Someone alert LUS: There’s something in the water on the south side of Lafayette and it's causing widespread paranoia.
Freshman Hub City state Rep. Stuart Bishop has before the House Tuesday a concurrent resolution, HCR 89, that “[r]ecognizes the destructive and insidious nature of the United Nations Agenda 21.” Bishop's District 43, formerly represented by now-Sen. Page Cortez, spans much of south Lafayette.
The conspiracy theory that radical environmentalists are infiltrating all levels of government in an effort to stamp out private property and automobile ownership, private farms and other American luxuries and cram everyone into New Urbanist communities where we walk or cycle to work and eat granola is a favorite of tea party groups, the Tea Party of Lafayette notwithstanding. And the Agenda 21 bug has infected the Georgia Legislature and the Republican National Committee, both of which passed resolutions condemning Agenda 21, which was a framework for sustainable growth adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Yes, 20 years ago.
Tea party groups have used Agenda 21 paranoia to stoke opposition to urban planning, and based on the local group’s website, suspicion about Agenda 21 is alive and well, further evidenced by Bishop’s non-binding resolution. Unfortunately, this comes just the Lafayette Comprehensive Plan gets under way with community forums across the parish this week.
Here’s the essential language in HCR 89:
WHEREAS, the United Nations Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control that was initiated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development... and WHEREAS, the United Nations Agenda 21 is being covertly pushed into local communities throughout the United States of America through the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) through local “sustainable development” policies, such as SmartGrowth,Wildlands Project, Resilient Cities, RegionalVisioning Projects, and other “Green” or “Alternative” projects; and WHEREAS, this plan of radical so-called “sustainable development” views the American way of life of private property ownership, single-family homes, private car ownership and individual travel choices, and privately owned farms all as destructive to the environment; and WHEREAS, according to the United Nations Agenda 21 policy, social justice is described as the right and opportunity of all people to benefit equally from the resources afforded by society and the environment which would be accomplished by socialists and communist redistribution of wealth; and WHEREAS, according to the United Nations Agenda 21 policy, national sovereignty is deemed a social injustice.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of Louisiana does hereby recognize the destructive and insidious nature of the United Nations Agenda 21.
For more on Agenda 21, read our Feb. 15 cover story, “Hidden Agenda.”
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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Sure sounds Communist to me...