Do You Live In a One-World-Government ‘Sustainable’ Community Yet?

“Masked with feel-good rhetoric and lofty concepts like ‘smart growth’ and ‘sustainable development,’ the Livable Communities Act is top-down central planning aimed at changing where we live and work and how we travel.”–Ed Braddy, AmThinker, 8/11/10.

Predating the Livable Communities Act, which I discuss below, is ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainabilty, which claims there are 600 U.S. local governments “committed to climate protection and sustainability.” As you can see from the map, the communities are primarily located along the coastal areas and the Boston-NYC-DC-VA corridor controlled by progressive governments.

ICLEI, or the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, was established in 1990 at the World Congress of Local Governments for a Sustainable Future, at the United Nations in New York.

Harry Lamb, writing in the Canada Free Press, gives us our lead:

The essential difference between Capitalism and Marxism is the ownership of property. In a Capitalist system, individuals own and control the use of property. In a Marxist system, property belongs to the community, and its use is controlled by government. Agenda 21, and the “sustainable development” policies it contains, are constructed on the idea that property should belong to the community and its use must be controlled by the government.

Advocates of sustainable development have been convinced that the earth’s resources are not only finite, but in great jeopardy of extinction because of society’s greedy overuse and abuse. Consequently, they say, the only way to insure that future generations have the resources to meet their needs is for government to control the current generation’s use of resources. In one way or another, this is the excuse used in communities across the nation, to impose a system of government control called sustainable development, delivered through comprehensive land use plans.

“Sustainability” and ICLEI and United Nation’s Agenda 21, which was adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, are synonymous.

Even better, ICLEI member cities pay their annual dues using local taxpayer money, which is used to pay city employees who work to carry out ICLEI’s programs.

However, we don’t have to look any further afield than the Obama regime to find sustainable programs already popping up in our back yard.

More than a year ago, in February 2010, Secretary Shaun Donovan announced the launch of HUD’s new Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities (OSHC) to be overseen by HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims.

In February 2009, Corrupt-O-Dem Sims was nominated to serve as Deputy Secretary; he was confirmed in May.

Court records contradict Sims’ statements:

In March 2009, apparently certain of his confirmation, Sims told Lefty Grist:

President Obama has … challenged his Cabinet to prepare for the age of global warming. Success can only come if we transform our major metropolitan areas. … The idea is to be able to move pretty boldly and get back to a mission of improving the quality of life in every metropolitan area of the country. So I’m going to be doing that, and doing that in a way that is sustainable, and doing it in a way that meets the targets that are clearly being enunciated by [White House energy adviser Carol] Browner and the president for the reduction of our carbon emissions. … When we’re rebuilding the country, in those neighborhoods let’s do that in the context of what we know is occurring in the age of global warming.

But it gets better. OSHC, described as a “key component” of Obama’s Partnership for Sustainable Communities, was funded by Congress for the first time in HUD’s FY2010 budget — $150 million for a Sustainable Communities Initiative, with $100 million available for “regional integrated planning initiatives” through HUD’s Sustainable Communities Planning Grant Program.

And, of course, OSHC will focus on pushing “green” programs:

[OSHC] will also invest in energy-efficient homes and buildings, in renewable energy, and in next-generation infrastructure to lay the foundation for the clean energy economy America needs to compete and create jobs in the 21st century. To meet that goal, OSHC will strengthen HUD’s Energy Efficient Mortgage product and other energy retrofit financing options—for both single family homes and multi-family rental housing–through a $50 million Energy Innovation Fund. HUD will also make available an Affordability Index that measures the costs of where a home is located in relation to jobs, schools and transportation.

Now, watch for the magic word (which will be revealed below):

The grant programs will “provide funding to a wide variety of multi-jurisdictional and multi-sector partnerships and consortia, from Metropolitan Planning Organizations and State governments, to non-profit and philanthropic organizations. These grants will be designed to encourage regions to build their capacity to integrate economic development, land use, transportation, and water infrastructure investments, and to integrate workforce development with transit-oriented development. Accordingly, OSHC’s grants will be coordinated closely with the Department of Transportation (DOT) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).”

Did you find it? “Investments” = spend, spend, spend.

But this plan has been underway for some time. The Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus members have been working in concert with the House Livable Communities Task Force for more than a decade. The Task Force’s legislation list was last updated in October 2009, a detail that will soon be explained.

While we were still reeling from all the Hopeychangeyness, in June 2009 the DOT, EPA and HUD had already created the “unprecedented interagency” Partnership for Sustainable Communities. This, according to the HUD announcement, was the first time all three agencies had worked together to “coordinate federal policies, programs, and resources to help urban, suburban, and rural areas build sustainable communities.”

HUD had already developed Six Livability Principles, which follow.

However, as you are reading these, watch for the Marxist language (hint: social equity); also note how the federal “green” bureaucracy is growing by leaps and bounds:

1. Provide more transportation choices: Develop safe, reliable and economical transportation choices to decrease household transportation costs, reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote public health.

2. Promote equitable, affordable housing: Expand location- and energy-efficient housing choices for people of all ages, incomes, races and ethnicities to increase mobility and lower the combined cost of housing and transportation.

3. Enhance economic competitiveness: Improve economic competitiveness through reliable and timely access to employment centers, educational opportunities, services and other basic needs by workers as well as expanded business access to markets.

4. Support existing communities: Target federal funding toward existing communities — through such strategies as transit-oriented, mixed-use development and land recycling — to increase community revitalization, improve the efficiency of public works investments, and safeguard rural landscapes.

5. Coordinate policies and leverage investment: Align federal policies and funding to remove barriers to collaboration, leverage funding and increase the accountability and effectiveness of all levels of government to plan for future growth, including making smart energy choices such as locally generated renewable energy.

6. Value communities and neighborhoods: Enhance the unique characteristics of all communities by investing in healthy, safe and walkable neighborhoods — rural, urban or suburban.

Obama’s FY2011 budget proposal, actually never passed by Congress except as continuing resolutions and the recent partial-year funding, called for $527 million for the Livable Communities Program. Funding was to be allocated to three separate locations:

. $307 million in transit funding to increase the planning and project development capabilities;

. $200 million in highway funding for a competitive livability grant program; and

. $20 million to establish an Office of Livable Communities, located in the Office of the Secretary.

The Office of Livable Communities was to be established via the 2009-2010 Livable Communities Act. Both the bill introduced in the Senate by Christopher Dodd and the one introduced in the House by Earl Perlmutter, failed to make their way through the necessary committees.

In fact, in June 2010, the Republican Caucus Committee on the Budget awarded the proposed legislation the Budget Boondoggle Award for Imposing One-Size-Fits-All ‘Utopia’ on Local Communities: “With the Federal Government already facing $1.5-trillion deficits, $13 trillion in debt, and a workforce swollen by 15 percent, the administration’s proposed new $20-million ‘Office of Livable Communities’ is yet another way to squander taxpayer funds.”

The details behind winning the award expose the legislation’s audacity:

The administration has proposed a $527-million increase for its euphemistically named “livable communities” initiative. As benign as “livability” may sound, however, the program’s aim is to impose a Washington-based, central planning model on localities across the country. It does so by creating a new bureaucracy in the Department of Transportation, and by linking Federal transportation funds with local land use decisions to draw suburbanites into the cities, where they will stop driving their own personal cars and instead rely on taxpayer-subsidized public transportation.

When asked to define the vague term “livability,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said it “means being able to take your kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, drop by the grocery or post office, go out to dinner and a movie and play with your kids in a park, all without having to get into your car.” All of which sounds fine – except it’s not Washington’s business to dictate how local communities pursue these goals.

Local land use and zoning has always been the responsibility of local and State governments – to coordinate transportation and zoning projects, maximizing economic growth and serving community needs. But the administration’s “livable communities” initiative ignores this jurisdictional boundary by leveraging grant money to gain heavy influence over local planning decisions.

The initiative also would further burden communities’ already challenging planning and zoning efforts by adding a bureaucratic layer of three Federal agencies – the Department of Transportation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency – to coordinate the grants.

The new urban-focused “smart growth” fad has been popularized by the model of Portland, OR. The city diverts tax dollars from highway users to pay for streetcars, and to make driving more difficult, encouraging more urban living – and the administration wants to nationalize this approach. But some argue the Portland model has increased housing prices, which has made finding affordable homes a major challenge for the low income and the young. It has also increased commute times for those who must still rely on their cars.

Besides, what works in Portland might not work elsewhere. America’s communities are diverse; “livability” means different things to different people. As researchers from the Brookings Institution recently noted, the country’s metropolitan areas have wide and growing disparities in demographic, cultural, transportation, and educational attainment characteristics that defy a one-size-fits all solution.

Cities and local communities clearly face major challenges with growth, congestion, and a broad range of other quality-of-life concerns. The “Office of Livable Communities” reflects Washington’s lack of trust in localities’ ability to solve their own problems; and instead it imposes an urban-utopian fantasy through an unprecedented intrusion of the Federal Government into the shaping of local communities.

No one works harder than individual Americans, their families, their neighbors, and their local officials to produce livable communities. They have been doing it for hundreds of years, and they do not need the Federal Government, which fails to manage its own property, or the Department of Transportation, which paid $190 million more than it needed to for the building where this new office will be situated, to tell them how to do it. If a community decides to pursue a “livability” model, it should be free to do so. But Washington should not spend money it does not have to lord over local communities, taking their transportation tax dollars and letting them be spent only as unelected Federal
bureaucrats see fit. Everyone knows how this story ends.

As mentioned above, the Livable Communities Task Force had proposed several pieces of legislation, which all came to a screeching halt in fall 2009 when the parent bill, the Livable Communities Act, failed to become law.

That did not, however, stop HUD from designating a Livable Communities Czar. Ron Sims, mentioned above as HUD’s deputy secretary, has been serving as head of the Office of Livable Communities for some time.

Elana Schor writes in March 2010 that “the effort remains without an official congressional authorization,” while Sims was described as “chief of the administration’s inter-agency Office of Livable Communities.” The month prior, HUD Secretary Donovan had gone ahead and announced the creation of the office, with Sims as its head.

Progressives in Congress really have nothing to fear. No authorizing legislation is necessary. All is moving along smoothly.

Besides, the UN’s ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainabilty has its back. Or does it?

As Henry Lamb reports, Las Cruces, New Mexico, which signed on March 7 to be an ICLEI city — without the consent of the city council, by the way — will be ending its membership at the end of its inaugural year. Lamb writes:

As the news spread throughout the community, city councilmen were asked why they were supporting the U.N.’s Agenda 21. Several of the councilmen denied supporting Agenda 21, and told their constituents that such claims were “nonsense.”

Jim Harbison knew better. He appeared before the city council on April 4, and reading from the mission statement of ICLEI, showed how the city’s contract with ICLEI was directly supporting Agenda 21. He went on to say that the councilmen who told their constituents otherwise were either “…disingenuous or dishonest, because the city’s membership in ICLEI does, by default or intent, support Agenda 21.” …

It may be too late in Las Cruces. The government already controls virtually every square inch of land in the entire county. In the first place, 86.7 percent of the total land area in the county is owned by state or federal government. That leaves only 13.3 percent of the land in private ownership. And even that land is controlled by government. According to Chapter Two of the Las Cruces Vision 2040 – Regional Planning Project, “Performance districts regulate all privately owned areas…. All uses are permitted in these areas….”

The Sustainability Plan recently adopted by Las Cruces goes way beyond the control of land use, and seeks to regulate the behavior of previously-free people. The plan contains 8 objectives and 99 actions to be taken over the next three years. Each of these actions will impose some limitation on the freedom of individuals and/or cost additional tax dollars taken from individuals and companies to achieve goals that are, at best, questionable.

Some progress has been made, however. City Manager, Robert Garza, announced after the April 4 presentation by Jim Harbison, that the city of Las Cruces would not be renewing its agreement with ICLEI.

Here’s one of those issues with which everyone can become involved. There are several steps here, as Jim Harbison’s experience shows.

First of all, do you live in one of ICLEI’s 600 U.S. local governments “committed to climate protection and sustainability”? If so, how did that happen? Did you or your neighbors or your local community know what it was getting itself into?

The ICLEI membership is renewable annually. Go all-out Alinsky on this! Stop the renewal, if that’s the case, or stop the membership from happening in the first place.

Not all cities belong to the progs.