Have professional consultants descended on your town and “facilitated” meetings to “envision” more “vibrancy” in your downtown?
If we’d been paying attention, we might have noticed that Al
Gore, while using highly controversial—some say spurious—evidence to sell us
on the notion of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, leapt to a rather
curious and drastic solution: the “wrenching transformation” of America.
That’s wrenching, as in “to pull or twist someone or something
suddenly and violently,” and transformation, as in “a radical change”…whether
for better or worse. After all, with the US clocking in at only 4.5% of the
world’s population, even if Americans traded their beloved cars for
skateboards, this would hardly make a difference in the earth’s climate. No,
this was never about cooling off supposed planetary fever. It was about
grinding America down into an oppressed, de-industrialized nation.
So how do you “wrench” the world’s foremost free and prosperous
nation into a downtrodden, virtually third-world status? In a word, sneakily.
You do it by creating Orwellian terminology to hoodwink the
public into accepting new paradigms that lower peoples’ standard of living and
impinge on their freedoms. You use incrementalism, changing things ever so
slightly, little by little. (Think of the proverbial unsuspecting frog in the
gradually heating pot of water.)
You fill the media and state and local
governments with your agenda, masked as strategies to “save the planet” or to
create “equity,” or to “protect” lizards and minnows. (In Texas, 4,400 acres
are currently “protected” for the benefit of a species of blind salamander—I
kid you not. And in California, 250,000 acres of prime Central Valley farmland
were “transformed” into a virtual dustbowl after the irrigation water was cut
off to “protect” a tiny minnow called the Delta Smelt.)
You do it by forcing cities to march to a new drumbeat as you
quietly alter their zoning laws and land use policies, striking
surreptitiously at the heart of property ownership and individual rights.
Take your own city. Have professional consultants descended on
your town and “facilitated” meetings to “envision” more “vibrancy” in your
downtown? Was the outcome a new Specific Plan or “Gateway Project” with new
zoning laws permitting substantially higher density because the “consensus”
reached during the “visioning” favored the “vibrancy” of multistory,
mixed-use, high-density housing projects adjacent to rail or bus lines? What a
coincidence! That happened in my town, too.
And perhaps, once the precedent of urbanized, higher density
development had been set in your heretofore tranquil suburb, it became time to
“update” the town’s General Plan for “consistency” with your new “Specific
Plan.” Get the idea?
In fact, much of the wrenching transformation we are now facing
is being presented to us under the seemingly innocuous guise of the “update.”
For this is not only being applied to General Plans, but to Housing Elements,
and Zoning Ordinances as well. We might say the cancer of the wrenching
transformation that began in our Specific Plans soon metastasized to cover our
whole city.
But it did not stop there.
Here in California, much of said transformation is being
inflicted on us via newly powerful regional boards. Again, as with the
supposedly innocuous “updates” of pre-existing city planning documents, these
regional boards existed for decades without doing harm, so why be concerned
about them now? Why indeed! Seemingly overnight, these boards of unelected,
non-representational bureaucrats began to dictate to the
residents/citizens/voters all over the Bay Area, precisely in the manner of
Soviet councils imposing top-down, central planning agendas on a
disenfranchised citizenry. The now-hated though innocent-sounding boards ABAG
(Association of Bay Area Governments) and MTC (Metropolitan Transportation
Commission), in spite of vehement public opposition, passed their infamous
Plan Bay Area last summer. This Plan will compel people to live in
high-density multi-story stack-and-pack housing projects in narrow “transit
corridors” and drastically curtail driving, all for the “good of the planet.”
Plan Bay Area also creates Priority Conservation Areas
(PCAs—these guys love acronyms), which comprise the majority of Bay Area
lands, and woe to those who live in such newly designated areas. Their
property rights are no longer worth the paper they are printed on. For, ominously,
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is in the process of
“updating” the State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP). And from here,
anything goes—very likely including swaps (OK, pun intended, but you can bet
they thought of it first). For example, your backyard may be deemed essential
to the well-being of long-toed salamanders, so off you go into a cramped
apartment in a high-rise near the train, the better to leave the salamanders
in peace.
Here is a telling quote from the CDFW pertaining to the update in
question: “The conservation strategies take into consideration the
relationship between the biology and ecology of the natural environment,
together with the social, economic, political and institutional systems that
may affect the habitats being conserved.” So the priority is the “habitat” for
reptiles, fish and assorted predatory and other animals, trumping the rights
of property owners, i.e. people/residents/voters/American citizens/human
beings.
And what does the CDFW seek to accomplish? To “create a common
vision (that word again) for fish and wildlife conservation in California,”
and to “update species at risk, vulnerable species and species of greatest
conservation need lists,” among other things. By the way, the other things
will apparently include a huge, statewide land-grab by means of claiming that
most of the land in California is necessary for “conservation” purposes—the
lizards and minnows again. Interestingly, Stalin didn’t find it necessary to
rationalize his “land reforms” so that the peasants would quietly accept the
State confiscation: he just starved them to death. But then the Ukrainian
peasants would have surely seen through such ruses as “species protection” or
“biodiversity” arguments and continued to fight against collectivization of
their lands.
Of course, it couldn’t happen here…or could it?
Cherie Zaslawsky is a writer/editor/educator who lives in
California. After many years as an unquestioning liberal Democrat, she woke up
to reality, and hopes to help others do likewise.
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