Corvallis wins "Porker Award"

From Oregon Capitol Watchdog Foundation - On October 1, the second Oregon Capitol Watch Foundation "Porker Award" was bestowed upon the City of Corvallis for spending $500,000 on encouraging people to use compact flourescent bulbs and ride their bicycles.

Corvallis Gazette-Times, 10/5/2012: Foundation hands 'pork' award to city (plus comments) - Public Works Department Director Mary Steckel defends money spent and money yet to be spent. Read More......

Clackamas County to Ditch ICLEI Membership While Portland Spends and Spends

An announcement of momentous import was made at the April 26^th 2012 Board of County Commissioners meeting of Clackamas County, Oregon.  Commissioner Jamie Damon revealed that Clackamas County would not be renewing their membership in “ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability USA” at the next annual dues deadline.  Commissioner Jamie Damon stated, “This was brought up several business meetings ago, and I was unfamiliar with the organization, so I did some research and looked up the organization as well.  And we have decided to not continue as members of ICLEI.  So I just wanted to let you know that.” The remaining crowd in the room erupted in applause.  It was nearly at the end of the meeting around one hour fifty nine minutes (video on their web).  Read more at Red County/Colony Rabble... Read More......

Subject: What is a Soviet?

 FREEDOM ADVOCATES, Article from June 28, 2005 by Michael Shaw 

Hat tip: Linda Weimer, Chair of Benton AFP via Jim Clausen, Chair of Linn AFP

 People know that a soviet system of government is a dismal failure. A failure so bad, in fact, that it's inconceivable to consider that soviet-style "change agents" might actually be Americans living and working in our own neighborhoods. Even worse, would be to discover that your smiling political leaders might also be "agents of change." 

In these increasingly divisive and stressful times, a need for the basic understanding of political systems has become crucial. At a young age I learned that a "soviet" was a system of interconnected councils that work to destroy individual personality, suppress individual potential, and centralize power into the hands of those who seek to control human action and human production.

As a political science major and later as a law student, the definition of, or nature of a soviet social system was never addressed. But years later when "stakeholder consensus councils" began to swarm Santa Cruz County, I began to evaluate the subject in earnest.

Santa Cruz California Establishes a National Model In early 2001 a proliferation of councils popped up all over Santa Cruz County. Among them were:

* A "Fire Safety Council" - created in order to impose a county wide Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP). The plan was designed by the Federal Department of the Interior and would have prevented rural landowners from reducing vegetation fuel loads on their land in the name of safety!

* "Watershed Councils" - established for nearly every trickling watercourse in order to regulate human action from the stream bank to the upland ridge.

* Special "action" neighborhood councils - designed to control home size, tree pruning or removal, colors and more for existing and prospective private homes.

* A Federal ocean "sanctuary" - created to regulate and monitor the flow and use of all water between the mountain ridge and the seashore.

Today, forest trees cannot be cut. The forest has become less healthy and more fire-prone. Farmers pay exorbitant taxes to draw water from their own wells. Commercial fishermen cannot fish the ocean. A ludicrous mass-transit system is being financed with federal and state money. Dense government housing is being built along the coastal rail line. Rules and regulation covering all manner of human activity are sprouting like forest mushrooms after rains. "Consensus" rules the day; Robert's Rules of Order have been abandoned (or substituted with phony versions intended to fool people). Consistently each council is comprised of people (often the same ones) who are in agreement with a pre-arranged outcome.

I know that the outcomes are pre-arranged because I attended many of these "stakeholder" meetings. My perspective always included addressing the consequence of the planned program on private property and individual autonomy. Without exception an attempt was made by the paid "facilitators" to disregard comments like mine. After realizing that a pattern existed within these councils, some of us learned how to expose the "change agents" objectives, despite being massively outnumbered by other people getting paid to attend the meetings.

For instance, the HCP "consensus" was drawn from "stakeholders" including the Federal Department of the Interior, the Resource Conservation District, the State Department of Natural Resources, the County Planning Department, the Sierra Club, the Native Plant Society, Congressman Sam Farr's Office, insurance industry representatives, the county Fire Chiefs, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO's), and local "environmental" activists. This council was defeated because the proponents could not stand up to the exposure of their irrationality by a small group of reasoned citizens. Why did so many people fight so hard to destroy citizen lifestyles at the risk of catastrophic fire in order to pursue a nonsensical land management policy?

The guidebook behind the Santa Cruz soviet system of "regional" councils is the Santa Cruz local United Nations Agenda 21 (Sustainable Development). I attended these meetings, too. We were told at the time (1996) that Agenda 21 was not connected to the U.N. and that the concept was developed locally. Although the policies were patently irrational, the local Board of Supervisors quietly adopted its provisions as local governing policy. Congressman Farr congratulated the local Agenda 21 committee "The 'Local Agenda 21' Action Plan will not only have local significance, it also will have regional and national impacts."

Agenda 21 is sweeping America under the nomenclature "Sustainable Development" using the environment as an ostensible front for the real purpose behind Sustainable Development Agenda 21 – implementing a partnership between business and government in order to seize America's natural resources and to exercise increasing control over the American people.

The Definition of a Soviet: * A soviet is a system of councils that report to an apex council and implement a predetermined outcome, often by consensus, affecting a region or neighborhood.

* Members of a soviet council are chosen by virtue of their willingness to comply with that outcome and their one-mindedness with the group.

* Soviets are the operating mechanism of a government-controlled economy, whether it be socialism or government-corporate ("public-private") partnerships.
Change agents are working with opportunists and other foolish people by coordinating government, business, NGO, and "non-profit" partners to implement a soviet system in your county, too.

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What is a Soviet? by Michael Shaw

Michael Shaw is an Abundance Ecologist and a founder of Freedom Advocates [Formerly Freedom 21 Santa Cruz]
See "Understanding Sustainable Development - Agenda 21" Read More......

Fox: Utah on verge of passing bill demanding Feds relinquish public land

3/6/2012 (AP) SALT LAKE CITY – Lawmakers who want to seize control of federal lands are pushing a legal battle they insist is winnable despite multiple warnings their effort is highly unconstitutional and almost sure to fail in court. ✧ Utah is poised to become the first state to pass a package of bills that demand the federal government relinquish claims to huge sections of public land. A proposal that advanced Wednesday demands that by 2014 the federal government cede control of nearly 30 million acres -- nearly 50 percent of the entire state. ✧ A bill setting an identical deadline is also moving in the Arizona Legislature. Read more at Fox News... Read More......

County in Washington Ditches Sustainable Development

THE NEW AMERICAN - Activists in Clallam County, Washington are celebrating their government's decision to pull the plug on membership in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), a worldwide association of more than 1,200 local governments dedicated to promoting the United Nations' sovereignty-eroding sustainable development program known as Agenda 21. The county will save $1,200 in annual membership dues, but ICLEI critics say they've salvaged much more than that. Read more at The New American... Read More......

Lane County accepts planning agreement

Portland Conservative Examiner, 9/30/2011 by David Mcnabb - Lane County Commissioners voted 3-2 to enter an agreement between Lane County, Eugene, Springfield, and the Lane Council of Governments to accept $1.45M in grant funding for the proposed Lane Livability Consortium. According to a staff report sent to the commissioners, the agreement establishes management authority to the general purpose governments, creates an accountability framework, and improves the budgetary and work product outcomes for Lane County. In English, it is an agreement to ensure more bureaucratic red tape at every level of the lives of local residents and businesses. It may not contain any new regulations as is, but it is a framework for future regulatory capacity. Reading through the agreement was similar to reading the email from the guy in Nigeria who has your inheritance, all he needs is your bank account number. Continue reading at Examiner.com

David Mcnabb is a conservative/libertarian activist. He has worked with grassroots organizations who share his goal of combating the progressive stronghold in local and national political institutions. Read More......

TD: The Wrenching Transformation of America

(Hat tip: Facebook: Benton County Americans for Prosperity), April 22, 2009 Speech by Tom DeWeese - Ladies and gen­tlemen, I’ve come a long way to get here and I have such a short time to be with you. So, let’s just get every­thing out on the table right now, shall we? ∴ I believe the Amer­ican people, and their every action, are being ruled, reg­u­lated, restricted, licensed, reg­is­tered, directed, checked, inspected, mea­sured, num­bered, counted, rated, stamped, cen­sured, autho­rized, admon­ished, refused, pre­vented, drilled, indoc­tri­nated, monop­o­lized, extorted, robbed, hoaxed, fined, harassed, dis­armed, dis­hon­ored, fleeced, exploited, assessed, and taxed to the point of suf­fo­ca­tion and desperation. ∴ America is drowning in a sea of rules and reg­u­la­tions, par­tic­u­larly under the guise of “saving the environment.”

Read more at August Forecast... Read More......

NCPA: Smart Growth Policies Led to Greater Losses

The 11 metropolitan areas in which the greatest housing cost increases occurred accounted for 73 percent of the pre-crash losses, says Wendell Cox, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis... Read More......

California high-speed rail to cut through San Joaquin farmland

FRESNO, Calif. -- California's ambitious plan for high-speed trains is drawing sharp criticism from San Joaquin Valley farmers who fear the project would carve their property into useless pieces, disrupt their work and drive down land values. Read more at Standard Examiner Read More......

AT: The Purposeful Flooding of America's Heartland

AMERICAN THINKER, 6/22/2011 by Joe Herring - "Some sixty years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) began the process of taming the Missouri by constructing a series of six dams. The idea was simple: massive dams at the top moderating flow to the smaller dams below, generating electricity while providing desperately needed control of the river's devastating floods." (Snip) "Preservation of habitat for at-risk bird and fish populations soon became a hot issue among the burgeoning environmental lobby. The pressure to satisfy the demands of these groups grew exponentially as politicians eagerly traded their common sense for "green" political support." Read more at American Thinker... Read More......

Freedom Advocates: Assessing Monetary Collapse

FREEDOM ADVOCATES, 6/9/2011 by Michael Shaw - Assessing Monetary Collapse: Exposing Agenda 21 and Understanding Freedom

What if the Federal Reserve dollar falls – hard? How is the globalist blueprint, known as Sustainable Development Agenda 21, designed to make humans into livestock? Why liberty must be understood by this generation of Americans lest it be lost for a very long time. Read more at Freedom Advocates...

Read More......