This is the fifth lesson in a series of ten lessons on Agenda 21, commonly known as Sustainable Development. Today we will learn…
How Public Private Partnerships Are Used by Government to Take Control of the Economy
A Public Private Partnership is sometimes referred to as a PPP or a 3P.
The definition for a Public Private Partnership is an exclusive partnership between a public entity and a private entity that uses the financial resources of the private sector to carry out the legal activities or functions of the public sector.
3P’s do not work in a free market way where competition decides who wins and who loses.
Video: Lesson 5
This is because a 3P company is granted special privileges by the government, such as the liberal use of eminent domain, tax breaks, subsidies, “front of the line” for permits, and freedom from certain regulations, etc. Hence the company accepting the “goodies” is the “Private” part of the Public Private Partnership, while the government granting the “goodies” is the “Public” part of the Partnership.
These corporations force their competitors to play on an unlevel playing field. This is called Corporatism, Crony Capitalism, or more commonly “choosing winners”, and undermines the free market system on which our prosperity rests. This can over time cause the creation of government sanctioned monopolies in selected segments of the economy.
The corporation, because of all of the “goodies” it has received from the government will have a stronger bottom line. In return the corporation will allow the government to tell it what to produce, for example let’s say solar cells, wind turbines, mercury laden light bulbs, etc. The corporation in return will have the job of promoting its government approved products through its many advertisements. These advertisements not only increase the corporation’s bottom line, but serve as a vehicle for the indoctrination of the citizen to accept whatever the government is pushing. In this way the company’s bottom line benefits; while the government watches the company do the government’s bidding, and the public is limited to, or indoctrinated into, buying artificially expensive products that would not be successful in a true free market system. Add to this, the corporation is most likely using your tax dollars and if the corporation fails, the tax dollars disappear.
An infamous example of a 3P is Solyndra. The government provided huge amounts of money, which came out of the pockets of taxpayers, to “encourage” the corporation to produce solar cells. When the company went bankrupt, for lack of demand, it cost the public sector approximately 500 million in tax dollars.
These Green Sector jobs are especially worrisome because it appears that Sustainable Development policies are designed to destroy, through unreasonable regulations, certain existing industries, like the coal companies, which will then be replaced by new “green” industries created with federal subsidies paid for by the taxpayers.
A more complicated situation occurred in 2007 when the federal government passed legislation to begin phasing out certain of the “old fashioned” incandescent light bulbs by January 1, 2012. The major companies that manufactured these light bulbs, G.E., Royal Phillips Electronics, and Siemens, all lobbied for the passage of the 2007 bill to remove the incandescent light bulb from the market place for the simple reason that there was a greater profit margin in manufacturing the new halogen incandescent and compact fluorescent light bulbs. Late in 2011 the Republican Party managed to legislate a reprieve to the banning of the incandescent light bulb by preventing the Dept. of Energy from receiving any funds to force the change.
Before you sigh a sigh of relief, the reality is that the reprieve came too late.
Joseph Higbee, a spokesman for the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, which represents 95 percent of U.S. light bulb manufacturers, said even if the Department of Energy does not have the funding to enforce the energy efficiency standards, manufacturers are not going to retro-fit their assembly lines to produce the less efficient traditional light bulb.
So, where does that leave us? First you need to realize that there are three key players in this mess; General Electric, the Federal Government, and we, the people. General Electric, the “Private” in this Public Private Partnership, got a light bulb that provided the company with a much higher margin of profit, plus some very generous tax breaks from the Federal Government. The Federal Government, the “Public” in this Public Private Partnership, got the energy-efficient light bulbs they wanted, undermined the free market, and by sending jobs overseas created economic justice.
That just leaves, we, the people. What did we get? Oh, quite a lot. We got expensive, mercury laden, slow to heat up in the cold light bulbs, a weaker free market, and fewer jobs and a weaker economy in America which is the natural result of the redistribution of wealth from a rich country to poorer countries.
This example goes back to what was said in the definition of Agenda 21 (Refer to Lesson 1).
Agenda 21 is NOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT! If it was, the EPA would never allow this mercury laden light bulb to be manufactured or used in the U.S. nor allow the creation of windmill farms that are known to kill every year thousands of birds, including the Bald Eagle. As said previously, it is a political movement designed to control humans and their wealth.
Of course, it’s not just American companies entering into PPPs with our government. Foreign companies are being met with open arms by local, state, and federal officials who see a way to use private corporations and their massive bank accounts to fund projects. “ As the Associated Press reported July 15, 2006, “on a single day in June (2006) an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.6 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road, an Australian company bought a 99 year lease on Virginia’s Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road for 50 years”. (Tom DeWeese/American Policy Center from his Stop Agenda 21 Tool Kit)
Perhaps most worrisome of all are PPPs that involve the infrastructure (roads, sewer systems, water supplies, water treatment facilities, etc.) of a community. Many communities are cash strapped and are always looking for ways to raise money. With that in mind, communities may be tempted to sell and/or lease (often for very long periods of time) parts of their infrastructure. Not only do they get cash but they no longer are required to maintain expensive infrastructure.
However, when government is in charge of a community’s infrastructure, there is an implied responsibility to maintain it to an acceptable degree while at the same time minimizing the tax/service fee burden, if for no other reason, if this doesn’t happen, elected officials become unelected ex-officials.
If public infrastructure is sold off or leased to a private entity, the cost of service to the taxpayers is subservient to the corporation’s need for profit. The private entity is not electable, so if rates soar, un-electing the heads of the corporation is not an option. Even more concerning is if, as mentioned previously, a foreign entity buys/leases the infrastructure they are even less likely to have the best interest of the American taxpayer in mind. In addition, profits from these ventures are likely to leave the U.S.
Taking this one step further, it might be suggested, that when governments lose control of their infrastructure they will also lose control of their governing ability and will no longer remain accountable to their taxpayers. You might even say, as did President Clinton, that we are “reinventing government”.
Speaking for myself, I kind of liked our “old government”.
Another 3P concern with Public Private Partnerships is that over time, due to the uneven playing field, fewer and fewer small businesses are able to survive. This works very well for a government that is trying to destroy the free market. This type of government does not want competition. It wants control. The fewer companies that exist, and the more compliant to government demands they become, the greater is the control of the government over the market place.
Unfortunately for the economy, small business is the driver of the economic engine. Therefore, the citizen’s will have diminished opportunity for prosperity as the economy falters. The ultimate goal of a government that is implementing sustainable development is to lower the standard of living and diminish the consumption of goods by its citizens. Reducing the chance of success for our small businesses will certainly stall our economy, reduce the living standard of America, while advancing the Agenda 21 goal of decreasing consumption habits in the U.S.
3P’s can exist on the highest level of our government as shown by the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA). NAFTA was touted as a way to make the U.S. more competitive with Asia and Europe by combining the economic strength of the U.S. with that of Canada and Mexico. Instead NAFTA caused U.S. jobs to go overseas, real wages in the U.S. to drop, an increase in our trade deficit, and an enrichment of select corporations. In other words, NAFTA redistributed American wealth overseas. Further, it was designed to blur our national borders and weaken our sovereignty. Can you say North American Union?
Validation of this can be seen in this quote by Henry Kissinger in July 1993: It [NAFTA] will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of the free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere. [NAFTA} is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system.”
This brings us back, yet again, to the definition of Agenda 21 given in Lesson 1 of this course where we learned that in an Agenda 21/Sustainable Development world the government seeks to control the world’s economy, dictate its development, and capture and redistribute the world’s wealth.
In summary, a corporation involved in a PPP with the government must comply with the government or lose their strategic advantage. This makes the relationship between the government and business so entwined that it is difficult to determine where the government begins and the private sector ends.
The loser is the American citizen who can no longer vote with their dollars in the free market. The government instead uses the taxpayer’s dollars to determine what products or services a corporation will produce, and therefore what products and services the taxpayer will be allowed to purchase.
Further, if the American citizen’s infrastructure is sold to the highest bidder, they will have no representative looking out for their best interests and, as the prices go up, they will have no recourse.
Last but not least, certain policies, like NAFTA, entered into by our federal government, can damage the free market on a global level, weaken our sovereignty, and hasten a One World Order.
In the next lesson, Lesson 6, you will learn how your tax dollars, through the use of grants, are used against you to destroy borders within the U.S. and ultimately your representative form of government.
It is strongly suggested that before you move on to Lesson 6 that you read the supplemental materials provided for Lesson 5. You may do that by clicking on the links below to the various supplemental materials provided for Lesson 5.
The Problem with Public Private Partnerships
Five Myths About the Federal Incandescent Lightbulb Ban
The Doctor Won’t See You Now-He’s Clocked Out
Position Paper on Public Private Partnerships
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