“doorway into hell” Good police work

Good police work by Tom Hogan's Chester County District Attorney's office, Chester County Detectives and North Coventry Police Department.

FOUR ARTICLES-PUT TOGETHER THEY CAPTURE THE CITY OF COATESVILLE’S POINT IN TIME

A few years ago Joe Carroll had his door open to his house on 8th Avenue in Coatesville to anyone who wanted to talk to him. The hardest part of these meetings was listening to the anguish of the family members of murder victims. The violence of that moment was relived by those people. They were living victims of murder. 

Several people told stories of being mugged. For the most part they were veterans who were staying at one of the several homes on Chestnut Street. The muggings weren’t always violent attacks. Three or more young men demanding money from a disabled veteran usually caused the veteran to give up his small amount of cash they carry without a fuss. But they were regular maybe once a week muggings. 

The first article could have been written about the City of Coatesville:

"The Price of Public Violence 

EVERY year, the Chicago Police Department issues a report with the macabre title “Chicago Murder Analysis.” It’s a short but eye-opening document. Do the calculations and you realize that in the past 15 years, 8,083 people have been killed, most of them in a concentrated part of the city. There’s one particularly startling revelation that gets little notice: in 2011, more than four-fifths of all murders happened in a public place, a park, an alleyway, on the street, in a restaurant or at a gas station. 

When Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old public school student and band majorette who just a week earlier had performed at President Obama’s inauguration, was killed on Jan. 29, she was standing under an awning in a park with a dozen friends. They all saw or heard it when she was shot in the back. One of them, in fact, was wounded by the gunfire. Which brings me to what’s not in the “Chicago Murder Analysis”: Over the past 15 years, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab, an estimated 36,000 people were shot and wounded. It’s a staggering number. 

We report on the killers and the killed, but we ignore those who have been wounded or who have witnessed the shootings. What is the effect on individuals — especially kids — who have been privy to the violence in our cities’ streets?I ask this somewhat rhetorically because in many ways we know the answer. We’ve seen what exposure to the brutality of war does to combat veterans. It can lead to outbursts of rage, an inability to sleep, flashbacks, a profound sense of being alone, a growing distrust of everyone around you, a heightened state of vigilance, a debilitating sense of guilt. In an interview I heard recently on the radio, the novelist and Vietnam veteran Tim O’Brien talked about how the atrocities and nastiness of battle get in your bones. The same can be said for kids growing up in Hadiya’s neighborhood."

More at: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/opinion/sunday/the-price-of-public-violence.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1361822777-ZxzH9iuBkdMy7+cVtXcC/g 

The second article and in part the third article concerns veterans. 

The Devitt Paul J Hardware Co was at 26 S 1st Ave. The building is gone and the space it occupied is now part of Gateway Park in Coatesville. At Christmas time the top floor of the store had a huge toy department with a Lionel Train display. At least it seemed huge to a 5 year old. That would have been 1947 and the Coatesville Veterans Hospital was well occupied. To a five year old Devitt’s and the Vet’s (hospital) sounded the same. I figured it out by the time I started school. 

Everyone who lives in Coatesville is affected somehow by the Veterans Hospital. The real name is the Coatesville VA Medical Center.  Some of the people you see on our streets may appear to be homeless people. They are not. They are veterans who deserve our respect. Some Coatesville residents believe the veterans we see in our streets degrade the quality of life here. I don't feel that way. A vibrant cosmopolitan community has all sorts of people. We all can make a unique contribution to our town.  I believe that the Coatesville VA Medical Center and the Brandywine Hospital combined are the largest employers in the 19320 area code.  

The man who shot and killed Osama bin Laden sat in a wicker chair in my backyard, wondering how he was going to feed his wife and kids or pay for their medical care. 

It was a mild spring day, April 2012, and our small group, including a few of his friends and family, was shielded from the sun by the patchwork shadows of maple trees. But the Shooter was sweating as he talked about his uncertain future, his plans to leave the Navy and SEAL Team 6. 

He stood up several times with an apologetic gripe about the heat, leaving a perspiration stain on the seat-back cushion. He paced. I didn't know him well enough then to tell whether a glass of his favorite single malt, Lagavulin, was making him less or more edgy. 

We would end up intimately familiar with each other's lives. We'd have dinners, lots of Scotch. He's played with my kids and my dogs and been a hilarious, engaging gentleman around my wife. 

In my yard, the Shooter told his story about joining the Navy at nineteen, after a girl broke his heart. To escape, he almost by accident found himself in a Navy recruiter's office. "He asked me what I was going to do with my life. I told him I wanted to be a sniper. 

"He said, 'Hey, we have snipers.' 

"I said, 'Seriously, dude. You do not have snipers in the Navy.' But he brought me into his office and it was a pretty sweet deal. I signed up on a whim." 

"That's the reason Al Qaeda has been decimated," he joked, "because she broke my fucking heart." 

I would come to know about the Shooter's hundreds of combat missions, his twelve long-term SEAL-team deployments, his thirty-plus kills of enemy combatants, often eyeball to eyeball. And we would talk for hours about the mission to get bin Laden and about how, over the celebrated corpse in front of them on a tarp in a hangar in Jalalabad, he had given the magazine from his rifle with all but three lethally spent bullets left in it to the female CIA analyst whose dogged intel work and intuition led the fighters into that night. 

When I was first around him, as he talked I would always try to imagine the Shooter geared up and a foot away from bin Laden, whose life ended in the next moment with three shots to the center of his forehead. But my mind insisted on rendering the picture like a bad Photoshop job — Mao's head superimposed on the Yangtze, or tourists taking photos with cardboard presidents outside the White House. 

Bin Laden was, after all, the man CIA director Leon Panetta called "the most infamous terrorist in our time," who devoured inordinate amounts of our collective cultural imagery for more than a decade. The number-one celebrity of evil. And the man in my backyard blew his lights out.

More at: 

 For the first time, the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden tells his story — speaking not just about the raid and the three shots that changed history, but about the personal aftermath for himself and his family. And the startling failure of the United States government to help its most experienced and skilled warriors carry on with their lives.

The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden... Is Screwed

The third article is sometimes seen as an inditement of the City of Coatesville. It’s not. Coatesville is used as a metaphor  for collapse of our industrial society in small towns across America and the illegal drug industry that in many cases replaced it.

From the blog:

Introducing "Cokeville," the New American Suburb

With a collapsed economy and shrinking middle class, Coatesville, Pa., represents small-town America. Now, the cocaine market is the only industry that's booming. Is this our nation's future? 

“Kennedy says that the local drug demand has a long history because Coatesville is home to one of the largest Veterans Administration drug rehabs on the East Coast. Generations of highly addicted war veterans have come from far and wide to detox at Coatesville, and many end up staying after they’re discharged, renting rooms and living in halfway houses. The VA’s success rate is as low as any other rehab’s, and plenty of vets relapse, making their way to the east side to hit up at one of the city’s crack houses.” 

The only constant is change. I believe the City of Coatesville is a small town in transition. For many people, especially those of us who live here, that transition can’t take place soon enough. Consider that when Chief of Police Dominic Bellizzie first saw Coatesville he said that the “streets were an open air drug bazaar”. 

It might not seem so but we have come a long way from the Coatesville of 18 years ago:

Coatesville Drug Trade Just Shifts With The Young Guns Gone, Eighth Avenue Is Quiet. Dealers They Drove Out Are Back On Seventh, Though.

December 19, 1997| 

By Thomas H. Matthews, INQUIRER CORRESPONDENT 

COATESVILLE — In the months since the street gang known as the Young Guns was broken up by police, things have grown quiet on Eighth Avenue, where the crack-dealing gang once ruled with a violent, intimidating grip. 

But a block away, other dealers have swept in to fill the void, and many residents along Seventh Avenue are complaining about wide-open drug dealing on their street. 

“You can't even get up the street because there's so many people in it,'' complained Randy Perry, 48, who lives in the area. “They harass you as you walk up the street.''

It's like a flea market with drugs,'' said Coatesville District Justice Brenda Bicking, who knows of the problem by way of the many youths who come through her courtroom. ``You can just drive your car down Seventh Avenue with a $20 bill and have someone put crack in your hand.'' 

More at:

http://articles.philly.com/1997-12-19/news/25555391_1_drug-dealers-drug-traffickers-young-guns

I SAVED THE BEST ARTICLE FOR LAST:

The forth article is in the current issue of Chester County Life Magazine. Starting on page 30 is “Forward-Looking Public and Private Sectors Forge Ahead to Revitalize Coatesville” 

The article in Chester County Life Magazine begins: 

“Don Cochran is proud of his hometown, Born and raised just outside of Coatesville, he reminisces about the glory days. ‘Friday night was always fun. Everyone gathered to see friends and neighbors. There were little girls in white gloves-boys wearing jackets and ties. Even people from West Chester Came to shop at Sears, Woolworth’s and Newberry’s.”
The article goes on to say that Mr. Cochran bought the former Lipkins warehouse and plans to refurbish it into condominiums or apartments with retail space on the first floor... 

“Funds are currently in place for a new $20 million train station. ‘We have a solid working relationship with the Redevelopment Authority, PennDOT, Amtrak, and Chester County Economic Development Council,” lists Sciochetti (David N. Sciocchetti). A developer will be hired, a concept completed. When designs are approved, construction begins. Finish goal is sometime in 2015...” 

Dual train station development will drive revitalization of downtown and encourage commuters to stay and enjoy shopping, dining and entertainment in Coatesville. Rail commuters who live in town will have access to the top half of the East Coast simply by walking out of their door. “If you connect with Amtrak, you’ll be in New York City in less than two hours,” suggests Grabus. “Instead of fighting highway traffic, you can read, rest, or work.” 

It offers convenience and gritty character juxtaposed with highway access, transit access, even air access at nearby Chester County Airport.  “One of my neighbors owns a private equity firm with offices in London, Dubai-and Coatesville,” punctuates Cochran. The world-class airport is one of the reasons he chose to locate in the Coatesville area.” 

The article ends with “People will stop. People will stay. People will invest. “Live here. Work here. Live here. Work anywhere, “ points out Pulver.  (Don Pulver, developer of the Coatesville Marriott Courtyard) Both trans station projects and the  Velodrome bring an air of economic optimism to Coatesville. “ concurs Sciocchetti. Revitalization lets everyone pick up their heads and imagine a better future. Government, transit and private partnership sector is usually a good formula for success.  

Add jobs and location to hit a home run. Pulver anticipates opportunity for up to 3,000 employment opportunities when all projects are complete.” And -you can’t beat this location,” stresses Cochran. 

“If entrepreneurs don by property in Coatesville today when it is a fraction of the cost it will be in two years, they will miss out on real estate investment opportunities”  

As Chester County moves west through Coatesville, it heralds a hub of activity, much like its 18th Century past.”

It's on the newsstands now.

BE SURE AND PICK UP A COPY OF:

http://www.chestercounty-life.com

I believe the four articles put together capture the City of Coatesville’s point in time. After more than a decade of working at it we know that the City of Coatesville can be the best place to live in, work in, and go to in Chester County.  We need to make our streets safe for everyone. We need good safe housing for everyone. We need economic development. We need residential, business and transportation development. We need to work at all of those at the same time.  I think we will succeed. 

Our location in a valley puts Coatesville, PA in an excellent geographic position for super WiFi.

It was attempted here way back in 2003 but the technology was not there. The City of Coatesville owns fiber optic cable running under Lincoln Highway. When Jean Krack who was then Assistant City Manager for the City of Coatesville designed our smart traffic signal and surveillance system he allowed extra fiber optic cable under Lincoln Highway for future use. Jean sold the Borough of Downingtown and Caln Township on the smart traffic signal system. It runs from the west end of Coatesville to the east end of Downingtown. Our smart traffic signal and surveillance cameras use only about 2% of that fiber optic cable. I believe that fiber optic cable is the biggest expense in setting up super WiFi and we already have it under Lincoln Highway. 

With strong input from telecommunication companies Pennsylvania laws were enacted prohibiting communities from forming their own WiFi networks. Pennsylvania laws have been modified. But now there is a whole new ballgame that could change because of new bandwidth becoming available.

There is now a proposal for Super WiFi being fiercely lobbied by Verizon, Comcast, ATT and other telecom monopolies. That proposal needs public support. 

Coatesville, Caln and Downingtown could form a public utility for the operation of a broadband super WiFi network along Lincoln Highway. This is a tremendous opportunity for Coatesville, Caln and Downingtown.

Imagine telling AT&T you're done with dropped calls, or telling T-Mobile you're done with slow data. Yes, elections matter, and the FCC is proposing something spectacular for Americans...assuming that shitting-their-pants mobile phone operators don't kill the mammoth proposal: 

Designed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, the plan would be a global first. When the U.S. government made a limited amount of unlicensed airwaves available in 1985, an unexpected explosion in innovation followed. Baby monitors, garage door openers and wireless stage microphones were created. Millions of homes now run their own wireless networks, connecting tablets, game consoles, kitchen appli­ances and security systems to the Internet. 

“Freeing up unlicensed spectrum is a vibrantly free-market approach that offers low barriers to entry to innovators developing the technologies of the future and benefits consumers,” Genachow­ski said in a an e-mailed statement. 

Some companies and cities are already moving in this direction. Google is providing free WiFi to the public in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan and parts of Silicon Valley.Cities support the idea because the networks would lower costs for schools and businesses or help vacationers easily find tourist spots. Consumer advocates note the benefits to the poor, who often cannot afford high cellphone and Internet bills. 

MORE AT: 

FCC Proposes Groundbreaking Free Public Wi-Fi Throughout United States; Mobile Companies Protest

 ALSO FROM FCC CHAIRMAN JULIUS GENACHOWSKI:

"As we’ve recognized in law and policy for many years, public-private partnerships are also essential for driving broadband deployment. Public-private partnerships like the Connect America Fund, which drives universal broadband deployment, and municipal and public -private projects like those in Chattanooga, Tennessee and San Leandro, California are also vital components of our national broadband strategy. Our Gigabit City Challenge and the important work of Gig.U to drive ultra -fast broadband centers for innovation can also benefit from innovative local approaches to broadband infrastructure. That’s why the National Broadband Plan stated that, when private investment isn’t a feasible option for broadband deployment, local governments ‘have the right to move forward and build networks that serve their constituents as they deem appropriate.’ 

"If a community can’t gain access to broadband services that meet its needs, then it should be able to serve its own residents directly. Proposals that would tie the hands of innovative communities that want to build their own high-speed networks will slow progress to our nation’s broadband goals and will hurt economic development and job creation in those areas. I urge state and local leaders to focus instead on proposals that incentivize investment in broadband infrastructure, remove barriers to broadband build-out, and ensure widespread access to high-speed networks."

MORE AT:

”FCC Chairman Issues Statement Opposing State Muni Broadband Limitations

Keep up on Municipal Wireless with:

MuniWireless

Tue, February 19, 2013 | Posted by christopher Bill Moyers talks with Susan Crawford on Moyers & Company's "Who's Widening America's Digital Divide?"

The City of  Lafayette Louisiana is mentioned in the video above. The City/Parish of Lafayette owns LUS Fiber. A provider of telephone, internet, and cable TV for Lafayette, LA:

Right wing extremism is growing rapidly in Chester County, PA

What I wrote about in the previous 3 posts  is mostly political stuff concerning our local right wing extremists.

Just as in the rest of our nation, I believe that right wing extremism is rapidly growing here in South East Pennsylvania. In:

Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right

From the Combating Terrorist Center at West Point they argue that violent actions are more likely when extremists feel powerful. 

But I believe that if the right wing extremists see their political attempts failing or feel that the United Nations is coming for their guns, very soon more of them may begin to use the AR-15s they are buying up by the thousands. 

There are legitimate reasons besides looking cool to own an AR-15. Hunting is not one of them, unless you want to scare the hell out of real hunters. I think the reasons that right wing types are buying up assault rifles is that they can penetrate most police vests. That would be the police that are coming for their guns. 
See:

West Memphis Fallen Officer

If right wing Republicans think "Sustainable Development" and local planning commissions are going to bring UN mind control to their communities what do they think about Obama's drone policy? 

Once militia groups; with camps, fortresses or whatever you want to call them, figure out they could be targets of drone strikes they will go absolutely bonkers. O wait, their already bonkers, maybe bonkers-on-steriods.  I think that a drone strike somewhere in the USA is extremely unlikely but keep in mind most militia members are preparing to do battle with UN Troops called in by President Obama. 

SEE:

Exclusive: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans

What once was local extremism in Coatesville is now in Congress

I knew the City of Coatesville would fail when they tried to reason with extremists.  What once was local extremism in Coatesville and Chester County is now mainstream in the Republican Tea Party Congress in Washington. Ordinary people in the federal government who don't really know what hit them are trying to reason with them. I believe the extremists aren't being taken seriously in Washington just like they were not taken seriously in Coatesville in 2004. 

As you read the link below keep in mind that Pat Sellers, the policical organizer of the "Bloc of Four" campaign, is a decades long Charter Member of the John Birch Society:  

"Just as it did with communism, the John Birch Society has done as much or more than any other group on the radical right to drum up panic and outrage..."  

"Under Agenda 21, these activists argue, the expansive American way of life, in which everyone can aspire to the dream of owning a house with a big yard and two cars in the driveway, will be replaced by one in which increasing numbers are crammed into urbanized “pack ’em and stack ’em” apartment complexes, and forced to use mass transportation and live according to a collectivist ethos. Once the UN’s radical utopia is achieved, gun ownership will be forbidden and the UN will raise an army intent on terrorizing the populace in the name of social order and equality, sustainability and smart growth — all words that anti-Agenda 21 activists believe signal the true intent of the UN’s plan." 

More at:

Antigovernment Conspiracy Theorists Rail Against UN’s Agenda 21 Program

Our plans for in Coatesville for public transportation, high rise condos and redevelopment of existing urban centers to leave the countryside more open must have had our local Chester County extremists convinced that the UN New World Order was being imposed in Chester County. 

 What happened in Coatesville, PA has gone national and is front and center in Republican Party in Congress. And most of the Federal Government and "beltway press" have no idea what is happening to them.  

Republican National Committee Calls Agenda 21 a Plan for Global Control

Below is a recent video concerning local government in Texas and how local government is being used by the United Nations. I believe the property rights people in Coatesville believed all of our workshops concerning redevelopment in Coatesville and the people who bought into redevelopment, public transit, bikeways and open space were tools of the United Nations evil plot to take our guns away and use United Nations mind control. This nonsense is now standard fare in the Republican side of the U.S. Congress.

"Sellers sought (Larry) Pratt’s support because of his expertise on gun issues."

You don't need to go to Idaho to find White Separatist Militia types.  You don't have to go outside of Chester County. 

Chester County has it's share of right wing extremist gun nuts. I believe they descended on the City of Coatesville in full force during the Saha property rights vs. Community Rights thing. Now the same kinds of people have descended on Washington, DC. 

The City of Coatesville was in a property rights fight. 

I saw and heard it before. The Sahas and their managers had no way of knowing my history of following and researching local right wing extremists in Montgomery County. 

Nobody, not even me or then Montgomery County DA Mike Marino called stretching a wire across an undeveloped part of the Perkiomen Trail to potentially lop of the head of a rider a terrorist threat. But given what I now know about the Skinhead KKK activity, drug growing operations along the upper Perkiomen Creek and the kinds of people linked to property rights quarrels maybe it was a terrorist threat. The Perkiomen Trail brought regular patrols of armed Montgomery County Park Service Rangers to an area that was once off limits to police patrols. I'm told that the Skinhead KKK still have "events" along the Perkiomen but I think the presence of the trail has stopped the cross burning. 

I realized the local government in Coatesville and the local press had no idea of what they were up against. I became involved in the revitalization of Coatesville.  

I wonder if Pat Sellers read Larry Pratt's "Armed People Victorious".

Digging on the internet and libraries and with the help of some local people I found that:

Larry Pratt was the keynote speaker in a fundraiser for Pat Sellers in his first run for Pennsylvania's 6 Congressional District in 1996. Sellers ran again in 2010.

From the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal:

"Pratt is executive director of Gun Owners of America. He left the Buchanan Campaign after the media reported on his ties to the Ku Klux Klan and the white supremacist group Aryan Nation. 

Pratt has indorsed Sellers and will be the keynote speaker at a fund-raising dinner for Sellers next week. 

Sellers said the allegations against Pratt are untrue and that he sought Pratt's support because of his expertise on gun issues."

SEE ARTICLE BELOW:

Pat Sellers is a decades long member of the John Birch Society:

Pat Sellers appears to be a reader or subscriber of American Renaissance magazine, a racist eugenics publication by Jarred Taylor.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/american-renaissance

See "Sir — Jared Taylor missed the mark completely ..." in the "Letters" section below:
http://www.amren.com/ar/2000/07/index.html

Pat Sellers had an email monicker of America1ster. Sellers said he was not a part of the America First Party. He believed we should put America First. 

Most alarming to me was Sellers' relationship to Larry Pratt.

"Out of the Barrel of a Gun
; Larry Pratt, 67

When it comes to sniffing out sinister plots to disarm gun owners, Larry Pratt and the Gun Owners of America (GOA) are constantly on the lookout.

Health care reform? It's a plot to take your guns, according to the GOA website. 

Environmentalism? You guessed it — another plot to take your guns. At the Ninth Annual Freedom 21 Conference in Texas in 2008, Pratt warned that "the major goal of the sustainable development movement is to disarm Americans."

Pratt, the GOA's executive director, was scheduled to speak at the "Second Amendment March" in Washington, D.C., this April 19. The event, which the GOA helped sponsor, was designed to let politicians know they had better not support anti-gun legislation. Patriot and other radical groups were also expected to participate.

There's one tiny problem. There's no evidence that the government is plotting to strip citizens of their guns. President Obama has even signed legislation allowing guns in national parks and on Amtrak trains. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has given Obama an "F" on every issue on which it graded him. 

But that's not stopping the hard-line GOA, which claims more than 300,000 members and doesn't believe in any gun restrictions at all. When armed citizens began appearing outside presidential events, Pratt addressed it in a column on the GOA website. "There are those who don't like Americans owning guns at all, let alone carrying them openly. They can be counted on to run around squawking like Chicken Little that the sky is falling."

Pratt may be the figure most responsible for introducing the militia concept to the radical right. He authored Armed People Victorious in 1990. Based on this study of "citizen defense patrols" in the Philippines and Guatemala — groups that became more commonly known as death squads — Pratt offered a flattering portrayal and promoted militias for the United States.

Two years later, in 1992, he was invited to a Colorado meeting where the outlines of the militia movement were shaped. More than 150 extremists attended the meeting, which was hosted by a white supremacist minister. In 1996, Pratt was ejected from the co-chairmanship of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign over such associations with white supremacists.

FROM:

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/summer/meet-the-patriots?page=0,2

They ran redevelopment in Coatesville entirely off the rails.

In the Coatesville City Hall Lobby I had a brief conversation with Dick Saha. He was scoping me out on what I thought about City Council. I said I thought he should try to work out some settlement with the City. And that City Council  represents our community  and we could come together as a community. Dick gave a nod to his son Ricky and I was surrounded by about a dozen people shouting "communist" at me. That was in 2004. 

We had  encountered the same sort of anti-government "Property Rights" people in Lower Fredrick Township, Montgomery  County when we proposed the "Perkiomen Trail". They used similar intimation tactics at public meetings. The "Stop the Horse Trail" people got the attention of then Montgomery County DIstrict Attorney Mike Marino when one of them strung a taught wire at neck level in an undeveloped part of the planned Perkiomen Trail.  Later as Montgomery County Commissioner Mike Marino was an instrumental  part of the completion of the Perkiomen Trail. 
SEE:

http://coatesvilledems.blogspot.com/2011/04/are-people-gun-shy-about-building.html?m=0 

I continued the research of "Property Rights" groups that I began in 1996 and found the link between municipal planning commissions, smart growth and the "UN conspiracy". It was a perfect fit to what was happening in Coatesville from 2000 to present day.  

Outside of Coatesville's polling places during the 2005 Elections Patrick Henry Sellers wore his straw hat with tea bags hanging from the rim.  He might have been the inspiration for the present day Tea Party. 

"Indeed, while the UN conspiracy talk makes it easy to dismiss the tea partiers as nutters, that doesn't mean they won't derail local development projects. "

SEE:

Mother Jones

We Don't Need None of That Smart-Growth Communism"

Tea partiers' latest fear: a secret UN plan to herd us all into urban "human habitation zones."

"First, they took on the political establishment in Congress. Now, tea partiers have trained their sights on a new and insidious target: local planning and zoning commissions, which activists believe are carrying out a global conspiracy to trample American liberties and force citizens into Orwellian 'human habitation zones.'

At the root of this plot is the admittedly sinister-sounding Agenda 21, an 18-year-old UN plan to encourage countries to consider the environmental impacts of human development. Tea partiers see Agenda 21 behind everything from a septic tank inspection law in Florida to a plan in Maine to reduce traffic on Route 1. The issue even flared up briefly during the midterms, when Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes accused his Democratic opponent of using a bike-sharing program to convert Denver into a "United Nations Community."

MORE AT:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/tea-party-agenda-21-un-sustainable-development