Alexandra Swann's Blog, page 8
June 27, 2014
Henry Paulson's Newest Assault on America--The Global Carbon Tax
Former Treasury-Secretary Hank Paulson is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with America. In 2006 he moved from his cushy Wall Street job at Goldman Sachs to his position as Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush and wondered aloud whether he could "make a difference." Two years later, he presided over probably the most blatant example of crony capitalism in the history of our nation as he persuaded Congress to give billions in TARP funds to bail out Wall Street firms that had bet wrong in the financial sector. The anger and frustration over the images of spoiled billionaires using the U.S. Treasury as their personal piggy banks was a huge part of the reason for Barack Obama's victory over John McCain in 2008. Americans hoped that they had seen the last of the big government/big business partnership. They were wrong.Now Paulson is back with a new idea to annihilate the U.S. economy--a global carbon tax. This is an old idea--it was part of the failed climate change bill that mercifully died in 2010 when conservative activists started the Tea Parties and ended the Pelosi Reign of Terror as Speaker of the House. But Paulson is undeterred. Under the guise of saving the planet, Paulson wants to tax us back into the Stone Ages, effectively completing his apparent mission as Secretary of the Treasury--to destroy the middle class and create a gulf so wide between the rich and poor that no one can cross it.
Paulson's latest scheme was outlined in an article he wrote Sunday for The New York Times. He, along with Michael Bloomberg, the enemy of all freedom, and Tom Steyer, a liberal billionaire who has dedicated his time to lobbying against the Keystone Pipeline, are releasing their Risky Business Campaign next Tuesday detailing ways that businesses can fight global warming and promoting the tax.
Al Gore proved that there are billions to be made in the "climate change" arena. What many Americans have forgotten is that the Chicago Climate Exchange was ready to sell credits as part of the "cap and trade" piece of the 2010 Climate Change bill before public anger leading to the 2010 elections destroyed any hope for passage. Now, apparently, Paulson and his buddies, emboldened by the Obama Administration's dedication to implementation of job-killing and economy-killing measures believe that they have a shot at passage of a tax that will allow them to exponentially grow their own personal fortunes on the backs of American taxpayers. Sound familiar?
What is oddly ironic about this whole situation is that anyone, anywhere, would believe that Paulson would be the right spokesperson for anything. His chief accomplishment in public life is presiding over the greatest economic crash since the 1920's--a fact that hardly inspires public trust. And yet, Paulson points to his time as Treasury Secretary as his primary qualification for his new mission. In his NY Times article, entitled, Lessons for Climate Change in the 2008 Recession, Paulson writes, "I was secretary of the Treasury when the credit bubble burst, so I think it’s fair to say that I know a little bit about risk, assessing outcomes and problem-solving." Right on, Hank--we saw how you solved the problems in 2008 by playing a substantial role in crashing the U.S. economy. Really, I think you've done enough.
The arrogance of leftist elites is matched only by their unbridled contempt for everyone who is not them. But even Bloomberg and Co. should know that Hank Paulson's name is MUD with most Americans. Whatever he's selling this time, we don't want any.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
June 17, 2014
The Pied Piper of Washington D.C.
Last week I wrote about the problem of immigrant children flooding the U.S.-Mexican border and the case of one two year old child--Adrian--who was brought by a presumed smuggler to the U.S. before being identified and returned to his mother in Durango, Mexico.
In just a week the situation has worsened significantly. To put what is happening in perspective for my readers, I moved out of the El Paso, Texas area May 1, 2014. Today, June 17, 2014, illegal immigrants are swarming into the city at a rate we have never seen before. My brother, Chris, who has been an operations manager with a local broadcast network affiliate for over twenty years and whose wife is the news director at the same station, sent me this email on Friday afternoon. I am reprinting it with his permission:
Are you keeping up with the news on these immigrants flooding into the country? It is crazy here in El Paso, We have bus loads of thousands of women and children who are coming up from Central America because they have heard that Obama is going to give their children amnesty. This is what they have actually told our news teams when we go interview them.
Finding them is no problem, we just go to the bus terminals and they are standing there waiting to go into the interior.
So the Border Patrol is picking them up all over the Southwest border, busing them to El Paso, where they are being directed to these local organizations who are supposed to care for immigrants. The folks who are supposed to be helping them are interviewing them, getting the names of anyone in the country who knows them and can put them up. When they make contact with a family member or friend somewhere in the US, they help the immigrants get bus tickets and arrange for them to be picked up by their families in New York, or Washington, or where ever. Before the Border Patrol releases them, they are given a court date and told they need to show up for it and are put into the system to have their case reviewed, which we are told will take several years to get around to because of backlogs. Of course, there is nothing to force these people to show up for any hearings and there are literally thousands of them streaming in daily.
It is the craziest thing I have seen. [DC] has literally opened the borders and we are swimming in them in El Paso. Buses coming in everyday.
Chris
And then yesterday I received this email:
Everything is the same here in El Paso We are getting overrun by illegals. Yesterday the Feds flew a plane load of them to the EP airport and let them loose. Lovely.
Chris
I am also hearing stories that many of these "kids" are seventeen or eighteen years old and are filling up the city. Reportedly they're hanging out in bands in retail parking lots begging for money. An influx of jobless, parentless youth with no skills and minimal, if any, education, cannot end well for El Paso or for the U.S. as they continue to spread through the nation.
Driving this flood of illegal child immigrants are policies like "The Dream Act" which promise to give amnesty to the children of immigrants. Of course, that promise was originally supposedly predicated on the concept that these children were the unintended victims of their parents' illegal behavior--they had no say in being brought to a nation that became the only country they had ever called home and it was, therefore, inhumane to deport them. Now, however, we are seeing a flood of underage minors actively engaging in illegal immigration because they perceive that they have a free ticket to the U.S. The Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal spotlighted this issue today in an interview with a woman from Central America whose fifteen year old son chose to cross illegally into the U.S.
Anybody left in the U.S. who has any illusions that policies that are fostering this influx of illegal immigration are humane needs to go back and read "The Pied Piper of Hamlin." In the poem, the piper lures away the village children with promises of a lifetime of delicious food and fun only to take them into the heart of the mountain where they disappear and are never heard from again. Likewise, the Obama Administration has become the Pied Piper of D.C., promising a glorious future it cannot possibly deliver. At a time when our social service programs are financially strapped, over 100 million Americans are out of the workforce and a reported twenty percent of American households do not have one single family member who is working, the Obama Administration has led tens of thousands of young people to believe that they will find work and prosperity in this country. In reality, with no education, poor English skills and limited opportunities, many will undoubtedly end up in crime or prostitution to survive.
At its heart, the failure of the Obama Administration's immigration policies is the failure of all liberalism--which assumes that there will always be money and resources to pay for every program and to support every person. It is the epic failure that stems from a government that refuses to follow the laws, that invites open immigration with no vision or plan for how to integrate the newcomers into our society. It is the failure of a government that refuses to recognize that immigration should and must, like any other successful relationship, be mutually beneficial. The immigrants must offer something to our society other than just their own needs. Simply being young is not enough to make a person a desirable future citizen.
What is happening in El Paso and other border communities is a crisis and a tragedy. But if we as a nation do not start dealing with this quickly it is a crisis that will not stay confined to the border. Congress needs to take action immediately to do whatever it can to stop this flow of migrants before our whole nation begins to suffer from the overload and these children have to face a lifetime of bad consequences from having been lied to about life in the United States.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
In just a week the situation has worsened significantly. To put what is happening in perspective for my readers, I moved out of the El Paso, Texas area May 1, 2014. Today, June 17, 2014, illegal immigrants are swarming into the city at a rate we have never seen before. My brother, Chris, who has been an operations manager with a local broadcast network affiliate for over twenty years and whose wife is the news director at the same station, sent me this email on Friday afternoon. I am reprinting it with his permission:
Are you keeping up with the news on these immigrants flooding into the country? It is crazy here in El Paso, We have bus loads of thousands of women and children who are coming up from Central America because they have heard that Obama is going to give their children amnesty. This is what they have actually told our news teams when we go interview them.
Finding them is no problem, we just go to the bus terminals and they are standing there waiting to go into the interior.
So the Border Patrol is picking them up all over the Southwest border, busing them to El Paso, where they are being directed to these local organizations who are supposed to care for immigrants. The folks who are supposed to be helping them are interviewing them, getting the names of anyone in the country who knows them and can put them up. When they make contact with a family member or friend somewhere in the US, they help the immigrants get bus tickets and arrange for them to be picked up by their families in New York, or Washington, or where ever. Before the Border Patrol releases them, they are given a court date and told they need to show up for it and are put into the system to have their case reviewed, which we are told will take several years to get around to because of backlogs. Of course, there is nothing to force these people to show up for any hearings and there are literally thousands of them streaming in daily.
It is the craziest thing I have seen. [DC] has literally opened the borders and we are swimming in them in El Paso. Buses coming in everyday.
Chris
And then yesterday I received this email:
Everything is the same here in El Paso We are getting overrun by illegals. Yesterday the Feds flew a plane load of them to the EP airport and let them loose. Lovely.
Chris
I am also hearing stories that many of these "kids" are seventeen or eighteen years old and are filling up the city. Reportedly they're hanging out in bands in retail parking lots begging for money. An influx of jobless, parentless youth with no skills and minimal, if any, education, cannot end well for El Paso or for the U.S. as they continue to spread through the nation.
Driving this flood of illegal child immigrants are policies like "The Dream Act" which promise to give amnesty to the children of immigrants. Of course, that promise was originally supposedly predicated on the concept that these children were the unintended victims of their parents' illegal behavior--they had no say in being brought to a nation that became the only country they had ever called home and it was, therefore, inhumane to deport them. Now, however, we are seeing a flood of underage minors actively engaging in illegal immigration because they perceive that they have a free ticket to the U.S. The Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal spotlighted this issue today in an interview with a woman from Central America whose fifteen year old son chose to cross illegally into the U.S.
Anybody left in the U.S. who has any illusions that policies that are fostering this influx of illegal immigration are humane needs to go back and read "The Pied Piper of Hamlin." In the poem, the piper lures away the village children with promises of a lifetime of delicious food and fun only to take them into the heart of the mountain where they disappear and are never heard from again. Likewise, the Obama Administration has become the Pied Piper of D.C., promising a glorious future it cannot possibly deliver. At a time when our social service programs are financially strapped, over 100 million Americans are out of the workforce and a reported twenty percent of American households do not have one single family member who is working, the Obama Administration has led tens of thousands of young people to believe that they will find work and prosperity in this country. In reality, with no education, poor English skills and limited opportunities, many will undoubtedly end up in crime or prostitution to survive.
At its heart, the failure of the Obama Administration's immigration policies is the failure of all liberalism--which assumes that there will always be money and resources to pay for every program and to support every person. It is the epic failure that stems from a government that refuses to follow the laws, that invites open immigration with no vision or plan for how to integrate the newcomers into our society. It is the failure of a government that refuses to recognize that immigration should and must, like any other successful relationship, be mutually beneficial. The immigrants must offer something to our society other than just their own needs. Simply being young is not enough to make a person a desirable future citizen.
What is happening in El Paso and other border communities is a crisis and a tragedy. But if we as a nation do not start dealing with this quickly it is a crisis that will not stay confined to the border. Congress needs to take action immediately to do whatever it can to stop this flow of migrants before our whole nation begins to suffer from the overload and these children have to face a lifetime of bad consequences from having been lied to about life in the United States.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
June 11, 2014
Putting a Face on Immigration Issues in Light of Eric Cantor's Historic Loss
What a difference a day makes! In a stunning turn of events last night, Eric Cantor lost his primary to relatively-unknown challenger David Brat. The Huffington Post, which yesterday led its email headlines with a smug banner reading, "Tea Party Facing Heavy Losses on Primary Day" today led with a story asking Who the Heck Defeated Eric Cantor?
While everyone on both the right and the left tried to catch our collective breaths, pundits were immediately talking about the impact that Cantor's defeat will have on the future of immigration reform. Fox News' Megyn Kelly speculated that Obama will use that famous pen and phone to act unilaterally, which is pretty much his consistent fallback plan every time he encounters any resistance.
I think we can expect to see some executive orders, but the simple truth is that for all of his political posturing, Obama does not have the authority to rewrite the law as much as he would like. The other truth, as I wrote yesterday, is that any executive order is a whole lot easier to get rid of than a law duly passed through Congress. So if we are going to see some action on this issue, it is better to have it be executive action than some massive piece of legislation amounting to a de facto amnesty to try to repeal down the road.
Whenever we talk about illegal immigration, we invariably hear a lot about "the children". Conservatives and liberals tend to disagree about what we should do with children of illegal immigration. Eric Cantor's pro-illegal immigration statements certainly contributed to his loss yesterday. Particularly, his statement about the U.S. wanting "the kids" sparked an outrage when we posted it on Facebook. Only very recently have we begun to understand that the policies and statements of the Obama Administration are actually contributing to the very problem of illegal immigrant children. There is an influx of illegal immigration among minor children prompted by their parents who are listening to our politicians and inferring that their children will get citizenship if they can just land on our soil. The problem is growing exponentially, as we demonstrated in a poster yesterday on The Liberty Project:
Proponents of the Dream Act, and any number of other initiatives to automatically grant citizenship to minor illegal aliens pretend that these proposals are based in compassion, but the truth is that they are leading to abuse, exploitation and abandonment of children on a scale we have not previously experienced. Today, I want to put a face on these numbers--the face of one two-year old abandoned in the desert near Sunland Park, New Mexico on the night of Saturday December 6, 2013.
Border Patrol underground motion sensors detected foot steps in the desert area during the night of Saturday, December 6. Agents who responded began following two sets of footprints and discovered the two-year old boy and a man who claimed to be his uncle hiding behind some brush. When agents asked the man for his citizenship, the man fled back across the border abandoning the little boy. KVIA-TV (the local ABC News Affiliate) covered the story:
Click here to access the KVIA Story
The little boy, who spoke only Spanish, identified himself as "Adrian". Agents turned him over to the Las Cruces Police Department who then turned him over to child protective services.
The case of "Adrian" was unusual even for our community because the child was so young. He was abandoned in a desert where temperatures are frequently below freezing at that time of year and lows in the low thirties are normal. The stretch of desert between Anapra and Sunland Park, New Mexico, is a desolate area with relatively few inhabitants. Packs of dogs and coyotes live in the desert along with poisonous snakes. The ways in which an unprotected toddler can die in such a place are almost too many to count. (Interestingly, in the KTSM story linked below, a resident of Anapra said that while she was very surprised to see a toddler abandoned there, she is accustomed to seeing children of six or seven years of age crossing the border alone.)
"Adrian" quickly became a top news story for the El Paso/Las Cruces/Juarez area as officials attempted to identify him and locate his family. Due to intense coverage and photos that were circulated through official news outlets and social networking sites like Facebook, officials were able to locate his family within a few days. Channel 9 News (the NBC affiliate) carried the story that through cooperation with the Mexican Consul, "Adrian"--whose name actually turned out to be Ruben, had been identified and would be reunited with his mother.
Click here to access the KTSM Story
Ruben's mother crossed the U.S-Mexico bridge to take her son back to Durango, Mexico. She refused to answer any questions about how he arrived. Authorities believe that the man who abandoned the child in the U.S. was a smuggler. According to the reports, it is not unusual for smugglers to abandon children; it is also not unusual to hold them for ransom. KVIA reporters were present for the reunion.
Click here to access the story of the reunion
In many ways, "Adrian" was lucky. Because he was so young, authorities made a concerted effort to track down his family and the amount of attention that the case received forced family members to come forward to claim him.
The story of "Adrian" is the natural outcome of the policies of an Administration that tells parents that their children can be used as human anchors to a land brimming with free social programs. Far from compassionate, programs that encourage parents to abandon minor children and even infants to a foreign nation are in fact brutal and exploitative. These government policies and programs are allowing parents to justify levels of abuse and neglect that would previously have been considered morally reprehensible.
The next time you are discussing illegal immigration and someone tells you to "think of the children", show them a photo of "Adrian". Then remind them that our government's misguided policies are not helping "the kids"; they are endangering their lives.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
While everyone on both the right and the left tried to catch our collective breaths, pundits were immediately talking about the impact that Cantor's defeat will have on the future of immigration reform. Fox News' Megyn Kelly speculated that Obama will use that famous pen and phone to act unilaterally, which is pretty much his consistent fallback plan every time he encounters any resistance.
I think we can expect to see some executive orders, but the simple truth is that for all of his political posturing, Obama does not have the authority to rewrite the law as much as he would like. The other truth, as I wrote yesterday, is that any executive order is a whole lot easier to get rid of than a law duly passed through Congress. So if we are going to see some action on this issue, it is better to have it be executive action than some massive piece of legislation amounting to a de facto amnesty to try to repeal down the road.
Whenever we talk about illegal immigration, we invariably hear a lot about "the children". Conservatives and liberals tend to disagree about what we should do with children of illegal immigration. Eric Cantor's pro-illegal immigration statements certainly contributed to his loss yesterday. Particularly, his statement about the U.S. wanting "the kids" sparked an outrage when we posted it on Facebook. Only very recently have we begun to understand that the policies and statements of the Obama Administration are actually contributing to the very problem of illegal immigrant children. There is an influx of illegal immigration among minor children prompted by their parents who are listening to our politicians and inferring that their children will get citizenship if they can just land on our soil. The problem is growing exponentially, as we demonstrated in a poster yesterday on The Liberty Project:
Proponents of the Dream Act, and any number of other initiatives to automatically grant citizenship to minor illegal aliens pretend that these proposals are based in compassion, but the truth is that they are leading to abuse, exploitation and abandonment of children on a scale we have not previously experienced. Today, I want to put a face on these numbers--the face of one two-year old abandoned in the desert near Sunland Park, New Mexico on the night of Saturday December 6, 2013.Border Patrol underground motion sensors detected foot steps in the desert area during the night of Saturday, December 6. Agents who responded began following two sets of footprints and discovered the two-year old boy and a man who claimed to be his uncle hiding behind some brush. When agents asked the man for his citizenship, the man fled back across the border abandoning the little boy. KVIA-TV (the local ABC News Affiliate) covered the story:
Click here to access the KVIA Story
The little boy, who spoke only Spanish, identified himself as "Adrian". Agents turned him over to the Las Cruces Police Department who then turned him over to child protective services.
The case of "Adrian" was unusual even for our community because the child was so young. He was abandoned in a desert where temperatures are frequently below freezing at that time of year and lows in the low thirties are normal. The stretch of desert between Anapra and Sunland Park, New Mexico, is a desolate area with relatively few inhabitants. Packs of dogs and coyotes live in the desert along with poisonous snakes. The ways in which an unprotected toddler can die in such a place are almost too many to count. (Interestingly, in the KTSM story linked below, a resident of Anapra said that while she was very surprised to see a toddler abandoned there, she is accustomed to seeing children of six or seven years of age crossing the border alone.)
"Adrian" quickly became a top news story for the El Paso/Las Cruces/Juarez area as officials attempted to identify him and locate his family. Due to intense coverage and photos that were circulated through official news outlets and social networking sites like Facebook, officials were able to locate his family within a few days. Channel 9 News (the NBC affiliate) carried the story that through cooperation with the Mexican Consul, "Adrian"--whose name actually turned out to be Ruben, had been identified and would be reunited with his mother.
Click here to access the KTSM Story
Ruben's mother crossed the U.S-Mexico bridge to take her son back to Durango, Mexico. She refused to answer any questions about how he arrived. Authorities believe that the man who abandoned the child in the U.S. was a smuggler. According to the reports, it is not unusual for smugglers to abandon children; it is also not unusual to hold them for ransom. KVIA reporters were present for the reunion.
Click here to access the story of the reunion
In many ways, "Adrian" was lucky. Because he was so young, authorities made a concerted effort to track down his family and the amount of attention that the case received forced family members to come forward to claim him.
The story of "Adrian" is the natural outcome of the policies of an Administration that tells parents that their children can be used as human anchors to a land brimming with free social programs. Far from compassionate, programs that encourage parents to abandon minor children and even infants to a foreign nation are in fact brutal and exploitative. These government policies and programs are allowing parents to justify levels of abuse and neglect that would previously have been considered morally reprehensible.
The next time you are discussing illegal immigration and someone tells you to "think of the children", show them a photo of "Adrian". Then remind them that our government's misguided policies are not helping "the kids"; they are endangering their lives.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
June 10, 2014
Is the Tea Party Really Dead?
Today on primary day, pundits across America are watching the races of Lindsey Graham and Eric Cantor, in particular, to diagnose the health and well-being of the Tea Party. This morning The Huffington Post sent out an email announcing that the Tea Party was facing big losses today. Such pundits are going to wait until the end of the day to see whether either Graham or Cantor is forced to a runoff to determine whether this modern American conservative movement is officially dead or just on life supports. And many conservatives will buy into the gloom and declare that the movement has failed.
Years ago I read that the main difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals are willing to win incrementally. No one has ever declared American liberalism to be dead, because it wasn't. Even when Tip O'Neill remarked in dismay (and very correctly I might add) that Ronald Reagan had set the left's agenda back thirty years, he never ever doubted that the agenda would ultimately be fulfilled. The left does not worry about losing today, because even if they lose today, they know they can keep pushing their agenda, reworking it, and reorganizing themselves until they finally do win.
The right, on the other hand, takes an "all or nothing" stance. If we don't win everything we want today we declare ourselves the losers. We need to take a page out of the other side's playbook and look at what we have accomplished.
The last five years gave us a GOP House, and could give us a GOP Senate this fall. It is not a perfect House and it will not be a perfect Senate, but grassroots activism has pushed the GOP politicians to the right. The last five years gave us Ted Cruz as the firebrand Senator from Texas and an activist Heritage Foundation that is now refuting big government and corporate lies. The last five years have seen Barack Obama fall from grace as the perceived savior of the universe to poll ratings so low that a majority of Americans would not vote for a congressional candidate he endorsed.
Seventy percent of the new jobs created in this country are being created right here in the state of Texas--where conservatism is alive and well. Texas is a living example that conservative, limited government brings prosperity and business growth. We are a constant reminder that small government works.
The Texas GOP held their state convention last week and voted in a platform that was MORE conservative than the platform two years ago. While many were dismayed and claimed that some of the principles--such as refusal to support drug legalization--are out of touch with modern society, the fact that such a platform could be approved in a state growing as rapidly as ours testifies to the truth that there are still many Americans who embrace conservative values.
What can we take away from all of this? First of all, we need to remember that if we have not gotten everything we wanted, certainly neither has the left. It is because there is no comprehensive climate change bill that Obama is trying to ram his climate change agenda down our throats via onerous EPA regulations. The president is using his "pen and his phone" as fast as he can, but the simple truth is that executive orders and memorandums such as the one he signed today on student loan debt, are much easier to change than actual laws passed by Congress. (In the case of today's memorandum, it will automatically expire at the end of his term). In the end this is the difference between trying to actually repeal a massive law like Obamacare and simply electing a new president who will undo the executive orders.
Second, we need to remember our victories. The runoff election between Chris McDaniel and Thad Cochran is a reminder that any candidate can be unseated; they just need the right opponent. We need to keep working and pushing. Two years ago it appeared that Lt. Governor David Dewhurst was a shoo-in to replace the very moderate old-guard Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson, but then a bright young Senatorial candidate named Ted Cruz captured the spirit of conservatism and the rest was history.
Third, we need to stand strong and stand together. In the same article celebrating the potential defeat of the Tea Party, The Huffington Post lamented that only 1 in 6 Americans is really interested in the 2014 Congressional elections and that the levels of interest are overwhelmingly higher with those who identify as "Tea Party" or "Republican" than those who identify as Democrats. This means that when the dust clears and the GOP has its slate of candidates, the momentum is on our side--if we will get organized, get out and vote. We don't have to win everything to win a lot. 2014 is ours to lose; let's not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
Years ago I read that the main difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals are willing to win incrementally. No one has ever declared American liberalism to be dead, because it wasn't. Even when Tip O'Neill remarked in dismay (and very correctly I might add) that Ronald Reagan had set the left's agenda back thirty years, he never ever doubted that the agenda would ultimately be fulfilled. The left does not worry about losing today, because even if they lose today, they know they can keep pushing their agenda, reworking it, and reorganizing themselves until they finally do win.
The right, on the other hand, takes an "all or nothing" stance. If we don't win everything we want today we declare ourselves the losers. We need to take a page out of the other side's playbook and look at what we have accomplished.
The last five years gave us a GOP House, and could give us a GOP Senate this fall. It is not a perfect House and it will not be a perfect Senate, but grassroots activism has pushed the GOP politicians to the right. The last five years gave us Ted Cruz as the firebrand Senator from Texas and an activist Heritage Foundation that is now refuting big government and corporate lies. The last five years have seen Barack Obama fall from grace as the perceived savior of the universe to poll ratings so low that a majority of Americans would not vote for a congressional candidate he endorsed.
Seventy percent of the new jobs created in this country are being created right here in the state of Texas--where conservatism is alive and well. Texas is a living example that conservative, limited government brings prosperity and business growth. We are a constant reminder that small government works.
The Texas GOP held their state convention last week and voted in a platform that was MORE conservative than the platform two years ago. While many were dismayed and claimed that some of the principles--such as refusal to support drug legalization--are out of touch with modern society, the fact that such a platform could be approved in a state growing as rapidly as ours testifies to the truth that there are still many Americans who embrace conservative values.
What can we take away from all of this? First of all, we need to remember that if we have not gotten everything we wanted, certainly neither has the left. It is because there is no comprehensive climate change bill that Obama is trying to ram his climate change agenda down our throats via onerous EPA regulations. The president is using his "pen and his phone" as fast as he can, but the simple truth is that executive orders and memorandums such as the one he signed today on student loan debt, are much easier to change than actual laws passed by Congress. (In the case of today's memorandum, it will automatically expire at the end of his term). In the end this is the difference between trying to actually repeal a massive law like Obamacare and simply electing a new president who will undo the executive orders.
Second, we need to remember our victories. The runoff election between Chris McDaniel and Thad Cochran is a reminder that any candidate can be unseated; they just need the right opponent. We need to keep working and pushing. Two years ago it appeared that Lt. Governor David Dewhurst was a shoo-in to replace the very moderate old-guard Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson, but then a bright young Senatorial candidate named Ted Cruz captured the spirit of conservatism and the rest was history.
Third, we need to stand strong and stand together. In the same article celebrating the potential defeat of the Tea Party, The Huffington Post lamented that only 1 in 6 Americans is really interested in the 2014 Congressional elections and that the levels of interest are overwhelmingly higher with those who identify as "Tea Party" or "Republican" than those who identify as Democrats. This means that when the dust clears and the GOP has its slate of candidates, the momentum is on our side--if we will get organized, get out and vote. We don't have to win everything to win a lot. 2014 is ours to lose; let's not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
May 21, 2014
The Making of a Nanny State
When I was a child, "mind your own business" was a regular admonition to meddling children and tattletales everywhere. My mother, who raised ten children, had her own version of this saying, "Don't worry about what everyone else is doing, just worry about yourself." That was the America of individual responsibility and individual accountability, where spying on others was considered almost as detestable as blaming every personal failure on the world around us.
Oh how times have changed! This past weekend, Michelle Obama raised eyebrows, and a lot of people's blood pressure, when she suggested that students need to begin monitoring their older family members, friends and acquaintances for comments that are not "racially-sensitive". We shared her remarks in a poster on The Liberty Project's Facebook page and the responses and comments were visceral. The message was clear---older Americans, and by older I mean people over about 35 years of age--still remember when "mind your own business" was the social norm. The poster is below and if you would like to add your own comments to the most shared and commented upon poster we have ever done, feel free:
Comment Here on The Liberty Project Facebook Page
The problem is that American students today are learning a doctrine very different from "mind your own business". Today's students are being indoctrinated into both the nanny and police state model through school practices that teach them that part of their mission on earth is to report their fellow students while also teaching them that they bear no individual responsibility for their own success or failure.
In March of 2014, I came to Dallas to interview for a position as the director of an educational video training program that supplies educational videos for schools across the U.S. and Canada. Twenty-five years ago I taught history and developmental education to freshman students at El Paso Community College for four years, and with that experience and my experience with media and video I was interested in the position and in the whole concept of teacher training and development through packaged videos delivered over a website.
This is what's wrong with America:
As I watched the videos I got a quick lesson in how community colleges educate our young citizens today. In 2014 it apparently takes a village to get an Associates Degree. Teachers are encouraged to volunteer for extra surveillance over their students--to not only note who is coming to class and who isn't as part of a normal attendance roster, but to follow up with students who are not attending, to call them, visit them and dog their steps to determine WHY they are missing class. In fact, everyone is encouraged to follow up with each other. The administrators of the program I saw stated proudly that they encourage the workers in campus housing to report the names of students they see who appear to be cutting class. (Why a community college would have campus housing I cannot even imagine since normally the student body is exclusively from the local community). Students are encouraged to report the names of those who are cutting class. Do you see a classmate crying in the hall or in the restroom? Don't ignore it; don't even just talk to her yourself to find out what's wrong. Tell a counselor. This model of education is taking "see something/say something to a whole new level". It is now everyone's responsibility to watch everyone else, report everyone else, and make sure that everyone else is where they should be doing what they should be doing.
I watched the video in horror remembering my own teaching days. Twenty-five years ago a lot of students fell off the roster during the first sixty days. For a handful, their financial aid did not come through, but for most, they just did not want to attend class. I did not need to pursue those students or track them down to find out why they stopped attending--I already knew. At the beginning of every semester, during the first hour of the first class I asked every student to tell me his or her name, a little about themselves, and what they were hoping to get out of my class. Every year a small but regular percentage answered the same way, "My parents (usually Mom) said I had to get a job or go to college, and I decided this was easier." Invariably, those were the ones who quit attending. Back in those days, students could smoke indoors and as I entered my classroom, I often saw them loitering in the hallway smoking and chatting with friends. Funny, in four years I never met a student who after enrolling and securing the financial aid somehow did not know that he/she was supposed to attend class. Each of those people knew where they were supposed to be; they just chose not to attend. And as far as I was concerned that was their own choice to make. After all, whether or not they attended class neither harmed nor benefited me in any way--I already had my own degree.
It's Everybody's Fault But Mine
In the 2014 model, the student does not have the freedom to merely leave class without fear of harassment, but that also means that he/she does not have any of the final responsibility for personal success or failure. The video I saw featured a young man who had enrolled in class and then immediately quit attending. His reason was that this was his first time away from home, and "you do every bad thing you can think of." Two months later he received a call from the counselor at the college who told him that he had not been in class for two months. "No. I was there yesterday," this kid answered--and apparently he wasn't being flippant--he actually had two months of missing time and really thought he had been in class the day before. Not to worry--his new surrogate parent, the community college district--scooped him up and brought him back to class.
As a teacher, I really have to wonder how much he has learned since returning to class. Is someone whose only interest in leaving home for the first time is to do "every bad thing you can think of" really ready to learn anything? Was he ready to learn when he came back--or just ready to sit in class and get a degree? Why are we as a society wasting taxpayer money on this nonsense?
The System is My Parent
Lest my readers think I am being too harsh, consider that we are replacing the individual family unit with the concept of an all-powerful, all-resourceful bureaucracy as our family. We saw this two years ago in Obama's "Life of Julia" Internet campaign. Julia never has a husband--the government provides her needs and those of her child and essentially takes on the role of husband and provider. In the same way, bureaucracy is taking on the parent role for young people. In the old days prior to government intervention, people went to college because they paid for it themselves or their father paid for it. If they paid for it themselves--worked their way through medical school waiting tables, for example, as did my father's ex-brother-in-law--they did not need any external motivation. Grueling work and sacrifice motivated them to go to class so that one day they could have a better life. If Dad paid for school, most of the time he set some minimum standard of achievement for his child. If his kid's grades dropped below a pre-set standard he cut could off the financial support.. The parent made the student accountable.
Today, government financial aid flows to government schools and government sponsored programs creating a system where there is no internal motivation at all and no human parent figure to externally motivate the student. So the bureaucracy is now the parent. This system of government as a faceless, impersonal husband/father/head-of-household figure creates an illusion of independence while fostering a very real and growing dependency. In 2014, my success or failure in life is determined entirely by the world around me--it is someone else's responsibility to get me up in the morning, make sure I attend class, make sure I visit the counselor, make sure I am on "the right track." Even though at age eighteen I am old enough to enter the military, marry, and, in some states, drink alcohol, I cannot and should not be at all responsible for getting an education. To expect that of me is unreasonable and unfair. And my government "parent" with its unlimited funds derived from the tax base, does not make the kinds of demands on me that a human parent who worked and saved to send me to college would, so I can be independent of the nagging demands of a real parent while growing ever more dependent on the system.
This new attitude of government as parent is permeating every part of student life. When I graduated with both my undergraduate and graduate degree, I had to apply for graduation. When my sister-in-law graduated from UTEP, she had to apply for graduation. Applying to graduate was an odd but necessary step in the academic process. It gave the registrar's office an opportunity to verify that all credits necessary for graduation had been completed. To the graduating student, having actually done the work was just step one in the process; step two was application for graduation.
Now, however, the Texas Community College system has done away with application for graduation. Graduation is automatic; just finish the credits and the community college will take care of the rest. Students don't remember to apply for graduation, and they should not have to be burdened with the extra responsibility of an additional application. No need to worry about anything; the bureaucracy will take care of it; after all, that's what it's there for.
Conservatives in America worry a lot about what their children are learning in school. Parents are worried about secular curriculum, pro-socialist revisionist history and common core math that cannot teach a student how to calculate 32-12. Some even worry about the influence of instructors like the aggressive atheist portrayed by Kevin Sorbo in the new Christian film God's Not Dead or the manipulative and diabolical Kevin Leeds in my newest novel The Force. What many parents do not understand is that the most powerful lessons in big government, the nanny state, and even the police state, are being taught in more subtle ways--in the inner workings of a system that strips away personal responsibility, personal accountability and even personal freedom and privacy and replaces it with collective governance supported by widespread surveillance. The young people graduating today from the school system will remember these subtle, underlying messages long after they have forgotten all of the lectures and the textbooks. And part of them will always believe that it takes a village to accomplish every task and it is part of their civic duty to report to the authorities those who fail to fall into line.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
Oh how times have changed! This past weekend, Michelle Obama raised eyebrows, and a lot of people's blood pressure, when she suggested that students need to begin monitoring their older family members, friends and acquaintances for comments that are not "racially-sensitive". We shared her remarks in a poster on The Liberty Project's Facebook page and the responses and comments were visceral. The message was clear---older Americans, and by older I mean people over about 35 years of age--still remember when "mind your own business" was the social norm. The poster is below and if you would like to add your own comments to the most shared and commented upon poster we have ever done, feel free:
Comment Here on The Liberty Project Facebook PageThe problem is that American students today are learning a doctrine very different from "mind your own business". Today's students are being indoctrinated into both the nanny and police state model through school practices that teach them that part of their mission on earth is to report their fellow students while also teaching them that they bear no individual responsibility for their own success or failure.
In March of 2014, I came to Dallas to interview for a position as the director of an educational video training program that supplies educational videos for schools across the U.S. and Canada. Twenty-five years ago I taught history and developmental education to freshman students at El Paso Community College for four years, and with that experience and my experience with media and video I was interested in the position and in the whole concept of teacher training and development through packaged videos delivered over a website.
This is what's wrong with America:
As I watched the videos I got a quick lesson in how community colleges educate our young citizens today. In 2014 it apparently takes a village to get an Associates Degree. Teachers are encouraged to volunteer for extra surveillance over their students--to not only note who is coming to class and who isn't as part of a normal attendance roster, but to follow up with students who are not attending, to call them, visit them and dog their steps to determine WHY they are missing class. In fact, everyone is encouraged to follow up with each other. The administrators of the program I saw stated proudly that they encourage the workers in campus housing to report the names of students they see who appear to be cutting class. (Why a community college would have campus housing I cannot even imagine since normally the student body is exclusively from the local community). Students are encouraged to report the names of those who are cutting class. Do you see a classmate crying in the hall or in the restroom? Don't ignore it; don't even just talk to her yourself to find out what's wrong. Tell a counselor. This model of education is taking "see something/say something to a whole new level". It is now everyone's responsibility to watch everyone else, report everyone else, and make sure that everyone else is where they should be doing what they should be doing.
I watched the video in horror remembering my own teaching days. Twenty-five years ago a lot of students fell off the roster during the first sixty days. For a handful, their financial aid did not come through, but for most, they just did not want to attend class. I did not need to pursue those students or track them down to find out why they stopped attending--I already knew. At the beginning of every semester, during the first hour of the first class I asked every student to tell me his or her name, a little about themselves, and what they were hoping to get out of my class. Every year a small but regular percentage answered the same way, "My parents (usually Mom) said I had to get a job or go to college, and I decided this was easier." Invariably, those were the ones who quit attending. Back in those days, students could smoke indoors and as I entered my classroom, I often saw them loitering in the hallway smoking and chatting with friends. Funny, in four years I never met a student who after enrolling and securing the financial aid somehow did not know that he/she was supposed to attend class. Each of those people knew where they were supposed to be; they just chose not to attend. And as far as I was concerned that was their own choice to make. After all, whether or not they attended class neither harmed nor benefited me in any way--I already had my own degree.
It's Everybody's Fault But Mine
In the 2014 model, the student does not have the freedom to merely leave class without fear of harassment, but that also means that he/she does not have any of the final responsibility for personal success or failure. The video I saw featured a young man who had enrolled in class and then immediately quit attending. His reason was that this was his first time away from home, and "you do every bad thing you can think of." Two months later he received a call from the counselor at the college who told him that he had not been in class for two months. "No. I was there yesterday," this kid answered--and apparently he wasn't being flippant--he actually had two months of missing time and really thought he had been in class the day before. Not to worry--his new surrogate parent, the community college district--scooped him up and brought him back to class.
As a teacher, I really have to wonder how much he has learned since returning to class. Is someone whose only interest in leaving home for the first time is to do "every bad thing you can think of" really ready to learn anything? Was he ready to learn when he came back--or just ready to sit in class and get a degree? Why are we as a society wasting taxpayer money on this nonsense?
The System is My Parent
Lest my readers think I am being too harsh, consider that we are replacing the individual family unit with the concept of an all-powerful, all-resourceful bureaucracy as our family. We saw this two years ago in Obama's "Life of Julia" Internet campaign. Julia never has a husband--the government provides her needs and those of her child and essentially takes on the role of husband and provider. In the same way, bureaucracy is taking on the parent role for young people. In the old days prior to government intervention, people went to college because they paid for it themselves or their father paid for it. If they paid for it themselves--worked their way through medical school waiting tables, for example, as did my father's ex-brother-in-law--they did not need any external motivation. Grueling work and sacrifice motivated them to go to class so that one day they could have a better life. If Dad paid for school, most of the time he set some minimum standard of achievement for his child. If his kid's grades dropped below a pre-set standard he cut could off the financial support.. The parent made the student accountable.
Today, government financial aid flows to government schools and government sponsored programs creating a system where there is no internal motivation at all and no human parent figure to externally motivate the student. So the bureaucracy is now the parent. This system of government as a faceless, impersonal husband/father/head-of-household figure creates an illusion of independence while fostering a very real and growing dependency. In 2014, my success or failure in life is determined entirely by the world around me--it is someone else's responsibility to get me up in the morning, make sure I attend class, make sure I visit the counselor, make sure I am on "the right track." Even though at age eighteen I am old enough to enter the military, marry, and, in some states, drink alcohol, I cannot and should not be at all responsible for getting an education. To expect that of me is unreasonable and unfair. And my government "parent" with its unlimited funds derived from the tax base, does not make the kinds of demands on me that a human parent who worked and saved to send me to college would, so I can be independent of the nagging demands of a real parent while growing ever more dependent on the system.
This new attitude of government as parent is permeating every part of student life. When I graduated with both my undergraduate and graduate degree, I had to apply for graduation. When my sister-in-law graduated from UTEP, she had to apply for graduation. Applying to graduate was an odd but necessary step in the academic process. It gave the registrar's office an opportunity to verify that all credits necessary for graduation had been completed. To the graduating student, having actually done the work was just step one in the process; step two was application for graduation.
Now, however, the Texas Community College system has done away with application for graduation. Graduation is automatic; just finish the credits and the community college will take care of the rest. Students don't remember to apply for graduation, and they should not have to be burdened with the extra responsibility of an additional application. No need to worry about anything; the bureaucracy will take care of it; after all, that's what it's there for.
Conservatives in America worry a lot about what their children are learning in school. Parents are worried about secular curriculum, pro-socialist revisionist history and common core math that cannot teach a student how to calculate 32-12. Some even worry about the influence of instructors like the aggressive atheist portrayed by Kevin Sorbo in the new Christian film God's Not Dead or the manipulative and diabolical Kevin Leeds in my newest novel The Force. What many parents do not understand is that the most powerful lessons in big government, the nanny state, and even the police state, are being taught in more subtle ways--in the inner workings of a system that strips away personal responsibility, personal accountability and even personal freedom and privacy and replaces it with collective governance supported by widespread surveillance. The young people graduating today from the school system will remember these subtle, underlying messages long after they have forgotten all of the lectures and the textbooks. And part of them will always believe that it takes a village to accomplish every task and it is part of their civic duty to report to the authorities those who fail to fall into line.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
May 14, 2014
How Green Was My Valley
Fifteen years ago I relieved stress by strolling along the banks of the rushing canals filled with water from the Rio Grande. In Southern New Mexico, no matter how hot the day is, the evenings are generally about 20 degrees cooler. When I finished work, I could go walking and hear the sound of the water. Residents of the whole community could be seen near the levies--children played along side the canals and splashed and swam in the often very unsanitary water. The smell of river water mixed with soil and chemical fertilizers filled the air with a distinctive, pungent perfume. As the summer went on, the smells of the crops--onions in the fields, alfalfa in bloom, and chilies, added their own touch to the warm, spicy fragrance of the valley. Ducks swam in pairs up and down the canals; shy water rats hid from view at the sound of human voices. The river banks and the canals that carried precious river water to the farmers' fields teemed with life--human, fowl and animal. The same river occasionally brought death--the canals were so filled with water and the currents so powerful that even strong swimmers occasionally drowned. There might be only a few constants in life, but the rushing water entering the gates of the canals and the odor of the river were among them.
My memories of the river--the heat, the wildlife, the smells---are so vivid that it is sad for me to see what it has become today. For the last few years, rather than a vibrant, rushing water source, we have had merely a dry riverbed. An observer would think that this river had been dry for decades. Yet it really only started a few years ago--when the federal government decided that water could not be released from the Rio Grande more than a few times a year because of drought conditions. Year after year we heard the same story--excessively warm winters left too little snow on the Colorado Rockies which did not sufficiently replenish the river, so the Elephant Butte Irrigation District could not release the water to the farmers. This led to the farmers putting down additional wells and pumping out the groundwater, just as it has in California. And just as it has in California, this pumping of groundwater has led to dropping water tables and water shortages. I was horrified to see a story last month about how the pumping of groundwater in California is actually causing the ground to drop 1 foot per year. I was particularly affected by the news that the sinking ground can actually prevent the underground aquifers from refilling. When I shared this story, my brother Chris, who is a year younger than I, commented on Facebook, "A lot of young people don't remember when our river had water in it."
Photo of the Rio Grande riverbed taken April 2014.
The area with the grass is the banks of the river. The sandy area is the bed.
At first, I was shocked, but over the weeks that followed I heard his comments echoed by other residents of the valley--the young people don't remember when the river bed was not just a dry bed with tire tracks in the middle. For them, there is no frustration with a government bureaucracy that is shutting off more and more access to water--they have no memories of a time when the water was plentiful.
For my part, I am amazed at the hypocrisy of an Administration that pretends to have unprecedented concern for the environment and yet takes so many actions that harm the environment. In diverting the river, the government has not only harmed the residents and the farmers; it has also harmed the wildlife that depended on the river for survival. And even though this past winter was extremely cold and much of the northern part of the country was blanketed with snow, the Elephant Butte Irrigation District announced in the spring that it would release water only once or twice through the irrigation season--forcing the farmers to continue to pump water from the river, dropping the water table and depriving small farmers and private residences of access to water for hours and sometimes days on end.
And the attacks on New Mexico's water are not limited to just those of us who have lived within walking distance of the river. My brother Chris frequently camps in the Gila Wilderness and the National Forests in Western and Southern New Mexico, respectively, where farmers and ranchers have traditionally allowed their cattle to drink from the abundant streams. But in the last few weeks, the U.S. Forest Service has set up gates in the Lincoln National Forest in Otero County locking out the cattle and forbidding access to the water. Their grounds for doing so are that cattle are a "non-native species" and they need to protect the streams. What nonsense! Nearly all domestic animals are "non-native" but essential nevertheless. Without water the cattle are dying. The Otero County Commissioners are siding with cattle ranchers and are trying to get a resolution passed to allow the Otero County sheriff's department to cut off the Forest Service's locks on the gates. Here's hoping they act quickly while there are cattle left to save. The ABC affiliate in El Paso covered this story last week and their coverage can be seen here.
What is happening to the valley, and the state, I once called home is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy that is being played out all over the western states as the federal government seizes control of water rights, through dams and gates and locks. Last month many of us watched in horror as the BLM sent snipers to Cliven Bundy's ranch to round up his cattle because of supposed unpaid grazing fees. Bundy's story made international news, but for every Cliven Bundy there are thousands more unseen citizens who are being forced to sell their property and quietly leave because they cannot access water. There are hundreds of ranchers who are being denied access to land and water they have traditionally used to sustain their livestock. The American West is being transformed before our eyes from a place of hope, prosperity and opportunity into a desperate dust bowl by an Administration bent on controlling its most precious resource--its water--at the expense of everyone and everything. And we who are watching are powerless to stop the destruction of what was once some of the most desirable land in our nation. The green valleys of the west are soon to be lost except in the memories of the people of my generation, who will occasionally close our eyes and recall the sights and sounds of the river.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
My memories of the river--the heat, the wildlife, the smells---are so vivid that it is sad for me to see what it has become today. For the last few years, rather than a vibrant, rushing water source, we have had merely a dry riverbed. An observer would think that this river had been dry for decades. Yet it really only started a few years ago--when the federal government decided that water could not be released from the Rio Grande more than a few times a year because of drought conditions. Year after year we heard the same story--excessively warm winters left too little snow on the Colorado Rockies which did not sufficiently replenish the river, so the Elephant Butte Irrigation District could not release the water to the farmers. This led to the farmers putting down additional wells and pumping out the groundwater, just as it has in California. And just as it has in California, this pumping of groundwater has led to dropping water tables and water shortages. I was horrified to see a story last month about how the pumping of groundwater in California is actually causing the ground to drop 1 foot per year. I was particularly affected by the news that the sinking ground can actually prevent the underground aquifers from refilling. When I shared this story, my brother Chris, who is a year younger than I, commented on Facebook, "A lot of young people don't remember when our river had water in it."
Photo of the Rio Grande riverbed taken April 2014.
The area with the grass is the banks of the river. The sandy area is the bed.
At first, I was shocked, but over the weeks that followed I heard his comments echoed by other residents of the valley--the young people don't remember when the river bed was not just a dry bed with tire tracks in the middle. For them, there is no frustration with a government bureaucracy that is shutting off more and more access to water--they have no memories of a time when the water was plentiful.
For my part, I am amazed at the hypocrisy of an Administration that pretends to have unprecedented concern for the environment and yet takes so many actions that harm the environment. In diverting the river, the government has not only harmed the residents and the farmers; it has also harmed the wildlife that depended on the river for survival. And even though this past winter was extremely cold and much of the northern part of the country was blanketed with snow, the Elephant Butte Irrigation District announced in the spring that it would release water only once or twice through the irrigation season--forcing the farmers to continue to pump water from the river, dropping the water table and depriving small farmers and private residences of access to water for hours and sometimes days on end.
And the attacks on New Mexico's water are not limited to just those of us who have lived within walking distance of the river. My brother Chris frequently camps in the Gila Wilderness and the National Forests in Western and Southern New Mexico, respectively, where farmers and ranchers have traditionally allowed their cattle to drink from the abundant streams. But in the last few weeks, the U.S. Forest Service has set up gates in the Lincoln National Forest in Otero County locking out the cattle and forbidding access to the water. Their grounds for doing so are that cattle are a "non-native species" and they need to protect the streams. What nonsense! Nearly all domestic animals are "non-native" but essential nevertheless. Without water the cattle are dying. The Otero County Commissioners are siding with cattle ranchers and are trying to get a resolution passed to allow the Otero County sheriff's department to cut off the Forest Service's locks on the gates. Here's hoping they act quickly while there are cattle left to save. The ABC affiliate in El Paso covered this story last week and their coverage can be seen here.
What is happening to the valley, and the state, I once called home is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy that is being played out all over the western states as the federal government seizes control of water rights, through dams and gates and locks. Last month many of us watched in horror as the BLM sent snipers to Cliven Bundy's ranch to round up his cattle because of supposed unpaid grazing fees. Bundy's story made international news, but for every Cliven Bundy there are thousands more unseen citizens who are being forced to sell their property and quietly leave because they cannot access water. There are hundreds of ranchers who are being denied access to land and water they have traditionally used to sustain their livestock. The American West is being transformed before our eyes from a place of hope, prosperity and opportunity into a desperate dust bowl by an Administration bent on controlling its most precious resource--its water--at the expense of everyone and everything. And we who are watching are powerless to stop the destruction of what was once some of the most desirable land in our nation. The green valleys of the west are soon to be lost except in the memories of the people of my generation, who will occasionally close our eyes and recall the sights and sounds of the river.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
April 16, 2014
Naboth's Vineyard--2014
The Old Testament book of I Kings records that King Ahab wanted the property of his neighbor, Naboth, because it was conveniently located to the palace and would make a lovely garden. He approached Naboth repeatedly and requested that Naboth sell to him or trade the land in exchange for another parcel, but Naboth refused, saying that the land in question had been in his family for generations. Finally, Ahab's wife Jezebel told her husband that she would get the property for him. Jezebel hired false witnesses to accuse Naboth of cursing God and the king, and then she put him on trial and had him executed. The Bible records that in response to this crime, God gave the following message to the prophet Elijah, "Go to Samaria to meet with King Ahab. He will be at Naboth's vineyard, taking possession of it. Give him this message from Me: 'Isn't killing Naboth bad enough? Must you rob him too?'" I Kings 21:17. I was reminded of this story last weekend as the nation watched the tense standoff at the Bundy Ranch. As heavily militarized federal agents surrounded the ranch with snipers and cut off communications on Friday night, I was, along with millions of Americans, praying that this situation would be resolved without violence. I was proud of the militia who went to the Ranch and grateful for the intervention of regular Americans who took up the cause of the life and property of a man they have never met as their own. Over the past few days, there have been numerous stories about the Bundy Ranch. The story of Bundy's "crimes" which precipitated such an unprecedented use of force evolved from a claim that his cattle were trampling desert tortoises to a government assertion that Bundy owes $1 million in grazing fees. Soon darker more disturbing reports began to surface asserting Harry Reid is trying to procure the Bundy Ranch for a deal that his son has brokered with the Chinese to put a green energy plant on the property. Other articles, such as this one in The American Thinker, link the Bundy troubles to a fight over groundwater--a lifeline in the West. What is clear is that the Bundy Ranch, like Naboth's vineyard, was passed down through the Bundy family for generations. Like Naboth, they have refused pressures to sell. The grazing fees he has refused to pay were instituted in 1993 and have accumulated to the tune of $1 million dollars. And like Naboth, Bundy is suffering the full force of the government because of his failure to cooperate. As the days pass and this situation calms, we as Americans need to take a close look at what nearly happened this past weekend in Nevada. Private property rights are central to all our other freedoms. Those of us who are tempted to assign the blame in this situation to Cliven Bundy need to remember that our traditional way of life is being swallowed by a massive bureaucracy of new rules and regulations. Over criminalization is turning once ordinary activities into crimes. In a society where the executive branch of government has the right to use the "pen and phone" to write laws and regulations without any checks and where the U.S. Attorney-General claims that he has the right to pick and choose which of our duly-passed laws he enforces, no one is safe. Some bureaucrat can come for our homes, our land, and our property simply by writing a new regulation and saying that we are out of compliance with the law. I hope that Americans will not forget Cliven Bundy, his ranch, or the bravery of the militias who were willing to risk their lives to protect a stranger. Most of all I hope that Americans will not forget the greater threat that this incident exposes. And I hope that they will not forget the Nevada politicians who refused to help, and Harry Reid who, whether the stories linking him to the land deal are true or not, refused to use his considerable authority to lift a finger to help a resident of his state suffering from a clear abuse of government power. I hope that in the fall elections, American will begin to look at the true cost of over-arching government and demand better for this country.
Private Property rights in America are under attack like never before. Find out why in this short video presentation.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
Private Property rights in America are under attack like never before. Find out why in this short video presentation.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
March 28, 2014
Agenda 21: Coming to a Neighborhood Near You Courtesy of Hud's Fair Housing Rules--Part II
Last year I wrote a post about how the Department of Housing and Urban Development was promoting Agenda 21 through new fair housing rules. In that post, I cited HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan's speech at the NAACP convention last June in which he promised to counter a "subtle" form of discrimination against minorities and the underprivileged:
For anyone unaware, Agenda 21 is a 1992 United Nations' policy document that calls for using radical environmental initiatives to destroy the wealth and affluence of Western nations--particularly the United States. Agenda 21 proponents call for an end to private property ownership and national sovereignty. People are to be packed into densely crowded urban areas which the document calls "human settlements" and much of the U.S. is to be rewilded into national forests and nature preserves. Western wealth and affluence are the enemy of global environmentalism, and the processes which produce these, including individual rights, national sovereignty, the Constitution and our entire way of life as Americans has to be destroyed for the goals of Agenda 21 to be fully implemented. The latest and most disturbing effort I have seen to implement the "sustainable" living initiatives is the new HUD Fair Housing Rule announced on July 16. 2013, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, speaking at the NAACP convention on that date, announced a new series of Fair Housing initiatives designed to counter what he calls a "subtle" form of discrimination against minorities and the underprivileged:
This morning, The American Thinker had an excellent article on Donovan's enforcement of this new initiative. In Westchester County, NY, HUD has forced the community to build 750 new units of housing designated for low income minorities or else face fines. Two years into this project, with 206 units built,, HUD is now saying that the county has failed to show how the new housing will end discrimination. HUD is insisting that half of the new housing have three bedrooms, which will greatly increase the cost of the units in a part of the country which already has some of the nation's highest property taxes.
Perhaps more seriously, Donavan's HUD is claiming that it should be illegal for landlords to refuse to accept Section 8 vouchers to offset the cost of rental housing. As all landlords know, Section 8 tenants are notorious for destroying property. The tenants are passing along the cost to the government and typically leave the properties trashed. To force landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers is a huge attack on private property rights. This has nothing to do with racial integration--rather it is a progressive forced income integration that only a liberal socialist would even want.
I have worked on Section 8 housing financing in my previous life as a mortgage broker. The tenant's portion of a rent bill can be as little as $16.00 a month for an apartment costing about $500.00 a month. The government (you) is/are paying the difference for the tenant. Expanding this program to make it mandatory in all communities is not only bad for landlords, it's also really, really bad for taxpayers. And expanding it to include some of the most expensive and exclusive zip codes in the U.S.in the interests of diversity is purely ludicrous. Not only is Donovan's agenda an assault on private property rights; it is an assault on common sense and fiscal responsibility.Even though George H.W. Bush signed onto the principles of Agenda 21 and every U.S. President since has upheld and furthered its objectives, without a national climate change bill, those initiatives have not moved very far forward. That makes what the Obama Administration is doing now so crucial--and so scary. By using HUD as a hammer to proactively charge developers of communities with discrimination if they do not comply with Smart Growth and sustainable housing initiatives, the President is implementing Agenda 21's housing policies without the need of Congressional approval. HUD's new rule can even be used to bully states like Alabama that have passed laws rejecting Agenda 21. By using Fair Housing laws as an enforcement piece, the President can make sure that his radical initiatives for remaking this country are enforced in every city and every state, regardless of what we the people think. We need to stand up and pull the mask off his policies and expose them for what they are--a radical attempt to remake our society. The Obama Administration is using federal agencies to push a globalist agenda that is at odds with personal liberty, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights and all of the freedoms that these documents afford us. We need to demand that our Congressional representatives hold him accountable for his actions. And we need to do it sooner rather than later, while we still have freedoms to protect. Find out more about Agenda 21, what it means, how it is being implemented, and what you can do about it by watching this video: Agenda 21: Bankrupting America into Utopia One City at a Time.
Read The Planner for 0.99 on Kindle March 28-29 and see the real cost of trading liberty for security.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
For anyone unaware, Agenda 21 is a 1992 United Nations' policy document that calls for using radical environmental initiatives to destroy the wealth and affluence of Western nations--particularly the United States. Agenda 21 proponents call for an end to private property ownership and national sovereignty. People are to be packed into densely crowded urban areas which the document calls "human settlements" and much of the U.S. is to be rewilded into national forests and nature preserves. Western wealth and affluence are the enemy of global environmentalism, and the processes which produce these, including individual rights, national sovereignty, the Constitution and our entire way of life as Americans has to be destroyed for the goals of Agenda 21 to be fully implemented. The latest and most disturbing effort I have seen to implement the "sustainable" living initiatives is the new HUD Fair Housing Rule announced on July 16. 2013, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, speaking at the NAACP convention on that date, announced a new series of Fair Housing initiatives designed to counter what he calls a "subtle" form of discrimination against minorities and the underprivileged:
Having worked in real estate finance for 15 years, I can say for a certainty that Fair Housing laws that have been in place for over 40 years protect minorities against discrimination in housing choices. There are laws against redlining (refusing to lend in neighborhoods comprised of primarily one ethnic group), laws against refusing to lease or sell to people of a specific ethnic group, and numerous fair lending laws. Donovan knows perfectly well that minorities in the US who are well qualified--with good credit and high incomes--are able to purchase homes wherever they choose and obtain excellent financing. The issues come into play with borrowers who have poor credit history, sketchy job history, or both. What Donovan is talking about is not traditional Fair Housing laws, but rather the type of mixed income housing that Smart Growth, Sustainability and New Urbanism require. Because Agenda 21 requires that people live very densely together, it seeks to make high income people neighbors with low income people--an arrangement which usually is pleasing to neither group. Plus, Smart Growth and Sustainable development city plans have the effect of making housing units very expensive, which hits low income and lower middle income families hardest. So rather than improving the situations of lower income people, Smart Growth policies tend to make their housing situations worse.Today, it’s about more than just addressing outright discrimination and access to the housing itself. It’s also about giving every community access to important neighborhood amenities that can make a tremendous difference in a person’s life outcome. I’m talking about good schools, safe streets, jobs, grocery stores, healthcare and a host of other important factors. To help families gain this access – HUD is working to strengthen our stewardship of federal dollars to maximize the impact they have on communities in advancing fair housing goals. As all of you know, HUD’s programs provide funding to partners at the state and local level. As part of the Fair Housing Act—for members of the protected classes—these partners have an obligation to affirmatively further fair housing opportunities – otherwise known as AFFH. But as you and many others, including the Government Accountability Office, have noted, this has proven largely to be a meaningless paper exercise without any teeth. The process has long been broken and we’re determined to fix it and help it reach its full promise. That’s why I am proud to announce that this week we will publish a new rule to bring affirmatively further fair housing into the 21st century. This rule focuses on the traditional tenets of discrimination – and also gets at the essential issues of access to opportunity so imperative to 21st century equity. Specifically, this new rule will: • provide a clear definition of what it means to affirmatively further fair housing; • outline a standard framework with well-defined parameters; and • offer targeted guidance and assistance to help grantees complete this assessment. Perhaps most important—for the first time ever—HUD is providing data for every neighborhood in the nation, detailing what access African American families, and other members of protected classes, have to the community assets I talked about earlier – including jobs, schools and transit. With this data and the improved AFFH process, we can expand access to high opportunity neighborhoods and draw attention to investment possibilities in underserved communities. Make no mistake: this is a big deal. With the HUD budget alone, we are talking about billions of dollars. And as you know, decades ago, these funds were used to support discrimination. Now, they will be used to expand opportunity and bring communities closer to the American Dream.
This morning, The American Thinker had an excellent article on Donovan's enforcement of this new initiative. In Westchester County, NY, HUD has forced the community to build 750 new units of housing designated for low income minorities or else face fines. Two years into this project, with 206 units built,, HUD is now saying that the county has failed to show how the new housing will end discrimination. HUD is insisting that half of the new housing have three bedrooms, which will greatly increase the cost of the units in a part of the country which already has some of the nation's highest property taxes.
Perhaps more seriously, Donavan's HUD is claiming that it should be illegal for landlords to refuse to accept Section 8 vouchers to offset the cost of rental housing. As all landlords know, Section 8 tenants are notorious for destroying property. The tenants are passing along the cost to the government and typically leave the properties trashed. To force landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers is a huge attack on private property rights. This has nothing to do with racial integration--rather it is a progressive forced income integration that only a liberal socialist would even want.
I have worked on Section 8 housing financing in my previous life as a mortgage broker. The tenant's portion of a rent bill can be as little as $16.00 a month for an apartment costing about $500.00 a month. The government (you) is/are paying the difference for the tenant. Expanding this program to make it mandatory in all communities is not only bad for landlords, it's also really, really bad for taxpayers. And expanding it to include some of the most expensive and exclusive zip codes in the U.S.in the interests of diversity is purely ludicrous. Not only is Donovan's agenda an assault on private property rights; it is an assault on common sense and fiscal responsibility.Even though George H.W. Bush signed onto the principles of Agenda 21 and every U.S. President since has upheld and furthered its objectives, without a national climate change bill, those initiatives have not moved very far forward. That makes what the Obama Administration is doing now so crucial--and so scary. By using HUD as a hammer to proactively charge developers of communities with discrimination if they do not comply with Smart Growth and sustainable housing initiatives, the President is implementing Agenda 21's housing policies without the need of Congressional approval. HUD's new rule can even be used to bully states like Alabama that have passed laws rejecting Agenda 21. By using Fair Housing laws as an enforcement piece, the President can make sure that his radical initiatives for remaking this country are enforced in every city and every state, regardless of what we the people think. We need to stand up and pull the mask off his policies and expose them for what they are--a radical attempt to remake our society. The Obama Administration is using federal agencies to push a globalist agenda that is at odds with personal liberty, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights and all of the freedoms that these documents afford us. We need to demand that our Congressional representatives hold him accountable for his actions. And we need to do it sooner rather than later, while we still have freedoms to protect. Find out more about Agenda 21, what it means, how it is being implemented, and what you can do about it by watching this video: Agenda 21: Bankrupting America into Utopia One City at a Time.
Read The Planner for 0.99 on Kindle March 28-29 and see the real cost of trading liberty for security.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
March 18, 2014
The Obama Administration's War on Prosperity and Western Civilization
I have written over the last few weeks about the declaration of war on prosperity and affluence that is the Obama Administration's current climate change policy. In a truly ironic twist, Secretary of State John Kerry called man-made climate change a "weapon of mass destruction" using language that brings to mind the decades long-war in Iraq that so many liberals decry.
The truth is that the "war" on climate change is costing our country as much as some of the wars fought on battlefields. To date, the Obama Administration has spent $120 billion combating man-made climate change, according to Congressman James Inhofe. That is enough money to buy 1400 F35 jets, as we illustrated in Liberty Project poster earlier this week:
The very thought that human beings can determine the weather patterns used to be the subject of bad jokes--"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it. " Now climate is being used an excuse to advance a radical environmental agenda which is simply old-time Marxism repackaged and renamed.
I have already written about the threat to water usage and rights in the Western states via the Administration's new "climate hubs" and over the next few weeks I will talk about the other threats from the climate change agenda being forced on us. But this week, I thought it might be wise to remind everyone of the underlying issues in the Administration's ever-expanding push for climate-change legislation. This is not about cleaning up the environment or saving the planet for our kids--it is about advancing the United Nation's radical environmental Agenda 21 and destroying Western Civilization.
In 1992, the United Nation's Earth Summit drafted a policy document called Agenda 21 which calls for "a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced--a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources...This shift will demand a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level."
For the past twenty-one years, all of us have experienced almost daily indoctrination into global environmentalism and "sustainability" as this "profound reorientation of human society" works its way into our daily lives.
To really understand what the global environmental movement is doing, we need to accept that all of us who live in wealthy developed nations, and particularly everyone in the U.S., are the enemy as far as the U.N and environmentalists are concerned. The major threat to the world's survival is Western affluence and Western lifestyles. According to environmentalists, we produce too much, and we consume too much because of economic systems which foster prosperity. This prosperity and our levels of consumption and production cause other nations to want to emulate us and to produce and consume at equal levels. But this aspiration for a better life is "unsustainable" and will lead to global disaster, according to climate change proponents. The only solution to this problem is to reduce the living standards of Western nations to the levels of third world countries so that all of the world is in an equal state of misery.
In 2012, the Earth Summit and Agenda 21 had a twentieth anniversary party in Rio de Janeiro where the U.N. reaffirmed its dedication to global environmentalism in a new document called The Future We Want.
The Future We Want is a 21st century message with 21st century messaging. It has its own Twitter hashtag--#futurewewant--and links to live streaming UN web TV with messages from the current Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, covering everything from his zero hunger challenge to the eradication of poverty worldwide to his goals for a more sustainable future. Last year, China asked 230 of its citizens to participate in a video titled, "The Future We Want 2032" which they stated their dreams for the next two decades.
I really encourage all Americans to watch this short film, 2032: The Future We Want, which includes young Chinese people expressing hope for a future in which national boundaries no longer exist and they are able to speak Chinese with people from all over the world. The film takes on special significance when we recognize that China's one-child policies are a model for the global environmental movement and that a primary goal of the "sustainable" movement is to transition China to the world's premier economy.
Here in the U.S., Agenda 21 is being implemented locally, in cities and towns across America that have joined ICLEI. However, it is also being implemented through mandates from the EPA, the USDA, various grant programs which provide funds for "smart growth" and executive orders signed by President Obama. This piecemeal enactment is necessary because we have failed to pass a federal climate change bill which would allow proponents of climate change legislation a huge framework in which to enact all of the elements at once. Agenda 21 calls for each of the 177 countries which signed onto the treaty to enact a federal bill implementing its goals.
Although there are hundreds of U.N. programs linked in some way to climate change and Agenda 21, I have reduced the U.N.'s policies down to five basic stages of implementation. Many of these are happening simultaneously.
Stage One--Control of Housing and Transportation
This stage is being implemented through "Smart Growth" and Smart Code which rezones areas of cities to mandate small, urban mixed-use housing with retail on the bottom of buildings and residents packed into tiny housing over the stores. Although Smart Growth advances on a local level, the Obama Administration is openly using all of the tools at its disposal to get rid of suburbs and "Manhattanize" America. Closely related to this is an increased emphasis on public transportation through grants and funding designed to increase the usage of public transportation while the EPA and the government raise fuel efficiency standards on cars that will price lower-income people out of cars totally. Also closely related is higher energy prices which make driving automobiles unaffordable--for example, refusing to approve the Keystone Pipeline. Obama's "war on coal" will increase the cost of heating and cooling single family homes to the point where they are no longer cost effective. These policies, combined with new restrictions on mortgage credit which take effect in January of 2014, high property taxes produced by urban redevelopment projects, and high housing costs produced by land rationing, will all serve to move people out of individual housing and into tightly packed "sustainable" human settlements. A primary goal of Agenda 21 is the abolition of all private property, and getting people out of houses is key to the accomplishment of that goal.
Stage Two: Global Arms Control and Disarmament
This stage is essential because of potential fallout from the remaining three stages. It is no accident that Obama began his second term by demanding new gun control measures and a national gun registry. On an international front, he is also insisting that we reduce our nuclear arsenal even as other nations like South Korea and Iran are working to develop their own nuclear weapons. Last month the U.N. announced that it was Iran's "turn" to chair the nuclear disarmament conference. In an ironic twist worthy of the world's great literature, the treaty that is supposed to protect the civilized world from "rogue nations" is being overseen by the leader of one of the most dangerous nations on the planet. But Obama is a "citizen of the world" and he understands that the decline of the U.S. is necessary to the accomplishment of the U.N.'s greater goals, so he does not mind crippling the defenses of our nation or our citizens. The weaker we are, the better.
Stage Three--Control of Food Production and Agriculture
"Sustainable" agriculture and food rationing is being preached everywhere right now. In a very misleading ad, ConAgra Foods is currently implying that 1 in 5 children in the United States is hungry. According to the USDA, 1 in 5 American children is "food insecure" without hunger or threat of hunger--which means that their families are concerned about the family finances as it relates to food. Only just over 1% of children is hungry, according to the USDA. One in three American children is obese--which in the doublespeak world of global environmentalism is actually the same thing as being hungry. All of this propaganda is being pushed out to persuade Americans that we need to give up our high output, high consumption ways of producing food in exchange for "sustainable" farming systems where we will only consume food that is grown locally and is in season. This goes back to the theory of over consumption and over production that I discussed at the beginning of this post. Current food systems produce plenty of food, but those methods are "unsustainable." As Babtune Osotimehin, a Nigerian doctor serving as the executive director of the UNFPA, said a few weeks ago at the Women Deliver conference in Kuala Lumpur, "A homeless person in Denmark actually consumes more than a family of six in Tanzania." And since the biggest problem that the world is facing now is that "every young person who grows up in Tanzania wants to drive an SUV" the solution is to ration and create scarcity until all of us are starving, rather than to try to lift up the standards of farming in Tanzania so that they can be better nourished.
The U.N.'s Zero Hunger Campaign is the newest program dedicated to ending over-consumption and food waste. On June 5, for World Environment Day, U.N. officials asked people worldwide to pledge to reduce their own food consumption. I only hope that everyone who signed the pledge understands what they are really signing on for and the profound and dire consequences of trading systems of food production which have historically produced an abundance of food for systems which have historically produced famine and starvation.
Stage Four--Worldwide Population Control
There is a reason that when President Obama spoke at the Planned Parenthood Conference he invoked God's blessing on them. The global environmental movement says that the world cannot support more than between 1 and 2 billion people. This is one reason that China is heralded as a hero in the Globalist New World Order. Their "one child policy" combined with forced abortions makes them perfect country for other nations to pattern themselves after.
Ted Turner, founder of CNN, has said that if we do not reduce the world's population, within 30 or 40 years the planet will be eight degrees hotter, and all of the people left on it will be cannibals. According to Turner, we MUST reduce the population of the world to prevent this. Turner says this can be done voluntarily, just as it is in China.Of course, China's policies are not voluntary. Last year China made international headlines for the forced abortion of a young married woman who already had a child but had decided she wanted another one. Her dead baby was laid beside her in the hospital bed where she was recovering, and the photos of her lying next to her forcibly aborted child soon went viral and resulted in three Chinese officials being fired.
Yet, at the Women Deliver Conference a few weeks ago, Princeton professor Peter Singer advocated new policies where women are not allowed to have children for the good of the environment. Singer maintains that even with more reproductive choices and family planning, too many women are choosing to have children, and we are entering a new era in which women's reproductive rights can no longer be considered "fundamental".
Maurice Strong, chair of the Earth Summit in 1992, gave an interview to the BBC in the 1970's in which he predicted that in the future people will have to receive licenses from the government in order to be allowed to reproduce.
Stage Five--Global Governance
Speaking on a panel at the Women Deliver Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Kavita Ramdas, an Indian representative of the Ford Foundation, said that people must be forced to make better choices for the environment. "You force it...you can force women to have less children, you can force people to consume less." But the problem with "forcing" people to do what they don't want is that this is incompatible with Western ideals of democracy in which politicians who try to force unpopular agendas typically find themselves out of a job.
To achieve the massive restructuring of the world demanded by global environmentalists, we have to get rid of pesky documents such as the U.S. Constitution which grant individual rights and freedoms as well as democratically-elected forms of government.
Global environmentalists don't really care if the science behind their programs is debunked as long as they can bring in this new system of global governance to correct all of the inequities of the world and create a new world order.
As 1992 Earth Summit chair Maurice Strong has famously stated, "We may get to the point where the only way to save the world will be for industrialized civilization to collapse." His sentiments were echoed by former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in 1996, "The threat of environmental crisis will be the international disaster key to unlock the New World Order."
It is time for Americans to wake up and understand that the global environmentalist movement is not about science--it is about crashing centuries of Western civilization, freedom and democracy and remaking the world into a destitute Hell managed by a global, centralized government of elites. The very people who are selling us this bunk know that they are scaring us into abandoning freedom, prosperity and our way of life in exchange for poverty, misery and slavery. Shame on us if we sit by and let them succeed.
To learn more about United Nation's Agenda 21, how it is being implemented across America, and what you can do to stop it, watch this video presentation:
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
