Jedediah Biagi, Candidate for District 2 Supervisor, Speaks Out on the Medical Marijuana Ordinance
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by Mr. Biagi are strictly his own, and do not represent those of Sierra Voices. His op-ed is printed here as a service to Nevada County voters.
By Jedediah Biagi
Looking at where we are right now in our country – with our freedom, liberty, and right to local self-governance at threat or already seriously impinged, it’s hard to see all the small things that have brought us here.
One of those small things happened at the last Nevada County Supervisors meeting, exemplifying how our right to self governance can be attacked and stripped by an innocent thing called a nuisance ordinance.
Not respecting the Constitution of the United States, the State of California, and opposition from a landslide super-majority of local citizens, four of the Supervisors voted to pass an ordinance giving a deputy, fire code or building code enforcer the right to enter your property any day of the week, day or night without a warrant (oh, but they ‘promise’ the ordinance won’t be used that way). If you thought you had private property rights or the right to use your property as you see fit, think again.
If you believe in the right to not self-incriminate, then it should make you upset to be required to get a notarized letter stipulating an arrangement of permission to exercise a California State given right, even if it’s contrary to Federal Law.
Input from the citizens’ focus group was either ignored or ratcheted back as to become unworkable or illegal. Examples being: decreasing the suggested allowable grow size over 500% to a restrictive average of 150sq ft per parcel or less, well below the state’s legally defined minimal allowances. When the suggestion of using grow bags was put forward to help restrict size of plants in residential areas the suggested size was 60 – 80 gallons, the county came back with 25 gallons, a size not even available on the market or if it was, not big enough to suit the needs of patients. Not only that, but using the process of an urgency ordinance took away our constitutional right of the citizenry to petition our grievance through signature gathering. This end-run around of our inalienable rights in the drafting and then passing of this ordinance cannot be ignored.
If you believe in the second, fourth, fifth, and tenth amendments you should be appalled at this blatant disregard for your rights.
The Federal Government has been conducting raids in neighboring counties against small organic farmers including raw milk co-ops and raw food co-ops, if you were wondering where our sheriff stood on the constitution and the tenth amendment – now you know, all small farmers should be on their toes right now because the sheriff sees no immediate threat from an overreaching federal government.
As we slide down the path of an all controlling Federal Government with things like the Patriot Act, NDAA, or planned FEMA camps, that path is being greased by hundreds of invasive nuisance ordinances like this one that grant far over reaching powers to government agencies beyond the definition of the nuisance.
I am running as a write-in candidate for Nevada County Supervisor District 2 (South County). I believe in the right to local self governance and creating buffers of protection from outside forces that wish to strip that right. I would like to create a public County Bank, and institute a foreclosure moratorium. I’ll be hanging out at local restaurants for lunch or dinner in the next couple of weeks, if you want to meet me check out my calendar online or if you have a group of people who would like to meet me, set up an appointment. My website is www.biagiforsupervisor.com .
Jedediah Biagi is a write-in candidate for Nevada County District 2 Supervisor.
Background on the Foreclosure Crisis In Nevada County
By the Foreclosure Defense Group of Occupy Nevada County
The Foreclosure Defense Group of Occupy Nevada County is made up of community members concerned about the high rate of foreclosures in our community. We are learning how to search county records for fraudulent assignments, and our research has revealed many improprieties by banks and loan servicers. We have witnessed many foreclosure auctions held on the steps of the Nevada City Courthouse, and have demonstrated against the seizure of homes by the very banks that caused the foreclosure crisis in the first place. We started a Foreclosure and Eviction Support and Empowerment Group, which meets Wednesdays at the Nevada City United Methodist Church. Community members who are going through foreclosure are now searching us out and we are trying to support them.
According to Realty Trac, over 5,000 homes in Nevada County have been foreclosed since 2008. There are currently 877 Nevada County homes listed for foreclosure.
In addition to the tragedy of personal loss, the foreclosure crisis has devastated Nevada County as a whole. Foreclosures provoke further decline in home prices, resulting in dramatic decreases in property tax revenue and drastic cuts to county jobs and services. Foreclosed homes cause neighborhood blight, crime, and public safety issues.
Estimated costs of the foreclosure crisis to Nevada County, including loss in home values, property tax loss, costs to local government, along with the methods of calculating these costs, can be found at the following website: http://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/Home-Wreckers-Report.pdf
Over the last two years incontrovertible evidence has emerged around the country that the loan servicers of the five largest banks have filed and recorded millions of fraudulent documents to illegally foreclose on homeowners. In February, 2012, San Francisco County Recorder Phil Ting announced that an audit of foreclosure documents in his office revealed that 99% of the sampled foreclosures had “suspicious activities” and 84% had “at least one clear violation of the law.” Most of these foreclosures contained more than one class of violation and some had up to six. In almost all cases these violations were related to chain of assignment issues, largely resulting from mortgage securitization, and the inability of foreclosure servicing agencies to demonstrate legal standing to foreclose.
In Nevada County the percentage of foreclosures has been much higher than in San Francisco County (5000 foreclosures in much-smaller Nevada County compared to 12,000 in San Francisco County). A thorough audit by the Nevada County Clerk-Recorder’s office would almost certainly reveal a similar proportion of suspicious activities and violations of law.
One problem for California counties, including Nevada County, is that banks are using the MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registry System) to transfer and assign mortgages. MERS is like a opaque “black box” that allows banks to obscure the chain of title on individual properties and avoid County recording fees. This has deprived the Nevada County Clerk Recorder’s Office of needed funds and has resulted in a significant reduction of staff. The system makes it very difficult for homeowners (and others) to track the various assignments and to uncover who is the legitimate owner of the loan (to whom they should be making payments). Audits of the MERS system have revealed widespread fraud. While banks require home buyers to be transparent, fill out mounds of paperwork, and pay recording fees, MERS enables the banks themselves to avoid doing so.
In short, there is little or no oversight of the foreclosure process, particularly in non-judicial foreclosure states like California. Our counties and homeowners are suffering the consequences.
There needs to be a state-wide and nation-wide solution to this problem. California Attorney General Kamala Harris is calling for a “Homeowner Bill of Rights,” comprised of a series of bills designed to protect homeowners from abusive mortgage practices and to help devastated communities recover from the foreclosure crisis. Among the other provisions in Harris’ bills are requirements that lenders prove to homeowners that they have a right to foreclose on a property before doing so1. The legislation she supports is currently stalled in committee due to heavy lobbying by banking interests2.
Our group has formed an Eviction Response Team, to support foreclosed families or tenants of foreclosed homes on an emergency basis if their rights are not being observed or if they are being harassed. (Yes, it happens here.)
We have formed a Fraud Investigation Team, to explore the extent of fraudulent assignments and other mortgage-related documents in the County Clerk-Recorder’s office.
We have also been exploring the legality of the foreclosure auctions taking place on the steps of the County Courthouse. Their courthouse location implies that they are lawful and sanctioned by the County. These auctioneers will not even give their names. According to the California Secretary of State, some of the foreclosing companies they represent are not licensed to do business in the State of California.
“Let Us Have Our Day In Court” (Local Rally at Wells Fargo Bank)
Press Release from Foreclosure Defense Group of Occupy Nevada County
“Let Us Have Our Day In Court”
Rally at Wells Fargo Bank
Wednesday, May 9, 4 pm
The Foreclosure Defense Group of Occupy Nevada County will hold a rally at Wells Fargo Bank on Wednesday, May 9, to support a local family in their struggle to resist eviction until their federal case against Wells Fargo and US Bank for unlawful foreclosure is resolved.
Billi Vogan and Lee Traupel invested $100,000 to buy their Penn Valley home in 2004. They paid their conventional mortgage for 6 years, but in 2010 their income was reduced and they applied for a loan modification. Thus began a long and convoluted process that resulted in their home being foreclosed last November. The couple currently has a case pending in Federal Court against US Bank and Wells Fargo charging that this was an unlawful foreclosure. Wells Fargo lawyers sought to have the case dismissed, but the federal judge declined to dismiss and found ten of the causes against Wells Fargo to be valid.
In spite of this precedent-setting case, the couple is facing an Unlawful Detainer hearing before a local judge on May 14, after which they and their son could be evicted. Earth Justice Ministries, a local nonprofit, is working with the Occupy group to organize an Interfaith prayer vigil in front of the courthouse at 2 pm. on that day.
The Foreclosure Defense Group is calling on Wells Fargo to negotiate directly with Billi and Lee. They are asking Wells Fargo and US Bank to postpone their eviction and allow them to pay rent at fair-market-value until the federal case is decided. An online petition supporting the family can be signed here:
A video interview with Billi Vogan explaining their situation is below.
The rally will be held at the Wells Fargo branch at 707 Sutton Way on Wednesday, May 9, at 4 p.m. There will be signs, visual displays, speeches, and songs related to the foreclosure crisis. For more information, contact noforeclosures@earth-justice.org or call 265-5976.
Background information is attached. “Our Story” is by Billi Vogan. “Background on NC Foreclosures” is by Foreclosure Defense Group of Occupy Nevada County. This Press Release is also attached.
For more information:
Billi Vogan: 432-8764
Peter Galbraith [petergalb@gmail.com] 288-3600 (Foreclosure Defense Group)
Sharon Delgado [revsher@earth-justice.org] 265-5976
Billi Vogan and Lee Traupel’s Story
Penn Valley, California
We bought our home in 2004, saved for years and had $100,000 to invest in our first home. We got a conventional loan with Wells Fargo (WF) and never missed a payment for 6 years. In 2010 my husband’s consulting business slowed so much that we knew we needed to try and reduce our mortgage payments if possible. By this time we couldn’t qualify for a refinance and had heard that banks were modifying home loans for people in our situation.
When we spoke with WF loan consultants they said that as long as we were current with our mortgage there is no way we would be considered for a loan mod. So, feeling like we were jumping off a cliff, we decided to default on our loan. We gathered the many documents WF requested and faxed in our app. for a loan mod. Six months later, we were still faxing, sending hundreds of docs and being told that, “We don’t understand why you are being denied a loan mod., your numbers should make you qualified.”
Around this time we heard about a WF loan modification workshop in Sacramento. Being publicized as an opportunity to meet face to face with loan specialists, we jumped on the chance and made an appt. We had all of our documents to substantiate our income and our explanation of hardship, thus allowing us to prove we should be able to get the loan mod we needed. After about 10 minutes the loan specialist said, “I have some bad news, your loan is an MBS, and these “investors” don’t participate in loan modifications, I’m sorry, there is not much we can do.” Why weren’t we told this at the beginning of our application process? Perhaps we would have never gotten so far behind in our payments had we known a loan mod was out of the question for us.
Because of our situation, I immediately knew what it meant to have an MBS loan. The Massachusetts Supreme Court had ruled in favor of a homeowner in January of 2011, US Bank National Trustee v. Ibanez, that the securitization of the loan that took place made it impossible to know who actually had clear title to the house in question. At that point I did more research and discovered our loan was the exact same as the parties for the Massachusetts now famous case, US Bank National and Wells Fargo. At this point we realized that our mortgage had been turned into a stock and it was unclear to us who we were actually supposed to be making mortgage payments to. There is a reason for laws regarding the transfer of title to protect homeowners. The banks in their rush to make money completely trampled the proper procedures for our real estate laws. Time to hire an attorney.
We found an attorney in LA, Deborah Gutierrez, of Proper Law, that specializes in such cases and is very passionate about the wrong doing that these banks have done, not just to homeowners, but their practices have greatly contributed to our whole financial meltdown. There are so many issues that have been discovered about the unscrupulous practices of banks to cover up their misdeeds. Robo signers, anyone? Robo signers are individuals that have no qualifications or correct documentation to sign what they attest to be signing. The reason for this is the banks don’t have the proper paperwork to foreclose, so they illegally falsify documents in order to foreclose on people. Our state is a non-judicial state, so the only way to defend your self from wrongful foreclosure is to file a case with the state or federal courts. We filed a lawsuit in March of 2011 in our Superior Court here in Nevada County and also asked for a Temporary Restraining Order to postpone the sale of our house, but the Nevada County Court allowed the foreclosure to go through without reviewing our lawsuit. US Bank National bought our home on the courthouse steps in July of 2011. Our attorney decided we had reason to file our suit in Federal Court, so we decided to file our lawsuit there in August of 2011.
We are now in Federal Court. Our case was heard in November of 2011 and the Federal Court judge ruled that there was cause to move the case forward, he did not dismiss our case as the WF and US Bank National attorneys assumed he would do. The legal council for WF and US Bank were quite surprised. Part of what our case is about is that there are laws and regulations governed by the NY Stock Exchange. Banks did not abide by those laws that govern these investments as stated in the Pooling and Servicing agreements that these MBS are in. I am told by Deborah Gutierrez that our case has made it into cases all over the country, so we are setting precedent in this case.
We are now facing an eviction hearing very soon here in our Superior Court. My husband and I are trying to defend ourselves, as our funds are exhausted and our attorney is only working on our Federal Case. It is very challenging to represent oneself in court without an attorney, and the banks are well aware of this. Most people in these financially challenging times don’t have money to hire an attorney. I am told these cases are “rubber stamped” and judges don’t usually rule in favor of the defendants. I am convinced that WF and Us Bank illegally foreclosed on our home because they did not follow the law when it came to assigning the deeds, as per their pooling and servicing agreement, and making sure the chain of title was correctly recorded among other illegal practices. What really is aggravating about all this is the way the banks want to make sure we have all our paperwork in perfect order during the loan mod process. In court we were recently fined to pay US Bank attorney fees regarding the eviction case, because we mistakenly did not send the attorneys all the documents they wanted for our upcoming hearing.
The other part of this that is distressing is that these issues are complex and I don’t think the courts understand that many of these cases are about much more than deadbeat home owners who don’t make their payments. There are many cases throughout our country in which homeowners are having success, but it is an uphill battle.
I would not recommend this battle to anyone, but I will never regret standing up for what I think is right. We feel that we will be forced out of our home shortly, but I know we will be ok. I have learned so much along the way and when I really think about our situation I would still rather be us than them.
Further Resources:
- “Background on Foreclosure Crisis in Nevada County“
- “Judge Rules Wells Fargo Engages in “Reprehensible,” Systemic Accounting Abuses on Mortgages, Hits with $3.1 Million Punitive Damages for One Loan“
- “Monique White May Win Back Foreclosed Home With Occupy’s Help”
- “Look Who’s Pushing Homeowners Off the Foreclosure Cliff”
We Screwed Up
Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.com (March 27, 2012)
A Letter of Apology to My Granddaughter
By Chip Ward
[Note: I became politically active and committed on the day 20 years ago when I realized I could stand on the front porch of my house and point to three homes where children were in wheelchairs, to a home where a child had just died of leukemia, to another where a child was born missing a kidney, and yet another where a child suffered from spina bifida. All my parental alarms went off at once and I asked the obvious question: What’s going on here? Did I inadvertently move my three children into harm’s way when we settled in this high desert valley in Utah? A quest to find answers in Utah’s nuclear history and then seek solutions followed. Politics for me was never motivated by ideology. It was always about parenting.
Today my three kids are, thankfully, healthy adults. But now that grandchildren are being added to our family, my blood runs cold whenever I project out 50 years and imagine what their world will be like at middle age -- assuming they get that far and that there is still a recognizable “world” to be part of. I wrote the following letter to my granddaughter, Madeline, who is almost four years old. Although she cannot read it today, I hope she will read it in a future that proves so much better than the one that is probable, and so terribly unfair. I’m sharing this letter with other parents and grandparents in the hope that it may move them to embrace their roles as citizens and commit to the hard work of making the planet viable, the economy equitable, and our culture democratic for the many Madelines to come.]
March 20, 2012
Dear Maddie,
I address this letter to you, but please share it with Jack, Tasiah, and other grandchildren who are yet unborn. Also, with your children and theirs. My unconditional love for my children and grandchildren convinces me that, if I could live long enough to embrace my great-grandchildren, I would love them as deeply as I love you.
On behalf of my generation of grandparents to all of you, I want to apologize.
I am sorry we used up all the oil. It took a million years for those layers of carbon goo to form under the Earth’s crust and we used up most of it in a geological instant. No doubt there will be some left and perhaps you can get around the fact that what remains is already distant, dirty, and dangerous, but the low-hanging fruit will be long-gone by the time you are my age. We took it all.
There’s no excuse, really. We are gas-hogs, plain and simple. We got hooked on faster-bigger-more and charged right over the carrying capacity of the planet. Oil made it possible.
Machines are our slaves and coal, oil, and gas are their food. They helped us grow so much of our own food that we could overpopulate the Earth. We could ship stuff and travel all over the globe, and still have enough fuel left to drive home alone in trucks in time to watch Monday Night Football.
Rocket fuel, fertilizer, baby bottles, lawn chairs: we made everything and anything out of oil and could never get enough of it. We could have conserved more for you to use in your lifetime. Instead, we demonstrated the self-restraint of crack addicts. It’s been great having all that oil to play with and we built our entire world around that. Living without it will be tough. Sorry.
I hope we develop clean, renewable energy sources soon, or that you and your generation figure out how to do that quickly. In the meantime, sorry about the climate. We just didn’t realize our addiction to carbon would come with monster storms, epic droughts, Biblical floods, wildfire infernos, rising seas, migration, starvation, pestilence, civil war, failed states, police states, and resource wars.
I’m sure Henry Ford didn’t see that coming when he figured out how to mass-produce automobiles and sell them to Everyman. I know my parents didn’t see the downside of using so much gas and coal. The all-electric house and a car in the driveway was their American Dream. For my generation, owning a car became a birthright. Today, it would be hard for most of us to live without a car. I have no idea what you’ll do to get around or how you will heat your home. Oops!
We also pigged out on most of the fertile soil, the forests and their timber, and the oceans that teemed with fish before we scraped the seabed raw, dumped our poisonous wastes in the water, and turned it acid and barren. Hey, that ocean was an awesome place and it’s too bad you can’t know it like we did. There were bright coral reefs, vibrant runs of red salmon, ribbons of birds embroidering the shores, graceful shells, the solace and majesty of the wild sea…
…But then I never saw the vast herds of bison that roamed the American heartland, so I know it is hard to miss something you only saw in pictures. We took lots of photos.
We thought we were pretty smart because we walked a man on the moon. Our technology is indeed amazing. I was raised without computers, smart phones, and the World Wide Web, so I appreciate how our engineering prowess has enhanced our lives, but I also know it has a downside.
When I was a kid we worried that the Cold War would go nuclear. And it wasn’t until a river caught fire near Cleveland that we realized fouling your own nest isn’t so smart after all. Well, you know about the rest — the coal-fired power plants, acid rain, the hole in the ozone…
There were plenty of signs we took a wrong turn but we kept on going. Dumb, stubborn, blind: Who knows why we couldn’t stop? Greed maybe — powerful corporations we couldn’t overcome. It won’t matter much to you who is to blame. You’ll be too busy coping in the diminished world we bequeath you.
One set of problems we pass on to you is not altogether our fault. It was handed down to us by our parents’ generation so hammered by cataclysmic world wars and economic hardship that they armed themselves to the teeth and saw enemies everywhere. Their paranoia was understandable, but they passed their fears on to us and we should have seen through them. I have lived through four major American wars in my 62 years, and by now defense and homeland security are powerful industries with a stranglehold on Congress and the economy. We knew that was a lousy deal, but trauma and terror darkened our imaginations and distorted our priorities. And, like you, we needed jobs.
Sorry we spent your inheritance on all that cheap bling and, especially, all those weapons of mass destruction. That was crazy and wasteful. I can’t explain it. I guess we’ve been confused for a long time now.
Oh, and sorry about the confusion. We called it advertising and it seemed like it would be easy enough to control. When I was a kid, commercials merely interrupted entertainment. Don’t know when the lines all blurred and the buy, buy, buy message became so ubiquitous and all-consuming. It just got outta hand and we couldn’t stop it, even when we realized we hated it and that it was taking us over. We turned away from one another, tuned in, and got lost.
I’m betting you can still download this note, copy it, share it, bust it up and remake it, and that you do so while plugged into some sort of electrical device you can’t live without — so maybe you don’t think that an apology for technology is needed and, if that’s the case, an apology is especially relevant. The tools we gave you are fine, but the apps are mostly bogus. We made an industry of silly distraction. When our spirits hungered, we fed them clay that filled but did not nourish them. If you still don’t know the difference, blame us because we started it.
And sorry about the chemicals. I mean the ones you were born with in your blood and bones that stay there — even though we don’t know what they’ll do to you). Who thought that the fire retardant that kept smokers from igniting their pillows and children’s clothes from bursting into flames would end up in umbilical cords and infants?
It just seemed like better living through chemistry at the time. Same with all the other chemicals you carry. We learned to accept cancer and I guess you will, too. I’m sure there will be better treatments for that in your lifetime than we have today. If you can afford them, that is. Turning healthcare over to predatory corporations was another bad move.
All in all, our chemical obsession was pretty reckless and we got into that same old pattern: just couldn’t give up all the neat stuff. Oh, we tried. We took the lead out of gasoline and banned DDT, but mostly we did too little, too late. I hope you’ve done better. Maybe it will help your generation to run out of oil, since so many of the toxic chemicals came from that. Anyway, we didn’t see it coming and we could have, should have. Our bad.
There are so many other things I wish I could change for you. We leave behind a noisy world. Silence is rare today, and unless some future catastrophe has left your numbers greatly diminished, your machines stilled, and your streets ghostly empty, it is likely that the last remnants of tranquility will be gone by the time you are my age.
And how about all those species, the abundant and wondrous creatures that are fading away forever as I write these words? I never saw a polar bear and I guess you can live without that, too, but when I think of the peep and chirp of frogs at night, the hum of bees busy on a flower bed, the trill of birds at dawn, and so many other splendorous pleasures that you may no longer have, I ache with regret. We should have done more to keep the planet whole and well, but we couldn’t get clear of the old ways of seeing, the ingrained habits, the way we hobble one another’s choices so that the best intentions never get realized.
Mostly I’m sorry about taking all the good water. When I was a child I could kneel down and drink from a brook or spring wherever we camped and played. We could still hike up to glaciers and ski down snow-capped mountains.
Clean, crisp, cold, fresh water is life’s most precious taste. A life-giving gift, all water is holy. I repeat: holy. We treated it, instead, as if it were merely useful. We wasted and tainted it and, again in a geological moment, sucked up aquifers that had taken 10,000 years to gather below ground. In my lifetime, glaciers are melting away, wells are running dry, dust storms are blowing, and rivers like the mighty Colorado are running dry before they reach the sea. I hate to think of what will be left for you. Sorry. So very, very sorry.
I’m sure there’s a boatload of other trouble we’re leaving you that I haven’t covered here. My purpose is not to offer a complete catalog of our follies and atrocities, but to do what we taught your parents to do when they were as little as you are today.
When you make a mistake, we told them, admit it, and then do better. If you do something wrong, own up and say you are sorry. After that, you can work on making amends.
I am trying to see a way out of the hardship and turmoil we are making for you. As I work to stop the madness, I will be mindful of how much harder your struggles will be as you deal with the challenges we leave you to face.
The best I can do to help you through the overheated future we are making is to love you now. I cannot change the past and my struggle to make a healthier future for you is uncertain, but today I can teach you, encourage you, and help you be as strong and smart and confident as you can be, so that whatever the future holds, whatever crises you face, you are as ready as possible. We will learn to laugh together, too, because love and laughter can pull you through the toughest times.
I know a better world is possible. We create that better world by reaching out to one another, listening, learning, and speaking from our hearts, face to face, neighbor to neighbor, one community after another, openly, inclusively, bravely. Democracy is not a gift to be practiced only when permitted. We empower ourselves. Our salvation is found in each other, together.
Across America this morning and all around the world, our better angels call to us, imploring us to rise up and be as resilient as our beloved, beautiful children and grandchildren, whose future we make today. We can do better. I promise.
Your grandfather,
Chip Ward
Chip Ward, a TomDispatch regular, co-founded HEAL Utah and led several grassroots campaigns to make polluters accountable. He wrote Canaries on the Rim and Hope’s Horizon, was an administrator of the award-winning Salt Lake City Public Library, and then retired to the canyons of southern Utah. His latest work, just published, is Dance, Don’t Drive: Resilient Thinking for Turbulent Times. His essays can be read at chipwardessays.blogspot.com. He can be written at moonbolt3@hotmail.com.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook.
Copyright 2012 Chip Ward
The Age of Obama: What Went Wrong (and How to Fix It)
Reprinted with permission from Yes! Magazine (March 29, 2012)
Van Jones reflects on his time in—and out of—the White House.
by Van Jones
This article is adapted from Rebuild the Dream, Van Jones’ new book.
The 2008 campaign was a campfire around which millions gathered. But after the election, it was nobody’s job or role to tend that campfire. The White House was focused on the minutiae of passing legislation, not on the magic of leading a movement. Obama For America did the best that it could, but the mass gatherings, the idealism, the expanded notions of American identity, the growing sense of a new national community, all of that disappeared.
It goes without saying that clear thinking and imaginative problem solving are easier in hindsight, away from the battlefield. I was in the White House for six months of 2009, and I was outside of it afterward. I had some of the above insights at the time, but many did not come to me in the middle of the drama and action. Most are the product of deeper reflection, which I was able to do only from a distance.
Nonetheless, the exercise of trying to sort out what might have been and trying to understand why nobody was able to make those things happen in real time has informed this book and shaped my arguments going forward.
Let me speak personally: looking back, I do not think those of us who believed in the agenda of change had to get beaten as badly as we were, after Obama was sworn in. We did not have to leave millions of once-inspired people feeling lost, deceived, and abandoned. We did not have to let our movement die down to the level that it did.
The simple truth is this: we overestimated our achievement in 2008, and we underestimated our opponents in 2009.
We did not lose because the backlashers got so loud. We lost because the rest of us got so quiet. Too many of us treated Obama’s inauguration as some kind of finish line, when we should have seen it as just the starting line. Too many of us sat down at the very moment when we should have stood up.
Among those who stayed active, too many of us (myself included) were in the suites when we should have been in the streets. Many “repositioned” our grassroots organizations to be “at the table” in order to “work with the administration.” Some of us (like me) took roles in the government. For a while at least, many were so enthralled with the idea of being a part of history that we forgot the courage, sacrifices, and risks that are sometimes required to make history.
That is hard, scary, and thankless work. It requires a willingness to walk with a White House when possible—and to walk boldly ahead of that same White House, when necessary. A few leaders were willing to play that role from the very beginning, but many more were not. Too many activists reverted to acting like either die-hard or disappointed fans of the president, not fighters for the people.
The conventional wisdom is that Obama went too far to the left to accommodate his liberal base. In my view, the liberal base went too far to the center to accommodate Obama. The conventional wisdom says that Obama relied on Congress too much. I say Obama relied on the people too little, and we tried to rely on him too much. Once it became obvious that he was committed to bipartisanship at all costs, even if it meant chasing an opposition party that was moving further to the right every day, progressives needed to reassess our strategies, defend our own interests, and go our own way. It took us way too long to internalize this lesson— and act upon it.
The independent movement for hope and change, which had been growing since 2003, was a goose that was laying golden eggs. But the bird could not be bossed. Caging it killed it. It died around conference tables in Washington, DC, long before the Tea Party got big enough to kick its carcass down the street.
The administration was naïve and hubristic enough to try to absorb and even direct the popular movement that had helped to elect the president. That was part of the problem. But the main problem was that the movement itself was naïve and enamored enough that it wanted to be absorbed and directed. Instead of marching on Washington, many of us longed to get marching orders from Washington. We so much wanted to be a part of something beautiful that we forgot how ugly and difficult political change can be. Somewhere along the line, a bottom-up, largely decentralized phenomenon found itself trying to function as a subcomponent of a national party apparatus. Despite the best intentions of practically everyone involved, the whole process wound up sucking the soul out of the movement.
As a result, when the backlash came, the hope-and-changers had no independent ground on which to stand and fight back. Grassroots activists had little independent ability to challenge the White House when it was wrong and, therefore, a dwindling capacity to defend it when it was right.
The Obama administration had the wrong theory of the movement, and the movement had the wrong theory of the presidency. In America, change comes when we have two kinds of leaders, not just one. We need a president who is willing to be pushed into doing the right thing, and we need independent leaders and movements that are willing to do the pushing. For a few years, Obama’s supporters expected the president to act like a movement leader, rather than a head of state.
The confusion was understandable: As a candidate, Obama performed many of the functions of a movement leader. He gave inspiring speeches, held massive rallies, and stirred our hearts. But when he became president, he could no longer play that role.
The expectation that he would or could arose from a fundamental misreading of U.S. history. After all, as head of state, President Lyndon Johnson did not lead the civil rights movement. That was the job of independent movement leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer. There were moments of conflict and cooperation between Johnson and leaders in the freedom struggle, but the alchemy of political power and people power is what resulted in the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
As head of state, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not lead the labor movement. That was the job of independent union leaders. Again, the alchemy of political power and people power resulted in the New Deal. As head of state, Woodrow Wilson did not lead the fight to enfranchise women. That was the role of independent movement leaders, such as suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Ida B. Wells. The alchemy of political power and people power resulted in women’s right to vote. As head of state, Abraham Lincoln did not lead the abolitionists. That was the job of independent movement leaders Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman. The alchemy of political power and people power resulted in the emancipation of enslaved Africans. As head of state, Richard Nixon did not lead the environmental movement. That was the job of various environmental organizations, such as the Sierra Club, and other leaders, like those whom writer Rachel Carson inspired. Once again it was the alchemy of political power and people power that resulted in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency
The biggest reason for our frustrations and failures is that we have not yet understood that both of these are necessary—and they are distinct. We already have our head of state who arguably is willing to be pushed. We do not yet have a strong enough independent movement to do the pushing. The bulk of this book makes the case for how and why we should build one.
Van Jones adapted this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions, from his new book, Rebuild the Dream. Van Jones, a former contributing editor to YES! Magazine and a former adviser to President Obama, is the co-founder of Rebuild the Dream, a platform for bottom-up, people-powered innovations to help fix the U.S. economy. He is also the co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change, and Green for All.
Interested?
- Now, Let’s Occupy the Ballot
Van Jones: During election season, all eyes turn to politics. How do we ensure that the interests of the 99 percent are represented in the halls of power? - 9 Best Strategies to End Corporate Rule
Corporate power is behind the politics of climate denial, Wall Street bailouts, union busting, and media consolidation, to name just a few. But real people have power, too. Here are some of our most successful strategies. - Special Weapons for Fighting Giants
Revoke their charters, and other legal tools to hold corporations accountable to our laws.
YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
Esquire Magazine: Writer wanted to help convert class war into generational war. No skills required; pays top dollar
Reprinted with permission from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (March 30, 2012)
By Dean Baker
This could well have been the want-ad Esquire used to attract a writer for its story titled, “War Against Youth.” This lengthy piece is the best compendium of warped logic and misplaced facts on this topic since the Peter Peterson financed film, IOUSA.
The whole story is given away in the first paragraph:
“In 1984, American breadwinners who were sixty-five and over made ten times as much as those under thirty-five. The year Obama took office, older Americans made almost forty-seven times as much as the younger generation.”
That sounds really awful. Thankfully it is not true, as readers could find by looking at the chart that accompanies the article. This is a ratio of wealth not income.
This is a huge difference. Wealth adds up a household’s total assets. This means the value of their home, their 401(k) and other savings, their checking account and car. The calculation the n subtracts liabilities: mortgage debt, car loans, credit card debt, and student loans. This is very different from income, which for most people means their wages and for older people their Social Security.
If the writer, the editor, the fact checker or anyone at Esquire had a clue, they would have caught this mistaken first paragraph and killed the piece. As their chart shows, the median net worth for households over age 65 was $170,494. That merits repeating a couple more times. The median net worth for households over age 65 was $170,494. The median net worth for households over age 65 was $170,494.
Again, net worth refers to total assets minus liabilities. This means that if we add up the home equity of the typical household over age 65, their 401(k) and all other savings, the value of their car and any other possessions they might have, it comes to just over $170,000. This is a bit more than the price of the median home.
In other words, if the typical household over age 65 took all of their wealth, they would have enough money to pay off their mortgage. After that they would be entirely dependent for their living expenses on their Social Security benefit, which averages a bit more than $1,200 a month.
To take another comparison, the lifetime accumulation of wealth of the typical household over age 65 would be approximately equal to what the CEO of Goldman Sachs earns in two days. A top hedge fund manager, who makes $3-4 billion a year, can pocket this much money in ten minutes. Yet, Esquire tells us that it is the high living retirees getting by on their $1,200 a month Social Security checks who are responsible for the questionable future facing the young.
Even this comparison of net worth is misleading. It shows that the net worth of households over age 65 increased from $120,000 in 1983 to $170,000 in 2009. However these numbers do not include pension wealth. A household over age 65 in 1983 was far more likely to be receiving money from a defined benefit pension than a household today. The loss of pension wealth would offset much of this modest gain in wealth over the last quarter century.
Also, using the ratio of the wealth of households over age 65 to the wealth of households under age 35 is just a foolish exercise. Households under age 35 never had much wealth. Their 1983 median wealth of $11,500 was not going to carry them far in life. The fact that it fell to $3,660 is not of great consequence compared to their career opportunities.
This would be like saying that homeless people are in trouble because the median amount amount of money they had in their pockets fell from $1.20 to 60 cents. Just as the main factor that will determine the well-being of homeless people is not the amount of change in their pocket, the main factor that will determine the well-being of the young is not their wealth.
A 25-year-old Harvard MBA with $150,000 in student loan debt will do just fine. The relevant issue for young people is their career prospects. These will not be very good if the 1 percent continue to get most of the gains from economic growth.
But the first paragraph is just the beginning. This piece is a true cornucopia of bad logic and misinformation. It tells readers that:
“The biggest boondoggle of all is Social Security. The management of entitlement programs, already weighted heavily in favor of the older population, has a very specific terminal point that coincides neatly with the Boomers’ deaths. The 2011 report by the Social Security trustees estimates that, under its current administration, the fund will run out in 2036, so there’s just enough to get the oldest Boomers to age ninety.”
Social Security is projected to first face a shortfall in 2036, according to the Trustees projections (2038 according to the Congressional Budget Office), but it does not “run out in 2036,” even in the absurdly unlikely event that Congress never does anything to address the shortfall. (The share of beneficiaries in the voting population will be about 50 percent larger in 2036 than it is today. Any bets that Congress won’t pay full scheduled benefits?)
There will still be plenty of tax revenue being paid in 2037. This will be sufficient to pay about 80 percent of scheduled benefits. With benefits projected to be close to 40 percent higher (after adjusting for increases in the cost of living) in 2037, the payable benefit in 2037 would still be higher than what the typical retiree gets today.
Perhaps even more importantly, today’s beneficiaries paid for their benefits. The return on their payroll taxes is reasonable (@1-3 percent, after adjusting for inflation), but hardly excessive. This is why it is absurd that Esquire tells us that:
“According to a 2009 Brookings Institution study, ‘The United States spends 2.4 times as much on the elderly as on children, measured on a per capita basis, with the ratio rising to 7 to 1 if looking just at the federal budget.’”
Yes, using the Brookings Institution methodology the United States spends about 1000 times as much on billionaires as on children, measured on a per capita basis.
Figure it out yet? Billionaires own government bonds. The government pays them interest on these bonds. A billionaire like investment banker Peter Peterson might well get tens of millions of dollars a year in interest on these bonds. It’s true that Peter Peterson paid for these bonds, but the Brookings Institution and Esquire says this does not matter.
The next golden nugget of ignorance comes in the very next paragraph:
“But the government’s future ability to pay is decreasing rapidly precisely because the Boomers splurged so heavily during the Bush and Clinton years. Public debt per person in the United States currently stands at $33,777. George W. Bush inherited a public-debt-to-GDP ratio of 32.5 percent and brought it up to 54.1 percent during a period of economic growth.”
If the measure of splurging is the public debt, then Esquire is on the wrong planet here. The gross debt of the federal government was equal to 64.1 percent of GDP at the end of 1992. It had fallen to 57.3 percent of GDP by the end of 2000. How could they get something so simple so wrong?
Of course the debt is not a measure of intergenerational equity. At some point everyone alive today will be dead. The bonds that they hold will end up in the hands of the next generation. This means that the debt will be paid from some members of younger generations to other members of younger generations. There can be an issue of intra-generational equity, for example if Bill Gates’ children and grandchildren own all the debt, but there is no issue of inter-generational equity here.
What matters for inter-generational equity is the overall state of the economy and the physical and natural infrastructure that we hand down to future generations. By the first measure, we are doing quite well. Productivity is increasing at the rate of close to 2.5 percent annually. This means that after 30 years, the average worker will be producing more than twice as much in an hour of work as they do today. If this gain is relatively evenly shared (i.e. the distribution of income gets no worse), then the typical worker in 2041 will enjoy a standard of living that is close to twice as high as what workers today enjoy.
It’s true that if we ignore global warming then this may not be the case. Similarly, if the U.S. manages to antagonize the rest of the world with its foreign policy, people here may not be able to enjoy the fruits of productivity growth. But this will have nothing to do with the Social Security and Medicare benefits received by baby boomers.
There is way too much other nonsense to address in this post, but one item is too delicious to pass up. There is a box with the heading:
“How to disenfranchise a generation.”
The box then discusses the measures proposed by Republicans in many states to impose more restrictions on voting, most importantly requiring a government issued photo ID card to vote. Incredibly, Esquire tells readers that this rule is aimed at young people, as though they expect these measures to keep the children of Wall Street traders and Fortune 500 CEOs from having a vote.
In fact, these laws are quite obviously targeted at minorities of any age. The Republicans are not trying to keep their kids from voting. There are trying to keep the kids of African Americans and Hispanics from voting, as well as parents and grandparents. Does Esquire really not know this?
This article is a shameful effort to transform the realities of class war, where the wealthy have been rigging the rules to secure themselves most of the gains from economic growth, into a generational issue. The combination of ignorance and dishonesty in this piece is truly extraordinary.
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He is frequently cited in economics reporting in major media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, and National Public Radio. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian Unlimited (UK), the Huffington Post, TruthOut, and his blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting. His analyses have appeared in many major publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, the London Financial Times, and the New York Daily News. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan.
Images from the Great Depression: Seems Like Just Yesterday
Reprinted from Common Dreams (March 25, 2012) by permission of author.
By Paul Buchheit
In March of 1936 U.S. photographer Dorothea Lange, on her way to San Francisco after searching the countryside for Depression-era photos, passed a sign saying “Pea Picker’s Camp” in Nipomo, California. Thinking little of it, she drove on. But a few miles down the road she changed her mind and turned back. Her first encounter in the camp was with a widowed 32-year-old Oklahoma mother of seven who had driven to California looking for work. Now, after a storm had wiped out the crop, and after she had sold the tires from her car to buy food, she sat under a makeshift tent with her children, unprepared for the days ahead of them. She looked a lot older than 32.
Days later a San Francisco News article reported: “Ragged, Hungry, Broke, Harvest Workers Live in Squalor.” Shocked Californians immediately began sending food, and the family of “migrant mother” Florence Thompson found refuge in a government shelter.
Millions of Americans today are like the woman in that 76-year-old black and white photo: desperate and determined but dignified individuals who want a job rather than a handout. But the present keeps fading into the past. The National Poverty Center recently reported that extreme poverty in America has doubled since the 1990s. 1.5 million people live on less than two dollars a day. Many more Americans — up to half the population — are considered “low income” by the Census Bureau.
Just like in the Depression years, people are losing their homes, or they’re losing the wealth that was in their homes. Foreclosures now account for almost a quarter of all residential sales. American families owe $700 billion more than their homes are worth.
Just like in the Depression years, people are without work, or they can’t find decent jobs. Unemployment figures don’t show the millions of underemployed and the millions who have stopped looking for work. Incredibly, wages over the last decade have increased more slowly than during the ten years of the Great Depression.
Other comparisons between then and now are equally striking. Inequality has returned to the modern-day high set in 1928. The middle class is rapidly losing its consuming power. Congress is making the same mistake that led to the “Roosevelt Recession” of 1937, focusing on budget-cutting rather than job growth.
Conservatives insist that the poor can’t become dependent on government. That’s fine, if they have job opportunities. Education is said to be the key. But state education cuts for 2012 are $12.7 billion, federal education cuts of 8% are anticipated beginning in 2013, and the total amount of student loans has reached $1 trillion.
The rational solutions include ending the Bush tax cuts, implementing the Buffett Rule, and imposing a small financial transaction tax.
Then wage a war, as we did in the 1940s, but this time against oil, by building wind turbines and solar panels and a smart grid for alternative energy transmission. That would create millions of jobs, and take us far away from a time we’d like to forget.
And it would put America back in the hands of middle-class workers instead of financial executives whose only goal is to get rich. It might even create a new class of folk hero. For a while in the 1930s “Pretty Boy” Floyd was a hero for taking money from the bankers responsible for foreclosures. He’d still be popular if he were around today.
Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of “American Wars: Illusions and Realities” (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.
Irony: Citizens United May Be Helping Democrats in Short Term
The now infamous Citizens United vs. FEC decision, thought by many to be the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott, has worried progressives because of the tsunami of corporate money it is expected to unleash into our electoral system. It was thought that the flood of cash would disproportionately favor the Republican Party, the traditionally corporate party (although both parties are now well and truly in the thrall of corporate money).
Whatever the reality is behind those fears, it is ironic that in this year at least, the ready access to big sugar-daddy donors and amped-up Super PACs has kept both Gingrich and Santorum viable much longer than they would have been in former elections. The big donors have kept the GOP clown car running on a full tank of gas, with no end in sight.
One of the effects of this circus has been to push all GOP candidates, including the presumptive front-runner Romney, more and more into the arms of the extreme right-wing fringe of the party, competing by supporting losing policies that appeal to that fringe — the war on women, “self-deportation” of paperless immigrants and other anti-Latino policies, etc.
A party of birthers, creationists, theocrats, climate-change deniers, nativists, gay-bashers, anti-abortionists, media paranoids, anti-intellectuals, and out-of-touch country clubbers cannot govern America.
It’s hard to see how any GOP candidate this year can be elected with the stink of fringe extremism clinging to him.
True Unemployment Rate at Depression Level (19.9%) and Rising
This article by Daniel Amerman (rated as a “must read” by Yves Smith in her Naked Capitalism blog today) examines in excruciating detail the government’s manipulation of unemployment statistics to make the rate look lower than it actually is, to make it appear to be falling when it is actually rising:
When we look at broad measures of jobs and population, then the beginning of 2012 was one of the worst months in US history, with a total of 2.3 million people losing jobs or leaving the workforce in a single month. Yet, the official unemployment rate showed a decline from 8.5% to 8.3% in January – and was such cheering news that it set off a stock rally.
How can there be such a stark contrast between the cheerful surface and an underlying reality that is getting worse?
The true unemployment picture is hidden by essentially splitting jobless Americans up and putting them inside one of three different “boxes”: the official unemployment box, the full unemployment box, and the most obscure box, the workforce participation rate box.
… a detailed look at the government’s own data base shows that about 9 million people without jobs have been removed from the labor force simply by the government defining them as not being in the labor force anymore. Indeed – effectively all of the decreases in unemployment rate percentages since 2009 have come not from new jobs, but through reducing the workforce participation rate so that millions of jobless people are removed from the labor force by definition.
When we pierce through this statistical smoke and mirrors and factor back in those 9 million jobless whom the government has defined out of existence, then the true unemployment rate is 19.9% and rising, and not 8.3% and falling.
CLICK FOR FULL ARTICLE
Fearful of Agenda 21, an alleged U.N. plot, activists derail land-use planning
Published in High Country News (hcn.org) February 6, 2012. Reprinted with permission.
By Jonathan Thompson
In November, La Plata County Commissioner Kellie Hotter called local land-use planning “a blood sport.” She wasn’t kidding. Since last spring, as this southwestern Colorado county considered a new comprehensive land-use plan, carnage has piled up. By mid-December, casualties included a fired planning commissioner, a resigned county planning director and the plan itself — a 400-page document that took two years, $750,000 and 137 public meetings to produce.
Even planning veterans in the rural West — where it’s not uncommon for mind-numbing meetings to erupt into verbal fisticuffs — were shocked by the bloodshed in La Plata County. But perhaps most surprising was who emerged the untarnished victors: Activists who believe that smart growth, clustered development, smart meters and even bike paths are all part of a nefarious United Nations plot to rob citizens of their liberties.
They may sound like folks on the fringe. But they are increasingly influential — and they’ve sabotaged planning efforts nationwide.
The movement’s ideology isn’t new: resentment of government interference and vigilant defense of private-property rights, especially when environmental initiatives are involved. What is new is the alleged villain: Agenda 21, a two-decades-old U.N. document that encourages sustainable development worldwide. The Agenda is being foisted, opponents claim, on often-unsuspecting local governments by ICLEI, a nonprofit that offers planning tools, greenhouse gas inventory software and technical support to some 550 government members in the U.S.
The result? “Government will control how hot your shower may be, how much air conditioning or heat you may use,” writes Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Center, an intellectual parent of the end-Agenda 21, or Agender, movement. “The policy of Agenda 21 comes in many names, such as Sustainable Development, Smart Growth, historic preservation … and comprehensive planning.”
La Plata County might not seem like a yeasty environment for fermenting right-wing movements. It’s voted mostly Democratic in major elections for at least 10 years. The population center is Durango, a college town with a disproportionate number of professional cyclists, lawyers and raft guides, not to mention a fabulous bike path. But remnants of the older West remain, most notably some 3,000 oil and gas wells. A far-right faction also still festers. When Colorado’s GOP was fractured by extremist and moderate infighting in 2006, the struggle was centered here.
Planning has always been contentious, and the county commission expected some controversy when, in 2009, it charged its staff and a team of consultants with developing a community-driven vision for the county’s growth over the next 20 years. The plan would contain no actual regulations, but it would provide a critical road map for rewriting the county’s land-use code.
A diverse, 17-member working group was formed to represent the community, and the public was encouraged to attend meetings. From the beginning, a vocal minority suspicious of government interference was present. At one early meeting, after a consultant spoke about preserving agriculture, possibly through zoning, sheep-rancher J. Paul Brown said: “If you’re looking for a fight, keep that crap up!” Such sentiments were incorporated into the draft plan.
Last spring, an ambitious vision emerged to rein in sprawl, encourage bicycling and public transportation, protect agriculture and promote sustainability. Respect for private-property rights and conventional energy development were also emphasized, and the draft was sent to the planning commission, an appointed body that in Colorado has the final say on county comprehensive plans. “There wasn’t a word in that plan that wasn’t vetted by the working group,” says Charlie Deans, the lead consultant.
But around the same time, the Agender movement was slithering out of the political primordial soup. Since as early as 2003, a few far-right commentators such as DeWeese had banged the Agenda 21 drum, but few listened. Then, in 2009, DeWeese took his ideas to the Tea Party, and its branches began adopting the Agender platform. “It was a slow acceleration,” says Don Knapp, an ICLEI spokesman who has tracked the movement.
During the 2010 mid-term campaign, Dan Maes, a doomed Republican and Tea Party Colorado gubernatorial candidate, announced that Denver’s bike-sharing program was part of a U.N. plot — probably the first high-profile mention of Agenda 21. In a debate for Colorado House District 59, La Plata County’s J. Paul Brown declared that Obama had a secret army and that the U.N. is “going to control our land and our guns.” Gleeful Democrats assumed the rhetoric would kill Brown’s chances for a seat long held by moderates. They were wrong: Brown won.
Also in 2010, Rosa Koire started the Post-Sustainability Institute, which campaigns against Agenda 21 and “communitarianism.” Despite the fact that she’s a registered Democrat who looks fresh from auditions for a Gloria Steinem bio-pic, Koire, a Bay Area real-estate appraiser, has become a Tea Party YouTube hero and Agender leader. Then, last June, Glenn Beck did a 14-minute anti-Agenda 21 monologue on Fox News.
“It really picked up steam after that,” says Knapp. Last month, Koire and dozens of fellow Agenders packed a planning meeting in Marin County, Calif., shouting anti-planning slogans. Agenders in Benton County, Ore., went after a plan to protect river corridors. One told the Corvallis Gazette-Times: “Riparian, sustainability — it’s the words that give ‘em away. Their goal is to take over the world by taking over the water, the land and the food.” Last fall, Newt Gingrich vowed to cut funding for “any kind of activity for United Nations Agenda 21″ if elected president. And at least 16 communities have ended their ICLEI membership in protest.
In La Plata County, by late July the anti-planning crowd started referencing Agenda 21 in their public comments. County planner Erick Aune had never even heard of it. So he attended an “evening of Agenda 21 education” hosted by the Four Corners Liberty Restoration group, where the featured speaker masterfully laid out a 200-year conspiracy culminating in the comprehensive plan. By the end of that month, more than 100 people had signed a petition against it, saying it was “based on emotional feel-good ideas that are designed for social engineering and social equity that trample our rights as free people.”
In December, after whittling the plan down to about 40 pages and snuffing out an entire chapter on sustainable development, the La Plata County planning commission unanimously voted to scrap it altogether. Aune resigned a day later.
The reasons the planning commissioners gave were somewhat vague. The plan was too values-based; it didn’t reflect the will of the community. But there’s little doubt that the Agenders influenced the process. “I’m for planning, but I’m not for the ideological, political, social engineering that went into this document,” commissioner Steven Kallaher said in December. Earlier, of community concerns, he said, “Someone who owns hundreds of acres in the county doesn’t want someone living in the city who rides a solar-powered bicycle to tell them what to do.”
“The (Agenders) group was very organized and very focused and very intent on delivering a consistent message,” says Aune. “They wanted (the comprehensive plan) to go away because it represents government and control to them.”
The movement’s meteoric rise is probably due to the fact that it’s just the most recent incarnation of an age-old ideology. “Local debates about property rights have been around for decades,” says Knapp. “What’s new is this idea that it has to do with the United Nations or the imposition of some outside force … that there’s this tyranny at play.
“(It’s) motivated a lot of people to get involved in local politics,” he says. “It’s a really good scare story. It’s big on fear, it’s big on fiction, and it’s short on fact.”
Jonathan Thompson is a contributing editor at High Country News and a 2011-2012 Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.
