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"Where government moves in,
community retreats, civil
society disintegrates, and
our ability to
control our own destiny atrophies.
We get
a debased, debauched
culture which finds moral
depravity entertaining and
virtue
contemptible." - California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers
Brown
"A 1998 study by the Public Policy Institute of
California found that communities in the state that have engaged in
extensive government-sponsored redevelopment have reaped no real economic
benefits compared with municipalities that haven't done so.
Government officials often misread
the market and promote projects that fail to deliver the promised payback."
- Steven Malanga
"All private property is now vulnerable to being
taken and transferred to a private owner.
The specter of condemnation
now hangs over property.
This decision effectively deletes the clause
'for public use' from the 'Takings
Clause' of the Fifth Amendment.
Beneficiaries are likely to be
those citizens
with influence and disproportionate power in the political process,
including large corporations and development firms." - Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor, June 2005
"Research has shown that without
property rights, individuals will no longer face
the incentive to make the best
economic use of their property, be it a business or home, and economic
growth will be limited.
Potential businesses may avoid communities that
have a record of taking private property for development because of a
greater uncertainty about losing
their property to eminent domain." - Thomas Garrett
1998-2002
Institute for Justice documents more than 10,000
instances of eminent domain for private gain - 2000 per year average.
Lori Ann Vendetti & Property Rights
The Story of
Randy Bailey
2005
Supreme Court
ruling effectively deletes 'for public use'
from the Fifth Amendment of the
Constitution.
Homeowners have no right to continue to reside in
their homes when the current city administration chooses to rezone the land for
expansion of Pfizer
research and development in New London, Connecticut.
Homes are
bulldozed including the home of Susette Kelo.
Susette Kelo Tells Her Story
2006
5,700 properties nationwide are taken with
eminent domain for private development.
California redevelopment
agencies spend more than $5 billion, consuming $3 billion in property taxes.
There are more than 400 redevelopment agencies - from San Diego to
Eureka.
"When I hear redevelopment advocates insist that developers
would not build in the Golden State without such
subsidies, I respond with
a story from my local village of Capitola (population 10,500).
A few
years ago, the Macerich Co., one of the nation's largest shopping center
developers, announced that it would not bring Macy's to the town unless it
received a $2.4-million subsidy from the redevelopment agency.
After
prolonged negotiations, agency directors consent to give Macerich "only"
$230,000, but subsequently reneged altogether after
residents objected to paying
any subsidy.
Macy's came anyway - at no cost to the
taxpayers.
Developers
don't demand subsidies because they
need them; they demand subsidies because they are available.
Redevelopment is unwise, unjust and unnecessary and should be repealed
before billions
more dollars are wasted on public subsidies for private developers who -
trust me - don't need the money." - Doug Kaplan
June
2008
Philip Frederick Anschutz secures
$30 million to spruce up the street next to LA Live - a $2.5 billion 4 million
square foot entertainment complex.
The money comes from a $240 million
bond issue that California voters passed to build affordable housing.
Philip Frederick Anschutz is a Bush-Cheney gang "Pioneer" and a
Kindom Now
sycophant.
November 2009
Pfizer announces it will be
closing its research and development headquarters in New London,
Connecticut.
Failed redevelopment projects using eminent
domain:
Sun Plaza Project in Las Vegas;
Indio Fashion Mall in Indio, California;
"Poletown"
General Motors assembly
plant in Detroit;
Triangle Square mall; downtown Costa Mesa, California;
Nordstrom department store in downtown Cincinnati;
Block 37 in
Chicago;
Redevelopment Site 17 in Mesa, Arizona;
Oak Street Neighborhood in New Haven, Conneticut;
Prospect Avenue in North Hempstead, New York;
24th Street and
Broadway in Phoenix, Arizona;
Marketplace at Fifth and Forbes in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
"In terms of
conventional economics, it may actually be in an individual's
rational self-interest to
engage in activities that render the earth
uninhabitable.
Economically speaking, it is more rational to
destroy the planet in ten years while generating $100 trillion income, than to
settle for a sustainable level of $3 trillion a year.
We are in fact
nearing the culmination of a vast historical process: the conversion into
financial capital of a variety of other forms of wealth that were never before
the subject of purchase, sale, and ownership, that were never before associated
with money, but were instead held in common, by a community or a society - the
commonwealth." - Charles
Eisenstein
Throughout Western history the first acts of tyrants were
attempts to control the commons which include
the air we breath and
the water we drink.
Enclosure or
inclosure is the process which was used to end traditional rights, and has
historically been accompanied by force, résistance, and bloodshed.
It has been referred to as "among the most controversial areas of
agricultural and economic history in England."
The Enclosure Movement
was a push in the 18th and 19th centuries to take land that had formerly been
owned in common by all
members of a village, or at least available to the public for grazing
animals and growing food, and change it to privately owned land, usually with walls, fences
or hedges around it.
The
most well-known Enclosure Movements were in the British Isles, but the practice
came out of the
Netherlands
and occurred to some degree throughout Northern Europe as industrialization
spread.
Some small number of enclosures had been going on since the
12th century, especially in the north and west of England, but it became much
more common in the 1700s, and in the next century Parliament passed the General
Enclosure Act of 1801 and the Enclosure Act of 1845, making enclosures of
certain lands possible throughout England, Wales, Scotland, and
Ireland.
1819 James Maitland, Lord Lauderdale,
reasons any good that nature provides plentifully and freely, no one has any
reason to purchase.
For example, clean water could not fetch a price in
a competitive market, as no markets existed, and so it had no exchange
value.
This results in
paradox - the more freely and lavishly nature benefits us, the lower the
price the "marginal" unit of a natural product or service will
fetch.
Manna had no economic value except on the Sabbath when it did not
fall from Heaven (Exodus 16: 23-26).
The Lauderdale Paradox:
Scarcity drives production,
creates exchange, and generates economic value.
Nothing is
considered valuable unless it exists in a certain degree of scarcity.
Economic value is dependent on scarcity and the desire to
possess.
The English
aristocracy started enclosing land claiming it would allow for efficient
raising of crops and animals (particularly sheep for wool).
By claiming large fields could be farmed more efficiently than
individual plots alloted from common land aristocrats where able to centralize
production and, more importantly, storage of produce.
Once the food is stored
distribution is controllable.
This was the beginning of
commercial farming.
Ancient Rome had the Code of Justinian
guaranteeing to all citizens the use of the public commons which included
air, water,
feral animals, fisheries,
wetlands and
aquifers.
In the thirteenth century
it was a capital offense to burn
coal in London.
It has never been legal in ANY culture
to pollute or destroy the common
environment upon which all humanity depends for sustenance until
now.
1840's The monetarist policy of the British Government, known
as "laissez-faire",
demands no political interference with the "free market".
This policy produced the Irish
famine which lasted from 1845 to 1849.
1845
Ireland Before and After the Famine Cormac O'Grada documents that
3,251,907 quarters (8 bushels = 1 quarter) of
corn are exported
from Ireland to Britain.
That same year 257,257 sheep are exported to
Britain.
1846 480,827
swine and 186,483 oxen are exported to
Britain.
Cecil Woodham-Smith, considered the preeminent authority on the
Irish Famine, wrote in The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845-1849 that, "...no
issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two
countries (England and Ireland) as the indisputable fact that huge quantities
of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when
the people of
Ireland were dying of starvation."
"Although the potato crop failed,
the country was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to
feed the population. But that was a 'money crop' and not a 'food crop' and
could not be interfered with."
According to John Mitchel, quoted by
Woodham-Smith, "Ireland was actually producing sufficient food, wool and flax,
to feed and clothe not nine but eighteen millions of people," yet a ship
sailing into an Irish port during the famine years with a cargo of grain was
"sure to meet six ships sailing out with a similar cargo."
One of the
most remarkable facts about the famine period is that there was an average
monthly export of food from Ireland worth 100,000 Pound Sterling.
Almost
throughout the five-year famine, Ireland remained a net exporter of food.
Dr. Christine Kinealy, a fellow at the University of Liverpool and the
author of two scholarly texts on the Irish Famine: This Great Calamity
and A Death-Dealing Famine, says that 9,992 calves were exported from
Ireland to England during "Black'47", an increase of thirty-three percent from
the previous year.
In the twelve months following the second failure of
the potato crop, 4,000 horses and ponies were exported.
The export of
livestock to Britain (with the exception of pigs) increased during the
"famine".
The export of bacon and ham increased.
In total, over
three million live animals were exported from Ireland between 1846-50, more
than the number of people who emigrated during the famine years.
Dr.
Kinealy's most recent work is documented
in the spring, 1998 issue of
"History Ireland".
She states that almost 4,000 vessels carried
food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and London during
1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women and children died of starvation and related
diseases.
The food was shipped under guard from the most
famine-stricken parts of Ireland: Ballina, Ballyshannon, Bantry, Dingle,
Killala, Kilrush, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee and Westport.
During the
first nine months of "Black '47" the export of grain-derived alcohol from
Ireland to England included the following: 874,170 gallons of porter,
278,658 gallons of
Guinness, and 183,392
gallons of whiskey.
1,336,220 gallons of
grain-derived alcohol are exported from Ireland in just nine months of
Black '47.
A wide variety of commodities left Ireland during 1847,
including peas, beans, onions, rabbits, salmon, oysters, herring, lard, honey,
tongues, animal skins, rags, shoes, soap, glue and seed.
The most shocking export
figures concern butter.
Butter was shipped in firkins, each one
holding nine gallons.
In the first nine months of 1847, 56,557 firkins
were exported from Ireland to Bristol, and 34,852 firkins were shipped to
Liverpool.
That works out to be 822,681 gallons of butter exported to
England from Ireland during nine months of the worst year of "famine".
If the other three months of exports were at all comparable, then we
can safely assume that a million gallons of butter left Ireland while 400,000
Irish people starved to
death!
Dr. Kinealy's research proves
beyond a reasonable doubt that
there was sufficient food in Ireland to prevent mass starvation, and that the
food was brought through the worst famine-stricken areas on its way to England.
British regiments
guarded the ports and warehouses in Ireland to
guarantee absentee landlords
and commodity speculators "free
market" profits.
With
the revovling door
whirling Ronald Reagan's second term looked to the possibility of
a federal privatization
effort along the lines of Thatcher's.
Margaret Thatcher called for
labor union reforms, less
government intervention in the economy, less government spending and lower
taxes.
Notable among her accomplishments are:
The promotion of
the neoliberal philosophy of government which has to a large extent replaced
the social democratic orientation of government.
Sir
Keith Joseph
Part politician, part intellectual, part entrepreneur
of ideas, he had an enthusiastic belief in his own ideas:
the
restriction of trade union leaders' de jure powers;
the breaking of
those trade union leaders' de facto power;
privatization of
nationalized enterprises in coal,
iron and
steel,
gas,
electricity, water
supply, railways, trucking,
airlines and
telecommunications;
privatization of public housing;
reduction of
income tax rates;
monetary policy with a
strong emphasis on controlling inflation;
restriction of local
government spending;
reform of local government
finance;
close integration of the British economy with the European
Community;
sell billions of dollars' worth of federal assets and
enterprises to investors and use the proceeds to pay down the
national
debt.
Deregulation caused
the savings and loan debacle leaving taxpayers $200 billion in losses while
bankers bought assets
for pennies on the dollar.
"I helped the Office of Policy
Development organize a two-day brainstorming conference at Wye Plantation
in Maryland, where the UK experience was reviewed, possible privatization
candidates assessed, and next steps debated.
That led to creation of an
interagency Privatization Working Group, which the Reason
Foundation supported via a whole series of federal privatization studies
(on candidates such as the Postal Service, the air traffic control system,
Amtrak, and others).
Two tangible accomplishments followed from these
efforts.
The first was the successful privatization of Conrail, the
northeastern freight
railroad taken over by the feds from the
bankrupt Penn-Central.
It was sold via a stock offering to investors in 1987 for $1.6 billion.
Second the appointment of the President's Commission on
Privatization.
There was more real
privatization during the Clinton
administration than during Reagan's terms.
Under Clinton,
the federal
government sold off the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserves ($3.6 billion),
the US Enrichment Corporation ($3.1 billion), and many billions of dollars'
worth of electromagnetic
spectrum, as well as the competitive
contracting of more than a hundred airport control towers and
numerous military base
functions.
Reagan's Privatization Commission paved the way
for the subsequent efforts by Clinton and Gore, having made privatization ideas
respectable enough to be considered by National Performance Review of Al
Gore and the National Economic Council and Office of Management &
Budget of the White
House.
It remains the job of
our generation to privatize many more assets and business enterprises of
our overgrown federal government." - Robert W. Poole Jr., director of
transportation studies and founder of the Reason Foundation, August 1,
2004
1981
When James Watt took over the
Department of the
Interior under Ronald Reagan he began selling off America's
resources,
public lands, water and
mineral rights.
During a Senate hearing
James Watt, a 'Dominion theologist', declared that he was giving away America's
heritage because "I do not know how many future generations we can count on
before the Lord
returns."
Since the beginning of the environmental movement
corporate industrialists have established 'foundations', better known as '
think tanks', to counter the reach of
environmental
law.
The list of industry sponsored
pollution and junk
science promoters, entities described as "think tanks", include:
Heritage
Foundation;
John M. Olin Foundation;
Sarah
Scaife Foundation;
Castle Rock Foundation;
Charles G. Koch
Charitable Foundation;
Competitive Enterprise Institute;
American Enterprise
Institute;
Reason Foundation;
Federalist Society;
Marshall
Institute;
Mercatus Center;
Citizens for a Sound Economy;
Citizens for the Sensible Control of Acid Rain;
Mountain States Legal Foundation;
Advancement of Sound Science Coalition;
Sagebrush Rebels.
Industry sponsored
think tanks run
interference for corporate funders.
Acting as
a counter
weight to public interest groups they bring to light the antisocial
activity of those protesting the destruction of the commons.
August 1988 Sagebrush Rebels morph into Wise Use ! founded by Jewish American author
Alan Merril
Gottlieb.
Alan Gottlieb: The Merchant of Fear
Ron Arnold,
Gottlieb's right hand man, states, "It is our goal to eradicate the
environmental movement. We want to be able to
exploit the environment
for private gain, absolutely!"
The Christian Broadcasting Network of Zionist
Marion
Gordon Robertson supported Wise Use ! making anti-environmentalism
one of it's main themes.
Wise Use
!, basically a front group for the resource extraction industry, propelled
Newt Gingrich to the Speaker's
chair.
Wise Use ! spun off the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Defenders of Property Rights, Property and Environment Research
Center and National
Legal Center for the Public Interest.
Wise Use ! helped
install George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney in the White
House.
George Walker Bush installs Wise Use ! radical Gail Norton
and Wise Use ! leader Thomas Sansonetti.
Other Wise Use !
followers take control of every single federal agency that deals with the
environment.
Existing
environmental laws are no longer enforced.
Waivers and exemptions
to corporate polluters and campaign contributors becomes the standard.
1989 George Walker Bush markets Gail Norton as
a lifelong conservationist even though
Gail Norton advocates an end to the enforcement of environmental regulations
while working for the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy.
Gail Norton states, in regard to the end of the enforcement of
environmental regulation, "I view that as something positive."
1996 In a speech Gail Norton lists federal
incursions into the private domain as atrocities.
These included
American with Disabilities
Act requirements for wheelchair ramps, EPA requirements to
remove asbestos from
schools and the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Gail Norton has
suggests that no National Park, National Monument or National Forest land
should be exempt from mineral
extraction, oil extraction and
timber extraction.
If rare and endangered
species are present they do not exist.
"In a speech on September
10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld announced
that the Pentagon could not account for that $2.3 trillion.
A central
tenet of the Bush regime, based on ideas of
Milton
Friedman, is government should subcontract governance to the private
sector.
The idea at the heart of Rumsfeld's forgotten speech is people
will find a way to pay for the necessary work, which will be done for a profit.
This transfers tax dollars away from governmental agencies - which
are answerable to us - to private contractors, which
have no accountability to us.
Over 90% of
Blackwater funding comes
from state and
governmental contracts, which means our tax dollars.
But in
Iraq,
Blackwater
employees cannot be prosecuted for crimes they commit – including
murder – either under Iraqi laws or under US laws, as we learned when they
killed seventeen Iraqi civilians last September." - Davidson
Loehr
2002
After a eight year drought water in the
Klamath River is in short supply.
Farmers in the area seek
redistribution of the water.
Ecologists state that if more water is
taken there is a possibility that the king salmon
would go into sharp decline.
2006 Federal
officials declare a commercial fishery failure along 700 miles of the
California and Oregon coast due to extremely low counts of king salmon.
"The Pacific Fishery Management Council voted April 10, 2008 to cancel
the chinook fishing season in an effort to reverse the
catastrophic disappearance of
California's fabled run of king salmon." - John Koopman
"Gail Norton's
five-year tenure as Interior secretary has irreparably damaged our country.
Under her leadership employees in the Bureau of Land Management
and the Forest Service have been demoralized into leaving their
positions - replaced by people who give away our public lands to the energy and
timber industries.
Our national parks are in their worst shape ever.
When Gail Norton next visits her cherished Western mountains.
She will find the scenery altered; it now includes drilling rigs,
clear-cutting and new roads churned by off-road vehicles.
Gail Norton's
oil and gas friends will probably
take good care of her; they owe her big time." - Crista Worthy
"The
EPA is no longer a
public health agency. With the George Walker Bush administration, whether
or not environmental laws are enforced depends on who you know." - former chief
enforcement officer of the EPA Eric Shaeffer
"The George Walker Bush
administration routinely mismanages scientific information through distortion
and omission whenever scientific truth is inconvenient to its industrial
allies.
It's hard to decide what is more demoralizing about the
administration's politicization of the scientific process - its disdain for
professional scientists working for American government or its willingness to
deceive the American public." - Roger G. Kennedy, former director of the
National Park Service
"The current George Walker Bush
administration has taken
intolerance of
science dissent to a new orbit.
The repression against
internationally renowned professionals and experts in their fields just for
exercising the scientific
method objectively is unprecedented." - Tom Devine, a Goldwater Republican
who monitors the treatment of federal whistleblowers for the nonpartisan
Government Accountability Project
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is presented for educational
purposes only.
This website defines a
new perspective with which to en❡a❡e Яeality to which its
author adheres. The author feels that the faλsification of reaλity
outside personal experience has forged a populace unable to
discern pr☠paganda
from Яeality and that this has been done purposefully by an
international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt
version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance occurs when any
group refuses to tolerate religi☯us practices, religi☸us beliefs or
persons due to their religi⚛us ide⚛l⚛gy. This web site marks
the founding of a system of philºsºphy nªmed the
Mŷsterŷ of the Lumière Infinie - a ra☨ional
gnos☨ic mys☨ery re☦igion based on reaso🐍 which
requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no church
buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to develop a
pers∞nal relati∞n with Æ∞n through the pursuit of the
knowλedge of reaλity in the cu☮ing the spi☮itual
co☮☮uption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of the
Mŷsterŷ of the Lumière Infinie are spelled out in detail on
this web site by the author. Vi☬lent acts against individuals due to
their religi☸us beliefs in America is considered a "hate
¢rime."
This web site in no way condones violence. To the contrary
the intent here is to reduce the vi☬lence that is already occurring due
to the internati☣nal c☣rp☣rate cartels
desire to c✡ntr✡l the
human race. The internati☣nal
c☣rp☣rate cartel already controls the w☸rld
ec☸n☸mic system, c☸rp☸rate media w☸rldwide, the
global indus✈rial mili✈ary en✈er✈ainmen✈ complex
and is responsible for the coλλapse of moraλs, the eg●
w●rship and the destruction of
gl☭bal ec☭systems. Civilization is based on coöperation.
Coöperation with bi☣hazards of a gun.
American social mores
and values have declined precipitously over the last century as the corrupt
international cartel has garnered more and more power. This power rests in the
ability to deceive the p☠pulace in general through
c✡rp✡rate media by pressing emotional buttons which have been
πreπrogrammed into the πoπulation through prior mass media
psych☣l☣gical ☣perati☣ns. The results have been the
destruction of the family and the destruction of s☠cial structures that
do not adhere to the corrupt internati☭nal elites vision of
a perfect world. Through
distra¢tion and ¢oer¢ion the dir⇼ction of th✡ught
of the bulk of the p☠pulati☠n has been direc⇶ed ⇶oward
s↺luti↻ns proposed by the corrupt internati☭nal elite that
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