Deweesereport

Global Poverty Act is back… Is Bill Gates the world’s Richest Useful Idiot?

He might be a whiz kid at creating computer software, but beyond that Bill Gates has proven time and again that he hasn’t a clue about why or how freedom works.

He constantly teams up with anti-free market types like the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) to produce “educational programs” in his software packages, misdirecting unsuspecting children with political propaganda. In 2002 he gave the NWF $600,000 worth of software to help these environmental radicals run their programs to block the drilling of American oil. Apparently Gates doesn’t understand that he needs oil to create power to run computers. Most recently his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $3 million to eight universities to reinvent the flush toilet. Environmentalists call that device “one of the world’s most destructive habits.”

Clearly Gates is a captive of his own wealth, suffering the usual rich man’s guilt over being rich – rushing full speed ahead to “give back to the world.” Funny how such giving back always seems to mean supporting socialist causes with money gained from the free market. Up till now, Gates has just been giving his own money voluntarily. Even if it’s to bad causes, he is certainly free to use his money anyway he chooses.

Now, however, his misguided meddling is about to involve the misdirecting of everyone’s income, and so the world’s richest useful idiot just became dangerous to freedom.

In November, as part of the G20 summit, Gates, representing his foundation, presented a report on a plan to eradicate world poverty. Said Gates, “I am honored to have been given this important opportunity. My report will address the financing needed to achieve maximum progress on the Millennium Development Goals, and to make faster progress on development over the next decade.” Gate’s report proposes a financial transaction tax (FTT) on tobacco, aviation, fuel and carbon (energy), to be enforced by all members of the G20 nations. The financial transaction tax has been excitedly talked about in the halls of the UN for a decade. Called the Tobin Tax, named after a Yale economist who dreamed it up, FTT would give the UN almost unlimited funding by taxing every stock and monetary transaction in the world.

Gates didn’t just dream this up on his own accord. He is actually resurrecting legislation a bill introduced in 2008 by then Senator Barack Obama. It was called the Global Poverty Act. Obama introduced the bill during his one abbreviated term in the U.S. Senate.

The bill was one of the only pieces of legislation ever introduced by Senator Barack Obama, and it wasn’t just a compassionate bit of fluff that Obama dreamed up to help the poor of the world. This bill was directly tied to the United Nations and served as little more than a shake down of American taxpayers in a massive wealth redistribution scheme. The Global Poverty Act would provide the United Nations with 0.7% of the United States gross national product. Estimates indicated that would add up to at least $845 billion of taxpayer money into UN coffers, to be spent (or wasted) by UN bureaucrats. The excuse for the taxing, of course, is to help end poverty in third world countries. The bill died in Congress in 2008 after passing unanimously in the House. Now Bill Gates has resurrected it.

Of course the United States has had an ongoing program of supplying billions of dollars in foreign aid and assistance to the poor for decades. In addition, the U.S. pays most of the bills at the UN for its many unworkable poverty programs. So what’s new about the Global Poverty Act, and why is it dangerous?

First, some history that led up to the Global Poverty Act. In 1999 and 2000 non-governmental organizations, NGOs held numerous meetings around the world to write what became known as the Charter for Global Democracy. The document was prepared as a blue print for achieving global governance. In reality it was a charter for the abolition of individual freedom, national sovereignty and limited government.

The Charter for Global Democracy outlined its goals in 12 detailed “principles:”

Principle One called for the consolidation of all international agencies under the direct authority of the UN.
Principle Two called for UN regulation of all transnational corporations and financial institutions, requiring an “international code of conduct” concerning the environment and labor standards.
Principle Three explored various schemes to create independent revenue sources for the UN – meaning UN taxes including fees on all international monetary transactions, taxes on aircraft flights in the skies, and on shipping fuels, and licensing of what the UN called the “global commons,” meaning use of air, water and natural resources. The Law of the Sea Treaty fits this category.
Principle Four would restructure the UN by eliminating the veto power and permanent member status on the Security Council. Such a move would almost completely eliminate U.S. influence and power in the world body. In turn Principle Four called for the creation of an “Assembly of the People” which would be populated by hand-picked non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which are nothing more than political groups with their own agendas (the UN calls NGOs “civil society”). Now, the UN says these NGO’s will be the representatives of the “people” and the Assembly of the People will become the new power of the UN.
Principle Five would authorize a standing UN army.
Principle six would require UN registration of all arms and the reduction of all national armies “as part of a multinational global security system” under the authority of the UN.
Principle Seven would require individual and national compliance with all UN “Human rights” treaties and declarations.
Principle Eight would activate the UN Criminal Court and make it compulsory for all nations — now achieved.
Principle Nine called for a new institution to establish economic and environmental security by ensuring “Sustainable Development.”
Principle Ten would establish an International Environmental Court
Principle Eleven demanded an international declaration stating that climate change is an essential global security interest that requires the creation of a “high level action team” to allocate carbon emissions based on equal per-capita rights – The Kyoto Global Warming Treaty in action.
Principle Twelve demanded the cancellation of all debt owed by the poorest nations, global poverty reductions and for the “equitable sharing” of global resources, as allocated by the UN – here is where Obama’s Global Poverty Act comes in.
Specifically, the Charter for Global Democracy was intended to give the UN domain over all of the earth’s land, air and seas. In addition it would give the UN the power to control all natural resources, wild life, and energy sources, even radio waves. Such control would allow the UN to place taxes on everything from development; to fishing; to air travel; to shipping. Anything that could be defined as using the earth’s resources would be subject to UN use-taxes. Coincidentally, all twelve principles came directly from the UN’s Commission on Global Governance.

There was one major problem with the Charter for Global Democracy, at least as far as the UN was concerned. It was too honest and straightforward. Overt action displeases the high-order thinking skills of UN diplomats. The UN likes to keep things fuzzy and gray so as not to scare off the natives. That way there is less chance of screaming headlines of a pending takeover by the UN. So, by the time the UN’s Millennium Summit rolled around in September 2000, things weren’t quite so clear.

At the Summit, attended by literally every head of state and world leader, including then-president Bill Clinton, the name of the Charter had been changed to the Millennium Declaration and the language had been toned down to sound more like suggestions and ideas. Then those “suggestions” were put together in the “Millennium Declaration” in the name of all of the heads of state. No vote or debate was allowed — just acclamation by world leaders who basically said nothing. And the deed was done. The UN had its marching orders for the new Millennium.

Now the principles were called “Millennium Goals,” and there were eight instead of twelve. Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty; Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education; Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women; Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality; Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health; Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases; Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability; Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development.

Yes, these are sneaky guys, well trained in the art of saying nothing. Who could oppose such noble goals? The Millennium Project, which was set up to achieve the “goals” says on its website that it intends to “end poverty by 2015.” A noble goal, indeed. So what happened to the 12 Charter principles? Take a hard look – they are all still there.

Principles One, Two, and Twelve are right there in Goal 8 – to develop a global partnership for development. Now almost every world organization such as the World Bank carries a section on their web sites calling for “Millennium Development Goals” which control international banking and loan policy. They set policy goals for each country and sometimes communities to measure if nations are keeping their promise to implement the Millennium goals.

Principle Seven is clearly Goal 3, the only way to assure Gender Equality is to enforce compliance with UN Human Rights treaties. Principle Eight has already been achieved. Principle Nine is Goal 7. Al Gore is doing his best to enforce Principle Eleven. Global Warming, no matter how well the theory is debunked, just won’t go away because it is one of the Millennium Goals.

And then there is Barack Obama’s Global Poverty Act. Can you see which Principle that is? Of course, Principle 12 and Goal 1. Obama’s 2008 bill specifically mentioned the Millennium Goals as its guide and the 0.7% of GNP is right out of UN documents. In order to eradicate poverty by 2015, they say, every industrial nation must pony up 0.7% of their GNP to the UN for use in eradicating poverty.

The UN is now becoming an international collection agency, pressing to collect the promises the world leaders made at the Millennium Summit. The UN wants the cash. In 2005 former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, “Developed countries that have not already done so should establish timetables to achieve the 0.7% target of gross national income for official development assistance by no later than 2015…”

At the Summit in 2000, the UN set clear goals to establish its power over sovereign nations and to enforce the greatest redistribution of wealth scheme ever perpetrated on the world. Now it has the Criminal Court; Sustainable Development (Agenda 21) is fast becoming official policy in every corner of the nation—only today we call it “going green;” and there is a full court press on to enforce Global Warming policy, in spite of the fact that there is now overwhelming evidence pouring out of the scientific community to fully debunk the scam.

Obama introduced the Global Poverty Act as he campaigned for the Presidency with the obvious and clear intention of showcasing the then little known Senator as a world leader. But the bill died in the Senate. Now, Bill Gates is proving his “useful idiot” status (a term coined by Lenin to describe capitalists who would sell the rope to hang capitalism), by serving as Obama’s lackey to resurrect the Global Poverty Act.

And right on cue, just after Bill Gates made his report to the G20 Summit calling for a financial transaction tax, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) introduced legislation to put a tax on “certain trading activities undertaken by banking and financial firms.” The bills, of course, are the Tobin Tax and in line with Gate’s report.

Clearly, Obama needs to show that, under his leadership, the United States is falling in line with the Millennium Declaration and its 2015 deadline for implementation. Truth, science and American taxpayer interests be hanged, as Bill Gates offers the rope, Harkin and DeFazio provide the knot, and Obama gets to pretend to be a “world” leader.

Quotes

UN Millennium Project – and the drive for Global Governance

A PLAN TO SAVE HUMANITY IS ALMOST ALWAYS A FALSE FRONT FOR THE URGE TO RULE.” H.L. MENCKEN

Those of us who have for years, warned of the coming of global governance and the threat of globalization to our freedom, have been marginalized and labeled as “kooks.” So here are a series of quotes to show what we are talking about in the words of UN documents and reports written by Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) for discussions at a variety of international (or should I say global) UN conferences. (TAD)

The End of Sovereignty and independence

“The bedrock of every country’s international relations must be the mission of using the United Nations system as the machinery for working and acting together.”
Shridath Ramphal, co-chairman, UN Commission on Global Governance “Nationhood as we know it will be obsolete, all states will recognize a single, global authority… National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”
Strobe Talbott, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration
“It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful.”
Maurice Strong, co-chairman, UN Commission on Global Governance
What is Globalization
(No borders)

“Although globalization has become a very popular term, it is often misunderstood and confused. And globalization is sometimes understood as the same meaning as internationalization. However, globalization is quite different from internationalization. Globalization goes further beyond internationalization, where nation states are in increasing contact with one another, but nevertheless remain separate. Globalization means that the globe becomes one world, where national borders have little significance. While governments controlled internationalization, today’s globalization is largely guided by market forces and non-state actors like transnational corporations are playing more and more roles beyond government intervention.”
UN Millennium Forum discussion paper, May 8, 2000

Economic Globalization (redistribution of your wealth)

“…The most urgent problem of our global village seems to be distribution of wealth rather than growth of production. The world production is already big enough to satisfy all needs – although never big enough to satisfy all greed.”
UN Millennium Forum discussion paper, May 8, 2000

Abolish or Control Private Property

“Land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principle instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore, contributes to social injustice.”
UN Habitat II Summit, 1976

Changing the Structure of Government to Force Global Governance

In 1997, UN Secretary Kofi Annan proposed that the Commission on Global Governance should serve to “link the UN and civil society ( NGOs) in their collective trusteeship for the integrity of the Global environment and commons area.”

‘Global governance’ in our vocabulary does not imply a global ‘government’, but rather the institution set up for cooperation, coordination, and common action between durable sovereign states…people and nations are beginning to agree to take the next steps together. They are reaching a consensus by practical procedures rather than by formal voting of governmental representatives; many international functions ,especially those requiring the most foresight and operational flexibility, and be carried out through non-governmental arrangements.” Report by the Club of Rome entitled “The First Global Revolution”

We call for: Decision making structures to be changed to enable a transition to sustainable production and consumption…the common threat in all of these debates is the challenge to develop new models of governance. Sustainable Development will not be achieved without institutional change”
UN Millennium Forum discussion paper, May 8, 2000

“We call for: More adequate provision for the role of social service organizations, a new provision is needed which would enable such organizations – both governmental and non-governmental – to participate directly in the development and monitoring of the implementation of an enabling social framework for sustainability and equitable development.”

UN Millennium Forum discussion paper, May 8, 2000

“Social services are equally required in rural Areas and it is that the phrase ‘sustainable human settlements’ or ‘sustainable communities’ should be used rather than ‘sustainable cities.’”
UN Millennium Forum discussion paper, May 8, 2000
Editors comment: social service organizations include home social workers, assigned to oversee the raising of children; welfare workers; psychologists; private NGO organizations with a political agenda for land development control; and many more – empowered to dictate and enforce policy over our lives – as reported in the July, 1999 Vol. 5, Issue 7 of The DeWeese Report.

Why We Have $4 Per Gallon Gas – And Rising

“A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally-damaging consumption patterns. The shift will require a vast strengthening of the multilateral system, including the United Nations.” Maurice Strong, Chairman, 1992 Earth Summit

“…current lifestyle and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work air conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable.” Maurice Strong, Chairman, 1992 Earth Summit

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?
Maurice Strong, Chairman, 1992 Earth Summit

And for your local officials who deny any connection between their comprehensive development plans and Agenda 21 – this quote from the EPA Website

“The Sustainable Development Challenge Grant program is also a step in implementing Agenda 21, the Global Plan of Action on Sustainable Development, signed by the United States at the Earth Summit on Rio de Janeiro in 1992. All of these programs require broad community participation to identify and address environmental issues.”
Environmental Protection Agency web site http://www.epa.gov/EPA-GENERAL/1998/August/Day-24/g22655.htm

Will Warmists Face Justice for their Deceptions?

By Alan Caruba

When you murder someone the case is never closed. The same holds when you murder the truth. No matter how long it takes, truth is defended despite all the calumnies heaped on those who stand firm against the lies and the propaganda intended to persuade those who have been deceived.

Ultimately, truth is its own defense. There never was a shred of truth in the claim that humans were causing the Earth’s climate to heat up by using so-called “fossil fuels” and engaging in manufacturing and other activities. There was no dramatic “global warming” in the 1980s until the present.

The Earth’s climate has warmed very slightly since the end of the Little Ice Age, dated to around 1850. Five hundred years of extremely cold weather had gripped the northern hemisphere starting around 1300. The much heralded “climate change” is, unlike the weather, measured in terms of centuries, not days, weeks or years. It is used by politicians that do not know what they are talking about. It is also used by charlatans, but I repeat myself.

Under the direction of the United Nation’s Intergovernmen- tal Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a massive fraud was engineered. The object was to turn carbon dioxide (CO2), a common though minor atmospheric gas, into a commodity that could be traded in exchanges around the world that would issue “carbon credits” to utilities, industrial facilities, and others who would be required to pay for permission to produce energy and products. It was an audacious scheme.

It began with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, otherwise known as the Kyoto Protocol. It set binding targets for the reduction of CO2 by 37 industrialized nations and the European community and was adopted on December 11, 1997 and entered into force on February 16, 2005. The U.S. never signed the Protocols. They were rejected by a unanimous vote in the Senate.

It was a complete lie without any basis in science. C02 plays no role in climate change and reducing whatever amount industry and other human activities might produce would be meaningless.

Surely the people behind the scheme knew this. The IPCC charged a small clique of climate scientists to come up with “proof” that global warming was happening. In England they were located at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit and, in America, they were led by Dr. Michael Mann working first at the University of Virginia and later at Penn State University.

Mann’s research, assisted by co-authors Bradley and Hughes, was published in 1998. “Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations” became famous for a graph dubbed the “hockey stick”. Its sudden upward curve, intended to demonstrate a dramatic increase was based on tree ring reconstruction of climate over a thousand years.

To say it attracted attention is an understatement. It and other studies produced by the IPCC clique became the cornerstone of the “global warming” hoax. The problem for Dr. Mann was that Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mathematician in Toronto, along with Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph concluded it was bogus science and published a paper in 2004 criticizing it.

In science, when a theory or hypothesis is put forward, the data supporting it is as well. Years went by before McIntyre could get access to it. The tree ring data had been provided by Keith Briffa of the Hadley UK Climate Research Unit. Neither Dr. Mann, nor Briffa made it available, but McIntyre was able to secure it from another source. When he plotted all the tree ring data, not just the parts cherry-picked by Mann, the “hockey stick” disappeared.

In November 2009, thousands of leaked emails between Dr. Mann and other “warmists”—scientists responsible for the global warming hoax, revealed nothing less than a massive fraud.

Flash forward to a freedom of information (FOI) request by Chris Horner on behalf of American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center. Despite stonewalling for years, Dr. Mann’s former employer, the University of Virginia complied in May 2011, agreeing to release Dr. Mann’s computer files containing the data he had kept hidden for more than a decade.

Serendipitously, a similar FOI issued to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has revealed the level of financial gain received by another key player in the global warming hoax, Dr. James Hansen a longtime NASA employee and the man credited with generating the hoax with testimony before a congressional committee in 1988. He has been the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981

It turns out that in 2010 alone he received “between 236,000 and $1,232.500 in outside income”! When you add in all the awards and speech fees Dr. Hansen has received over the years it is a tidy sum while he exploited his taxpayer -funded position. The agency had resisted disclosing this information for years, but as a federal employee Dr. Hansen waives privacy interests as a condition of employment.

A former government employee, Vice President Al Gore, became the face and voice of the hoax, earning millions in the process.

What has the global warming cost Americans? Joanne Nova of the Science and Public Policy Institute has estimated that the U.S. government spent more than $32.5 billion on climate studies between 1989 and 2009, nor does that include about$79 billion more spent for related climate change technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks for “green energy” (solar and wind).

For deception on that scale, one might think they will be punished at some point, but it will likely be years more before those responsible for the global warming fraud will stand before the bar of justice, if ever.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center. 

Smart Meter Removal Has Begun: Millions of Customers Were Unhappy with Their Smart Meters

By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh

California’s Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) has quietly begun replacing Smart Meters with analog meters for citizens reporting adverse health effects. Consumer rights and other groups demanded immediately that their wireless devices be removed from their homes.

Joshua Hart of stopsmartmeters.org reported the good news just as PG&E deploys the last phase of its smart meters in California. The Department of Energy’s promise that the smart grid and smart meters will lower electricity costs has proven incorrect; on the contrary, the utility costs have skyrocketed.

Millions of customers were unhappy with their Smart Meters. They are surveillance devices in homes, without a search warrant, which is a violation of privacy. Fires, explosions, and health issues ranging from nausea, dizziness, heart palpitations, headaches, tinnitus, insomnia, and radiation exposure associated with powerful wireless devices that transmit information 6-8 per minute constantly, have plagued the stealthy and deceptive installation.

California’s counties and cities have demanded a stop to smart meter installation and some local governments passed laws prohibiting wireless meters. Nevada’s Pacific Utilities Company (PUC) called for investigation into the adverse health effects and other smart meter issues.

Recently, the California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey assured customers that the utility “will provide for you to go back to the analog meter if that’s your choice.” The problem is that most Americans have no idea how damaging these smart meters are and an even larger group of Americans have never heard of it or see it as a contribution to “save” the planet because that is how these meters were sold to the public.

The tired rhetoric said that the smart grid and smart meters save the planet from doom and gloom, reduce waste by cutting your electricity at peak usage, eliminates the reader who must go to each home to calculate their monthly consumption, reduces your carbon footprint, and it will make the planet “green.” The reality is very far from the disingenuous promises.

Californians’ electric bills have almost tripled and lawsuits ensued. Marylanders swelter without electricity six hours at the peak of summer and almost freeze six hours in the dead of winter. An analog meter user who insisted on keeping it has to pay $35 each month to have his meter read by the power company. Thousands of customers across the country are having severe health issues from radiation that are not being addressed.

Millions are having issues with the power company selling wireless data collected from their homes via smart meters to third parties. Anybody with a handheld device can capture information from your home and sell it to a third party. The utility company knows if you are home, if you are away, if you are on vacation, which lights are turned on, which appliances, which computers, TVs, and other devices in your home.

Caitlin Phillips of Santa Cruz, Ca, who had suffered severe headaches and other symptoms from her smart meter, became the first person for whom PG&E re-installed on October 28, 2011 the classic analog meter. Caitlin Phillips had told the Wellington Energy installer, a subcontractor of PG&E, that she did not want a smart meter. “When I returned home later, I discovered a smart meter on my house. That night I awoke to severe anxiety, headache, and buzzing in my teeth, and realized the new smart meter was on the other side of the wall from my bed.”

Caitlin received help from “Stop Smart Meters” group who referred her to sources to obtain an analog meter and a person to install it. Her symptoms disappeared immediately after the analog meter was installed.

Caitlin spoke to a commission meeting in San Francisco about her ordeal and, a week later PG&E crews replaced her temporary analog meter with an official PG&E analog meter. Her frustration, pain, and suffering were finally over.

An “opt-out” proceeding is currently overseen by an Administrative Law Judge at the California Public Utilities Commission. “There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people suffering in their homes from forced ‘smart’ meter radiation,” said Joshua Hart, Director of the grassroots organization Stop Smart Meters!

PG&E and other utilities have responded to health complaints by replacing wireless ‘smart’ meters with digital meters that are “wireless-ready.” These digital meters have been associated with health problems from “dirty electricity” frequencies that pass into a home via the electrical wiring. Digital meters have been rejected by customers who still report health issues after installation. (Joshua Hart)

Susan Brinchman, Director of the San Diego based Center for Electrosmog Prevention, said, “At this point, the burden of responsibility is on the utilities to demonstrate that any new meter they want to install on our homes is safe. Communities have the right to retain analog meters at no extra charge.”

While California is pushing back the not so smart wireless technology, places like northern Virginia are going full steam ahead with the installation. Dominion Power has completed placing 100,000 smart meters in a pilot phase in three counties.

“There are hundreds of thousands- if not millions- of people suffering in their homes from forced ‘smart’ meter radiation,” said Joshua Hart, Director of the grassroots organization Stop Smart Meters! “The utilities must respond promptly to all requests that analogs be returned. The alternative is that people will increasingly turn to independent professionals to remove unwanted ‘smart’ meters from their homes, a reasonable action we assert is within our legal rights. Protecting your family’s health is not tampering.”

“Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh is a freelance writer (Canada Free Press, Modern Conservative, Romanian Conservative), author, radio commentator, and speaker. Her book, “Echoes of Communism, is available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Short essays describe health care, education, poverty, religion, social engineering, and confiscation of property. Visit her web- site,.ileanajohnson.com 

Video Update from Tom DeWeese on Agenda 21

Battle Against Agenda 21 Heating Up

Latest Developments - By  Tom DeWeese

First, let me thank all of the freedom activists who taking up the fight against Agenda 21. You are having an incredible impact. And as a result, things are heating up in the battle to enforce Agenda 21.

It appears that many of our recent victories to stop it have prompted Sustainablists to step up and rush new policies into place. Here are just some of the latest details:

First, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is forcing what he calls “Plan Maryland” through Executive Action rather than through the state Legislature. That means no votes from representatives of the people. Plan Maryland will lock away 400,000 acres of Maryland land – blocking any development over the next 20 years. The scheme shifts control of land use from local government to dictates by unelected state bureaucrats.

Worse, O’Malley’s plan will punish any county that doesn’t comply by withholding state funding. It will also triple sewer “flush” taxes on property tax bills — a tax on toilet flushes. Moreover, he wants to ban most septic tanks – a move that will destroy the ability to live in rural areas. Agenda 21 is on the move in Maryland.

Second, in Knoxville, TN a plan is being considered to charge a fee to property owners for rainwater runoff – meaning you pay a tax when it rains. This scheme has been enforced in Houston, TX where the city annually scoops up more than $400,000. The excuse is that rain water runoff from private property pollutes streams. Rain is natural and this is nothing more than another environmental con to grab more of your hard earned money.

They call it a fee rather than a tax in order to snare non-profit entities like schools and churches. Some churches in South Carolina pay an annual rain runoff fee of as much as $2,600. This too is Agenda 21 on the attack.

Third, there is a new kind of corporation being developed through Public Private Partnerships –it’s called “benefit” corporations. Imagine a legislated brotherhood of business where favored businesses get to go to the front of the line for permits, licenses and opportunities merely because they agree to advance the principles of Sustainable Development and Agenda 21.

Six states already have Benefit Corporation legislation: Hawaii, Virginia, Maryland, Vermont and New Jersey, and New York. And more are in the process of making it part of their states corporate legal system, including California, Colorado, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. This policy will destroy free enterprise and guarantee that we can’t stop Agenda 21.

There has been some good news in recent days in our battle to stop Agenda 21. We can now add the following communities to the growing list that have ended their contracts with ICLEI (the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives- the main group forcing Agenda 21 in many cities in America).  Clallam County, Washington, Abington, VA, Carver MA, Pinellas County, Florida, Garland, TX, and Sarasota County, Florida. Each of these communities has taken action to stop Agenda 21. And there are many more in the process of ending their membership in ICLEI and starting down the road against Agenda 21/Sustainablist policies.

The American Policy Center is on the front lines, spreading the message of the dangers of Agenda 21. I am on a seemingly non-stop speaking tour, informing citizens and elected officials of the dangers of these policies. Together we can win this battle to restore America’s Republic.

Federal Milk Price Controls a Sour Scam

Today, the government is still wasting taxpayer money on the regulation of milk prices—70-some years and counting. The Federal Milk Marketing Order system (FMMO) was created during the Depression era to dictate price floors for dairy products, with the aim of ensuring that farmers stayed in business and that American families subsequently had local access to affordable milk. While this sounds like a good idea (don’t they all), the problems it was originally created to combat no longer exist in today’s world of high-tech refrigerators and modern transportation. Instead we’re left with a veritable labyrinth of government red tape, just for milk.

study by the International Dairy Foods Association (a trade group) suggests that if the FMMO had been previously eliminated, the federal government would have saved more than $400 million in 2009. The Cato Institute’s Downsizing the Federal Government project likens this scheme to a cartel and the Citizens Against Government Waste thinks it’s an anachronistic waste of money.

The IDFA’s campaign to get Big Government out of milk has added a new way to make your voice heard in the fight against big government. If you’re fed up with government involvement in milk prices, you can send a letter to your Congressional representatives urging them to reform these byzantine regulations. With a deadline of November 23 for spending-reduction recommendations, Congress’s Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction needs to hear your opinion about eliminating the FMMOand its pointless price regulations.

Obama’s Green Energy Fail

By Alan Caruba

Watching Secretary of Energy Steven Chu face nearly five hours of grilling by a congressional committee seeking answers to the multi-billion dollar loss taxpayers have taken after the department dispensed their money in pursuit of its Green energy program was a reminder that ideology is not a substitute for reality.

Dr. Chu received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 for his work at Bell Labs, shared with colleagues, on cooling and trapping atoms with laser light. At the time he was appointed to head the Department of Energy, he was a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkley. He also had gained notice as an environmental enthusiast advocating a shift away from fossil fuels—coal, natural gas and oil—to combat “climate change.”

At one point Dr. Chu thought that painting roofs and other structures white would help reflect the sun’s radiation and save the nation and the world from global warming. Another nutty idea of his was a global “glucose economy” to create a “low-carbon economy” by shipping glucose from tropical plants would replace oil, the energy source that fuels transportation worldwide and serves a multitude of other uses.

Why any of this nonsense qualified him to be the chief administrator of the Department of Energy defies understanding. A footnote to this is the fact that the Department was the creation of the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter whose “windfall profits” legislation drove much of the oil industry out of America despite the fact that the U.S. sits atop some of the greatest deposits of oil in the world.

The loan guarantees of grants made by the Department of Energy are turning out to be a huge scandal for the Obama administration, rivaling the Department of Justice’s “Fast and Furious” gun-running program to the drug cartels of Mexico. When you toss in an unemployment rate that rivals that of the Great Depression, it is hard to understand why anyone would suggest that Obama will be reelected.

As reported in The Washington Post in September, “A $38.6 billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would create or save 65,000 jobs has created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records show.”

This works out to $5,077.574 per job created.

We are now familiar with the Solyndra scandal, one of the companies that received loan guarantees despite grave misgivings of DOE staff members. It declared a very predictable bankruptcy as a manufacturer of solar panels. Its failure was blamed on competition from China, also a major producer of wind turbines.

Between solar and wind technology, the failure of these two Green energy producers touted by the Obama administration, is beginning to be noticed at the same time the Environmental Protection Agency is hell-bent on closing down coal-fired electrical power plants and the companies that mine coal.

Another DOE beneficiary was BrightSource, another solar firm which received a $1.4 billion bailout. It turns out that the DOE officials involved was Sanjay Wagle, formerly a principal in Robert Kennedy, Jr’s firm. In 2010, BrightSource whose largest shareholder was Kennedy’s VantagePoint Partners, had $1.8 billion of debt obligations and had lost $71.6 million.

Just how many billions the Obama administration’s Green energy program will have lost by the time they are eventually calculated will be testimony to the general failure of solar and wind power. Meanwhile, the Sierra Club is celebrating Obama’s decision to delay approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, estimated to generate 20,000 jobs.

The Department of the Interior has just delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio “for up to six months” and an industry group estimates that drilling in the Utica shale affected by the delay would produce 204,500 jobs by 2015.

In mid-November, Lisa Murkowski, a Senator from Alaska, wrote an opinion published in The Wall Street Journal, noting that the Obama administration’s proposed expansion of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico are its first concession since its moratorium on drilling in the Gulf. The administration still opposes offshore drilling on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Sen. Murkowski pointed out that “Cuba, Mexico, the Bahamas, Canada and Russia are all moving ahead on offshore development adjacent to our borders,” noting that according to the Department of Interior, “our offshore areas hold more than 86 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Artic Oceans is projected to hold 20% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas.”

Why anyone thought Dr. Chu was qualified in any fashion to run the Department of Energy defies the imagination. Why anyone still believes that solar and wind energy can replace traditional proven sources of energy is testimony to environmental propaganda and myth-making.

Green energy is simply one more way the Obama administration has set about destroying America’s capacity to generate the energy needed for everything requiring electricity. It is one more way to impoverish the nation. And he is running for reelection in 2012.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

A Different Christmas Poem

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked without fear,
‘Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!’

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light
Then he sighed and he said ‘Its really all right,
I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night.’ ‘It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ‘ Pearl on a day in December,’
Then he sighed, ‘That’s a Christmas ‘Gram always remembers.’
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘ Nam ‘,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.

Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue… an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and a ll,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.’

‘So go back inside,’ he said, ‘harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.’
‘But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
‘Give you money,’ I asked, ‘or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.’
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
‘Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.’

PLEASE, Would you do me the kind favor of sending this to as many people as you can? Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our U.S.service men and women for our being able to celebrate these festivities.  Let’s try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us.

LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30th Naval Construction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq.