Election Mop-Up and DES Warning

Well, folks, are you ready for another four years of having your sustainable Michigan goose cooked with a hefty dollop of the Democrats’ Jackass Sauce? I’ll guarantee you aren’t going to like the taste of it by the time the next United Nations’ world report card marking period rolls around in 2010. In all honesty, you wouldn’t have liked it anymore were it served with the Republican’s Elephant Sauce, but eat it or starve to death, you will.

Thirteen years ago in 1993 at the onset of the Clinton Administration, as many as twenty federal agencies signed a Memorandum of Understanding that kicked off a plan for the development of ecosystem management projects. The socialist goose-steppers knew we’d never go along with the Sustainable Development gag, so they wrapped it up in a conservation package and are bringing it about through a “management plan” for grand scale ecosystems.

The Great Lakes Ecosystem management project is among them, but it’s nothing more than a scheme for partnering government agencies and Gang Green’s members to achieve total control of all of our land and water resources throughout an eight-state and two-Canadian Province region all around the Great Lakes. Once they control the land and water resources, they will also control the Sheeple.

No section of America is spared and at fruition at least one half of our land will belong to the wild things—vast tracts of land connected by migration corridors where neither you nor I will be allowed to go. The rest of our country will only be accessed through dictatorial land use mandates so as not to upset these maniacs’ notion of sustainability of all natural resources, and even then, commoners won’t be able to access but a small portion of that.

Each of these projects was developed by overstepping the bounds of congressional authority—another “behind closed doors” blatant disregard for We, the People.

Who’s going to put these policies and stringent limitations in place? The re-elected and newly elected legislators, governors, local officials, government agencies and the stakeholding Gang Green members, that’s who! And Americans must like it because they keep electing or sitting still for the appointment of the sorts of men and women who have no qualms about aiding and abetting the land use dictators.

Over the past few years, On Target has introduced readers to the Wildlands Project, Agenda 21, and Sustainable this, that, and the other thing. Readers have been introduced to the tactics of the land grabbers and the players who are doing it, and most recently to the Organization of American States and the coming North American Union between the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

I’m weary of writing about these topics, or should I say I’ve just grown tired of beating my fingers on the keyboard stringing words together and sick at heart because so many people continue to stick their head in the sand?

When I first discovered the deplorable Wildlands Project, I was fortunate to have a phone conversation with the wife of Dr. Michael Coffman, the former MTU forestry professor who prevented the federal legislators from ratifying the Biodiversity Treaty that President Clinton and his chum, V. P. Albert “Global Warming” Gore, wanted to shove down our craw.

I asked Mrs. Coffman what I, as just a little person on this planet, could do to stop the madness and she replied, “just help spread the word as much as possible.” I’ve spent almost three years doing that, but am still met with doubt from those who question whether or not I know that what I write about is fact. Unfortunately it is fact, and you folks who faithfully read each column don’t even know the half of what’s to come yet.

Now that the elections are over and after just coming back from Wisconsin to vote, I’m heading back to Cheeseland for an indefinite stay while my daughter awaits her fate at the hands of a surgeon’s instruments and yet another biopsy.

It appears she may have become a victim of the drug industry and could soon be joining the ranks of the “Daughters of DES,” as most likely some of your daughters will or already have.

DES is short for “diethylstilboestrol” (di-ethyl-stilboestrol), a synthetic estrogen drug commonly prescribed or simply given to an estimated 5–10 million women by their doctors between the years of 1938-1971 to prevent a miscarriage.

If you or your mother took prenatal vitamins during pregnancy between the years of 1938 and 1971, you and/or your children and grandchildren could be at risk and should discuss that risk with your doctor—one that is up on things and not just looking at his billfold or trying to avoid a lawsuit.

The sad fact of the matter is that many women who were pregnant during those years took vitamins that weren’t vitamins at all. Physicians often told women they were taking vitamins when what they were really taking was diethylstilbeostrol, which was marketed under many names.

Exposure to this drug all those years ago is affecting not only mothers who faithfully followed the doctor’s orders and took DES during that time, but also their children and grandchildren.

The use of DES was stopped in 1971 (some reports say 1975) after researchers discovered that daughters exposed to the drug in the womb had a higher risk of breast cancer, pregnancy complications, and rare cancers of the vagina and cervix; some have been as young as 8 when diagnosed.

Sons of DES users have also been found to have a lower-than-average sperm count and an increased risk for developing testicular cancer.

I’ve provided a couple of links where you can begin your search to help yourself and your loved ones learn more about the effects of DES, and the last link tells of a class action lawsuit that is still open to victims.

As things stand now, there will not be another On Target column for at least the next three weeks, perhaps longer if things really go badly, but it’s not because I want to conserve on paper or put loggers out of business. It’s because I’m up to my ears with worry of another sort.

You see, when it comes to the Federal Drug Administration, some of their decisions aren’t in our best interests, nor do some of those decisions made years ago make our lives more sustainable or enhance our “quality of life.”

In fact, even after a study in 1958 showed that DES provided absolutely no benefit for preventing miscarriages, it wasn’t pulled off the market for another thirteen years, during which time I gave birth to two children or three if DES was still being doled out as prenatal vitamins until 1975. Did I take them? Now who in heck can remember what they swallowed that far back? But, in all likelihood I did, at least for the first one who now lives in Wisconsin, and that doctor and his records are long in the grave.

http://www.sovereignty.net/p/land/biotreatystop.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/DES/consumers/women/index.html

http://womenshealth.about.com/cs/azhealthtopics/a/desdaughters.htm Click on everything related to DES

http://womenshealth.about.com/cs/azhealthtopics/a/desexpriskconsq.htm

http://www.kglg.com/case/case.asp?lngCaseId=4299

Response to the Lahti Letter

Though I’ve made it a practice to keep the “I,” “me,” and “my” out of this column as much as possible since I began writing it several years ago, the 2006 election merry-go-round has had me so worked up, I’ve injected more “me” into On Target than I normally would.

Like most folks, I’ll be glad when it’s over but probably won’t be very pleased with the results. Money talks more so than integrity nowadays, and more than likely, the candidate with the wealthiest pocket and most financial backing will come out on top of the heap.

Most likely the newly elected will quickly forget about campaign promises to boost Michigan’s economy and instead concentrate on boosting their own financial interests, their cronies’ financial interests, and the special interests of their corporate backers and political action committee campaign donators.

I’ve taken a leave of absence from the woods at Prickett Dam and am writing this column from Wisconsin where granny’s services are needed for at least a week, maybe more. To avoid speculation that the far-left liberal leaning political kooks have stifled me forever, I’m taking a few hours off from “granny-duty” to write this column. Take note—there won’t be one next week as my Wisconsin family, specifically my daughter, awaits the results of another visit by “Murphy” and his law of bad luck.

Bad luck, bad news, or not, it was an opportune time to get away from home as trapping season is here again and the house is full of guys who hunker around the table and talk about nothing but the best way to set a 330 conibear or outwit an otter.

Maybe by the time I get back home they’ll all have a backlog of fur to be skinned and I can make myself useful for something other than K.P. duty and pulling burdock and stick-tights out of trapping duds. My specialty is muskrats—I don’t know why, but I really like to skin rats.

Speaking of which, I see 110th District Democrat Representative “wannabe,” Mike Lahti, took the time to write a letter to the Lake Superior Voice editor in response to the On Target column published in the Oct. 16th issue.

I stand corrected on Mr. Lahti’s ownership of the Keweenaw Trail Services, Inc. (KTS), a snowmobile trail-grooming organization for which he serves as president.

However, according to the April 2006 minutes of the state Snowmobile Advisory Committee, I don’t stand corrected on the fact that the advisory committee’s chairman, Bill Manson, requested a breakdown of Keweenaw Trail Services, Inc. expenses from Mr. Lahti and, after some discussion, felt it necessary to send Mr. Lahti recordkeeping forms so his organization could keep better account of its expenses; that Mr. Manson went on further to advise that it’s important to track expenses and document costs.

Well, good heavens to Betsy, somebody better be keeping records if KTS is paying men to groom trails and providing workers’ compensation insurance for them, as well as paying approximately $14,000 last year to a retiring insurance agent crony of Mr. Lahti who oversaw the trail-grooming operation for a few months during the 2005-2006 snowmobile season. Hmmm, I wonder who got that job this year.

Also, according to Mr. Lahti’s letter to the editor, he’s using conventional financing as well as a Michigan State Housing and Development Authority loan to turn the old Scott Hotel in Hancock into a mixed-use building with commercial rentals on the main floor (conventional financing) and 28 apartments for low to moderate income seniors (over 55) on the upper four floors (MSHDA loan)

Although Mr. Lahti didn’t mention any financial help other than the loans he’s responsible for “if the project doesn’t work or pay its way,” the following information can be found online:

From the TechAlum News, March 7, 2005 (Vol. 11, No. 41): “Hancock Seeks Block Grant: Hancock has applied for a $306,000 Community Block Grant to assist in the rehabilitation of the historic Scott Hotel (which currently houses Hancock Hardware). The grant would be used to fund half the cost of a five-stop elevator, site work consisting of a 50-car public parking lot and the purchase of a conservation easement to keep the historic facades intact. New owner Mike Lahti proposes to convert the five-story, 45,000 square-foot structure into an elderly housing unit while also allowing commercial space.”

From the TechAlum News, October 10, 2005 (Vol. 12, No. 19): “Hancock’s Scott Hotel Gets Boost With Funds. The renovation of the Scott Hotel got a boost recently when the Michigan Economic Development Corp. awarded a $155,000 grant to help with the $3.1 million project. City Manager Glenn Anderson said although the money is for a private project, MEDC grant money must be applied for by government entities. The Scott Hotel is owned by Hancock businessman Mike Lahti. That was done because the project is important for the city, Anderson said. ‘It’s our signature building,’ he said. ‘It’s been a high priority for the city. The Hancock Downtown Development Authority will match the MEDC grant with $17,000,’ Anderson said . . . ‘The development we’re paying for is considered public improvement,’ Anderson said. Lahti said the MEDC grant will be used to repair a parking lot behind the hotel and construct a handicapped-accessible elevator in the building.”

From the Houghton County Board of Commissioners meeting minutes, February 17, 2004, called to order by Chairman Mike Lahti—“Phil Musser was present representing the Revolving Loan Fund Board. He stated there is an investor interested in purchasing the Scott Hotel, if the Keweenaw Co-op would relocate and be an anchor tenant. He stated the Revolving Loan Board approved a $7,500 planning grant to Keweenaw Food Co-op to help complete a study and business plan to relocate to the Scott Hotel Building, contingent upon the Keweenaw Food Co-op being able to obtain an additional $10,000 to cover the remaining costs of the study. Phil stated a public hearing will have to be scheduled prior to the Board taking any action. He stated the additional $10,000 should be in place by the next scheduled meeting and a public hearing can be scheduled for the same date.”

Mr. Lahti chaired the March ’04 regularly scheduled board and public hearing meeting where the board agreed to go ahead with the Revolving Loan Fund Planning Grant for the Keweenaw Co-op to put toward their market study for relocation to the Hancock Hardware/Scott Hotel building.

From the TechAlum News, Sept. 27, 2004 (Vol. 11, No. 20): “Co-op Nixes Move: The Keweenaw Co-op has decided to remain in its current west Hancock location and not move to the former Scott Hotel in downtown Hancock. The Scott building currently houses Hancock Hardware and a gym/fitness center. However, the co-op board said the store’s sales would not support the larger space and more expensive rent.”

From the TechAlum News, July 18, 2005 (Vol.12, No, 8): “Hancock Landmark To Be Revived: The five-story former Scott Hotel, most recently home to Hancock Hardware, will have its interior and exterior overhauled to more closely resemble the building’s original form and function. Mike Lahti, who purchased the building in October is planning . . .”

So, to make a long story short, folks, it seems that either the unnamed “investor” mentioned by Phil Musser at the Houghton County Board meeting in February of 2004 was presiding over that meeting or Mr. Lahti stepped up to the plate in October 2004 to carry the risk for Hancock’s “signature building.”.

Should that have happened, it wouldn’t have been the first time he was agreeable to being a risk carrier for other parties. Mr. Lahti offered to be the “front man” who would have assumed the risk for the Republic Bank building (former Detroit and Northern high-rise bank building in Hancock) when the original “front-man” had to back out because of a failed business venture. That building was being eyed by certain parties for use as a Smart Zone incubator for emerging high-tech businesses.

It was said later that the idea of using the building for that purpose was abandoned because it was taken off the market, but then another resource reports that it was abandoned because the Republic Bank building was two/thirds occupied and an empty building was needed.

Mr. Lahti wants a job as our 110th District Representative in Lansing, but in my humble opinion, he might be better off if he were to forego politics and take care of his multitudinous rental units and other business enterprises. One cannot serve two masters, the pocketbook and the public, and the public certainly doesn’t need a risk-taker representing them in Lansing.

As I wrap up this week’s On Target column, I will assure you that, contrary to Mr. Lahti’s pooh-poohing of the UN’s Agenda 21, that agenda along with several United Nations’ treaties are the printed force behind rapidly approaching global governance and the continuing redevelopment of our nation into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada. We can thank some “Republicans In Name Only,” and we can thank one heck of a lot of accommodating left-leaning Democrats for that assault on our constitutional rights and our national sovereignty.

As our Republic morphs into Socialism and then into the throes of Fascism, think back on how it all came about and who helped make it happen through denial, indifference, and greed.

http://www.houghtoncounty.net/minutes/Minutes-02-17-2004.html
http://www.houghtoncounty.net/minutes/Minutes-03-09-2004.pdf

Ballot Proposals

Michigan voters will be asked to say “yes” or “no” to five ballot proposals at the polls on November 7. I’ve spent quite a bit of time online reading about the pros and cons of each in hopes of reaching an intelligent decision about which to support, but as usual, when it comes to ballot initiatives, the Devil’s in the details.

Some appear harmless at first, but as you read into them or do some research, you learn there’s more involved than meets the eye. In those cases, the ballot proposals are designed to support special interest groups, but perhaps not the general public.

After all, just about any special interest group can initiate a ballot proposal, and if they’re successful in getting enough signatures to support it, the deception games begin. For instance, the Michigan Humane Society, notoriously anti-sportsmen and anti-gun rights, instigated the anti-dove hunting proposal #3.

Readers should make their own decisions after doing their own homework, of course, but this is my take on where I’ll stand on November 7 and why.

Proposal 1 is designed to create a “Conservation and Recreational Legacy Fund” taking revenue from such sources as state park entrance dollars and hunting and fishing license fees to fund it. Cute word—“legacy,” huh? Aren’t there enough of these sorts of cutsie-wootsie sounding “funds” as it is?

The Devil in the detail of Proposal 1 is that thirteen other MI-DNR “funds” are to be put into it and then, under the umbrella of the “Conservation and Recreational Legacy Fund,” all will be protected from a raid by our legislators when money is short for other needs.

These funds really shouldn’t be raided, but certainly they can be protected individually if theft is really an issue. The problem I have with supporting Proposal 1 is that Gang Green is in cahoots with our DNR and that the Michigan United Conservation Clubs (MUCC) is supporting this proposal.

It’s no longer a secret that the Nature Conservancy, which acts as the UN’s global real estate broker, is directing traffic for the MI-DNR according to an international Wildlands Project ecosystem management scheme based on managed land use for all life forms, and concocted by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) partners. It’s also no longer a secret that the MUCC is the National Wildlife Federation’s Michigan affiliate or that the National Wildlife Federation is a partnering member of the IUCN along with TNC and the rest of Gang Green.

And, pray tell, who will oversee a new “Conservation and Recreation Legacy Fund” and dole out the grant money? Will it be some like the Natural Resources Trust Fund Board, headed up by the MUCC’s Sam Washington, who in concert with Nature Conservancy supporters feeds Gang Green?

Now, the rest of the Michigan’s voters may be cuckoo for conservation, but this voter is saying “No” to Proposal 1, as a matter of principle and also because she doesn’t have a vote with the pack mentality.

Proposal 2 will eliminate current “Affirmative Action” programs that give preferential treatment to people and minority groups based on gender, lifestyle, skin color, or national origin. Public institutions affected would include state and local government, public colleges and universities, community colleges, and school districts.

Proposal 2 would also prevent institutions from discriminating against groups or individuals for the same reasons. A constitutional provision already prevents discrimination based on race, color, and national origin anyway, but adding gender and lifestyle preference appeases some who aren’t thrilled with this proposal.

“Affirmative Action” serves as a Gay Rights-Alternative Lifestyle Agenda tool and the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender community is trying to keep it in their toolbox.

Speaking at the Triangle Foundation’s 12^th Annual Awards Dinner for LGBT activists on Sept. 30, Governor Granholm told dinner-goers, “This race is critical. We need to send a message to the rest of the nation that Michigan is not going to be a red state. This is the set-up for 2008. For those of you who care that we have just policies in Michigan, vote Democratic. Proposal 2 is bad for you. Don’t wait till ’08, start the fix in ’06.” She also told the group that her contender, Dick DeVos, isn’t an option for Michigan, or for LGBT people.

Well, folks, I’m starting my fix in ’06, too, and I’m going to support Proposal 2 with a “yes” vote to do away with “affirmative action.”

Proposal 3, an initiative to establish a hunting season for mourning doves, is being supported by a lot of sportsmen and pro-gun rights people. However, this sportswoman will be voting “no.”

The reason for that came as a result of reading and digesting a gentlemen’s message to others on the Michigan Bowsite forum. Mr. Dalton, who contacted me quite some time ago for information about Gang Green’s plan for his Lake Sinclair watershed area, advised all that there are a lot of fence-sitters who support gun rights and sportsmen. However, some are little old ladies and others who don’t like the idea of hunters shooting doves that visit their yards and feeders. It’s better, he thinks, to leave the fence-sitters sit than to get them permanently off the fence and paying dues to the Michigan Humane Society. I believe he’s right. Certainly we sportsmen have better things to fight for than the right to target practice with itty, bitty birds, so I’m voting “no” on Proposal 3.

Proposal 4 should be a “no-brainer” for those who treasure their property rights. This proposal would prohibit government from taking property and transferring it to another private individual or business for purposes of economic development or to increase tax income.

If passed, the proposal would provide that if a person’s principal residence were to be taken by government for public use, that person must be paid at least 125% of the property’s fair market value. It requires government to show that the taking is for public use, and if the taking were for the purpose of eliminating an eyesore (blight), a higher standard of proof to show that the taking is for a public use would be required.

Proposal 4 would preserve the rights private property owners have now. Individual members of Gang Green and land developers might vote “no” for Proposal 4, but this old gal is going to vote “yes” to preserve her property rights, or at least what’s left of them.

If passed, Proposal 5 would establish mandatory school funding levels and increase the current funding by about $565 million right off the get-go. It would force the State to provide yearly funding increases equal to the rate of inflation for public schools, intermediate schools districts, community colleges, and state universities and financial aid/grant programs.

The Michigan Board of Canvassers and non-partisan House Fiscal Committee estimates this proposed law could cost up to $1.1 billion smackers, but not to worry, the State (that’s us) would be forced to make up any shortfalls from the General fund (our tax pockets).

I’m all for education. I’m all for kids. I’ve had a few and I’ve taught a few, but I’m not going to give a nod to this proposal. It has nothing to do with enhancing children’s education. It’s about increasing benefits and funding pension plans for Michigan’s public education unions. Proposal 5 is a guaranteed spending measure that will remove one heck of a lot of money from annual review by the legislature and will be darn hard to get rid of once enacted. It’s totally unnecessary and will get nixed by me.

Michigan’s economy is right in the gutter, and though Governor Granholm claimed in her last debate with Dick DeVos that she was the Captain of this Ship of State and would pilot it into port, this crewmember thinks she’s heading for the sewer.

The S.S. Michigan has been floundering on the shoals of economic disaster since Jennifer Granholm took the helm, and it’s time she was stripped of her Captain’s bars and replaced with an Admiral who knows how to take the helm.

http://www.pridesource.com/article.shtml?article=20486
http://www.tri.org/
http://www.bamn.com/
http://www.micatholicconference.org/public_policy/
2006_election_information.php

Though I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of any political party and my vote is still up for grabs for individual candidates come November, I’ve made no bones about supporting conservative Republicans rather than liberal Democrat contenders for political office this time around.

A friend recently shared a response to a question he posed many weeks ago to Republican David Schmidt, who is running against Democrat Mike Lahti for Rich Brown’s 110^th District seat. He posed the same questions to Mike Lahti. Dave responded; Mike didn’t.

Dave was specifically asked about his perception of the UN’s Agenda 21, which faithful readers of this column now know more about than the average Joe. Apparently, Dave Schmidt does, too, because this is what he had to say:

“Agenda 21 is only a factor in our state if we elect legislators that allow it to be a factor. I am against Socialism and worldwide control of our country’s natural resources. I believe in the fundamental precepts of our U.S. Constitution and I will fight to maintain local control of our natural resources. Call that the U.P.-Agenda 21-1⁄2.”

My friend not only sent Mike Lahti an e-mail message asking him the same question he posed to Dave Schmidt, but he also met up with Mike face to face and asked him in person. However, the Democrat who wants to be our 110^th District Representative claimed to know nothing about the UN’s worldwide plan for “Sustainable Development,” a.k.a. Agenda 21.

So what do we do to fill the 110^th District seat this November 7? Do we elect someone who needs to be educated about the monumental problem that Agenda 21 presents for Americans, or do we elect one who already acknowledges that it exists and stands prepared to counteract it where and when he can as our state representative?

I know what my decision will be—it’s a “no-brainer” in my book, and I’ll be darned if I’ll vote for a guy who’s had his head in the stamp sand, but his hands out, palms up, for self-serving grant money for quite some time.

Perhaps Dave Schmidt doesn’t know everything there is to know about Agenda 21 or fully understand yet what a threat it is to our country and us, but he knows enough to realize that it’s the harbinger of Socialism and global control of our natural resources according to international law.

I’m aware of the fact that Dave Schmidt believes there must be some controls set in place for community growth to prevent sprawl, and I heartily concur. However, I don’t believe that economic growth should be so micro-managed that new industries must be clustered near to or within the Houghton/Hancock city limits, and I’m sure he doesn’t believe so, either.

As our 110^th representative, I’m quite certain Dave Schmidt will not feel obligated to kiss up to the Houghton-Hancock Hot Shots who appear to be wheeling and dealing with lots of grants funded with taxpayer money.

I’m very sure he will also not kiss up to those who are directing where the 21^st Century, high-tech businesses Granholm champions are setting up shop, which certainly seems to be primarily in the Houghton/Hancock and Calumet/Laurium areas, and points in between.

While it’s good to give college graduates start-up money and other perks to keep them in the local community, it’s also true that many locals who were born and raised in the U.P. have little or no opportunities at all, other than a place in the bread and cheese line or a crappy job for even crappier pay.

However, even if they haven’t helped develop new 21^st-century technology that results in patents, which universities can market to fatten their coffer, Yoopers still should deserve some respect as human beings. Not everyone is a rocket scientist nor will all ever be, but most need a decent job.

Certainly, rather than setting up entrepreneurial businesses in the Houghton/Hancock vicinity, some new industries could be directed to other areas, say Ontonagon, Baraga, L’Anse, and gosh, oh golly gee, even Alston, Tapiola, Mass, Rockland, Bruce Crossing, Bessemer, Ewen, Watersmeet, or just about anywhere other than a college town. Their local economy needs boosting, too.

But, you see, that’s not going to happen in bioreserves around the UN Biospheres, especially if we elect politicians who are either clueless about Agenda 21 or sucking up to its facilitators so as to take advantage of more marketable real estate offers before others can and/or take a first class ride on the grant money gravy train.

Mike Lahti has been aided with a great deal of grant money to renovate the old Scott Hotel in Hancock for low to middle-income rental units and rent receipts for his bank account, a project estimated to cost about $4 million. Does that sound like he’s planning on hustling up some good paying jobs to you?

He’s also looking to turn the old Morrison Elementary School in Calumet into low-income apartments by applying for Michigan State Housing and Development Authority money for that $3 million project, provided that the village council adopts a real estate tax exemption ordinance that would earn the village payment in lieu of taxes.

According to a local newspaper article, “The state requires that housing projects which use MSHDA funding, stay as low-income housing for at least 30 years, and the plan is to keep the Morrison School building low income for 45 years, which would provide the village $3-4,000 per year as payment in lieu of taxes. That estimated amount is based on 3 percent of net revenue from rent on the apartments.”

Mike Lahti has his fingers in many, many enterprises, including a couple of subdivisions in the vicinity of the new Portage Hospital complex, and one is for modular homes. He also sells manufactured homes and owns the Ramada Inn along the Hancock waterfront right near the lift bridge. He has a number of apartment buildings already. He operates a real estate business, and on that Web site it’s stated that he owns a number of small businesses and hotels.

One of those businesses is Keweenaw Trails Services, Inc., a snowmobile trail-grooming business that garnered two $90,000 DNR grants for equipment during the 2004-2005 season. Apparently the money wasn’t enough to cover wages, however, because at a state Snowmobile Advisory Committee meeting last April, he asked committee members to support legislation change to allow for trail groomers to be paid through the grants program. He was asked for a breakdown of expenses, discussion ensued, and he was told he’d be sent forms to help him track expenses—that it was important to track expenses and document costs. Last summer, Mike announced that he’d turned his trail-grooming business into a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) enterprise so that large organizations can donate funds for trail grooming.

Oh, but Mike Lahti has a plan if elected; he has lots of plans and you can hear about some of them at a Website paid for by the “Michigan Quality of Life Fund.” The proclamations on that site sounds almost as though Granholm wrote them, and I think we’ve all had enough of her after four years of getting nowhere.

My relationship with Mike Lahti goes back over thirty years. I’ve known him professionally as a State Farm Insurance agent and personally as a friend. In fact, at one time our daughters were married to brothers, though the girls were never particularly close.

My feelings of goodwill toward Mike began to change several years ago when he was campaigning for a seat on the Houghton County Board of Commissioners, a successful bid that put him in the limelight among the liberals in the two north-end college towns.

During his campaign to become one of my county commissioners, I stopped in his office to update one of my policies with his secretary. He popped out of his office and offered me a really nice shirt with “Lahti for County Commissioner” emblazoned across the front of it.

As I opened my mouth to thank him, he said, “Hey, wait a minute. You can’t vote for me; you’re not in my district!”

He quickly popped back in his office with the shirt, bounced out again, and handed me a pencil stamped “Vote for Lahti,” which I promptly threw out of my window as I drove away. Needless to say, he’s no longer my insurance agent.

If the fact that he’d opt to look the fool in front of one who couldn’t vote for him six years ago is indicative of Mike Lahti being interested in only doing something for someone who can do something for him in return, his constituents are going to be in a lot of trouble, should he get elected on November 7.

Student Strip-Searches

If our sensibilities haven’t been assaulted enough by our legislators’ Big Brother mentality, there’s now pending federal legislation that, if enacted, will allow our children to be strip-searched in schools across America.

HR 5295 is the handiwork of Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) who wants to “put a process in place so teachers don’t have any fear of liability, but at the same time it (the process) protects the rights of students from an unreasonable search.”

Davis, born to American parents in Montreal, Quebec in 1958 and educated in the West Pittsburg, PA school system and at the West Point Military Academy, is married and the father of six children.

According to information On Target received from the People for Life and Freedom, HR 5295, officially known as the “Student Teacher Safety Act of 2006,” is:

“A sloppily written bill that would require any school receiving federal funding (essentially every public school) to adopt policies allowing teachers and school officials to conduct random, warrant-less searches of every student, at any time, for essentially any reason they want. All they would have to do is say they suspect one of their students might be carrying drugs, and then they could conduct a wide scale search of every student in the building. These searches could be pat-downs, bag searches, or strip searches depending on how far school administrators want to go. Although courts would have the power to overturn policies that went “too far,” it could take years—possibly decades—to safeguard the rights of students in every school.”

HR 5295 is in direct violation of the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, which reads: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be searched.”

What this legislation proposes is to disconnect suspicion from an individual and transfer it to all students in a school building, subjecting them to what we can only presume will be all but body cavity searches. However, with the emerging New World Order all things will belong to Big Brother, including those personal places where the sun will never, ever shine, so who’s to say what will eventually be searched and what won’t?

Though our local media didn’t provide much news of it, disconnecting searches from individual suspicion is what led to the 2003 Goose Creek, South Carolina scandal. In that city, a gun-toting SWAT team was sent into a high school because a principal “suspected” one of his students might be selling marijuana. As a result of his suspicions, approximately 140 terrified students were forced to the hallway floor at gunpoint and made to lie there, some in handcuffs, while a canine unit was brought in to search their book bags.

End result? No drugs were found during the raid ordered by high school principal George McCrackin because of an unnamed informant’s tip and “increased drug activity” he “thought” he saw while peering at the school’s security cameras.

McCrackin resigned shortly after tapes of the raid surfaced on national television and a lawsuit filed on behalf of the victimized students was settled last July to the tune of $1.6 million. The settlement is to be paid by the city of Goose Creek, its police department and the Berkeley County School District, with assistance from their respective insurance companies.

The message yours truly received from the People For Life and Freedom organization was prefaced with this statement: “I am sending you this e-mail from one of the worst places to live in America. They’ve been strip-searching students for years here. Sometimes these strip searches are done purely for the carnal pleasure of the administrators…you would never guess where this is in a million years.”

The writer was correct; if I hadn’t inquired, I would never have guessed he was writing about Reading, Pennsylvania. However, the remark about “carnal pleasure of the administrators” doesn’t surprise me at all, nor would it if it were extended to the teaching staff, but then I once was a secondary teacher and have firsthand knowledge of a few perverts who managed to find their way into a classroom by benefit of a college education and a piece of paper indicating they were fit to educate our youth. NOT!

The “Student Teacher Safety Act of 2006” has the backing of the National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union, which also appears to be one working diligently to bring the United Nations’ Agenda 21 into our nation’s school system.

The pending legislation is opposed by the National Parent Teacher Association, the Council of Great City Schools, the Drug Policy Alliance, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the ACLU, the American Association of School Administrators, the National School Boards Association, and the American Teachers Federation, which called the measure unnecessary.

Regardless, on September 19th, the House of Representatives passed the blasted legislation in a voice vote so that no blame could be leveled at any individual in an election year. And, though there was some denial during an extremely brief debate that this would open the door to strip-searching students, the Devil is in the details, which, should this bill become law, will lie with individual school districts.

A brief summary of HR 5295 reads as follows: “Requires local educational agencies to have in effect policies that deem to be reasonable and permissible a search of any minor student on public school grounds if conducted by a full-time teacher or school official, acting on any reasonable suspicion based on professional experience and judgment, to ensure that the school and students remain free from the threat of all weapons, dangerous materials, or illegal narcotics. Requires search measures to be reasonably related to search objectives, without being excessively intrusive in light of the nature of the offense and the student’s age and sex.”

The Student Teacher Safety Act of 2006, if enacted, will deny Safe and Drug Free School funds, provided under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, to local educational agencies that fail to comply with this Act. Those funds have been used to establish existing local policies that now may have to be discarded, re-debated, and rewritten to fan federal legislators’ fannies.

In impassioned opposition to HR 5295, Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) beseeched the House to consider that school is not only a place where children learn math, reading, and writing, but also a place where children learn how to be citizens in a free society. In his words:

“Being a citizen of this country means living free from the fear of unnecessary searches and government harassment. My fear is that when we expose our children to constant violations of their privacy through limitless drug tests and unreasonable searches during their school years, they will grow up to believe that violations of their constitutional rights are the norm in this country. The future generations that we will depend on to defend the Bill of Rights may no longer know what those rights are. They may be all too willing to accept ever-increasing government intrusion into their private lives. In an age of warrant-less wiretaps and secret surveillance, this is not a risk I am willing to take.

In addition, this bill does not adequately protect the privacy interests of our students. In 1969, the Supreme Court said that children do not leave their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door. Yet this bill is so vaguely and broadly worded that it potentially opens a “Pandora’s Box” of 4^th Amendment violations in our schools. This bill does not require that school officials actually suspect an individual of wrongdoing before searching them. Rather, it allows for searches if a school official thinks that his or her actions will help the school remain drug free...

School safety is a vitally important issue. Children must be able to learn in an environment free from fear and violence. Providing students and teachers with safe schools does not require students to check their civil liberties at the door. The Bill of Rights envisions a balance between individual freedoms and law enforcement. That balance has served our country well for more than two centuries. There is no reason that such a balance cannot be struck in our school system. If we want safe schools we should invest in after school and mentoring programs. We should invest in programs that teach children how to resolve conflicts in non-violent ways. We should teach our children that they have privacy rights that follow them wherever they go, including school. I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill.”

They didn’t, and now this legislation lies waiting in the Senate where those who have failed for far too long to secure our southern border with Mexico to help keep America safe from drug peddlers, child molesters, murders, and other dregs of humanity who victimize our nation’s children and us will take up the matter of the “Student Teacher Safety Act of 2006.”

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.5295.IH:
http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/092006search.cfm
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1527912/04052006/
id_0.jhtml?headlines=true
http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd216.htm

North American Union

Snookered! We’re being snookered, folks. Snookered right out of our sovereignty and Constitutional Rights, and like dummies, we’re allowing it to happen. Many of those we’ve elected are allowing it to happen, too—are, in fact, causing it to happen by dragging their feet over critically necessary legislation to prevent it or by proposing and/or supporting new legislation that will do further harm.

What am I ranting about? I’m ranting about the new North American Union—the homogenization of America, Canada, and Mexico.

You won’t read about this treachery in mainstream media sources controlled by power mongers. Nor will you hear of it over airwaves controlled by the same. And, rest assured, within a short time little hometown papers such as the Lake Superior Voice with editors who allow just about anything to be printed about all things will become a thing of the past because freedom of speech, like all freedoms and rights, will be history.

The Council on Foreign Relations, whose roots are immersed in the Bilderberg Group and the Rockefeller led Trilateral Commission, sponsored a North American Union Task Force to make “recommendations” on implementing the destruction of America’s borders with its two neighboring countries by the year 2010.

Of course, the events of 9/11 in New York City and at the Pentagon are being used as a tool of necessity to cram this homogenization down our throats with flowery language deception related to “national security.”

Interesting, isn’t it, how wiping out the World Trade Center and striking the Pentagon has been so useful in getting Americans sufficiently fearful enough to buy into buying out of their individual and collective rights? Yup, fear is a great wool greaser to motivate Sheeple to herd up and move to where elitists want them to go, mentally, emotionally, and physically.

The news coming in from those who really know and report the news, however, is that fewer and fewer people are clinging to a belief that 9/11 was an “outside” job and, instead, was a carry-over from the Clinton years, which was to be carried over into the Al Gore years, except there was a little snafu with the Florida ballots, thanks to the Bush clan.

Regardless, it’s been full steam ahead for the destroyers of America as a sovereign nation, and the Council on Foreign Relations’ Task Force has recommended that four years from now there will be a new borderless North American Union—a diversified community full of Juan and Juanita Pierre Jones families—to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity.

Our new boundaries are to be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products and capital will be “legal, orderly, and safe.”

According to this all-seeing Task Force, the three governments should approach continental issues together with a tri-national perspective, although progress should continue dually, particularly in the line of defense since the Mexican military has little to offer other than foot soldiers adept at sneaking across a border.

To settle your mind as to why Senator Debbie “Do Nothing” Stabenow will not vote to immediately close our border with Mexico, consider that the Task Force indicates that the new North American Union’s economic focus should be on the creation of a common economic space that expands economic opportunities for all people in the three-country region, a space in which trade, capital, and people flow freely.

In order to secure our expanded and newly redefined border perimeters, the Task Force has recommended, among other things, that the three countries develop a common North American “border pass” with “biometric identifiers” to make it easier for border pass holders to get through customs, immigration, and airport security checkpoints.

These “smart” cards will be issued only to those who “voluntarily seek, receive, and pay for a security clearance.” Although passports and national identity documents would still be needed, “smart” cards would have the added advantage of allowing Big Brother to track Joe Smoe wherever he might go, just as the Brethren are attempting to track our food supply and modes of transportation, including soon to be RFID chipped horses should the cavalry rise and ride again.

The Task Force is also calling for the blending of military forces and law enforcement to better facilitate Big Brother’s people watch program. They’ve called for a trilateral training and exercise program to better provide for the detection of threats, preventative action, crisis response, and consequence management. Now couple that with the Organization of American States’ civilian prisons, and you might have a better idea of exactly who might be considered a threat to the elitists’ national security to the newly defined North American Union.

As to economic development, the Task Force recommends that we rich Americans and our equally rich Canadian neighbors, referred to as the “private sector,” take the poor Mexican peons under our wing and infuse their country with billions of dollars so that they, too, will become a prosperous people or at the very least become equally as poor and dependent on crumbs tossed down to Gringos and Kanucks.

The Task Force recommends that by the year 2010 Canada, America, and Mexico should agree on streamlined immigration and labor mobility rules that enable citizens of all three countries to work elsewhere in North America with far fewer restrictions than immigrants from other countries.

They also recommend that by 2010, and in order to make North American based companies as competitive as possible in the global economy, Canada and America should consider eliminating all remaining barriers to their citizens’ ability to live and work in the other country.

This free flow of people, they believe, will offer employers in each country the advantage of a larger pool of skilled labor and enhance the well-being of individuals in both countries by enabling them to quickly move where their skills are needed. In the long term, it’s recommended that this “people-flow” be extended to Mexico, but not until the wage differential has been diminished considerably.

The Task Force also recommends that the educational network be integrated and a scholarship program set up to encourage students in all three countries to become fluent in English, Spanish, and French, and, looking ahead to the future, to see to it that as many as 60,000 Mexican students study in the U.S., as well as Canada, and vice versa.

They also call for the melding of students from all three countries to address North American Union issues, as well as issues outside of the new tri-national boundary. Simply put, this will eliminate singlemindedness in being an American, a Canadian, or a Mexican, and where better to start than among impressionable young minds!

The Council on Foreign Relations Task Force “recommendations” can be read in their entirety by using the first link below and it’s highly suggested that one does so.

Ladies and gentlemen, these Task Force recommendations are nothing more than a game plan to fully implement the United Nations’ Agenda 21, which emanates from the same place that this Council on Foreign Relations was spawned, namely the Bilderberg Group and Trilateral Commission whose elitist members are playing “in house” monopoly with all countries and all people on the face of the Earth.

To aid and abet the seamless flow of people and goods, a new tri-national “corridor,” which normal people call a highway, will wind its way from inside Mexico all the way into Canada through the soon to be erased border near Duluth, Minnesota, Fargo, North Dakota, and Detroit, Michigan.

This super highway, ten lanes wide, will gut Texas and America’s heartland, and be accompanied by toll booths and a complimentary railroad line to facilitate the movement of goods within the North American Union.

NASCO, a.k.a. North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, has been babying this puppy along since 1994 when Clinton was in office. A link is provided below for those interested in learning more about NASCO, but proceed with this warning: Do not believe everything you read on this site because the statement that “there are no plans to build a new NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement, circa 1994) Superhighway—it exists today as I-35” is a bold-faced lie.

Not only will there be a ten-lane wide highway with express lanes for Mexican semi-trailers hauling containers of goods imported from the Far East, but the first customs stop will be at a Mexican customs office, a new “Smart Port” complex, being built for Mexico in Kansas City, Kansas at a cost of $3 million U.S. tax dollars.

The last two links below provide a synopsis of Representative Bart Stupak and Senator Debbie Stabenow’s overall records regarding immigration. Stupak received a overall career grade of “D” and Stabenow was given a “C,” probably because she took no action on four of the nine issues. I will remember all of this in November. Will you?

http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NorthAmerica_TF_final.pdf
http://www.nascocorridor.com/pages/about/about.htm
http://www.nascocorridor.com/ interactive map
http://www.soonews.ca/viewarticle.php?id=7120 another map
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=15059
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=15497
http://grades.betterimmigration.com/testgrades.php3?District=MI01&VIPID=403
http://grades.betterimmigration.com/testgrades.php3?District=MI&VIPID=913

As more and more folks are beginning to read “On Target,” knowing that its content is aptly named and factual, perhaps now is a good time to update and reprint a column written well over a year ago so newbie readers will be better able to understand how Gang Green has been pulling the wool over the Sheeple’s eyes for far too long.

President Reagan pulled America out of UNESCO in 1984 because he believed it was totally corrupt. George W. Bush, however, returned our country to UNESCO in 2002, stating he was doing so “as a symbol of our commitment to human dignity.” “This organization has been reformed and America will participate fully in its mission to advance human rights and tolerance and learning,” Bush said in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 12, 2002.

Because “we’ve” now rejoined the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, its Man and the Biosphere Program (MAB), which never really halted in America, has moved full speed ahead in the Upper Peninsula. Biospheres, however, are listed only at the request of the country in which they’re located, and can be removed from the list at any time by a request from that country.

A U.N. Biosphere is a designated core area, usually federal public land operated by a government agency, generally the National Park Service. Biospheres can encompass a National Park, National Forest, Heritage Site, Historical Park, Scenic Highway, Wilderness Area, Designated Wetland, Wildlife Preserve, or a combination of these and/or several other things. The trend now is to also include state and local municipality land as part of a Biosphere Reserve.

Through the acquisition of more and more federal, state and municipal public land and subsequent control of how it’s used, Biosphere perimeters expand; they’re never stagnant. Biospheres can overlap into great swaths of controlled land, thousands of miles in all directions. MAB’s object is to gain jurisdiction over the Earth’s entire surface and control all resources, such as air, water, land, minerals, and all forms of life, including human beings.

Biospheres act like “living laboratories” for the “scientific” testing of targeted bio-geographical ecosystems, guaranteeing the conservation of biodiversity through research, monitoring, and “training” activities, or so it’s claimed. In truth, the conglomeration of international MAB land grabbing thieves’ end goal is to hold the Earth’s entire land and air surface hostage and to manipulate people into cooperating with their scheme, one way or another.

To control Bio-Reserve integrity, land use must be severely restricted or halted altogether because human activity is seen as the greatest stress factor that destroys the essential wholeness of various eco-systems within the integrated Biospheres. Gang Green’s denial that humans will not be severely and adversely affected by traditional activity abatement, as more land control is exerted, will ultimately prove to be a lie.

UNESCO’s MAB Program is a world network of Biospheres controlled through the partnership of international governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) collaborating to keep the manipulative scheme rolling at the national, state, and local level. Some NGOs are the Nature Conservancy, Defenders of Wildlife, and the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), which consists of affiliated conservation clubs, one per state. In Michigan, NWF’s affiliate is the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, comprised of more good old boy sportsmen’s clubs than conservation clubs, most of which have no clue as to what they’re really supporting.

The World Bank supports the grandiose MAB scheme, as does the U.N. Environment Program, the U.N. Development Program, the Food and Agriculture Org., the World Conservation Union (IUCN), Conservation International, and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

The U.S. government agencies and NGO supporting partner list of IUCN is exhaustive, and several can be identified as threads of a tangled partnership web, most involving the Nature Conservancy, now very busy at work controlling or helping to control U.P. public land while trying to convince all that its heart is pure.

The MAB scheme involves many individual projects, such as the Great Lakes Basin Project. This effort began in 1995 at the instigation of the National Park Service, which requested that the Isle Royale Biosphere be elevated to fully functional status. The project is now an internationally directed bi-national plot to control land use and water resources in each of the eight states and the Canadian provinces surrounding the Great Lakes and the tributaries running into each.

Partnering organizations and government agencies are using the “Watershed Approach,” attorneys well versed in environmental law, and increasingly restrictive environmental mandates to force humans to accept land use restrictions. Those who balk at the land grabs and use restrictions are purposely made to feel guilty of not wanting to protect the environment and fresh water resources.

The partners are marching right around the Great Lakes, watershed by watershed, using the two designated Biosphere Reserves at Isle Royale and the tip of the Lower Peninsula, as well as several others in other states and Canada as core areas.

Almost every Biosphere from coast to coast is situated where there is an important water resource, and new Biospheres will continue to be designated unless citizens become irate enough to force Congressmen to call a halt to the whole U.N. Biosphere business in America.

In 1968, just prior to Nixon’s election, there was a UNESCO “Biosphere Conference” and the Biosphere Reserve concept was laid out. In 1970, the U.N.’s Man and the Biosphere program surfaced to set this reserve scheme in motion.

The United States joined the MAB Program in 1974 when our Department of State signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” (not a treaty) and pledged that the U.S. would adhere to Biosphere conditions and limitations laid down by UNESCO. Richard Nixon was president at the time and Henry Kissinger became his Secretary of State after muscling out William P. Rogers.

There’s no national law mandating that Biospheres be designated in the U.S. Regardless, at last count, there are 47 U.N.-U.S. Biospheres that we know of. Twenty-seven were designated in 1976 during the Nixon years. Oddly, another 11 were designated during the Reagan years, but his two Secretaries of State served the Nixon administration as well. Excepting for perhaps one or two, the National Park Service rules over all Biospheres in the United States.

The University of Michigan Biological Research Station became a Biosphere in 1979 after Carter took office, as did Isle Royale in 1980. The Research Station encompasses an area from Mackinaw City on down to a line running east and west below the Petoskey/Charlevoix area. Carter’s Secretary of State was environmentalist Ed Muskie after Cyrus Vance resigned in 1980 in protest of Operation Eagle Claw, Carter’s secretive and failed mission to free hostages held at the American Embassy in Iran.

Although no concrete information could be found about who nominates Biospheres, it’s purported that locally established committees usually coordinate the initial planning and prepare the nominations. Letters of concurrence from local “interest” groups and local and state government representatives are attached to each nomination package. Landowner approval is required for a property to be included. The package is then submitted for review and recommendation to the U.S. Man and the Biosphere Program (US MAB), based at the U.S. Dept. of State, in Washington, D.C., which sends its recommendations to the UNESCO office in Paris for final approval.

U.S. MAB Bulletin, July ’97, Vol. 21, #2, contains the following information: “The long-term goal of the U.S. MAB Program is to contribute to achieving a sustainable society early in the 21st Century.” So, you see, “sustainable redevelopment” a la Agenda 21 fits nicely into Gang Green’s US-MAB program, which is turning the entire U.P. into an incubator for ecosystem management, new technology research, and sustainable (no excesses) human development.

The aforementioned bulletin also includes a farewell from the US-MAB Committee Chairman, Dean Bibles, who at the time was director of the U.S. Dept. of Interior’s policy on land tenure and also special assistant to Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbitt.

More intriguing info in that bulletin is the introduction of the new National MAB Chairman, David Hales, who was appointed to a three-year term as Chairman of the U.S. National Committee for the MAB Program. Previously, Hales had been Director of the Michigan DNR from 1988-1991 and had served as a board member of the Michigan Chapter of the Nature Conservancy. (Hales’ biography: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1183)

The tangled and deceitful webs of scheming partners putting the U.N.’s Agenda 21 in place are becoming much easier to follow, and the picture that’s coming into focus isn’t in the best interest of the American public or our nation’s sovereignty. For your sake and the sake of your loved ones, force your elected officials and community leaders to admit their guilt in complying with Agenda 21 or their ignorance in knowing little or nothing about it. You can educate the ignorant, but you must give stupid elected officials the boot because, as Wisconsin Bob says, “Ignorance is temporary, stupid is forever.”

Granholm Must Go

By the time this column hits the stands, there’ll be about fifty days left until the November election. Faithful readers of this column know that yours truly won’t be voting for any incumbent or Democrat wanna-be politician or Republican In Name Only (RINO) spouting empty promises that they’ll “work” to bring jobs to the Upper Peninsula for Joe Lunch Pail and Suzy Sack Lunch.

How many times have we heard that mantra from successful candidates who do nothing to help Suzy, Joe, and all the Lunch Pails and Sack Lunches, but work to benefit their fat-cat cronies instead? Some are already sucking up millions of dollars in grants, which enable the fattening of their own pockets, not the public’s coffer. And some are hiding assets by putting auxiliary businesses under other people’s names and/or hiding business relationships with silent partners or as a silent partner themselves. Why is this being done if they’re above board and as honest as the day is long?

Until politicians from all parties confront the United Nations’ Agenda 21 head-on and report to the people about its true nature and the effect it will have on America and its people when fully implemented, there’ll be no truth in political advertising, just “spin” to awe us into thinking Mr. Big Shot or Ms. Empowered Woman is the best person for office.

Let’s get real here. The sorts of jobs that Suzy Sack Lunch and Joe Lunch Pail qualify for are industrial jobs, not high-tech research businesses developing innovative technology, which Governor Granholm has been trying to attract like moths to a fire in the most southern part of Michigan. She’s apparently made it her personal onus to “diversify” our economy, but after almost four years she’s only managed to put Michigan and its citizens further in the hole.

As of September 12, our state continued to lose one job for every twenty minutes Granholm has been in office. Yes, Michigan has lost 103,000 “net” jobs, while the rest of the nation has seen 5.5 million “new” jobs created under the Bush Administration. We’re in a single state recession, while states other than those hit by Hurricane Katrina have experienced growth.

According to Jim McHugh, a legislative analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the causes of the “one-state” recession are “complex, but largely come down to the fact that Michigan is burdened with destructive business taxes, excessive regulations and bad labor laws that make ours one of the least competitive business climates in the United States.”

We’re losing businesses and we’re losing people who are finding jobs out of state. A gazillion homes are standing empty, and rumor has it the bottom is about to fall out of the housing market nationwide. Mortgage lenders have even stooped to offering 50-year mortgages for half-million-dollar homes, an amount bright-eyed young folks will be hard put to pay a few years from now.

Granholm can blame Michigan’s economic woes on former Governor Engler’s administration and the Bush administration until the cows come home, but the fact remains that she’s done next to nothing in the past four years to change things around, and, while other states have prospered, Michigan has truly become a bottom feeder.

Certainly Michigan residents are smart enough to realize that the President of the United States isn’t intentionally thumbing his nose at our state and penalizing its citizens by purposely keeping them poor and needy. No, he needs our vote, as do other Republicans, so why in the world would he be foolish enough to pull a stunt like that?

The Granholm administration contrived to get its hands on $2 billion by leveraging Michigan’s tobacco settlement money and has dumped it into a “21^st Century Jobs Fund” for the Governor’s “go anywhere, do anything to bring jobs to Michigan” campaign. Well, it’s not working well at all, and most definitely not in the U.P.

To bring this into better focus, across our state’s southern border lies Indiana. According to a report posted online this past August 31 at the “InsideIndiana.com” Web site, “Indiana’s economic hot streak continues. Since January and in six month’s time, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation has landed more than 126 competitive deals and secured commitments for more than 15,800 new jobs and $3.9 billion in capital investments.”

Dot Foods chose Indiana as the place to build a new redistribution center, creating 250 new jobs; America General Financial Services is creating 150 new jobs, Honda is creating 2,000 new jobs at a new assembly plant, Rolls-Royce is creating 600 new jobs, American Commercial Lines is creating 1,150 jobs at its Jeffboat division, Pfizer is creating 450 new jobs, Sysco is creating 500 new jobs, Shoe Carnival is creating 278 new jobs, and Toyota is creating 1,000 new jobs, all in Indiana where the business climate is more user-friendly than it apparently is across the border in Michigan.

However, the biggest slap in the face comes from Nestle, which is building a new facility and creating 340 jobs in Indiana, not Michigan.

Nestle has been draining our state’s water in Mecosta County since 2001 when the Engler administration awarded the company nearly $10 million in local property and state education tax abatements, as well as job training and infrastructure grants to set up shop in Michigan. In return for this windfall, Nestle paid less than $100 for a license fee and is peddling its Ice Mountain water brand, which it gets for nothing other than production cost, at 240 times the cost of that production.

While campaigning for her first term of office, Granholm led folks to believe that she’d put a stop to Nestle’s highway water robbery in Michigan, but later changed her mind and allowed her administration to interfere in a Court’s decision to call a halt to it.

Last February, the Governor signed a bill regulating and restricting the diversion of water from the Great Lakes, but there was a loophole that allows Nestle to export 300 million gallons of water a year from the region. The law restricts traditional methods of diversion, such as pipelines, canals, or sea-going tankers, but it exempts water bottled in containers of 5.7 gallons or less.

Nestle uses bottles of that volume, and so it can export as much water from a region as it wants once it gets a cheap license to do so. It can do this without regard for any subsequent damage to the aquifer and without compensating Michigan citizens in any way. And though other states in the region could bring Granholm and the State of Michigan to task, none have so far done so.

In addition to giving away Michigan water to Nestle, the Granholm administration has been quite successful in turning over a great deal of State-owned land in the Upper Peninsula, as well as northern Lower Michigan, to the Nature Conservancy for its “Northern Great Lakes Forest” project through what she calls her “U.P. Big Deal.”

That deal was a scam orchestrated between the State, the Nature Conservancy, and Forestland Group LLC, whose CEO and president, Tom Massengale, is the former founder and president of the Conservancy’s North Carolina Chapter.

Forestland Group purportedly won the bid on almost 400,000 acres of Upper Peninsula timberland amassed in the late 1980s and early ’90s by a very young man from the East Coast named Ben Benson. Benson flipped some of his briefly held land holdings to the National Park Service at Munising for a “buffer zone” and flipped the remainder to the Kamehameha Schools Trust (Bishop Trust) of Hawaii, which in turn wanted to flip it to Engler, the Conservancy, and an “unnamed timber company” (bogus?), but the Trust flipped it to Forestland Group, which then quickly flipped it to Granholm and the Conservancy instead. It’s sort of like the old lady who swallowed the fly, isn’t it? But, in this case, we know why, don’t we?

The bottom line is that the nonprofit and tax-exempt Nature Conservancy, which is between the sheets with the MI-DNR, the Federal Forest Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and several other government agencies, is dictating land management policy according to the mandates of the UN’s World Conservation Union (IUCN), and within a few years you will not freely traverse any public land in the U.P., let alone own private property or have any water rights whatsoever.

This is the intention of Agenda 21, Sustainable Development, regional and grand scale Ecosystem Management, global FSC and FSI Forest Certification, Smart Growth, UN Biospheres, Buffer Zones, Migration Corridors, metropolitan Human Settlements, River Walks and Green Space, university Centers of Excellence, and the whole global ball of wax.

Our Governor and her accommodating legislators who are enabling Agenda 21 and all its “recommendations” to go forward through newly proposed legislation that manipulates society into conformance with those recommendations and diminishes our constitutional rights and inherent freedoms must not serve another term in office, nor should any candidate who would support this nonsense be elected to serve in their place.

http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7588

According to information on the “Michigan Votes” Web site, MI 2005 Senate Bill 855 (Repeal property right to reasonable use of groundwater) was introduced by Senator Liz Brater (D-Dist. 18, Washtenaw Co.) on November 1, 2005, and referred to the Senate Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs.

If enacted, SB-855 will “repeal the riparian water use doctrine of Michigan law, which established that a property owner has a property right to the use of groundwater drawn from beneath his or her land, as long as this does not interfere with another person’s use of groundwater. Instead, property owners would not have a right, but could use groundwater only if the state grants permission.”

This riparian use doctrine is the norm east of the Mississippi River, but not in arid states of the west where farmers and others are already engaged in a “water war.”

Riparian land is land that abuts or includes a stream or river. In law, a “Riparian Right” is the right of one who owns riparian land to have access to and use of the shore and water, including that which is below ground. Riparian water, as distinguished from floodwater, is the water that’s below the highest line of normal flow of the river or stream. These rights are a form of real property and are inherited with the land. Now, some of our elected state senators and representatives are attempting to deny Michigan private property owners their water rights.

In addition to denying us unregulated use of our private well water, SB-855 would also “prohibit the sale outside the Great Lakes basin of bottled water that is taken from a municipal water system.” This includes the Nestle bottled water plant (formerly Perrier) in Mecosta County, which probably won’t be affected anyway since Nestle already pays a token amount to withdraw water in copious amounts thanks to a slick deal made with Governor Granholm before anyone knew that some legislators were coming after little guy property owners, farmers, industry, and others. (More about this Nestle hanky-panky is coming in a future column.)

While SB-855 gives every appearance of being about withdrawing and selling water and/or carting it off to the hinter-lands, the opening salvo of the proposed legislation states: “THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN ENACT: SEC. 32704A. (1) THE LEGISLATURE FINDS AND DECLARES THAT THE WATERS OF THE STATE ARE HELD IN THE PUBLIC TRUST FOR THE USE AND ENJOYMENT OF THE PUBLIC AS AUTHORIZED BY LAW.”

A copycat bill, HB-5366, and was introduced in the House by Rep. Gary McDowell (D-Mackinac, Chippewa, Emmet and part of Cheboygan Co.)

Folks, if Governor Granholm enacts either of these bills into law, you can kiss your water rights goodbye and wash your face in a tea cup of water, and don’t think she won’t gleefully spit on her pencil lead before she signs this legislation.

SB-855 and HB-5366 are part and parcel of the Governor’s “Water Legacy Act,” which she wants our legislators and us to buy into. The “Water Legacy Act” appears to be very much a part of the Wildlands Project, and with the State and land trusts gaining control of most all inland lakes and streams in the U.P. now, more parts of the Project’s people control scheme are coming into better focus.

According to Granholm, Michigan now lags behind other Great Lakes states in controlling groundwater withdrawals, as well as preventing diversions of surface water outside the basin. Her proposed “Water Legacy Act” supposedly would “fulfill” the state’s “obligation” to “preserve and protect” a “threatened” natural resource and bring Michigan into “partial compliance” with the so-called Annex 2001, a “voluntary” “regulatory code” “under consideration” by the eight states and two Canadian provinces that “cooperatively exercise” jurisdiction over the Great Lakes.

Now, if that doesn’t sound like the Wildlands Project, I’ll eat my fishing hat. If the “regulatory code” is “voluntary,” then how are Michigan citizens “obligated” and so what if the state isn’t in “compliance”? Who says the water in the Great Lakes basin is threatened? Is it environmental groups involved with the UN’s World Conservation Union and its Wildlands Project? What are we supposed to do, feel guilty enough to give up our water rights?

When the Governor proposed the Water Legacy Act to the Legislature, she stated, “We are the only state that hasn’t lived up to its end of the bargain. If we do not take action to regulate withdrawals of water from the Great Lakes Basin, those who are already eyeing our treasured lakes as the solution to their water shortages will begin arriving with their pumps and hoses to take their bounty home.”

Apparently she wasn’t too concerned about pumps and hoses when she approved of a deal to allow Nestle to continue to get at our state’s bounty after she’d disapproved of Nestle’s water robbery when she was Attorney General. Apparently she wasn’t too concerned three years ago when organizations pleaded with her and a Court not to allow Nestle to continue taking Mecosta County’s bounty with those pumps and hoses.

In an article titled “Proposed Water Legacy Act: A Bad Idea For Michigan,” Mackinac Center Senior Environmental Policy Analyst Russ Harding wrote, “The importance of water supplies to Michigan and its neighbors demands caution in its regulation. The lives of thousands of property owners, and the livelihoods of millions more, would be jeopardized by ill-conceived government actions. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy thus examined Gov. Granholm’s arguments for so radical a change in water law, as well as the likely consequences of the proposed regulatory crackdown. In April 2005, we published a Mackinac Center Report, ‘Groundwater Regulation: An Assessment.’ Our findings on these matters argue against enactment of the proposed Water Legacy Act.

“Michigan is not a regulatory backwater, as the governor contends. Legal mechanisms already exist to protect groundwater supplies and limit large-scale diversions from the Great Lakes. Our review of statutes throughout the region found only a single instance of a regulatory scheme as stringent as that proposed by the Granholm administration. Moreover, the governor’s proposals to restrict water diversions far exceed the draft rules of Annex 2001.”

Too bad guys like Mr. Harding don’t run for office instead of those buzzards who willingly look for ways to exploit citizens’ rights because, you see, not only does the Granholm administration want to control what can be considered “public” water in the Basin, it also wants to control “private” water, and in order to do that our legislators will have to give a nod of approval to SB-855 or HB-5366.

Senators who co-sponsored Liz Brater’s proposed legislation, SB-855, are all Democrats: Michael Prusi (Dist. 38), Robert L. Emerson (Dist. 27), Deborah Cherry (Dist. 26), Virg Bernero (Dist 23), Mark Schauer (Dist. 19), Gilda Jacobs (Dist. 14), Michael Switalski (Dist. 10), Dennis Olshove (Dist. 9), Raymond E. Basham (Dist 8), Burton Leland (Dist. 5), Irma Clark-Coleman (Dist. 3), Martha Scott (Dist. 2), and Hansen Clarke (Dist. 1).

Representatives who co-sponsored Gary McDowell’s proposed legislation, HB-5366, are: Matthew Gillard (D-Alpena), Steve Tobocman (D-Detroit), Alma Smith (D-Washtenaw), Gretchen Whitmer (D-Ingham), Dianne Bryum (D-Onondaga), Kathleen Law (D-Gilbrater), Andy Meisner (D-Ferndale), Lisa Wojno (D-Macomb), Steve Bieda (D-Macomb), Doug Bennett (D-Muskegon), Michael Sak (D-Kent), Brenda Clack (D-Flint), Kathy Angerer (D-Monroe & Washtenaw), John Gleason (D-Genesee), Herb Kohl (D-Monroe, deceased), Gino Polidori (D-Dearborn), Lee Gonzales (D- Genesee), Barbara Farrah (D-Wayne), Marie Donigan (D-Royal Oak), Ed Clemente (D-Wayne), Aldo Vagnozzi (D-Farmington Hills), Michael C. Murphy (D-Ingham), Glenn S. Anderson (D-Wayne), Gabe Leland (D-Wayne), Joel Sheltrown (D-West Branch), George Cushingberry, Jr. (D-Wayne), LaMar Lemmons, Jr. (D-Wayne), Fred Miller (D-Macomb), Pam Byrnes (D-Lyndon Twsp.), Hoon-Yung Hopgood (D-Wayne), John Espinoza (D-Sanilac), LaMar Lemmons III (D-Wayne), Jack Brandenburg (R-Macomb), Edward Gaffney (R-Wayne), John Stewart (R-Wayne), David Law (R-Wayne), Roger Kahn (R-Saginaw), Mike Nofs (R-Calhoun).

Those are the names of your elected officials in Lansing who are attempting to take control of our water rights, and it’s up to voters to bring them to task by ballot in November or through a recall process. Additionally, each and every man or woman running for office in November must be asked if they reject or support SB-855 or HB-5366, as well as the Water Legacy Act, and their answers must be weighed at November voting booths before even more of our rights are gone forever.

People living in urban areas might not care about rural folks and private wells, but somebody better start caring before all of us, Country Bumpkins and City Slickers alike, lose everything we’ve a lawful right to call our own. And yes, if you’re wondering, “water control” is an integral part of the UN’s Agenda 21 recommended policies, Sustainable Development, Smart Growth, the Wildlands Project, UN Biospheres, and the whole ball of global wax that’s designed so the Sheeple will have no private property, water rights, or much of anything at all.

With the exception of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, who had the cojones to get us out of UNESCO, every president since World War II has been in on and compliant with all forty chapters of Agenda 21. Residual members of the Carter administration just hunkered down, doing what they could to facilitate the Agenda in the meanwhile. Even Eisenhower’s “People to People” program, noble though it appeared to be, morphed into a “Sister Cities” Agenda 21 network.

Every four years we’re led to believe that we’re electing the man who will run the country, but in reality, its the men and women behind the scenes, the advisors, who run it by directing public policy where they, not We the People, believe it should go. And which group’s members have been implanted in positions of power to give guidance and direct national and international policy? Members of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, that’s who; men and women with visions uncommon to the common man.

Although it’s been a team effort by both parties, in my estimation the worst administrations were those of Nixon and Clinton, the former because of the cozy “globalization” relationship Nixon launched with China and the later because Clinton was (and still is) a yes man to the UN and all of the UN’s schematic programs. Clinton’s “golden ring,” which is barely out of reach now, is Kofi Annan’s lofty position at the UN, and Mrs. “We’re Going To Take Things Away From You For The Common Good” Clinton, had she been able to keep her empowered-woman syndrome in check, was hoping to become the first woman to become President of the United States.

Both Nixon and Clinton lacked the moral integrity to lead our nation in the direction that would have been best for Americans, and instead were easy pawns of those really in charge. And now, only a very few years into the 21^st century, we’re facing the reality of the total annihilation of our most precious gift next to life itself—our Constitutional rights and freedoms as individual citizens of the United States of America living in a sovereign nation made up of sovereign states.

Clinton and his pal, Al Gore, pushed the Trilateral Commission and Gang Green’s agenda, as well as their collective political Mother Ship, Agenda 21, from 1993 until George W. took office in 2001. Nine months into the Bush presidency, America gave birth to a fear factor emanating out of New York City. That fear factor facilitated the Clinton administration’s “National Security Strategy for the 21^st Century,” a strategy compiled, edited, and ready to go in 1999, well before the tragedy of September 11, 2001. It was ready and waiting for George W. Bush because Al Gore just couldn’t muster enough electoral votes to take over Clinton’s Oval Office.

How prophetic that Phase III of the “National Security Strategy for the 21^st Century,” a document penned in 1999 and shelved until January 2001, would contain these words right off the get-go on page viii under the heading “Securing the Homeland”:

“…A direct attack on American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century. The risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralization that could undermine U.S. global leadership. In the face of this threat our nation has no coherent or integrated governmental structures.

We therefore recommend the creation of an independent Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) with responsibility for planning, coordinating, and integrating various U.S. government activities involved in homeland security.”

It was recommended that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) be a key building block in that effort, and of course we’ve seen what that agency has been incapable of doing along the Gulf Coast a full year after Hurricane Katrina wiped out the lives of many and the hopes and dreams of so many more.

How prophetic, too, that Phase II of the “National Security Strategy for the 21^st Century,” titled “A Concert For Preserving National Security and Promoting Freedom,” would briefly mention citizens’ resistance to change and include these words of warning on page 5:

“…We know that major countries rarely engage in serious rethinking and reform absent a major defeat, but this is a path the United States cannot take. Americans are less secure than they believe themselves to be. The time for reexamination is now before the American people find themselves shocked by events they never anticipated.”

Links to all phases of this National Strategy are provided below, and readers who take the time to investigate them are reminded to pay attention to the dates. This strategy was in the hopper well before terrorists, who flunked Basic Flying 101, managed to take control of large passenger planes and maneuver them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, shocking people with events they never anticipated.

Within a few days of those events and with all I’s dotted and all T’s crossed, the 348-page USA Patriot Act surfaced. The title, USA Patriot Act, is actually an acronym that stands for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” The legislation was purportedly written in large part and in short order by then Assistant Attorney General, Viet Dihn, and our most recent Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff. Few if any congressmen bothered to read the “Patriot Act” before approving it and allowed it to be signed into law a mere 45 days after the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon were struck.

Viet Dihn was born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1968 and came to America as a refugee when he was 10 years old. He graduated from an Orange County, California, high school in 1986, received a law degree from Harvard in 1993, and went on to become a professor of law and Director of Asian Law and Policies Studies Program at Georgetown University. He found a brief niche in the U.S. Justice Department when George W. Bush appointed him as Assistant Attorney General in April 2001, about four months before 9/11.

Chertoff was born in Elizabeth, NJ, and is the paternal grandson of Russian emigrant, Rabbi Paul Chertoff, a noted Talmudic scholar. At one time, Michael Chertoff was a U.S. Court of Appeals’ judge, a federal prosecutor, and also an Assistant U.S. Attorney General. As Director of Homeland Security, he failed miserably with efforts to coordinate disaster recovery after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast but has persistently called for strengthening our nation’s preparedness in the face of terrorism and natural disasters.

In fact, a month prior to last August’s onslaught from a devastating hurricane, Chertoff called for “a new structure and strategy to revamp and bolster” Homeland Security’s “preparedness work.” According to Chertoff, this was “part of an overall reevaluation of the Department known as the “Second Stage Review,” which he’d ordered when he took over as Secretary of the Homeland Security Agency.

Speaking before the U.S. House Select Committee on Hurricane Katrina, Chertoff said, “In the area of preparedness, the Department of Homeland Security is charged with being an ‘all-hazards’ agency—focused on the full range of capabilities to prevent, protect against, and respond to acts of terror or other disasters. I said in July—and I will say it again today—we are not where we need to be as a nation of preparedness. At that time, we presented a specific plan for strengthening our capabilities in this area. Unfortunately, Katrina arrived just one month later.”

I submit to you ladies and gentlemen reading this article that there is something more going on in America than meets the eye, something beyond clairvoyance related to destructive weather or terrorism, but you’d have to read the National Security Strategy for the 21^st Century to better understand why.

We are rapidly on our way to a North American Union comprised of all the Americas, Canada, and Mexico. Our Republic will be governed through mandates imposed through the Organization of American States and the UN’s Agenda 21, which will be enforced by Homeland Security and FEMA.

For that we can thank former and present elitist members of the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, and the Council on Foreign Relations and, collectively, their most useful tools ever…government pawns and the Fear Factor.

With any luck, the November elections will not be disrupted by an all-out simultaneous assault that will create widespread civil disobedience and a reason for the power mongers to sort through the rabble of humanity to determine whom they believe can be bent as far left toward Fascism as possible. The writing is on the wall, people. You can either chose to read and understand that writing and try to erase it when you vote a few months from now or be prepared to soon bend.

Who’s in charge of the public forests in Michigan? If you’re under the impression that it’s the MI-DNR or Federal Forest Service, you’re wrong. Like all our natural resources, forest management has been taken over by Gang Green, in concert with the Wildlands Project and a merry band of eco-green, non-government organizations willingly doing business with the UN.

Let’s face it. Gang Green is nothing more than a freeloading bunch of tax-exempt nonprofits with a land control agenda. For Gang Green’s shakers and movers to deviate from that agenda will cause their bottomless well of grant money to dry up, putting them into the bread line with all those whose income they’ve destroyed. Likewise, should their tax-exempt status be removed, they’d have to get a real life instead of sucking ours dry.

And, while federal and state resource management agencies wring their hands, pretending they’ve no control over Gang Green’s demands, they’re committed to the Gang and a shared agenda through their partnership with the UN’s International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), also known as the World Conservation Union. It’s a scam, folks, and they’ve been running it on us for decades, re-educating and socially engineering us into complacency.

Our tax dollars foot the resource agency personnel’s paychecks, but they work for Gang Green, not for taxpayers whose labor puts food on their table and clothes on their kids’ backs. That’s right, folks, its “ecosystem management” by IUCN international standards served up ala Carte by the Gang, and tough if you don’t much like it.

The scam runs along the lines of the Hegelian Principle, which is the “basic con” power seekers use as a foundation f