

Social Security should remain unchanged for current and near-term recipients, but should be planned to comply with the Constitution and handled by the states. Federal Education and Healthcare regulations should be repealed and cost reduction steps taken in these industries. Government funding of all industries should be reduced and ended. Federal government involvement in lending should be reduced and ended.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Friday, December 23, 2011

Unemployment Fixes Ignored

Our official unemployment percentages are calculated using our number of unemployment benefit recipients in any given week or month. This number has hovered around 10%. It doesn’t include those who have given up looking for a job or those who are working part-time. If you add those in, you get about 20%. There are about 150 million job holders in the U.S. A 10% unemployment figures means that there are about 15 million unemployed and collecting benefits. If you add in the other 10%, you find that we actually need 30 million more jobs than we have.

Immigration

We have added 1 million legal immigrants each year for the past 10 years. That means we have added 10 million legal job seekers to the 11 illegal immigrants we already have. If we would have restricted legal immigration and fired illegal immigrants 10 years ago, our unemployment over the past 10 years would have averaged less than 4 % and our national debt would have been held at $10 trillion instead of the $17 trillion it is going to become.

Tariffs

We gave away 90% of our manufacturing jobs almost 20 years ago with NAFTA, GATT and WTO agreements. Our electronics manufacturing companies started to buy circuit boards from China to save 50% on product cost. They then sent the rest of their manufacturing the entire product to China. We now have “throw-away” computer printers. Our import tariff is currently 1.2%. It generates $25 billion in tax revenue. It used to be 6% and would generate almost $150 billion in revenue. If we lowered the corporate tax rate to 5% for manufacturing companies who actually built their products in the U.S. and raised the import tariff for those who didn’t, manufacturing would return to the U.S. and unemployment would begin to drop. The best jobs to add would be manufacturing private sector jobs.

Politicians have been wringing their hands over this for years, but the few simple things that could be done have been ignored.

Consider cutting legal immigration to 200,000 a year, raising our import tariff to 6% and cut federal spending by $1 trillion by moving their unconstitutional functions to the states and we would have an economy on the mend. If we then cut foreign aid, close most of our overseas military bases and relocated them on the Mexican border we would have an economy with full employment.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody Ga Tea Party Leader

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Payroll Tax Vote

The Payroll tax holiday reduces employee deductions for Social Security from 6.2% to 4.2%. The vote today simply extends this 2% cash-flow break until February 29, 2012. This has been going on since 2010, through 2011 and they want to continue it through 2012.

This makes as much sense as being allowed to pay interest only on your mortgage. We will make up the shortfall ourselves with a hike in the payroll tax later. This is a cash-flow exercise. Like most ponzi schemes, Social Security payments will cease when the federal government runs out of money. We’re already there. A straightforward admission that the federal government is going to need to privatize Social Security is too big a blow for our socialist rulers to allow.

Left out was any action on a host of other "temporary" tax breaks that expire this year. These include the research and development credit for businesses and a state and local sales tax deduction for individuals (oops). Also left behind is a fix for the 20% less Medicare doctors receive as reimbursement.

Beware

I looks like Democrats want to weaken the Social Security Retirement Plan by underfunding it by 30%. Up to this point, the word is that the Social Security System is the only solvent thing our federal government runs. Democrats certainly don’t like that. If we hit the debt wall and need to cut our federal spending in half, they want Social Security tainted so it will be on the table. They want to means test Social Security so it ceases to be a defined benefit plan, albeit a bad deal. It then clearly becomes part of the socialist welfare plan. Move over Greece, here we come.

We want Social Security left alone and want them to cut all their money squandering departments and agencies instead. They hate this idea and will go postal if we even mention it. We want to beat them over the head with the Social Security System and want them to keep every promise made and pay it out and strip themselves naked to do it. We would let them off the hook for citizens who don’t yet have a Social Security Card and let them set up their own retirement plan with these deductions, but this would be a Defined Contribution Plan that they own. Social Security would then be paid out of the general fund with an increase in import tariffs. We would kill the death tax and allow families to accumulate wealth.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

TSPLOST: Law Unenforceable

by Georgia Taxpayers Alliance, Inc. Taxes, TSPLOST, Vote November 7, 2011 / JB

Bucky Johnson, the Mayor of Norcross and Chairman of the Atlanta Regional Roundtable, made a big deal in a recent editorial (MDJ – ‘Splish-Splash’ column wrong about new tax’ October 16, 2011) about the difference between a SPLOST, a TSPLOST and the Transportation Investment Act (TIA), which comes up for a vote in July 2012. The TIA is estimated to raise more than $16 billion through a one-percent statewide sales tax over 10 years. An estimated $6.1 billion would be raised in the 10-county metro Atlanta region, which includes Cobb.

Regardless of what the Transportation Investment Act is called, it is the biggest single tax in the history of the state of Georgia. A tax this big demands absolute clarity and strict enforcement provisions for every word, every paragraph and every jot and dash to ensure that all promised projects are delivered. Mayor Johnson’s letter confirms to me there are no real enforcement provisions in the TIA.

As the Transportation Investment Act is written, enforcement does not exist.
Johnson asserts that the “Georgia State Financing and Investment Commission is responsible for payments and ensuring that the revenue is being spent as authorized by the list.” This is true, but it misses the point. Nothing in the law prevents GDOT or other agencies from moving money from one project to another within a district, especially if any future study shows it is infeasible to build a particular project.

The logical thing would have been to do studies before creating a project list. Yet, in this fine example of government foresight and planning, only after the tax is passed will feasibility studies be done. Only then will we know if projects are viable and should be built, but by then the politicians will have our money, if we vote for this tax. If the studies deem any project as infeasible, will it still be funded? Or, will the money for an infeasible project get shuffled off to another one within the district, like maybe, light rail? Who knows? Your guess is as good as mine.

Cobb County voters will remember that Cobb Department of Transportation head Faye DiMassimo told us that voter approved SPLOST projects would be deferred to a future SPLOST, due to cost overruns and revenue shortfalls. Nowhere in SPLOST law is this allowed, but it was done. So much for the law. Likewise with the TIA, projects may be deferred.

I agree with Mayor Johnson that the Transportation Investment Act is different than a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax and that the same rules do not apply. Regrettably, even those few weak rules that enforce SPLOST do not apply to the TIA. That’s unfortunate for us, and our pocketbooks.

The Transportation Investment Act was deliberately written to be vague and open to interpretation. The law is silent concerning enforcement by the state attorney general, the administrative law process and grand jury oversight. This is the real teeth of any enforcement of any law, not an appointed citizen oversight panel with virtually no legal authority. TIA as written has no enforcement provisions. The only way to make sure all promised projects will be built is if we as citizens litigate.

Mayor Johnson has failed to show any proof that the TIA law is sufficient to protect the promised projects. Instead, he has chosen to play word games. The word you should remember is “TAX” and that this is the largest tax in the history of our state.
We can end this nonsense by voting NO in July 2012.

James Bell
Georgia Taxpayers Alliance, Inc.

U.S. Free Market History

We are in real danger of losing our free market economy completely and being forced to submit to a socialist republic similar to the USSR. It seemed like a good time to review the history of our free market economy to determine when, why and how we began to allow our government to destroy it.

From the beginning of our English colonies in 1601, individual citizens were free to work to provide for themselves. The country was rich in resources, so it was possible to establish privately owned farms, timberland, mines and trade. For about 200 years, we functioned as a colony and built a large, free market economy on the eastern seaboard from Maine to “Georgia, with Tennessee and Kentucky as territories until 1804 when Thomas Jefferson purchased the northern half of the continent from Napoleon for $15 million. That was 828 thousand square miles for 3 cents per acre. That fortunate violation of constitutional authority was a beneficial exception. For the most part, government was limited in what it did and didn’t impede our productivity, in fact, the Louisiana Purchase ignited our productivity. Spain had owned the southwest and in the 1830s it went to Mexico. In 1848, the U.S. took the southwest.

The First Continental Congress met in 1774, elected by the people to represent the States. Their task was to discuss their problems and adopt a list of grievances to present to the English Parliament. The Boston massacre was the event that prompted the States to vote to seek independence.

Prior to 1775 we were an English Colony. England provided for our defense and levied taxes. We followed English Law. The States operated somewhat autonomously. The Revolutionary War began in 1775 and ended in 1883. The congress was made up of representatives from the States. The members of this congress met, discussed and began to create our founding documents and structure. They selected George Washington to conduct the revolutionary war and funded the army. In 1883 when the war ended the congress became the Constitutional Convention, finished our founding documents and elected George Washington to become the first President in 1789. The States provided government functions and retained most of these functions under the Constitution and 10th Amendment. The Federal Government would be responsible for national defense, coining money, approving foreign trade agreements, treaties with other nations, maintaining a postal service, establishing the House and Senate to write federal laws and establishing a federal court system to enforce these laws.

From 1789 forward, the federal government grew from hardly handling anything to do with our economy to meddling in almost everything and things aren’t going so well. We went from following the Constitution to the letter to not following it at all. Campaign contributing “special interest groups” have complete control over legislation and we find ourselves in a bloodless civil war. The benefits of big government have been trumped by running out of other peoples’ money.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) proposed that the means of production should be given to the government, there should be no private property and everyone should share equally in the fruits of everyone’s labor. There has never been any evidence that this actually works with any group larger than a generous family. Russia tried ‘forced sharing’ for about 75 years and went broke. We in the U.S. like most of Europe embarked on this experiment with socialism for about 80 years and now all of our socialist governments are broke. The adoption of socialism in the U.S. and Europe was gradual and so far, stopped short of governments taking private property. Instead, we established financially unsustainable “entitlement programs” to redistribute wealth and we established crony capitalist regulations to discourage competition. The end result is that our economic opportunity is shrinking. In addition, in the U.S., we have given away trillions of dollars to the international banking system, given all types of foreign aid to other countries and taken responsibility for the defense of countless countries. The cost of government entitlement programs and regulations and none of it is legal according to our Constitution as written.

The level of prosperity we have achieved until recently is due to our freedom to pursue opportunities to apply our hard work, initiative, intellect, skill and productivity. We are finding our freedom to provide for ourselves has diminished as opportunities have diminished.

Our decline was swift after the formation of the WTO in 1995 and the passage of GATT and NAFTA in1993. They said we were entering the “information age” as if we could make a living with that, but the information wasn’t good. We were about to export our manufacturing and with it, our economy. We had trouble getting other countries to honor our U.S. patent law and they were involved in pirating everything we invented. They lied when they said they would behave if we gave them our manufacturing industries. U.S. corporations bought it to escape the U.S., which was about to become a socialist, environmental straight jacket.

At the same time, environmental lobbies, who had been busy purchasing their own politicians pushed through productivity killing regulations. Logging and mining operations ceased, Oil and gas exploration came to a screeching halt. This was followed by an assault on farming and ranching that is still quietly going on. The weapon of choice for environmentalists is air and water regulation. In 1992, the U.N. saw a mechanism they could use to drain the last dollar from the U.S., using the environment as an excuse to collapse the U.S. and make it part of a “world government”. The “global warming” scam was intended to push financially irresponsible wind and solar power, kill oil and gas and make our electric bills 5 times higher than they were using coal and nuclear. The U.N. wants legal authority over our water, in order to tax us for using it. We have been sold out by our own government with the help of our own corporations.

The only principle we hold dear is the right of companies to move anywhere they like. If you don’t let them, they will simply move to a country that will let them. Now we need to figure out what to do.

In 1792, Our entire federal government revenue was $4.6 million. A 15.1% tariff funded this revenue. Tariffs remained our only source of funded our federal government until 1913, except for the civil war years when an income tax was imposed. Tariff rates varied from a low of 6.5% in 1815 to a high of 44.6% in 1870. For the industrial northern states, tariffs on imported goods off-set prices to protect our manufacturing industries. In the agricultural south, the tariffs often spiked the prices of their exports and made them uncompetitive.

By 1900, we were celebrating a very successful century. We had expanded our territory and found a wealth of resources. We also enjoyed a bounty of new inventions we would continue to perfect throughout the 20th century.

Abandoning the Constitution

In 1913, tariff revenue was joined by income tax revenue. The tariff revenue that year was $318.8 million and the income tax revenue was $35 million for a total of $353.8 million. From 1913 to 2010, reliance on tariff revenue decreased as income tax revenue increased. In 2010, tariff revenue was about $25.298 billion and income tax revenue was $2.163 trillion for a total of $2.188 trillion. Tariffs are sales taxes aimed at leveling price differences between imports and domestically produced products. In 2010, our tariff rate was 1.2%. In 1970, it was 6%. Our tariff can produce about 25 billion per percentage point, so a move back to 6% would produce $150 billion in revenue.

The increase in the scale of revenue growth comes primarily from inflation caused by the Federal Reserve printing more money. In 1913 a loaf of bread was 6 cents, now it’s over $2.00. This currency debasement has averaged about 4% per year for almost 100 years.

The other cause of the increase in revenue and spending is excessive and illegal federal government involvement in the private and global economies. Special interest groups now own our government through billions in campaign contributions. Our lack of control over the government has resulted in the federal government exercises productivity crushing control over our ability to operate a free market economy. They own over 35% of the land mass and are currently on a land grab binge to pander to special interest. The result is that they are shutting down our productive capacity.

Saving the Free Market

To reverse this, we must cut federal government spending by $1 trillion a year. We would take a 7% reduction in the GDP. If we do this, we should expect the stock market to tank again and unemployment to go from our current real 20% to 30%. These will primarily be government employees or employees of government contractors, plus main street goods and services they will cut back on.

To lower our unemployment, it is important for us to shut down legal immigration of the 1 million a year we currently allow. We should certainly continue to try to lose the 11 million illegal immigrants who still remain.

Housing prices will decline again and apartment building will halt as the unemployed move in with relatives. It will also affect future investment plans, but these will be replaced with more useful, less wasteful plans to provide necessities for our 300 million population market. We may stabilize for a bit before the next bubbles break. It will be twice as bad in what are now the emerging markets for those countries who are now importing to the U.S. like China.

It’s also important for us to abandon all unnecessary government expenses including foreign aid of all types as well as government activities that are actually harmful, like the UN Agenda 21 implementation. The federal government has been spending about twice its income and it should cut the budget in half to match expected revenue. As foreign investors flee U.S. Treasuries, the Fed will buy up the difference.

If the Federal Reserve doesn’t pull back its printed money, the dollar will undergo hyperinflation and our economy will crash. Once again, the stock market will tank even further, housing prices will tank and unemployment will hit 50%. At that point we will replace our front yards with vegetable gardens and it will be bizarre.

The federal government will be in even worse shape because it took over and bought all the student, mortgage, commercial and retail loans and these will all default. We will come close to a total collapse of our economy. None of this is avoidable, so it is very important for us to cut immigration and get ready for tha crashes.

We will have multiple bubble crashes and their combined effect will be far worse than the 2008 meltdown. The government debt, corporate debt, personal debt and dollar crash bubbles will pretty much go off together. The European sovereign debt crash may well be the signal to watch for. The will rename this one the Great Depression and begin to refer to the one in the 1930s as the Mild Depression.

The 2nd Civil War

We are in a bloodless civil war. We are divided into two camps. We are Free Enterprisers. Our camp wants to roll back federal government spending from $3.9 trillion to under $2.2 trillion a year. We would do this by ending all foreign aid of any kind and closing most of our military bases. We would also close all federal departments and agencies that are not allowed by the Constitution as written and enforce the 10th Amendment. All unconstitutional functions would go to the States and the People. We would lower our corporate income tax to 5% for companies whose manufacturing is U.S. based. We would audit the Federal Reserve, disband the Council on Foreign Relations and quit the U.N., WTO and IMF. Global companies would handle their own affairs.

The real financial end-game is a battle being fought now by the Free Enterprisers vs. the Kick the Can Down the Road gang. Democrats and RINOs are in the Kick the Can group, that’s why you don’t see a reduced federal budget being passed. The Liberals, you could say are all Kick the Can folks. Free Enterprisers are Ron Paul Republicans, Tea Party Leaders and anybody who believe we need to stop government spending. Our solution is to return to the Constitution as written We need to reset our federal government back to a date where it worked. Our reset date is 1900.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader, ntl@mindspring.com NTL Conservative Blog

Monday, December 19, 2011

Reset Government

American values include love of liberty and responsibility, independence, self reliance, self determination, hard work, thrift, trust in God, fairness and skepticism. Missouri is the ‘show me’ state. We coined adages like ‘figures don’t lie, but liars figure’. Our values do not include environmentalism, socialism, communism, globalism, collectivism, bribery, graft or corruption.

The Federal Government has lost its credibility little by little over the past 100 years until we are convinced of the necessity to reset our government back to a date when it worked, just like we would reset a computer that had been corrupted with worms and viruses.

The judiciary made major decisions that are clearly wrong and based on twisted interpretations of the law. They invented case law to allow judges to build on the errors of past decisions. They led the way to encourage government to totally ignore the Constitution as written.

The legislature found ways to put the will of the people and the common good aside to serve special interests They allow themselves to deal in bribery and extortion. They have conspired to hide corrupt Bills, that would never pass on their own, to be buried instead in amendments to Omnibus Bills. They have engaged in ‘horse trading’ and gaming with no regard for the damage the build-up of bad law and malinvestment would create. This is not what we had in mind for Congress. The Congress delegated its powers away to the extent that it cannot find its way back to its own responsibilities. The Federal Reserve coins whatever money it wants with no regard for sound money. The infiltration of global socialists have made foreign aid a sacred cow. The regulators in the Executive Branch make up whatever regulations they want, with no regard to the intent of the laws passed by Congress. The Congress is paid by special interests to make no attempt to correct these abuses.

The Executive has routinely abused its power to support the whims of the courts, the special interests, the globalists and the destructive path we’ve been on for 100 years. We have evolved into an insolvent socialist state and are heading for a communist world government. Presidents are not obliged to sign Omnibus Spending Bills stuffed with corrupt amendments and bad law, but they have all caved in to the process. Presidents should not be free to issue Executive Orders to create laws that would not have passed the Congress.

Together, all three branches have conspired to bribe scientists to support unlikely theories to support political objectives. They have over-subsidized and totally ruined healthcare and education by making it unaffordable. They have assumed unsustainable liabilities from bank and insurance bailouts and codified it in Dodd Frank.

The Federal Reserve bought $1 trillion in toxic student loans and $4 trillion in toxic securities with printed money. They have made loans and loan guarantees for another $20 trillion in global toxic assets. They’ve leveraged our liabilities to the point that further spending, borrowing and printing money must be reversed substantially, driving unemployment higher.

They are allowing federal agencies to dismantle our ability to grow food and are attempting to undermine our right to private property and our right to secure affordable energy in the name of environmentalism. They have entered into a pact with communist globalists to sell us down the river and they’re trying to be very quiet about it. Our distain for the errors of our government over the past 100 years has accumulated and we want the damage stopped and reversed.

They have obstructed our ability to be productive. They conspired to remove manufacturing from the States. They shut down timber harvesting, mining, oil and gas exploration. They have given away vast amounts of our money to corrupt foreign governments and organizations.

All of our founding documents describe a government whose sole purpose is to preserve our freedom and support a free enterprise system to sustain our security, prosperity and independence. That meritocracy is being dismantled by the very government sworn to protect it.

If we object loudly, they will retreat and cease the destruction of our free market system and our prosperity...for a while. Then, if we haven’t dismantled the corrupt infrastructure they have built, they will try again. Modern global communists are very patient. We need to reset the government back to 1900 to make it a little harder for this evil to resurrect itself.

It is absolutely necessary to restrict campaign contributions to registered voters who would be allowed to make contributions only to those candidates who appear on their ballot. This needs to happen NOW.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader, ntl@mindspring.com

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Atlanta’s Transportation Disasters

You will find my first article on problems we encounter driving around metro Atlanta in my June 2011 comedy post, Metro Atlanta Mayhem I. I have more articles on the ARC Transportation Plan every month from July to October 2011. The earlier articles describe the original $126 billion plan and the more recent articles cover the revised $6.14 billion plan.

The fact that we will be voting on this in July 2012 is a travesty. Half of the funds will go to bail out MARTA and the other half goes to overpriced, unhelpful multi-modal fantasies with cost estimates that will give you sticker shock. The worst part of this is that ARC is an appointed, unelected, unaccountable pseudo-government entity with taxing and spending powers that usurp city and county sovereignty. It’s all outlined in the UN Agenda 21 plan for the dissolution of US sovereignty. How’s that for “fundamental transformation” comrades ?

We believe all transit should be private, with no tax subsidies supporting its operations. MARTA should be dissolved and have its assets sold to private operators. MARTA has consumed tax subsidies since 1971 and continues into 2012 with a budget of $750 million, revenue of $120 million and tax subsidies of $630 million. That’s where the road funds went. The problem with MARTA is that trains and buses only go where they go and for most of us, our work commute and errands require us to drive. There is no justification for the TSPLOST plan to spend $3 billion to expand MARTA and provide it with new trains and buses. This is a useless drain on funds that should be used to create a better system of roads. TSPLOST has been pushed by politicians to grab the last of the federal grants. The $1 billion in federal money is a bribe to get us to absolutely squander our $5 billion on this boondoggle. The current federal debt makes It unlikely that federal grants will continue after 2012.

All revenue from all gasoline taxes and license tag fees should go to the GDOT and the cities and counties right after we dissolved the Regional Commissions. The current process for allocating funds is corrupt and needs to be rewritten. The lane-mile method currently used allows rural counties to count dirt roads in their lane-mile total.

The building and maintenance of roads and bridges is primarily a city or county responsibility. The movement of funds to the federal government for redistribution has sabotaged the process and should be reversed. We support the closing of the federal department of transportation and the ceding of responsibility for interstate highways to the states. We also need to close the EPA and transfer its responsibilities to the states with clean air and water regulations that would allow us to expand our road systems and operate our farms.

I consider the immediate Atlanta Metro area to include the City of Atlanta and DeKalb and Fulton Counties where the transportation problem is the most severe. I-285 was built too close in for a by-pass and became a bottle neck jammed with interstate and local traffic.

US 29 is scheduled to become I-785 in Maryland and North Carolina. If that could be extended to Georgia and it was connected to I-85 and I-75 south of Atlanta, it would become an effective by-pass for interstate traffic. That would allow interstate traffic a way to avoid Atlanta. That shouldn’t be forced; it should be a choice given to interstate traffic. That step is necessary to thin out some of the Atlanta interstate traffic we currently have.

In addition, it would be helpful to develop at least one east-west connector highway inside the perimeter in the North Atlanta area to connect West I-285 with East I-285. This would connect Smyrna with Tucker without having to go over the top of I-285. It would run across west to east connecting I-285 in the north, the same way I-20 connects in the south. That would give Atlanta the same highway grid found in the best laid-out metro areas. Currently, the inability to sell houses makes taking a job on the other side of town unthinkable.

Georgia Transportation planning, design and implementation has created a litany of errors. HOV lanes were a useless waste of a lane. The construction of HOV exits were expensive, confusing and lethal. For years, the HOV lanes were as empty as a MARTA bus in Dunwoody. Replacing the HOV lanes with HOT Lanes at the cost of $1 billion was another really dumb idea. We need to turn these lanes back to general use and add an additional lane to I-285. The fact that there are stop lights at our highway entrance ramps should tip you off that the GDOT is an incompetent operation. The state should not be able to create commissions. The GDOT should be a regular department reporting to the Governor. Until it is, there will be no accountability or improvement. Its funding and responsibility should be limited to interstate and state highways.

The next priority for the GDOT would be to redesign the poorly designed exits and entry ramps for I-75, I-285 and I-85 to be less confusing for interstate traffic. Coming down I-75 to find the right exit to I-285 north is the worst. Most of the rest of the worst try to take us from downtown Atlanta to I-75 or I-85.
Road maintenance and expansion costs are twice as high as they need to be. Better design, planning and implementation are needed along with wide-area open bidding. DOTs need to do financial analysis of road building and maintenance operations to keep these costs in line. Unless this is done, we will continue to overpay the same road constructors.

State, county and city road funding needs to come from spending reductions in public education, healthcare and other sand holes we’ve been pouring our tax dollars into for decades.

The poor condition of our road and highway systems is part of the government obstruction that saps our ability to increase our overall production and that is the only thing that will restart our economy.

We urge a NO VOTE on TSPLOST in July 2012, the repeal of the law that created ARC, the reform of road tax revenue allocation and the abolishment all unelected commissions.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Friday, December 16, 2011

Dunwoody GA Tea Party Update II

The Dunwoody GA Tea Party started in June 2011. We formed to restore common sense and fiscal restraint to city government plans and priorities. We recruited and supported genuinely conservative candidates and campaigned against the Park Bonds. Two of our candidates were elected and we hope their presence will result in giving balance to the city council. We are still concerned about the city’s $400 million Master Plans and will continue to encourage the council to revise its priorities and its Master Plans. We do not expect our economy to improve any time soon.

Most of us have been involved in supporting our candidates, holding “meet the candidate” meetings in homes and subdivision pools and clubhouses and attending the Park Bonds meetings. We actively opposed the Parks Bonds and Redevelopment Referendum. We wrote letters to the editor and put out yard signs. We confirmed that well over half of you agreed with us. We campaigned as a team and found that to be very effective.

We formed to give voice to the average Dunwoody voter. I continued to post articles on NTL Conservative Blog, the Dunwoody GA Tea Party Blog and encourage you to keep track of our activities by reading this blog. You can call or email me to be added to our list or if you have questions.

I attended a meeting of over 100 Georgia Tea Party Leaders in September 2011. The focus was about reversing the hapless city and county implementation of UN Agenda 21. Much of the extra $1 trillion Obama is spending is for grants to cities and counties to adopt UN Agenda 21 compliant Master Plans. These are designed to bankrupt us at the local level and build transit villages needed for the UN global governance take-over they are planning. Obama’s future in U.S. politics is toast, so he is courting the UN for a politburo job in the USSA. All Tea Parties are involved in replacing elected officials based on their past votes, beginning with the 78% in the Georgia Legislature who voted yes to authorize Regional Commissions to take over transportation and put the TSPLOST on the ballot. We want that law repealed and the Commissions abolished.

We will oppose the ARC Transportation T-SPLOST, the 1 cent sales tax increase for the Atlanta Regional Transportation Plan (MARTA Bail-out) and overpriced road refurbishment in July 2012. ARC’s very existence is a violation of city and county sovereignty. Counties cannot opt out or escape the results of the total votes of the 10 county region. We want the HOT lanes removed and returned to general use. We will then move on to focusing on the Primary in August 2012 and the General Election in November 2012.

We are Constitutional Conservatives. We formed to restore government to be compliant with the Constitution and 10th Amendment as written. We will not support Democrats, because they tend to vote with their party and that party is dedicated to destroying our free market economy.. We do not support all Republicans and are in fact recruiting candidates where needed to replace incumbent Republicans who are not Constitutional Conservatives. We evaluate national, state, county and city candidates based on their votes when they are incumbents. We vet new candidates carefully and endorse those we are convinced will support our government reform positions.

Our members, supporters and friends share our fiscal conservative convictions and understand how they translate to all levels of government. They chose to do different things. Some are city government watchers. Others concentrate on state government activities. Others limit their work to the reforms needed in the federal government. Some work on reform at all levels. Some join groups taking buses to rallies; most do not. Some are current or retired government employees working to reform government policies and benefits. Many couples are members Our supporters and friends include Dunwoody residents who support many of our positions and points of view, but are not active members. They vote for our candidates, agree to plant our yard signs in their yards and write occasional letters to the editor. Some make donations to pay for yard signs and ads in the Crier. Some will become more active members later as they are motivated by issues. Some may also join other similar causes. We are grateful for them all.

City Priorities

We want the City of Dunwoody to operate like a business with a clear sense of what’s city government responsibility and what isn’t. We want the city to avoid the pitfalls that can cause city governments to go bankrupt. We don’t like Bonds; we prefer that annual surpluses be used eliminate debt and then become reserve funds.
We want the city to live within its means and concentrate on its core responsibilities based on utilization. We define core responsibilities with 100% utilization as roads, intersection and storm sewer maintenance and refurbishment and clearing roads after severe storms. Water and sewers are core and are provided by our DeKalb water utility and DeKalb trash collection Zoning and building codes are core and they require balance and common sense. We don’t like government infringement of private property rights.

Secondary responsibilities include municipal court and police. Ambulance service and fire protection are provided by the county, These are needed to the extent that crime, fires, accidents and life threatening illness occur. We believe the city needs venues for city-wide activities, but think all that is really needed is a large park or two.

Low use park venues and Economic Development are the lowest priority items as are other activities such as mottos, branding, tourism and the advertizing portion of the hotel tax. We understand that PCID likes these things, but they have little support from homeowners. We don’t think the city should spend tax dollars on philanthropic activities. The relationship between the city and the 501c3 trusts like Dunwoody Preservation Trust, Senior Baseball League, the Nature center and Stage Door Players should be resolved to make these groups autonomous.

We will oppose most commercial redevelopment TADs. We favor single family residential development. We will oppose implementation of current city Master Plans. We can’t afford and don’t really need multi-modal, transit connected development. Commercial property sellers should be able to find their own buyers and patrons of the non-profits should support their organizations. They should comply with our building codes and zoning requirement, but a Master Plan that dictates everything is overreach and not how private property works in the real world. Our original “vision” of Williamsburg style shopping centers is the plan we should follow.

We support the private subdivision swim and tennis clubs model. These are supported by private membership fees. We support the churches that provide athletic fields, playgrounds, community meeting rooms and swimming pools.

All transit should be private. We oppose government subsidies of any kind. We enjoy the convenience of having PCID close by. We do think that large collections of apartments and condos need their own schools located inside PCID to allow children to walk and bike to school in a location close to their home.

All property should be private. Our success as a nation was due to our drive to make the land productive. We established farms and ranches to grow and raise our own food. We drilled wells, mined coal, harvested trees and manufactured goods. We oppose government owned wildlife preserves, wetlands and timberland. We oppose national parks and want the states to take them over and sell them to U.S. citizens. We object to the direction government is taking to obstruct our ability to make all our land productive.

Economic Assumptions

We don’t believe our economy will improve until the federal government lowers its current annual spending by more than $1 trillion and holds spending to match revenue for the next several years. We believe most federal agencies are impediments to the recovery of our free market economy and need to be closed.

We believe that our economic recovery requires the release of our productive capacity, now being held hostage by government. We need forests returned to timber harvesting, farms and food producers released from the EPA and FDA closures. We need to be able to water crops and build reservoirs. We need to keep hydroelectric dams, nuclear and coal electrical power generation. We need to drill for oil and natural gas everywhere. We need to roll back EPA regulations on air and water. We need to remove most species from the Endangered Species list. We want to close most federal departments and give those activities to the states. We need to defund all carbon capture related government activities.

10th Amendment

We are “Free Enterprisers”. We don’t want government to erode our freedoms or property rights. We want the federal government to shrink to comply with the Constitution and 10th Amendment as written. We want government out of everything the free market can and should handle. We don’t want government to act like a philanthropic organization; we want it to act like a utility company. We want the federal and state governments to be half their current size. They need to sell their land and not buy any more. They need to reduce spending on education, health care and regulatory overreach. They have no business owning wildlife preserves or state or national parks.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader, ntl@mindspring.com, 770-394-1284

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Stop Dunwoody Village Parkway Project

Congratulations to our new Mayor and Council Members. Dunwoody Citizens have entrusted you with the honor of leading our City. We heard your words of encouragement in this time of economic uncertainty and your expressed goals for sustainability and responsible fiscal stewardship. As you take on this honor I ask not only you but all of our Council Members, did you hear us?

In our vote on November 8, and December 6, 2011, we sent you strong, clear messages that we do not want our City run by outsiders who serve nothing but their own interests and we oppose unrestrained spending. The Council should put a moratorium on all projects, even those vetted when we were being assured the “bust” would be short-lived.

Moving forward means more than just continued spending. It also means forward thinking to provide a stability that will move us toward a secure future. We must deal with the Dunwoody of today and work to preserve our City.

It would be forward thinking for the Council to work to regain the trust of people. You don’t believe trust was lost? A 2:1 ratio against your plans and your candidates clearly tells you it was!

It is always wise in any situation to STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN!
STOP – all unnecessary and non-progressive projects. The removing of two traffic lanes at the Dunwoody Village entrance makes absolutely no sense even if the Feds are providing some funding! That is like burning down your house because you do not like the color and the Feds hand you a match!
LOOK – to improve areas of need through code enforcement, community involvement and forward thinking. Was a solution other than demolition of areas of blight and crime even considered?
LISTEN – to the message sent to you by the Citizens! Our message was strong and clear!

As I write this, Channel 2 News just aired a segment that the State of Georgia announced that seasonal revenue increases would be held onto in order to build up reserves. Is it possible that at least one state government is finally getting the right idea? Let’s hope Dunwoody will become the first city to do so.

Jeanette Smith
Dunwoody, GA

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Great Election Results, Except for Redevelopment Ordinance

I think the results of the recent elections were fantastic. The Conservative candidate won in 2 of the 3 races. The 2 Park Bond issues were defeated saving many of us from $400 to $500 per year (please consider the real increase in Parks Dept Operating Budget if ALL of the Proposed Parks had been added) in ADDITIONAL property taxes for the next 30 years.

Watch Out For TADs (Tax Allocation Districts or Redevelopment Powers) --
We will need to closely watch on the Tax Allocation District ( TAD ) ordinance that was approved in the City. This "Gimmick" has the potential to give control over property that one person thinks is bad and needs "Improvement" to someone who stands to profit by using Public ( think Taxpayers like you & me) money to make "Improvements to the “Bad” property. In other words, Suppose , I do not like you or your property. I arrange for the City to take or take control of your property and give control to me. Taxpayer backed money is spent to "Improve" the property and Private Interests ( think me , my Friendly Politicians or their Cronies ) Profit on the transaction while leaving Taxpayers at risk on the deal.

We need to closely watch on any "Redevelopment" deal the City possibly proposes to see if these attributes are there. Watch for proposed Developments or Redevelopments in the Dunwoody Village & Georgetown area closely. Other CODE words for these deals are Public/Private Partnerships!!! This really means Public Money ( i.e. Tax money ) and Private Interest Profits . Profits can be consulting or some type fee , Direct and Indirect Compensation and outright Profits.

We need to support our new City leadership. The Mayor and Council needs to change the direction the City is headed. We need to go to meetings and make sure they Honor the pledges they made to us to get elected. Our Leaders need to keep the City finances on a strong , fiscally conservative basis -- which means no DEBT.

The City already has several MILLION dollars of Debt ( YES Millions ) from buying the PVC farm. The City budget has $800,000 per year in cash cost for several years to pay off this debt. The City needs to establish priorities to stay within "NO TAX INCREASE" revenues. The City's original Objectives were Small, Effective Government , More and Better Policing and More Street Paving. I think these remain the priorities but other than possibly Policing, the grade for the City on the other 2 Objectives is at best a C-.

The most recent proposed City purchase of a $1 million + piece of real estate that is useless without more expenditures , is not on any Priority list for several years out , and will cost in EXCESS of appraised value is a PERFECT example of SPENDING running AMOK!!!

I urge all of you to STAY INVOLVED.

Bob Hickey, Dunwoody Resident since 1975 and a Proud Supporter of
Dunwoody Ga Tea Party

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Dunwoody GA Tea Party Update I

Thanks to Voters

Congratulations again to Mayor-elect Mike Davis and City Councilor-elect Terry Nall. We thank our members and friends for supporting them. We also thank everyone for voting NO on the Park Bonds. Taking on a 6:1 debt to income ratio isn’t a good idea and Bonds are never a good idea..

The First 6 Months

When we started in June 2011, we had a few simple goals. The first was to give voice to the majority of Dunwoody voters on pending city issues. It was clear that the City Council was proposing plans that were too expensive and were starting with the wrong priorities. So, we marched in the July 4th parade and about half the crowd was with us. That was an amazing response.

The next goal was to recruit, vet and support new City Council candidates to replace the current Council. I was one of many who approached Mike Davis to run and we both knew Rick Callihan might run. Terry Nall and Kerry de Valette were gifts. They determined on their own to run for the same reasons we, as a Tea Party, were active in recruiting candidates. Our meetings with Terry and Kerry told us that these were capable, talented, honest citizens who did have an accurate reading on the pulse of Dunwoody voters. They were also very smart and very conservative. We endorsed Mike Davis, Kerry de Valette, Terry Nall and Rick Callihan as Tea Party candidates. We functioned as a team. Our candidates were invited to attend most of each other’s events. Our Tea Partiers worked on candidates campaigns as well as our Vote No Park Bonds issue. Everybody put out each other’s signs. It worked the way effective campaigns should work.

When the Park Bonds went on the ballot, we opposed them as low priority and too expensive. We didn’t want the city to be saddled with a $128 million debt in the middle of the 2nd Great Depression. We bought Vote No Parks Bonds yard signs, ran ads in the Dunwoody Crier and opened a checking account to handle donations. We were joined by Bob Lundsten (Farmer Bob) and many others who stood up on their own to defeat this debacle.

The “Parks Yes” group campaigned hard to get the Park Bonds passed and countless Park Bonds meetings were held. The Nature Center, Senior Baseball League and Dunwoody Preservation Trust wanted the Park Bonds to pass, so they could have the city refurbish the city buildings and grounds they occupy. PCID wanted the city to pay for its “green space’ for its transit village and they will be lobbying for future TAD slush funds.

Results

Issues build constituencies, so the Tea Party went from a half dozen couples to over 100 individuals on our Dunwoody GA Tea Party members and friends list. We were successful in defeating the Parks Bonds and two of our candidates, Mike Davis and Terry Nall were elected to the City Council. We are encouraged by these results.
We regret that we failed to stop the Redevelopment Referendum that silently slid on the ballot… and so will you.

The Next 6 Months

We will oppose the $6.14 billion TSPLOST scheduled for a vote in July 2012 by the Atlanta Regional Commission, an appointed, unaccountable, unconstitutional layer of “government” whose very existence is a violation of city and county sovereignty. Half of the $6.14 billion goes to public transit.

MARTA is insolvent but wants new trains and buses and wants to expand. The other half goes to double expensive, multi-modal road re-dos. They want the 8 surrounding, non-MARTA counties to pay for it. We oppose the current annual $630 million tax subsidy MARTA receives. MARTA earns $120 million a year in fairs and lease payments, but spends $750 million a year. Doubling that would just double the subsidy.
We think all transit should be private and we believe a loud NO vote on the TSPLOST is needed to get MARTA to address its insolvency. We want the law that authorized the Georgia Regional Commissions to be repealed.

We will be joined by all Tea Party groups in the 10 county “Region”. This group includes DeKalb and Fulton (already MARTA counties) plus Cobb, Cherokee, Douglas, Fayette, Clayton, Henry, Rockdale and Gwinnett.

The “establishment” including Nathan Deal, the AJC, and the ARC, MARTA and GDOT bureaucracies have been involved in promoting this boondoggle over the past few months. The federal government will kick in a $1 billion bribe to try to get us to charge ourselves $5 billion to squander on this scam. The projects are all overpriced and half are unnecessary; they will certainly not improve our gridlock problems.

The failure of the HOT lanes will fuel opposition to the TSPLOST. The defeat of the TSPLOST should prompt the state legislature to dissolve the regional scam. Cities and counties should return to being responsible for their own roads.

November 2012 Elections
Immediately after July 2012, we will go to work on the November 2012 elections with a goal to send Obama back home (wherever that is). All Tea Parties in Georgia will drill down on state and local elections like we did in the Dunwoody City Council election. Those who voted for the creation of Regional Commissions in Georgia are toast.

Government Reform Needed

We are committed to seeing to it that the necessary reforms are made to return to a free market economy. We believe, to do this requires that we return to the Constitution as it was written and get government out of all activities that should be handled by the private sector. We see the federal government going in the other direction at a gallop and we want to stop it.

Tea Partiers have been tracking UN Agenda 21 implementation since before 2006. We see this implementation in Obama’s push for public transit and transit villages and in the plans written for city councils by ICLEI trained consultants. We saw the plans on the Dunwoody and other city websites and we saw creation of “Regions” and their emphasis on public transit. We know that sustainability, smart growth, redevelopment, community development, and master plans are part of the UN Agenda 21 vocabulary. We’ve witnessed eminent domain and federal agency abuses for several years. We’ve seen the proof that global warming is a hoax that is still being aggressively implemented by our federal government. We are committed to stop and reverse the destruction of our currency, our free market economy and our city, county and state sovereignty.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody Ga Tea Party Leader, ntl@mindspring.com NTL Conservative Blog

Monday, December 12, 2011

NLRB Drops Boeing Attack

The IAM requested the NLRB attack on Boeing for wanting to open a plant in South Carolina as their Seattle contract negotiations began. Now that Boeing and the IAM have a new contract, the IAM asked the NLRB to drop the charges, so they did. It’s time to close the NLRB, and the U.S. Department of Labor. Boeing should move to Finland. See below:

Posted by LaborUnionReport (Diary)
Friday, December 9th at 5:15PM EST

Following the ratification of a new Seattle-area contract between Boeing and its largest union, the International Association of Machinists, eight months of the union extremists running Barack Obama’s National Labor Relations Board wrongfully prosecuting Boeing offcially and quietly comes to an end.

[via New York Times]
A top official with the National Labor Relations Board announced on Friday that the agency was dropping its politically charged case against Boeing, in which the agency had accused the company of violating federal labor law by opening a new aircraft production plant in South Carolina.

The N.L.R.B.’s acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, said the labor board had decided to end the case after the machinists’ union — which originally asked for the case to be brought — had urged the board on Thursday to withdraw it.

According to a statement issued by the NLRB’s Acting General Counsel:
One of the stated goals of the National Labor Relations Act is to foster collective bargaining and productive labor-management relations. From the beginning of this case, and at every step in the process, we have encouraged the parties to find a mutually-acceptable resolution that protects the rights of workers under federal labor law. The parties’ collective bargaining agreement, ratified this week, does just that.

Yet, regarding the fostering of collective bargaining, in giving background to the NLRB’s charge against Boeing earlier this year, the NLRB stated:
The investigation did not find merit to the union’s charge that Boeing failed to bargain in good faith over its decision regarding the second line. Although a decision to locate unit work would typically be a mandatory subject of bargaining, in this case, the union had waived its right to bargain on the issue in its collective bargaining agreement with Boeing.

Further, notwithstanding the fact that Boeing has expanded in the Seattle area, on a conference call with reporters, the man who brought suit against Boeing, Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon, stated on Friday:
“The charge was always about the loss of jobs in the Seattle area.”
“This case was never about the union or the NLRB telling Boeing where it could it put its plant,” he said. “It was about retaliation.”

Solomon is correct in one sense: The case was a case about retaliation. However, it was not Boeing retaliating against the union. Rather, it was the union retaliating against South Carolina employees for having decertified the same union in 2009.
Had the South Carolina members remained members of the Machinists’ union and not exercised their rights to kick the union out, it is likely the charge would never have been pursued by the union or the NLRB.

In fact, although an unfair labor practice was filed against the union for retaliating against South Carolina employees, the NLRB has never addressed this issue.

Instead, the NLRB spent months prosecuting of Boeing, even going so far as having potentially broken the law in doing so.
According to the Hill, Senator Jim DeMint [R-SC] remains critical of the NLRB’s actions in the Boeing matter:

“The NLRB’s dismissal of charges against Boeing only after union approval of their new contract only confirms the charges were a politically-motivated negotiation tactic, not a serious complaint based on merit,” DeMint said in a statement. “Unfortunately, real and serious damage to America’s competitiveness has already been done. A precedent has been set by the NLRB that they will attack businesses in forced-unionism states that try to create jobs in right-to-work states.”
“Those on the NLRB board who led this attack on workers’ rights should resign immediately,” DeMint concluded.

Rep. John Kline also said in a statement:
“Today’s decision confirms the NLRB’s action against Boeing was nothing more than a shameless campaign to bully an American employer. While I am pleased Boeing and the union agreed to a resolution, thousands of jobs in South Carolina and many more across the country were threatened by the NLRB’s decision to pick winners and losers in a labor dispute. The top priority of the Obama NLRB should be to protect the rights of workers, not strengthen the bargaining position of its union friends. Countless employers and workers are now wondering whether they too will fall victim to similar tactics by Big Labor and its NLRB allies.“

Having been criticized for months, the NLRB’s Solomon did state he hoped the criticism would diminish. However, given the continual attacks on job creators, it’s not likely to happen. Moreover, Solomon also left the door open to a having similar type of case in the future:

Solomon said Friday he “hoped” the criticism of the labor board would recede with the withdrawal of the Boeing case, but he also said it was possible the NLRB would make the same decision in a similar circumstance.

“If we’re faced with a similar situation, we might well have a complaint,” he said.
With the NLRB losing its quorum in a few short weeks, leaving Lafe Solomon the nation’s de facto Union Czar, his statement may be more a prediction than speculation.

UN Gone Wild

The annual UN Climate Change (Scam) Summit in Durbin South Africa has created a UN global government ready to tax all developed countries, fine them for their carbon emissions and give the money to the UN. Obama is spending billions to implement this scam and Congress needs to stop him. See below:

Exclusive: UN Climate Draft Text Demands 'New International Climate Court' to compel reparations for 'climate debt' -- Also seeks 'rights of Mother Earth' & 2C° drop in global temps Visit Site

UN Draft Text Demands: The West will pay 'climate debt' because of its 'historical responsibility' for causing 'global warming' -- UN seeks end to wars to 'protect the climate system'

Friday, December 09, 2011By Marc Morano – Climate Depot
[Editor's Note: Climate Depot presented a new 61-page report to the UN Climate Summit: A-Z Climate Reality Check -- Sub-Prime Science Exposé: 'The claims of the promoters of man-made climate fears are failing' -- for continuous updates on UN summit, see here.]

Exclusive
Special to Climate Depot - Lord Christopher Monckton reports from UN Climate Summit
Durban: what the media are not telling you
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in Durban, South Africa

DURBAN, South Africa -- “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.

Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is "Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention -- Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean 'for'] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.

The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN's skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.

Main points:

Ø A new International Climate Court will have the power to compel Western nations to pay ever-larger sums to third-world countries in the name of making reparation for supposed “climate debt”. The Court will have no power over third-world countries. Here and throughout the draft, the West is the sole target. “The process” is now irredeemably anti-Western.

Ø “Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft, which seems to have been written by feeble-minded green activists and environmental extremists, talks of “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between humanity and nature”. Also, “there will be no commodification [whatever that may be: it is not in the dictionary and does not deserve to be] of the functions of nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose”.

Ø “Right to survive”: The draft childishly asserts that “The rights of some Parties to survive are threatened by the adverse impacts of climate change, including sea level rise.” At 2 inches per century, according to eight years' data from the Envisat satellite? Oh, come off it! The Jason 2 satellite, the new kid on the block, shows that sea-level has actually dropped over the past three years.

Ø War and the maintenance of defence forces and equipment are to cease – just like that – because they contribute to climate change. There are other reasons why war ought to cease, but the draft does not mention them.

Ø A new global temperature target will aim, Canute-like, to limit “global warming” to as little as 1 C° above pre-industrial levels. Since temperature is already 3 C° above those levels, what is in effect being proposed is a 2 C° cut in today's temperatures. This would take us halfway back towards the last Ice Age, and would kill hundreds of millions. Colder is far more dangerous than warmer.

Ø The new CO2 emissions target, for Western countries only, will be a reduction of up to 50% in emissions over the next eight years and of “more than 100%” [these words actually appear in the text] by 2050. So, no motor cars, no coal-fired or gas-fired power stations, no aircraft, no trains. Back to the Stone Age, but without even the right to light a carbon-emitting fire in your caves. Windmills, solar panels and other “renewables” are the only alternatives suggested in the draft. There is no mention of the immediate and rapid expansion of nuclear power worldwide to prevent near-total economic destruction.

Ø The new CO2 concentration target could be as low as 300 ppmv CO2 equivalent (i.e., including all other greenhouse gases as well as CO2 itself). That is a cut of almost half compared with the 560 ppmv CO2 equivalent today. It implies just 210 ppmv of CO2 itself, with 90 ppmv CO2 equivalent from other greenhouse gases. But at 210 ppmv, plants and trees begin to die. CO2 is plant food. They need a lot more of it than 210 ppmv.

Ø The peak-greenhouse-gas target year – for the West only – will be this year. We will be obliged to cut our emissions from now on, regardless of the effect on our economies (and the lack of effect on the climate).

Ø The West will pay for everything, because of its “historical responsibility” for causing “global warming”. Third-world countries will not be obliged to pay anything. But it is the UN, not the third-world countries, that will get the money from the West, taking nearly all of it for itself as usual. There is no provision anywhere in the draft for the UN to publish accounts of how it has spent the $100 billion a year the draft demands that the West should stump up from now on.

The real lunacy comes in the small print – all of it in 8-point type, near-illegibly printed on grubby, recycled paper. Every fashionable leftist idiocy is catered for.
Talking of which, note in passing that Rajendra Pachauri, the railroad engineer who, in the topsy-turvy looking-glass world of international climate insanity is the “science” chairman of the UN's climate panel, has admitted that no one has been talking about climate science at the climate conference here in Durban. Not really surprising, given no real warming for getting on for two decades, no recent sea-level rise, no new record Arctic ice-melt, fewer hurricanes than at almost any time in 30 years, no Pacific atolls disappearing beneath the waves.

Here – and, as always, you heard it here first, for the mainstream media have conspired to keep secret the Madness of King Rajendra and his entire coterie of governmental and bureaucratic lunatics worldwide – is what the dribbling, twitching thrones and dominions, principalities and powers of the world will be asked to agree to.

“International Climate Court of Justice”: This kangaroo court is to be established by next year “to guarantee the compliance of Annex I Parties with all the provisions of this decision, which are essential elements in the obtaining of the global goal”. Note that, here as elsewhere, the bias is only against the nations of the West. However badly the third-world countries behave, they cannot be brought before the new court. Though none of what the draft calls the “modalities” of the proposed marsupial dicastery are set out in detail, one can imagine that the intention is to oblige Western nations to pay up however much the world government run by the Convention secretariat feels like demanding, just as the unelected tyrants of the EU demand – and get – ever-larger cash payments from the ever-shrinking economies and ever-poorer tribute-payers of their dismal empire.

The temperature target: At Copenhagen and Cancun, the states parties to the Convention arrogated to themselves the power – previously safe in the hands of Divine Providence – to alter the weather in such a way as to prevent global mean surface temperature from rising by more than 2 C° above the “pre-industrial” level. They did not even say what they meant by “pre-industrial”. From 1695-1745 temperatures in central England, quite a good proxy for global temperatures, rose by 2.2 C°, with about another 0.8 C° since then, making 3 C° in all. The previous temperature target, therefore, was already absurd. Yet the new, improved, madder target is to keep global temperatures either “1 C°” or “well below 1.5 C°” above “pre-industrial levels” – i.e., well below half of the temperature increase that has already occurred since the pre-industrial era. The twittering states parties are committing themselves, in effect, to reducing today's global temperatures by getting on for 2 C°. This is madness. Throughout pre-history, the governing class – Druids or Pharaohs or Mayans or Incas – thought they could replace their Creator and command the weather. They couldn't. No more can we. But try telling that to the strait-jacketed ninnies of today's governing “elite”. Speech after speech at the plenary sessions of the Durban conference has drivelled on about how We Are The People Who At This Historic Juncture Are Willing And Able To Undertake The Noble Purpose Of Saving The Planet From Thermageddon and Saving You From Yourselves [entirely at your prodigious expense, natch].

The emissions-reduction targets: The new target proposed by the staring-eyed global-village idiots will be a reduction of 50-85% of global greenhouse-gas emissions from 1990 levels (i.e. by 65-100% of today's levels) by 2050, with emissions falling still further thereafter. The West should cut its emissions by 30-50% from 1990 levels (i.e. by 40-65% of today's levels) in just eight years, and by more than 95% (i.e. more than 100%) by 2050. Alternatively (for there are many alternatives in the text, indicating that agreement among the inmates in the Durban asylum is a long way off), the West must cut its emissions “more than 50%” in just five years, and “more than 100%” by 2050. The words “more than 100%” actually appear in the draft. The Third World, however, need cut its emissions only by 15-30% over the next eight years, provided – of course – that the West fully reimburses it for the cost.

The greenhouse-gas reduction target: Greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere “should stabilize well below 300-450 ppm CO2 equivalent”. This target, like the temperature target, is plain daft. CO2 concentration is currently at 392 ppmv, and the IPCC increases this by 43% to allow for other greenhouse gases. Accordingly, today's CO2-equivalent concentration of greenhouse gases is 560 ppmv, and the current lunacy is to cut this perhaps by very nearly half, reducing the CO2 component to just 210 ppmv, at which point trees and plants become starved of CO2, which is their food, and start to die.

The greenhouse-gas peak targets: Global greenhouse gas emissions, say the mentally-challenged Durban droolers, should peak in not more than eight years' time, and perhaps as soon as two years' time. Western greenhouse-gas emissions should peak immediately (or perhaps by next year, or maybe the year after that) and must decline thereafter. The greenhouse-gas emissions peak in third-world countries will be later than that of the West, and – no surprises here – will depend on the West to pay the cost of it.

“Historical responsibility”: The nations of the West (for which the UN's code is “Annex I parties”) are from now on required to beat their breasts (or at least their strait-jackets) and acknowledge their “historical responsibility” for increasing CO2 emissions and giving us warmer weather. The draft says: “Acknowledging that the largest share of the historical global emissions of greenhouse gases originated in Annex I Parties and that, owing to this historical responsibility in terms of their contribution to the average global temperature increase, Annex I Parties must take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof.” This new concept of “historical responsibility” – suspiciously akin to the “war-guilt” of post-1918 Germany, declared by the imprudent governments of the world at the Versailles conference, which was no small cause of World War II – further underscores the rapidly-growing anti-Western bias in the UN and in the Convention's secretariat.

Who pays? Oh, you guessed it before I told you. The West pays. The third world (UN code: “non-Annex-I parties”) thinks it will collect, so it will always vote for the UN's insane proposals. But the UN's bureaucrats will actually get all or nearly all the money, and will decide how to allocate what minuscule fraction they have not already spent on themselves. As a senior UN diplomat told me last year, “The UN exists for only one purpose: to get more money. That, and that alone, is the reason why it takes such an interest in climate change.” The draft says: “Developed-country Parties shall provide developing-country Parties with new and additional finance,inter alia through a percentage of the gross domestic product of developed-country Parties.” And, of course, “The extent of participation by non-Annex-I parties in the global effort to deal with climate change is directly dependent on the level of support provided by developed-country Parties.”

The get-out clause: One or two Western countries – Canada and Japan, for instance – have begun to come off the Kool-Aid. They have worked out what scientifically-baseless nonsense the climate scam is and have said they are not really playing any more. To try to keep these and the growing number of nations who want out of “the process” bankrolling the ever-more-lavish UN, an ingenious escape clause has been crafted: “The scale of financial flows to non-Annex-I parties shall be based on the assessments of their needs to deal with climate change.” Since climate is not going to change measurably as a result of Man's emissions, any honest assessment of the needs of third-world countries “to deal with climate change” is that they don't need any money at all for this purpose and shouldn't get a single red cent. The UN is now the biggest obstacle to the eradication of poverty worldwide, because its pampered functionaries divert so much cash to themselves, to an ever-expanding alphabet-soup of bureaucracies, and then to heroically lunatic projects like “global warming” control. Time to abolish it.

World government: The Copenhagen Treaty draft establishing a world “government” with unlimited powers of taxation and intervention in the affairs of states parties to the UN Framework Convention fortunately failed. Yet at the Cancun climate conference the following year 1000 new bureaucracies were established to form the nucleus of a world government, with central control in the hands of the Convention's secretariat and tentacles in every region and nation. The draft “agrees that common principles, modalities and procedures as well as the coordinating and oversight functions of the UNFCCC are needed” – in short, global centralization of political, economic and environmental power in the manicured hands of the Convention's near-invisible but all-powerful secretariat. No provision is made for the democratic election of key members of the all-powerful secretariat – in effect, a world government – by the peoples of our planet.

Reporting to the world government: From 2013/14, the world government will oblige Western nations to prepare reports and submit them to it every two years. The format of these reports is specified in obsessive detail over several pages of the draft. The reports will describe the extent of their compliance with the mitigation targets imposed by the various treaties and agreements. The West will be obliged to to continue reporting “greenhouse-gas emission inventories”, for which “common reporting formats and methodologies for the calculation of emission, established at the international level, are essential”. Separately, Western nations will now be required to provide information on the financial support they have pledged to assist third-world countries in mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions and adapting to “the adverse effects of climate change”. The world government also expects to receive reports from Western nations on their financial contributions to the Global Environment Facility, the Least Developed Countries' Trust Fund, the Special Climate Change Fund, the Adaptation Fund, the Green Climate Fund and the Trust Fund for Supplementary Activities”. Western nations must also provide information on the steps taken to promote technology development and transfer to third-world countries, and on how they have provided “capacity-building support” to third-world countries, and on numerous other matters. The inexorable increase in compulsory reporting was one of the mechanisms by which the unelected Kommissars of the anti-democratic European Union acquired absolute power over the member states. EU advisors have been helping the UN to learn how to use similar techniques to centralize global power just as anti-democratically in its own hands.

Review of Western nations' conduct: Once the multitude of mechanisms for Western nations' compulsory reporting to the world government are in place, the information gathered by it will be used as the basis of a continuous review of every aspect of their compliance with the various agreements and concords, whether legally-binding or not. Teams of five to eight members of the Convention's secretariat will scrutinize each Western nation's conduct, and will have the power to ask questions and to require additional information, as well as to make recommendations that will gradually become binding. The world government will then prepare a record of the review for each Western nation, including reports of various aspects of the review, an assessment of that nation's compliance, questions and answers, conclusions and recommendations (eventually instructions) to that nation, and a “facilitative process” (UN code for a mechanism to compel the nation to do as it is told by people whom no one has elected).

Finance: One of the 1000 bureaucracies established at Cancun is the Standing Committee on Finance, which the draft says will have the power of “mobilizing financial resources” through flows of public and private finance, “mobilizing additional funding”, and requiring and verifying the reporting of finance provided to third-world Parties by the Western nations through a new Financial Support Registry. Finance for third-world countries is to be scaled up “significantly”, and Western countries will be obliged to provide “a clear work-plan on their pledged assessed contributions” from 2012-2020 “for approval by the Conference of the Parties”. Taxpayers will be compelled to provide the major source of funding through public expenditure.

Green Climate Fund: Western nations are urged to “commit to the initial capitalization of the Green Climate Fund without delay”, to include “the full running costs” and “the funding required for the formation and operating costs of the board and secretariat of the Green Climate Fund”. Here, as always, the UN bureaucrats want their own pay, perks, pensions and organizational structure guaranteed before any money goes to third-world countries.

Worldwide cap-and-trade: The draft establishes a “new market-based approach/mechanism ... to promote the reduction or avoidance of greenhouse-gas emissions” – once again for Western countries only. Also, “Ambitious, legally-binding emission reduction targets for developed-country Parties ... are essential to drive a global carbon market”. What this means, in the plain English that is almost entirely absent from the 138-page draft, is worldwide compulsory cap-and-trade, centrally imposed and regulated, imposed on Western countries only.

Patent rights: Under the guise of action to prevent “global warming” that is not happening at anything like the predicted rate, coded references to the extinction of patent rights in third-world countries are creeping into the text. For instance, “identification and removal of all barriers that prevent effective technology development and transfer to developing-country Parties”; and “the removal of all obstacles, including intellectual property rights and patents on climate-related technologies to ensure the transfer of technology to developing countries”. As an inventor with patents to my name, I can predict what effect any such provision will have. It will prevent the establishment and development of patent offices in continents such as Africa, which – thus far – has contributed remarkably little to the world's inventions, not least because the structure for protecting and encouraging inventors is rickety or non-existent.

Shipping and aviation fuels were previously excluded from the scope of the Convention and are now to be included. International shipping and aviation are described as “a source of financial resources for climate change actions”. More money for UN bureaucrats.

The new bureaucracies: As though the 1000 bureaucracies created at Cancun were not enough, another bureaucracy is to be created “to oversee, monitor and ensure overall implementation of capacity-building activities consistent with the provisions of the Convention”. There will also be a new “International Climate Court of Justice” (see above). A “Financial Support Registry” is also to be set up.

The new special-interest group: Meet the “Parties that are alternative-energy-disadvantaged”. No wind, no sun, no renewables – so, handouts from the West, please.
The new buzzwords: Welcome to the notion of “equitable access to global atmospheric space”; “Mother Earth” [I kid you not: it's in the draft]; “climate-resilient infrastructure” and “paradigm shift towards building a low-carbon society”. These buzzwords are in addition to pre-existing buzzwords such as “climate justice” and “climate debt” – the latter being the notion that because the West has emitted more carbon dioxide than the rest it owes the Third World lots of money.

“Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft burbles insanely about “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between humanity and nature, and that there will be no commodification [whatever that may be] of the functions of nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose”.
“Right to survive”: “The rights of some Parties to survive are threatened by the adverse impacts of climate change, including sea level rise.” At 2 inches per century? Oh, come off it! The Jason 2 satellite shows that sea-level has dropped over the past three years.

The science is at last to be reviewed in a manner that appears independent of the discredited IPCC. However, no details of the method of review are provided, and other parts of the schizophrenic draft say we must defer to the science put forward not by the peer-reviewed learned journals but by a political body whose reports are not peer-reviewed in the usual sense.

Legally-binding treaty: According to the draft, the aim is to create a “legally-binding instrument/outcome”. This is UN code for an international Treaty. The US will sign no such treaty. Nor will Canada, Japan, France, India and many other countries. On the basis of drafts as in-your-face idiotic as this, no legally-binding climate treaty will ever be signed: which is just as well, because no such treaty is necessary.

War and the maintenance of defence forces and equipment are to cease because they contribute to climate change. Just like that. The UN draft text asserts: "Stopping wars, defending lives and ceasing destructive activities will protect the climate system; conflict-related activities emit significant greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere." A wave of the UN's magic wand and peace will reign throughout the Earth, the sun will shine (but not too much) the rain will fall (just where and when needed), and non-gender-specific motherhood and non-commodificated apple pie will be available to all. Ouroborindra, ba-ba hee! It does not seem to have occurred to the Druids of the UN that they have near-totally failed to prevent wars on Earth – the original purpose for which it was founded. Yet now, in their gibbering, spastic arrogance, they think to command the weather. Canute, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

Related Links:
Climate Depot Special Report: A-Z Climate Reality Check -- Sub-Prime Science Exposé: 'The claims of the promoters of man-made climate fears are failing' -- Presented to UN Summit
Watch Now: Skeptics parachute into UN Climate Summit -- CFACT & Lord Monckton drop from 10,000 feet to deliver message about Climategate 2.0
Watch Video: Morano praises Obama for failure at UN climate summit: 'His Nickname Is George W. Obama' -- 'Leading Climate Change Denier Embraces U.S. Stance at U.N. Talks'
Greenwire features Climate Depot at UN summit: Morano: 'This is now getting to the level of medieval witchcraft, where they think the UN can control the weather' -- Morano: [World leaders & delegates] think the UN is somehow going to somehow be able to pass some kind of regulation that's going to control floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and droughts...We're here to deliver the message, because this is a vast echo chamber here where they never hear from the outside world -- except essentially falsehoods about how the whole world is waiting breathless for some kind of agreement'
Irish Times: Deniers taunt UN:' The briefing was to launch a fresh denialist report The A-Z's of Climate Change, which is at climatedepot.com' - Irish Times: Climate Depot's Morano 'claimed that there were now 'more than a 1,000 scientists, including some IPCC members' -- 'The scientific reality is that on virtually every claim – from A-Z – the claims of the promoters of man-made climate fears are failing and in many instances going in the opposite direction'
Watch Now: Inhofe to UN climate conference: Nobody's listening any more -- Inhofe praises Climate Depot's new A-Z report! - Inhofe: 'Marc Morano will be releasing his A-Z Climate Reality Check report. This report shows that on virtually every claim – from A-Z – the promoters of man-made climate fears are failing and the global warming movement is suffering a scientific death of a thousand cuts'
UK Guardian: Climate skeptics (literally) parachute into UN conference -- Video features Climate Depot
Climategate 2.0: More Smoking Guns From The Global Warming Establishment -- Read the 'incriminating e-mail exchanges'
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Sunday, December 11, 2011

Newt on Palestine

Newt Gingrich was right in his assertion that Palestine has never been real a country. If General Moshe Dayan had not convinced the Arabs to stay after the 1967 war, they would have all gone home.. The Arabs were packed and ready to go back to Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, where they came from. It was a big, expensive mistake to invite them to stay.

I have a good friend who grew up in Alexandria Egypt and he told me that for decades, the Saudis took all the inmates from their prisons and mental hospitals, put them on buses and dropped them off in Palestine.

Google Israeli Map History to see Israel’s past and current maps and Google the History of Israel and Palestine .to see the never-ending attacks on Israel by these Arabs since 1948. Palestine is a scam.

Liberals have favorite scams like Palestine, global warming, carbon emissions, abortion, welfare, open borders, labor unions, academic freedom, tolerance, diversity, sustainability, smart growth, green space, public transit, wetlands, wildlife preserves, endangered species lists, the EPA, FDA, HUD, HHS, Interior, Commerce, Transportation, Energy, Labor, Homeland Security, TSA, the State Department, government owned land, gay rights, women’s rights, minority rights, the UN, the World Bank, the WTO, the Federal Reserve, the Democratic Party, the Obama Presidency, the lie that our government is solvent and the economy is recovering and the assertion that the Constitution doesn’t say what it actually says.. It’s high time we laughed them all out of office and out-of-town.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Friday, December 9, 2011

Ask Heritage: What Is Agenda 21?

Morning Bell: Agenda 21 and the Threat in Your Backyard

by Mike Brownfield December 5, 2011 at 9:51 am

Ready to trade in your car for a bike, or maybe a subway instead? Interested in fewer choices for your home, paying more for housing, and being crammed into a denser neighborhood? You can have all this and more if radical environmentalists and “smart growth” advocates have their way and local, state, and the federal government impose the policies set forth in the United Nations’ Agenda 21.

You might have heard of this nefarious-sounding policy in a recent Republican presidential debate, but even if you haven’t, here’s some background information:

Agenda 21 is a voluntary plan adopted at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. It calls on governments to intervene and regulate nearly every potential impact that human activity could have on the environment. The end goal? Getting governments to “rethink economic development and find ways to halt the destruction of irreplaceable natural resources and pollution of the planet.”

As adopted, Agenda 21 was described as “a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.” That includes hundreds of specific goals and strategies that national and local governments are encouraged to adopt. And that translates into restrictive zoning policies that are aimed at deterring suburban growth. Ultimately, they suppress housing supply and drive up home prices, in turn imposing unnecessary costs, especially on middle- and lower-income households. These policies contributed to and aggravate the real estate bubble by putting inflationary pressures on housing prices.

But here’s the catch: Nothing about Agenda 21 is binding, and it’s not a threat in and of itself. Instead, the threat Americans need to be concerned about is the one that lies in their own backyard. In a new paper, “Focus on Agenda 21 Should Not Divert Attention from Homegrown Anti-Growth Policies,” Wendell Cox, Ronald Utt, Brett Schaefer explain:

Opponents of Agenda 21 should not be distracted from the more tangible manifestation of the smart-growth principles outlined in that document. If they focus excessively on Agenda 21, it is much more likely that homegrown smart-growth policies that date to the early 1970s and undermine the quality of life, personal choice, and property rights in American communities will be implemented by local, state, and federal authorities at the behest of environmental groups and other vested interests.

In the United States, smart-growth policies started in California and Oregon but then spread around the country to “deter suburban growth for all but the well-to-do,” as Cox, Utt, and Schaefer explain. They also write that those policies were not without detrimental impact:

As they became more prevalent and restrictive, their impact on housing prices and construction likewise expanded. An explosion of exclusionary zoning throughout the U.S. encouraged many communities to adopt zoning policies to ensure that they maintained a certain demographic ‘profile.’ Such zoning limited real estate development to higher-cost homes in order to ‘price out’ moderate-income households, which included a disproportionate share of minorities.

Where do these home-grown smart-growth policies stand today? The Obama Administration has embraced them while also increasing environmental regulations and restrictions on the use of natural resources. But the White House isn’t the only one behind the smart-growth movement. Local and state officials, along with interest groups, are promoting the policies at all levels of government.

And that’s where smart growth must also be thwarted. It’s not just a matter of standing against the implementation of Agenda 21 at the national level; it’s also about protecting our own backyards against the home-grown threat.

Mike Brownfield