Planners. You don’t elect them. You likely don’t even know them. They sit at desks in your city and county government buildings. They sit on bureaucratic boards you didn’t elect and you don’t see. Higher up in the echelons are the unelected planners and enforcers in Washington. They are appointed for their political ideology….which just happens to be far left Progressive Socialism. Surprise surprise. Planners like to plan and Socialists like unelected planners. And since Progressives have been ensconced into our government and schools, the packs of planners have continued to grow in numbers and in power. As long as they all sing from the same song book, i.e. global Marxism, they get to plan your life to their hearts content.
You would think to yourself that these are Americans and they live among us, so surely they can’t be that bad. But you would be missing a core problem. They don’t think for themselves. And they are living on your money.
Who dreamed, for instance, that the American Planning Association would be co-opted by Bill Clinton to create a master planning book for the entire country, a planning book you either use or you don’t get Federal money. The American Planning Association is the non-profit organization whose credentials you supposedly must have in order to get a job in planning. It’s like the American Institute of Architects in that same way. If you want a job drawing up architectural plans, you are a member of AIA. (That is a story for another day.) So if you want to plan a town, city, or county, you belong to APA as an accredited member or you don’t get the job.
So let’s say you are Bill Clinton and you want the entire nation revolving around your global Socialist plans. Who do you go to? Not Congress. Congress may turn you down. So you go to the American Planning Association. You promise them a few buckets full of Federal money to draw up the UN global vision for the nation / world. They take the bait and the next thing you know, every planner in the country is parroting what the UN has commanded for planning. (Sustainable Development) Pretty good deal, eh? Then you create an executive order requiring all Federal agencies to operate on that same plan. You definitely don’t go to Congress. Much easier to go around them. Voilá!! UN plans in place. Federal agencies get funding. No sweat. Walk in the park. It was all too easy.
Now, since Clinton laid the groundwork, Obama steps in and doubles down on the whole plan. Obama grabs the rural areas with another executive order called the White House Rural Council and another executive order establishing the Sustainable Communities Initiative which is a partnership between all Federal agencies to bribe the small towns, suburbs, and farming communities with more buckets of Federal grants.
Where do they send the money? To your local and/or regional planning departments, or Councils of Governments, or some non-profit, all of whom work with planners or are planners. These planning departments are all too happy today to bring in grants and subsidies to implement whatever the APA tells them…and whatever HUD, the EPA, DOT, DOE, Fish and Wildlife, et al. When they waltz in with grants and subsidies, you see, they are justifying their own existence. “See how valuable we are?” “We bring you money from the Feds!!”
Lest you think this is all the fault of these two Presidents, the planners, and the UN…. I want you to know that Congress could have done something to stop this, but hasn’t. I think the funding could have been stopped. I think a directive could have gone out from Congress to cease and desist on all activities associated with Sustainable Development aka Agenda 21. But they sat there on their thumbs, looked the other way, and did nothing to stop the most comprehensive and insidious take over of local autonomy and states rights that has ever taken place in my lifetime. So it isn’t just the perpetrators. The firewall is broken.
The next time you read the local paper to find another grant has been handed out to your area, take a look at what program or project is being funded. Is it a greenway? Is it for a “multi-modal” transit center? Is it for bike lanes? Is it for a mixed use inner city project located close to public transit?
When planners once again learn to actually think about and plan your local area without using the cookie cutter, one size fits all plans from the APA, the UN, the International Code Council, the US Green Building Council, and all of the other Federal agencies who are implementing Agenda 21, that will be a great day. Meanwhile, know thy enemy.
