SO YOU THINK THE MAYOR'S OFFICE IS PARTY NEUTRAL?
First Myth: Local offices, like city council and mayor, are Party neutral.
Second Myth: Local officials are interested in local solutions to local problems.
Third Myth: These officials are mainly interested in the local citizens.
Every year and some times two or three times a year, Mayors attend national meetings with titles such as the US Conference of Mayors or The League of Cities. Do they share information on how to conduct local business? Hardly, if one reads the information contained on the US Conference web site or might have followed the 2006 meeting which just concluded, in Washington, D.C.
Walnut Creek's Mayor, Kathy Hicks, was there as were most of the mayors in the cities south of Walnut Creek. Apparently the Mayor of Concord, Ms Bonilla, did not attend this year, but Concord Mayors in past years have attended.
Kathy Hicks was also in attendance on June 25, 2001, when the Conference passed a Resolution endorsing the Earth Charter and committing the organization to realization of its aim.
Some of the goals of the Earth Charter are to:
1. Promote the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations.
2. Promote the Equal Rights Amendment by affirming gender equality and equity as prerequisites to sustainable development. That's equity not equal opportunity.
3. Adopt patterns of reproduction that safeguard earths regenerative capacities, and, ensure universal access to health care that fosters reproductive health and responsible reproduction.
4. Integrate into formal education and life-long learning the knowledge, values, and skills needed for a sustainable way of life.
5. Recognize the importance of moral and spiritual education for sustainable living.
If your Mayor is a Democrat he or she might also be attending the National Conference of Democratic Mayors whose goals are: To serve as the structure through which Democratic mayors can communicate and promote the goals of the Democratic Party.
For a full understanding of the Conference of Mayors go to U.S. Mayors
At the recently held meeting Chicago Mayor Daley suggested that it was good to promote food stamps for everybody. He stated that: Not enough people were taking advantage of the food stamp program. Food stamps can bring more money into the community so sign up more people.
George Cloutier, Director of American Management Services for small businesses was promoting his program called Partner America This program provided $15-20 million annually to cities promoting their (national) projects.
California's former Assembly Speaker, Antonio Villaraigosa, now Mayor of Los Angeles gave a lengthy address promoting his Poverty and Opportunity Task force which he referred to as Cities for Strong America.
He threw out a lot of statistics on poverty in America and proclaimed that a growing number of working Americans were Living on subsistence spending more than they earned. They deserved, he declared, to be given a reasonable expectation of the good life He didn't provide a definition of either reasonable or good life.
He called on every mayor to participate in his task force to help create an Ownership society. The goals of his task force included:
1. Housing vouchers.
2. National charitable giving (unclear what he meant by that).
3. Challenge the private sector to a greater claim on cities through charitable giving.
4. A higher minimum wage.
5. Health Insurance for all.
6. Rescue failing schools.
7. Free and compulsory public education. (This could be a subtle push for Rob Reiner's tax funded preschool initiative on the June, 2006 ballot.
Mayor Daley returned to the podium to endorse Villaraigosa's program and he called for the promotion of a national education program partnering with state and local entities. He also called for federal government expansion of head start with an emphasis on promoting federal oversight on education from preschool to high school.
All of this should cause one to ponder just how much local elected officials work for the local citizens and how much they really work for national special interests.
What Does Community Health Mean?
By Camille Giglio, Director California Right To Life Committee
Recently I participated in a panel discussion on Prop 73 with two other pro-life people and three pro-abort women – a young woman was from Planned Parenthood, a much older woman speaking for N.O.W. and a third, young, eager, aggressive woman represented an organization called Bay Area Community Health Education [BACHE].
Afterwards, I couldn’t get the title “community health” out of my mind.
What is the meaning of the term “community health,” is it different than individual health?
I looked up BACHE online and discovered that they were sponsored by the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and Clergy for Responsible Choice. They apparently have no web page but can be reached at the email address, bachemtdiablo@comcast.net.
Their mission, as stated in a flyer is to “promote teaching of comprehensive, medically accurate, age appropriate, bias free, sex education in the Public Schools.”
In other words they seem to function as an extension of PP, but are they something more than that?
As usual they have distorted and twisted the meaning of words such as “bias free” and “medically accurate” to suit their agenda. As I was sitting there on the panel listening to them expressing their beliefs - accurate or not - it occurred to me that these people are so confident in themselves, their message and that it will be accepted without question, that they feel unconstrained, saying whatever they want, true, accurate or otherwise.
The pro-abortionists can rely on a certain percentage in these audiences who will uncritically accept their claims. These folks basically want to be deceived and not have their belief structure challenged.
We on pro-life side can put forth what we feel is an overwhelmingly convincing argument and the opposition are not going to hear us. Bluntly, they appear to have been brainwashed and are extremely difficult to reason with.
Understanding their mindset however can be a big advantage to accessing Planned Parenthood’s audience.
In the past I have written of the need to be alert to the word “comprehensive” as it applies to legislation, especially legislation centering on sex education in which case it translates into the full Planned Parenthood array of liberal sexual indoctrination.
Now I suggest that another word to be aware of is the word “community,” as in “community health.”
People who form into groups such as this local version of the ACLU - BACHE - are on a mission to stake out a certain segment of the community, be it local, national or international, and drag those people into conformity with their vision of social, human or civil rights justice - never mind the US Constitution. They will form whatever partnerships they have to to achieve their vision be it governmental or faith-based.
That which in their minds, meets the needs of the group rather than the individual is paramount. The health and needs of the individual are of little concern to these people. These elitists perceive that the needs of the individual are at odds with the needs of the community thereby creating an unhealthy environment– as they define it – and as a result, the community comes first. In their view individuals who believe otherwise are merely confused, misinformed and selfish.
If you can’t be convinced then you will be silenced through public humiliation and intimidation.
So if a woman is poorly educated, a member of a minority racial group, without a job and is pregnant the elitists maintain that it is in the best interests of the community to abort her baby.
Her child is really viewed as the enemy - human pollution. But, it goes beyond that. These people have assigned themselves the right to direct others social, economic and educational options in order to create their idealized healthy community.
In that regard non-profit and religious groups have formed partnerships with governmental agencies, skillfully bypassing the Brown Act which requires open government meetings. They work in secret, drafting master plans which will radically change communities and the lives of the individuals within them, all to meet the leftist’s utopian motif.
Community Health and Smart Growth
In doing further research online using the term “community health” I came up with the following groups - ”Center for Civic Partnerships,” “California Healthy Cities” and ”Communities Network.” They also have an international connection.
Last April this group hosted a conference in Berkeley entitled – “Healthy Cities and Smart Growth.” Berkeley’s mayor, Tom Bates [formerly a state Senator] acted as MC. California State Senator Tom Torlakson [D, 7th District] was one of the speakers. His mini-bio reads:
“Senator Torlakson represents the 7th Senate District, which includes most of Contra Costa County. He is Chair of the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee and Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Bay Area Infrastructure. His legislative achievements include improving the transportation system, preventing drunken driving, strongly supporting public education, promoting consumer protection and safety, improving fitness and nutrition, and protecting the environment.”
Well, I guess everybody else in Sacramento can go home since Tom appears to be doing it all. He is a good example of the bureaucrat using partnerships, legislation and the public trust to push through his version of the vision.
Since 1973 many leaders in the pro life community in Washington and in Sacrmento have insisted that education is the main route to returning our country to a position of respect for life.. I believe that they have tragically misjudged our opponents and misled our people into wasting decades of time on legislators and groups who are blinded to wisdom and compassion regarding the value of human life.
We decry the moral corruption and wonder why it is happening, yet, we turn around and elect the very same people who have given us all this moral corruption and human destruction.
The one instrument that will both educate and instruct the people is the Bill of Rights, the right to vote, the freedom of speech and the will to exercise those Rights. We can wait no longer to educate those who will not be educated to respect and accept the worth of the individual human. We must vote them out of office and defund those groups who would use our tax dollars to work in secret to defeat our Constitiution and our God given right to life.
Another group, the Community Development Foundation [online they refer to themselves as the FDC] promotes “public/private partnerships.” Their mission statement clearly speaks of their visionary goals:
“The FDC's partners are those with whom the organization, because it shares a common vision, interests and aspirations, can undertake together or through them, programmers, projects or other development initiatives to the benefit of the neediest communities. In establishing partnerships and, consequently, in all FDC interventions, one of the fundamental principles is the creation of autonomy and self-confidence among the communities and groups with whom we work”.
Residents of a community must be made to feel that they are the “stakeholders” in changing their community. This is usually done through small group meetings. By the way “stakeholders” is another red flag word.
The mission statement continues:
“This necessarily involves strengthening the communities' internal social networks, and increasing local capacity to intervene in the environment where people live and to participate actively in defining their future, and in undertaking the changes necessary to improve their living conditions.” – FDC Website
“Intervene where people live,” “defining their environment” “defining their future and undertake changes to improve living conditions. This is the central, defining core of the visionary’s goal in life. These people are more salesmen than city planners.
According to Thomas Sowell, these people are the epitome of the Visionaries he writes about so eloquently in “Conflict of Visions,” “The Vision of the Anointed” and “The Quest for Cosmic Justice.” These are elitists who believe so profoundly in what they preach that truth means nothing more than an a trifling interference with their quest for fulfillment.
The next topic will discuss a Contra Costa County, California, public/private partnership entitled “contra Costa For Every Generation.” This is a project underway for two years in the county to obtain the consent of the residents to be manipulated into changing their lives and style of living to conform to the bureaucrats plan for Smart Growth.
TESTING ELDERLY DRIVERS
Camille Giglio
There have been several letters to the editor in the Contra Costa Times recently about elderly drivers and their potential for causing accidents on the road.
The discussion was kicked off with a guest editorial by a Richard Harsham. He suggested rather bluntly that whenever an elderly driver was seen behind the wheel it was cause to whip out one’s cell phone and report the older driver to the police thereby turning other people into politically correct tattletales. By the way, the age at which these elitists consider a person to an “at risk” driver starts at 60 years. Most people have not even begun thinking of retiring from work yet much less retiring from driving.
Now an article has appeared (1-21-06) written by Andrew Scharlach, Professor of Aging at the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare. He has a greater command of the English language than Harsham, presumably soothing everyone’s ruffles and appearing to defend the right of older citizens to continue driving. But upon closer examination he is supportive of Harsham’s mandate to get older citizens out of their cars and onto the bus.
Buried in Scharlach’s fine rhetoric are two important, core goals. 1) “We should require (he means mandate by law) health care providers to report to the DMV all individuals who are judged to be driving risks, regardless of age, based on clearly defined screening criteria.” He wants the medical profession to be tattletales. Actually I thought they already were doing that especially if patients reported episodes of unexplained fainting spells.
2) “We need to revise zoning laws to encourage development of neighborhood businesses and services. It should not be necessary to drive a 2,500 pound vehicle to cross 6 lanes of traffic just to get a carton of milk or go to the doctor.”
The only way this could be done is if neighborhoods were reconfigured to become self sufficient compact entities enabling everyone to receive all services without ever leaving the immediate area or crossing a main thoroughfare.
What Professor Scharlach did not explain in his article was his direct connection in masterminding all this reorganization of the community and it’s driving and living habits.
Along with his duties as a Professor of Aging, (how does one teach aging? Can a person flunk aging?) Scharlach is employed by the California Public Policy Research Institute to conduct surveys and develop reports on findings. In this capacity he was commissioned to complete a statewide survey of older citizens and report on the needs of the aging Baby Boomer cohort of California citizens for community services to aid in the aging process. This report was mandated by passage of a Senator John Vasconcellos piece of legislation, SB 910, in 1999. This statewide survey of elder citizens was to evaluate needs based on housing, transportation, health care, economics, end of life planning. This survey was completed in 2003.
Beginning in 2003 a partnership of government agencies and tax funded, private community services agencies began meeting in relative obscurity, circumventing the Brown Act, to plan a Project entitled Contra Costa for Every Generation. This project based on the findings of Scharlach’s survey intends to use Contra Costa County and its citizens as a model for the reorganization of cities and communities throughout the state. This is Hillary Clinton’s “it takes a village to raise a child” extended to cover every citizen from birth to death.
The planning stage of this Every Generation Project is now completed. The initiation of goals and objectives has now begun. One of the first objectives is getting older people out of their cars and onto public transportation. Therefore, the manipulative articles in the media under the guise of news or commentaries.
In the minds of the people planners this makes sense. Our state’s population is aging. The Baby Boomers have a love affair with their cars. To the environmentalists cars are a major source of environmental pollution and the paving over of mother earth with tar and cement. Therefore, drag older people out of their cars by shaming them or creating such intense pressure and public awareness of older people on the road that it becomes unbearable. If this doesn’t work?
Phase three of Project Every Generation is legislation and local ordinances. These elitist planners are serious and so must you be in order to maintain your right to guide and plan your own life.
THE REALITY BEHIND -AFFORDABLE HOUSING
In the state of California there are 107 jurisdictions that have adopted what is referred to as “inclusionary zoning” for housing ordinances. Contra Costa County and Walnut Creek in particular have become the scientific and social experimental lab for those who are, as Thomas Sowell calls them, bureaucrats in a “Quest for Cosmic Justice.”
We all can agree that everyone should have the freedom to provide themselves with a roof over their heads, however the bureaucrats are redefining that into a new right wherein the homeless and illegal aliens will be afforded the best our taxes can provide and that you, the citizen have the duty to share with those who are financially less-secure.
The government has assigned a "fair share" housing requirement to the cities within California. The cities are mandated to accommodate whatever number of citizens the state has deemed appropriate - in Walnut Creek the number is in excess of 1,000. Economically, on paper these people fall into the categories of extremely low, low or moderate income.
According to Mike Parness, General Manager of Walnut Creek that assessment will occur every 5 years. The city will be required to accommodate at least that number once again if not more and the mandated requirements “may get stiffer.” This is obviously a move to disperse certain California citizens to different areas rather than allow them to reside in large groups.
This large scale experiment might suggest a mixing of the Biblical account of the Good Samaritan with the decree by Caesar Augustus that all people should return to their home villages to be counted.
In this new version, instead of providing direct aid to the needy man, the good Samaritan would have been directed to first go to the capitol to lobby a Roman official for equal housing and health care for this disadvantaged individual. He would then organize a protest march and disrupt the city's daily business, making sure to increase his own insurance coverage just to cover the possibility of the homeless man suing him for providing him with lodgings he thought beneath his dignity.
The state has empowered NGO’s like Association of Bay Area Governments the authority to decide how much housing must be set aside for certain protected or targeted classifications of residents. Walnut Creek's fair share is 1.653 housing units for very low, low, moderate and above moderate income singles or families with an estimated family size of 2.02 people. But Walnut Creek under the pretext of needing these units has been preparing for several years to create a major expansion in the residential and commercial areas of the town turning our pretty suburban streets into canyons of tall buildings. The median price of homes in Walnut Creek is about $569,000. Housing units, designated for low and moderate iincome levels, either brand new or re-modeled apartments turned into condos will begin at the arbitrarily set price of $170,000. This is called affordable housing, but it’s not meant for you. It will however be your privilege to help subsidize - through taxes or levy’s on high end condos - the “affordability” of a home for someone else.
That’s justice after all according to the seekers of cosmic justice.
I recently asked the Santa Cruz based, Freedom 21 opponents of sustainable development to provide me with a definition of “affordable housing.” Here is what Joanne Shaw said:
”Affordable housing is a warm and fuzzy term used to make the idea government subsidized and government controlled housing seem acceptable to the general public. Some ‘affordable housing’ results in government ‘project’ type housing and other affordable housing shows up as units or houses within an ‘inclusionary housing’ development.”
Definition of Inclusionary Housing: Inclusionary housing typically means government controlled housing and zoning with a mix of different income residents residing there. Some pay nearly nothing and others pay market or higher, all living within the same complex or neighborhood.
Further on in her report she provided a definition of low-income housing:
“As to low-income, the term used by Sustainable Developers typically means the grouping of people into "low-income" "very-low income", "extremely low-income", "moderate income", and "above moderate" income. The categorization of different income levels is what HUD and the County use to determine eligibility for subsidized housing programs. The exact amount of money can vary according to the area. What might appear to be low income for Walnut Creek could be high income for, say, Richmond.
According to Mrs. Shaw “every development that I know of that has been built using public/private partnerships includes an element of subsidized housing.”
The Walnut Creek City Council readily admits that its expansion plans contain Affordable Housing with all of the above elements, very low, low, moderate income housing levels in every new or remodeled development. Walnut Creek, as reported in it’s EIR Report states that Walnut Creek's share of the Bay Area housing need includes 289 Very-low Income, 195 Low-Income, 418 Moderate Income, and 751 Above-Moderate Income units. Of course, the city will at the time of any sale realize a 17% share in the sales profits of these residences which is about the amount they are lending the buyer in the first place.
The EIR report further states that According to March, 2005, the median home price tag was $569,000, slightly higher than other areas of Contra Costa. Further rentals go for approximately $1,175 for a studio unit to $1,950 for a three bedroom/.one plus bath with $1,476 being the median cost of rentals. This would be affordable to a moderate income three person family, but unaffordable to those in lower income brackets
So, what happens with the very low to low and moderate designated housing units?
By housing unit it is most likely to be a condo rather than a free standing house. Who actually pays to put a very low to moderate income family into a housing unit in Walnut Creek? You do. You do especially if you are buying one of the above-Moderate income units in the same housing development. The developer holds those units which can only be sold to those qualifying. These are not available to real estate agents to sell.The developer isn’t going to take a loss on that property so you who are buying the higher priced unit are subsidizing the purchase of the lower income unit. Your taxes are used when H.U.D. and or the city subsidizes the developer building the housing development.
Again, who pays?
You do if you are a member of a church that decides to build affordable housing on church property as is being done in the Oakland Diocese in the cities of Hayward, Pinole and Richmond. In that instance the diocese takes out a loan with H.U.D. to build, the developer builds and (in some cases) holds the lease on the property for a certain long period, usually about 10 years. The church rents out the property which then goes to pay off the HUD building loan. The church doesn’t pay taxes of course, but now that portion of the property put into housing development becomes useful to the state. Also Catholic Charities gets subsidies to provide welfare to work training for those housing residents eligible.
And, what happens to the housing unit bought by this low income person/family? Does that home owner have the financial means to provide upkeep on the unit? Who pays the monthly fees for exterior upkeep, painting, gardening, repairs? Probably you do. What about the inside of the housing unit, the interior upkeep? In Walnut Creek , below market sales price is currently $274,000 for a two bedroom new or converted condo unit. 80% financing would mean that loans on the unit total $219,000. At 6% annual fixed interest, 30 years, the monthly payments would be approximately $1900.00 including Home Owners Association fees.
It is shameful that truly affordable housing, including housing for lower income people, is precluded from being built due to interference with, free-enterprise and genuine voluntary cooperation between people. In Santa Cruz the same people who created the current housing problem are the ones implementing the phony solution designed to control us.
THE CC TIMES ADVANCES THE COLLECTIVIST AGENDA
Please allow me to provide you with some insights into how the media is used to advance the cause of the social planners. I’m sure you are all familiar with the basic goal of Smart Growth which is taking shape, rather quickly now, in Walnut Creek and outlying cities around the county.
Smart Growth - SG - has to do with redeveloping the physical structures of a city - it’s housing areas - who and what gets housed. It’s transportation agendas making it “easier” to get around town or to get cars off the streets altogether, etc. etc.
What you may not be aware of it that there is a human corollary to all this transforming of a city. The people must be encouraged to embrace this planning and make it their own.
In Contra Costa County, the human element in all this is contained in a plan that has been in the works for three years entitled Contra Costa For Every Generation. Over 300 representatives of county, private and religious groups have been meeting under the guise of preparing for the social, health, housing and transportation needs of a soon to be massive cohort of aging baby boomers who “want and need” government services in order to “age gracefully” and avoid being “at risk” of losing their independence.
The first phase of this strategic plan, the development of the plan, is now finished. Phase two starts “stakeholders” down the road of preparing public policy plans and appeals to state and local officials to put teeth into these plans through legislation or ordinances.
But first, the people must be softened up, prepared psychologically,to accept the goals of the social planners. One of the ways this is done is through articles placed in the newspaper touting some important discovery or making articles on nutrition sound like breaking news.
Saturday’s CC Times, 9/10/05, contains 5 such articles.
Page 3 an article states “Residents want to live downtown.” The article is filled with vague generalities about peoples desires to live downtown. This idea probably came from small group discussions led by consensus building trained leaders. Note that one of the senior residences planned for downtown is called Casa Vasconcellos. Sen. John Vasconcellos was, in 1999, the author of a bill that mandated the statewide development of plans to consolidate and organize services to all seniors regardless of income, education level, etc. SB 910 is the sire of Contra Costa For Every Generation.
Other articles on pages 4, 5,13, and the Opinion page talk about cities planning residences for teachers - that’s a part of Smart Growth - it’s called housing equity. Area employees must be encouraged to live/work in the same community to avoid commuting, get people out of their cars.
The most insidious article is on the Opinion Page and is titled: “Your call can help stop elder abuse spread.” Remember some years back al the misery created when parents were being turned in by school teachers, their own children,etc. for presumed abusive treatment? It seemed that only the “experts” knew how to deal with teenagers. Well, this is the same thing. Seniors, according to the bureaucrats, must be funneled into senior housing, health care, gotten out of cars, placed under the protection of the state and out of the watchful eye of their adult children. I have actually read material stating that fact in a rather forward and blunt fashion.
I will be writing more about this. I would also like to ask anyone who might be interested in trying to help us short circuit the work of this public/private partnership in social engineering if
you would please contact me asap. We need other people to help get out the word.
