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Liberty Matters

May 1, 2008  

Local Governments Fight TTC

Within the past week, three new sub-regional planning commissions under Texas Local Government Code 391, have been created as a means to fight the Trans-Texas Corridor, the first leg of the NAFTA Superhighway.  Taking the lead of the Eastern Central Texas Sub-Regional Planning Commission in Bell County, Texas organized to fight the TTC-35, the three new commissions were formed to fight the Texas Department of Transportation’s TTC-69 in East Texas.  Three cities (Trinity, Groveton, and Corrigan) formed the Trinity-Neches Texas Sub-Regional Planning Commission (TNT) and Garrison, Cherino, and Huntington east of Lufkin, Texas, formed the Piney Woods Sub-Regional Planning Commission.  Nacogdoches County commissioners voted four days later on Monday, April 28, to join the Piney Woods SRPC. Waller County and the City of Waller in east Texas have formed the fourth 391 commission.  “These are all courageous leaders in local communities that have decided to do something about their runaway government in Austin,” stated Fred Kelly Grant, the attorney who has taught the local coordination concept to thousands of leaders nationwide.  The Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 391, requires state agencies to coordinate with local commissions to ensure effective and orderly implementation of state programs at the regional level.  Through this government code, local commissions are placed on an equal footing with state agencies like TxDoT.  Fighting locally literally is a means by which the people can take their government back from leaders who have sold our nation out to the highest bidder.  “There is a mini revolution beginning to develop here in Texas and it is happening because people are beginning to see the great tool and opportunity they have through 391 Commissions,” stated Margaret Byfield, Executive Director of Stewards of the Range, who is spearheading the coordination effort with the American Land Foundation.

Nacogdoches County will fight TTC as new member of regional planning commission

Unintended Consequences

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." ---Thomas Jefferson
Since we are now subsidizing producers of ethanol, corn prices have shot up and corn and grain shortages have resulted.  The government’s shift to biofuels was supposed to wean the U.S. from foreign oil dependence and protect the environment at the same time.  The unintended consequences of this government’s folly have produced food shortages worldwide and food riots have occurred in Mexico, Morocco, and Egypt, to name a few countries.  Pakistan has even reinstated food rationing.  Since January of this year, food prices have increased 65 percent.  Thanks to the United States’ ethanol subsidies and the European Union’s palm oil subsidies, environmental havoc is rampant everywhere.  Forests in Malaysia and Indonesia are being destroyed to cash in on the palm oil craze and in America farmers are growing more corn and using more fertilizer that leaches nitrogen into waters of the U S and causes increased nitrous oxide emissions – “a green house gas that heats the atmosphere 300 times more effectively than carbon dioxide,” writes Indur Goklany, in the New York Post.  Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-TX has finally recognized government has goofed again.  In a Town Hall article April 28, 2008, “Undoing America’s Ethanol Mistake,” Mrs. Hutchison writes; “In recent weeks, the correlation between government biofuel mandates and rapidly rising food prices has become undeniable.”  The Energy Independence and Security Act that President Bush signed Dec. 19, 2007, decreed biofuel production increases from 7.5 billion gallons in 2012 to 36 billion in 2022.  “Nearly all our domestic corn and grain supply is needed to meet this mandate, robbing the world of one of its most important sources of food,” Hutchison notes.  “Since February 2006, the price of corn, wheat and soybeans has increased by more than 240 percent,” she says.  Mrs. Hutchison thinks the ban on oil and gas production in Alaska and the Outer Continental Shelf should be lifted and we should expand our energy sources by using nuclear power and wave energy.”  So far so good, but Mrs. Hutchison’s solution to fix the ethanol problem shows her political mindset.  “I am introducing legislation that will freeze the biofuel mandate at current levels, instead of steadily increasing it through 2022.  This is a common-sense measure,” she declares, “and the Senate must remain focused on the facts as it debates the issue.”   By proposing to freeze ethanol production at the current high levels, she totally skirts the real issue.  Biofuels are not the answer to our oil shortage.  Drilling for oil in ANWR, North Dakota, the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf Coast is the solution, but that won’t happen because politicians are too scared of the green lobby. 

Fuels vs. Food

Green on the Outside, Red on the Inside

“If we want to save our planet earth, to save life, to save mankind, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system,” said Bolivia President Evo Morales in his keynote address at the United Nations forum on Indigenous People.  Marxist Morales’ statement demonstrated the real goal of the radical environmental movement; embrace communism with all its splendor.  He called for an end to “unbridled industrial development, extraction of natural resources, excessive consumption of goods and accumulation of waste.”  (See ethanol story).  Morales and his ilk have a loyal following in places like the canyons of Manhattan whose denizens revere him as a real Aymara Indian from Bolivia and who fall for the wise and noble indigenous nonsense he spouts.  Morales wants the West to turn over trillions of dollars to backwards places like Bolivia “to repair the earth.”  “We feel that we have the ethical and moral right to talk about these things as indigenous peoples because we have historically lived in harmony with Mother Earth,” Morales said.  According to the story in Investor’s Business Daily News, however, “getting rid of capitalism created the black rivers of China, filled Eastern Europe’s skies with unfiltered coal and diesel exhaust,” the deforestation of China, spilled oil that destroyed Siberian lakes and much more.  The radical environmentalists can’t sell their global governance, poverty to the people, scheme with the dismal record of communist regimes in full view of the world, so they resort to a feel-good concept that many gullible westerners swallow – “saving the earth.”  U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon piled it on higher by saying; “As custodians of these lands they [indigenous people] have accumulated deep, firsthand knowledge about the impacts of environmental degradation, including climate change…”   However, the real story is much different.  “The nations that have the best track records on environmental protection and improvement are those with the highest amount of free-market capitalism” wrote Samuel Aldrich and Jay Lehr, in Free Enterprise Protects the Environment.  The people who peddle the “save the earth” clap trap by denouncing capitalism are seeking something else.  “Too often their real agenda is power – power to remake the economic and social systems to suit their own command and control goals, not to serve the public good as they so loudly proclaim,” Aldrich and Lehr concluded.

The Environmentalists' Real Agenda

Mr. Universe Flexes His Muscles

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appears to be following ex-president Jimmy Carter’s lead by making deals with foreign nations.  Schwarzenegger thinks the Bush administration is dragging its heels on the issue so he is working with the UN and China to address the so-called problem.  “America has to lead, and [California is] doing so with or without Washington,” the governor said in response to questions about his decision to ratify a two-year environmental alliance between California and China overseen by the U. N.  The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) provides “a framework of cooperation and facilitate [s] collaboration” between California and China on climate change issues.  As if Californians weren’t already taxed to the max for welfare schemes within their state, Schwarzenegger has promised California tax dollars to underwrite  “capacity building in China” -- infrastructure, technology, and other resources to help reduce its greenhouse gasses.  Since Schwarzenegger is a naturalized citizen, he may not be too familiar with the U.S. Constitution (much like Congress), so he may not know that the Constitution reserves to Congress the responsibility to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations” and only the President and the Senate may negotiate treaties.  Under the MOU “Cost-Sharing Agreements,” entered into by the parties shall be “in accordance with the applicable UNDP rules,” and will “specify contributions to specific UNDP projects in China…”  The Governator has made similar agreements with Mexico and Brazil and is an advocate of the Law of the Sea Treaty.   The UN is clearly pulling the strings and Schwarzenegger is its all too-willing puppet.  It would be interesting to know what reward the UN is offering Arnold for his treason, a high position in the UN hierarchy, perhaps. 

Globalist Governator