Remember a month or two ago, there was a public hearing to raise support for a Promise Zone?
"....in his State of the Union Address earlier this year, the President laid out an initiative to designate a number of high-poverty communities as Promise Zones, where the federal government will partner with and invest in communities to create jobs, leverage private investment, increase economic activity, expand educational opportunities, and improve public safety."
Long story short, the Region 7B Brainchild known as "A Northern Transformation" enlisted the support of 250 "community partners" and applied for a Promise Zone designation.
We, of course, opposed.
(A sincere thank you to patriot and good friend Kurt Kocur for attending this "promise zone " public hearing on behalf of We The People of Gladwin County. Kurt was able to cut through the greedy anxiety of being near free money by taping 14, 8.5x11 pieces of paper to the wall representing the 17 trillion in debt the this country is facing. It was relayed to me that he did a great job of admonishment for those that would freely put their own grandkid's future at risk in exchange for money we don't have, for programs we don't need, we have huge character issues within our local governments and we need to start being able to identify them....)
As it turns out, A Northern Transformation was not selected to receive the Promize Zone designation, much to the chagrin of the community partners, and likely to the outright despair and anguish of the back-patting, fellow-board-sitting circle of "friends" that man the roundtables at places like Region 7B, EMCOG, and Prima Civitas.
But it seems they are not willing to go away quietly. The snippet below was emailed to the community partners:
Although we have seen the letter, we are certain no one from Northern Transformation is seeking the feedback we are offering.... But here it is anyway.
Why don't you support the Promise Zone?
We don't support the Promise Zone in this area because it is nothing more than a way for the people who sit on boards - like EMCOG, like EDC, like Prima Civitas, like Region 7B - to further capitalize on the demographics of our area to secure money in the guise of "development", while, in reality, they are only validating their own existence and their right to play SimCity with our tax dollars.
Remember FEDzilla?
This is the perfect example. This line chart is how we interpret the federal overreach, the spineless local leadership, the greedy unscrupulous NGOs. The compliant state, the disaster that is regionalism, the disaster that is Agenda 21....
You have three major entities involved the Promise Zone. The first is A Northern Transformation. From their website: "Founded in 2010, Northern Transformation is the nonprofit division of the Michigan Works! Region 7B Consortium. Region 7B has been engaging employers and job seekers since 1978 serving the six lower counties of Northeast Michigan. Northern Transformation's reach goes beyond the 6 counties that make up Region 7B to cover all 14 counties of Northeast Michigan."
Really? Why? Why encapsulate a bigger region?
It's to encapsulate a larger number of poor people, fewer jobs, and likely skew numbers for the Feds. The Feds, we are sure, are proud of the technique of Regionalism.
The second is Region 7B Consortium. Region 7B works at ".... increasing our competitiveness by bringing tradition and innovation together to support our clients, in the global economy."
<yawn...think Agenda 21 101>
The next is Prima Civitas. (Wow! Sounds official....who are they?)
From their website:
Hmm..... What does that mean? A disruptive catalyst?
Huh?!
OK.....ummmm....what does that mean....really?
OHHHHH!!!! You are a regionalist Agenda 21 agency who pats the backs of other NGO's while lining one another's pockets with tax money under the guise of caring about our economy enough to give money back to our communities....
<crickets chirp, the earth turns, no one answers....>
Well, I mean, come on.... The Region 7B guy, who created a Northern Transformation, sits on your board.
<even the crickets go still>
No, seriously.... He does. Look.
<still no comment>
And admittedly, this is a Regionalist organization.... I mean, we took this right off your web site.
OK, OK.... No more poking the Agendist Beast. We're sure you get it by now.
Our first president, George Washington, took office in 1789. No more than 220 years later, in 2009, our national debt hit $10 trillion.
We've hit our national debt limit *79 times.*
Since 2009, we've piled on $7 trillion additional - and it's projected the unfunded liabilities surpass $100 trillion. It is unsustainable, and these prostitute pimping NGO's like Northern Transformation don't give a damn. They will benefit in their lifetimes by selling national debt bought and owned by China to local community officials.
Those that advocate for this "free" money have no concept of the potential for losing our republican form of government. These plans and agreements hamstring local elected authority and leave us with less local control.
Regionalism is THE threat to our Constitutional Republic
Reward an overreaching, overstepping, over controlling bureaucracy by asking them into your life by contract in exchange for cash advancing your children's debt? Did ANYONE research The Pied Piper?
Doesn't work out so well for our children when we cannot pay our debts, folks.
Many of the failed governmental ideas and solutions mimic higher governmental bodies like a pyramid scheme. The smaller and more localized a body of government is, the more likely individuals can have a positive impact. It's precisely the reason we bring regionalism - grants, handouts, unelected boards, and steady and incremental requests for tax hikes - into discussion.
You see, at its core, the relationship between our smaller local governments and our Feds, as well as those that hold Fed money, is a symbiotic one. Symbiotic in that they rely on us to offer them something (taxes, a quantifiable number of poor, our property), while giving us mere crumbs of what we've given them back -under the guise, of course, that they are really giving us something meaningful...something extra...but yet they come back for even more next time...so that they can give us back something smaller (especially if we've regionalized; makes for fewer entities to give money to). And the whole time, they hold our way of life precariously in the balance.
So think this kind of symbiotic:
<Hint: We're not the alligator>
We have major hurdles that our governments are charging us into. While not all our representatives look across the once fruited, but now largely decimated plain, all our actions and decisions are part of a system that is interconnected and complicit with the failed direction of our nation only by free will.
We can have a dialogue with elected representatives, and we can use the leverage that is the American spirit and sheer numbers to influence as many as possible in our governments to reach for the emergency brake. Hard times are coming. Staving off the inevitable for future generations to exponentially suffer at our own hand is immoral.
It's kicking the can down the road...it's selfish, and it's wrong.
Speaking of which, you can get a look at those officials, entities, organizations, and even some individuals that support the designation of a Promise Zone. Most hold a common trait - they ultimately work on your dime, and they'd love to have more of them.
See who they are. Click here:
The responsibility lies with the people to not allow local government to ride on auto pilot and accept the NGO and FED enticement of reward in exchange for stipulation (after all, who has to maintain all those nifty projects their grant monies fund for us?).
There is an all-out assault taking place on local government, and we are not being told the truth by our elected officials. Those that recognize the threat are few, and those that do but don't give a damn are many.
The fact is, most state and local governments are simply so desperate to keep their roads paved and lights on, that they will not look too closely at the strings attached to the offered grants. Some of them require additional spending that further compromises the fiscal health of our smaller communities.
Eventually, if we become unable to sustain these strategic investments, or gifts, we sometimes have to pay the money back - if we still have it. Or cut the valuable services that impact our communities more directly in order to have the money to pay for things like upkeep on bike trails, for instance; or upgrades to a facility we may have gotten.
I don't know about you, but cutting things we NEED, or services we rely on, to bare bones, is not something we enjoy.
But then perhaps, if we can't staff our counties or cities the way we need to, the government level above us steps in and lumps us into a region, where we have access to those services - along with another groups of counties. They will call it good. They will call it necessary. They will call it fiscally responsible.
We think fiscal health comes from making choices that don't add up to additional costs that are not sustainable in the future, and pile more money on our already in-the-trillions debt.
The result is that the Agenda 21 train - which seeks to regionalize our communities in order to divvy up a smaller amound of money than if they had to pay for each community individually - races down the track towards completion.
When it hits the station, we will no longer have a community identity, and sadly, much of what we are selling out for is a crumb of a return of our own money - the money that WE ... The PEOPLE ... paid into our government.
One final thought on grants; this lesson should make one wonder, if all the grant moneys currently being paid out were combined, and then used to reduce the federal deficit, might not the federal deficit melt away? In other words, might the massive amount of money used for grants to encourage social justice, green programs, and regionalism not be the very reason our federal deficit is so very large?
Regionalism strips individual liberty and folks need to find their heart, their guts, plant their feet and say, "We will have none of this in our community."
Freedom is far more dear than short term pacifism. Look through the smoke and see what we are facing as a free community.
So when you read that there is another public hearing to designate "Northern Transformation" as a "Promise Zone", stand up with us. Stand up for freedom, and tell your local officials that we want the Liberty of a free and individual society, not the slavery of a collective funded by NGO's who do nothing more than redistribute our tax money....
