Tag Archives: grants

Quick-take for sidewalks and bike paths by government is no longer acceptable under the law in Ohio!

This story is really HUGE, but it has quit a few moving parts, so bear with me.

Bike paths and sidewalks are being built all across the United States so that someday, when we are forced to abandon are cars, we will have bike paths on which to travel. However, since bike paths are really expensive the feds have done two things to get local government to agree to build the bike paths. First the feds offer grants to the local government (the money is usually funneled down through regional boards), which in theory helps cover some of the cost of the road itself. In return the local government often has to promise to use a Complete Street design. A Complete Street design requires sidewalks and bike paths be built adjacent to the road that is being built or repaired.

It is not uncommon for these extra features, which really add to the overall width of the project, to force the taking (eminent domain) of private property on either side of the road bed.

To receive and keep the grant the local government has to adhere to a strict time-table. That means, if a property owner chooses to fight the loss of their property, the time-table may be slowed to the point that the grant may be lost. This explains why some local governments have used the “quick-take” process, which allows the local government to come onto contested property and get on with the project denying the property owner their day in court.

The logic has been that quick-take has been acceptable in the past to speedily facilitate the building of roads, but in recent years quick take is being used for sidewalks and bike paths, too.

In Perrysburg, Ohio this situation with a slight twist (the land was being taken, not by the property owners’ local government, but by a neighboring local government!) occurred. You can read this interesting story by clicking on this link.

What makes the Perrysburg, Ohio situation different is the homeowners who were threatened with eminent domain used the talents of Maurice Thompson Executive Director of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law. Thompson was able to win this incredibly important court case which will prevent quick-taking property to build sidewalks or bike paths.  This will force the system to provide property owners their day in court and make it much more difficult for the Complete Street design to be used. Thank you, God! You can read about this important case by clicking on this link.

 

Worlds Largest Solar Plant Applying for Federal Grant to Pay Off Its Federal Loan

 

Yet another solar project is in financial trouble. The renewable energy giant, NRG, and Google borrowed $1,600,000,000 ($1.6 billion) from the federal government to build a solar power facility in the Mojave Desert called Ivanpah. Since its start-up in December of last year (2014), the facility has only produced a little over 25% of the predicted electricity. Now the company wants to receive a grant (read that as your tax dollars) for $539,000,000 ($539 million) to pay off their federal loan with your money so that they do not have to use their own money.

 

This story is emblematic of all that is wrong with sustainable development policies because it contains so many of the typical green-scheme-gone wrong-elements such as 1)faulty data was used to predict an outcome (think Climate Change Model) , 2)crony capitalism was used to acquire a sweet deal from the federal government, 3) taxpayer dollars (aka grant money) are being used to reward a private company for poor performance, and 4)controversy over whether an environmental initiative actually helps the environment. For example in this case is the carbon footprint reduced enough by using solar energy to justify the death-by-frying of thousands of birds caught up in the intense rays of the solar facility? (Of course we know the carbon controversy is in itself a scam meaning the birds are being sacrificed for no good reason.)

To learn more about this latest green-scheme fiasco, click on this link.

LESSON 3: Wildlands Project

Country BarnThis is the third lesson in a series of ten lessons on Agenda 21, commonly known as Sustainable Development. Today you will learn…

How Sustainable Development Policies Will Force Citizens Off of the Rural Lands.

“Land, because of its unique nature and the crucial role it plays in human settlement, cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market.  Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. Social justice, urban renewal and development, the provision of decent dwellings-and healthy conditions for people can only be achieved if land is used in the interest of society as a whole.” The preamble to The Vancouver Action Plan approved at Habitat: United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (31 May to 11 June 1976). Continue reading

Lesson 4: Smart Growth

Bike at beach.This is the fourth lesson in a series of ten lessons on Agenda 21, commonly known as Sustainable Development.. Today you will learn…

 How Smart Growth Stategies are Used to Control Human Behavior Within the Human Settlement.

One of the goals of Agenda 21 is to re-wild over 50% (plus an additional 10% for buffer zones around the re-wilded areas) of the United States. Out of necessity, this will force the human population off the rural lands and into, using Agenda 21 language, “human settlements”. Once there, the behavior of humans can be more easily monitored and controlled, thus creating, “sustainability”. Continue reading

Lesson 5: Public Private Partnerships

Private Public PartnershipsThis 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.  Continue reading

Want to See Which Businesses are in Bed with the Feds???

There are two links provided below to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s (WBCSD) website. The first one will take you to the site itself, where if you spend only a few minutes roaming just through the “history” section found on the “about” page, you will see that this organization is not even trying to hide its associations to the United Nations and their Agenda 21 plans.

The second link will take you to where you can see which companies belong to this freedom sucking organization.  After looking at this list you may want, where you can, to rethink where you spend your money .

Remember, in the brave new world of Agenda 21, big business-along with big government, and NGO’s-will have a very large say on the quality of your life and that of your children-if we allow this scam to continue unchecked.  link   link

The Doctor Won’t See You Now. He Has Clocked Out

PPP’s come in so many variations. Take Obamacare for example. As it morphs over time into its various forms, it is taking on all the trappings of a PPP of mega proportions. As this article points out, Obamacare is forcing more and more physicians to leave their private practice to seek the “protection” of large hospitals, where the government can play watch dog for the public in the private hospital setting. However, one should ask who is going to watch the government? Certainly not the hospital, as it becomes within its geographic area, a de facto monopoly ( another sign that this relationship is a type of PPP). The government in return has fewer health care facilities to control, making it easier to control what services the public can and cannot have. After all, even if grannie is relatively healthy, at some point is it really worth spending money on her? Of course no one on the left acknowledges that there are death panels, although they seem to be awfully fond of the Complete Lives System: link

The Purposeful Flooding of America’s Heartland

As you learned in Lesson 3 on the Wildlands, the goal of the Biodiversity Treaty is to return at least 50% (60% if you count the buffer zones) of the U.S. to the condition it was in before Christopher Columbus arrived on our shores. Since obviously there were no dams in existence at that time, the extreme environmentalists have the dams in America in their crosshairs. As is so often the case with the proponent of Agenda 21, they often create 2-fers. In this case by removing the existing dams, they return the river to nature, plus they flood out many of the citizens who live downstream, forcing them over time to move, the environmentalists hope, into town where they can be put under control of the government. To read about more about how the Corp of Engineers at present is needlessly imperiling the property, businesses, and lives of millions of people constituting criminal negligence click on this     link

Dam removal begins in Cuyahoga Falls

This article published on July 30,2013 would best be read after reading the article also posted under Lesson 3 (Wildlands Project) titled The Purposeful Flooding of America’s Heartland as this article gives greater background into how the Federal Government with the support of the Corp of Engineers has made removing dams across the nation a priority in order to return them to their natural flow. This article, Dam Removal Begins in Cuyahoga Falls, provide documentation that this same policy is being followed in Ohio, and for the same reason. No mention is made about the increased likelihood of flooding concerns downstream caused by the removal of this dam. People and property must take a back seat to nature in our new sustainable world. To read more about the removal of this dam, and to view series of DamCam photos showing the removal of the dam, please click on this    link  .

Bessemer Farms calls it quits, says new farm rules too cumbersome

The family farm is in the crosshairs of the federal government through the increasing number of regulations to which farmers are being asked to comply. Click on this link to learn how these regulations drove  Bessemer Farms  in Akron to totally change their farming model, and how, as more farmers follow suit, this will contribute to higher food costs for Americans. link