Agenda 21 Comes to OSAB

I need to preface this post with two items:

First, as a person with deep traditional conservative roots, I don't like big anything - government or business. I also want plenty of liberty with freedom of choice. Smart Growth means more options to me. It doesn't mean that someone can't do something. It means more choices. Living in sprawl America means that I must choose the automobile for transportation. I must choose hydrocarbons for fuel and lubricants. I must choose the big box store on the edge of town. If I live in most suburbs created from the 1950's forward (or in East El Paso predominantly with the palm trees and squared front walkways), my choice is to leave my niche or culvert, find the main arteriole where I join many more motorists and drive to the strip mall usually much farther from my home than the crows flies or park on I-10 to go to work. The oil, automobile and agricultural giants have convinced me that I still live in a free country and have such great choices such as buying a Chevrolet or a Hyundai, purchasing Chevron on this corner or that, and shopping at a mega food giant or a big box store. So many choices! Bah! With Smart Growth I have more options: drive a car, ride a bus, ride a bike, walk, maybe even take a train. I can live in a house with a backyard or in an apartment above my small street shop. I can choose to live next to natural open space because there is natural open space - not just more land for developers to put up the latest Happy Acres.

That's my first preface, here's my second: Ed Beck is a good guy. I mean it. Who is Ed Beck you ask? He was one of the many candidates who ran for the District 2 seat on City Council. More than anyone else he was probably the reason Romero beat me in the run-off. Ed had a sizable loyal following of fellow conservatives. I'd often find his cards stuck in the door of the same houses I was visiting. They would read: "I'm the only Republican in this race." Ed is a man of principle and voters loyal to him weren't squishy. Having principles was also true of Michael Apodaca who endorsed me after he lost in the general election. My other opponents had squishy followers and they easily voted for Larry Romero or myself. Am I sore with Ed? Absolutely not. If you ever get to know the guy, you will like him. He's not just nice, he's a good man. He's a good neighbor and someone who will do something for his neighbors not just talk about it. The big problem with Ed is that he believes one really screwy thing: the Agenda 21 UN Conspiracy. 

Agenda 21 Conspiracy followers believe that smart growth and smart choice and sustainability and being green are ALL U.N./Communist plots to ultimately put all the world under one government control. One conspiracy nut (and let's not call them "nuts" because that's derogatory - "fruit pies" which are sweet seems far more apt) . . . one fruit pie said this: "Agenda 21 is not an environmental management policy, but an attempt to impose a global centrally planned quasi-government administered by the United Nations. Under Agenda 21 all central government and local authority signatories are required to conform strictly to a common prescribed standard and hence this is just communism resurrected in a new guise." (The Green Agenda) Can you stomach more? Then read the American Policy Center's piece. Or read a piece by an El Paso blogger even if she gets most of her facts wrong about Dover Kohl and Plan El Paso (that communist, UN document that evil people thrust on El Pasoans). The ultimate vision of the world under Agenda 21 comes from Glenn Beck, no relation to Ed I don't believe. Here's that dark future being brought to us by Plan El Paso, Agenda 21, and all those who who favor sustainability, a clean environment, plenty of natural outdoors and freedom to walk or ride a bike as well as drive a car:




Now you know that, as the author of a blog for a "sustainable El Paso southwest", I want to burn up old people (after taking away their automobiles, their backyards and their WalMart.) Bad robot!

There are, of course, more rational voices. Read Jeff Turrentine who concludes: 


"In the century since they first appeared on our physical and cultural horizon, the suburbs have earned the right to consider themselves every bit as American as our gleaming cities and rolling farmlands. There's no stealth plan to "abolish" them. There is, instead, a perfectly transparent plan to include them in the list of communities that must be brought into the sustainability fold if we're ever to address climate change effectively, protect wildlife habitat, and ensure that we don't pollute or deplete our resources to the point of no return. Smart growth is great for cities—but it's great for suburbs, too. People who love them should understand that any concerted effort to make them cleaner, prettier, safer, and less congested is a conspiracy worth joining."

Or read Stephanie Mencimer who makes the connection between the Agenda 21 Fruit Pie Conspiracy and Big Oil. 

So, what difference does it make that Ed Beck believes the Agenda 21 Conspiracy? Today City Council appointed Larry Romero's nominee to the Open Space Advisory Board: Ed Beck. Larry demagogued the smart code/smart growth issue in the election with his own brand of misinformation. He had a business friend of mine believing that he would have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to remodel his struggling restaurant. Larry also got it in my friend's mind that the evil El Paso government was going to take away parking from his patrons for more mass transit. Larry has a new vision - a vision of continued blight and favortism. Ed gets his payoff and Larry and his rich string pullers get the status quo and that suits the old fogies on the 5 Points Business Association just fine. They're Americans, you know. They like that freedom of choice that Big Oil, the Automobile Industry and Big Industrial Agriculture give them. Let's hear it for choice!

Oh - one new insight!   Why does TxDOT want to take federal money from Bike Share and give it back to the federal government by way of salaries for more agents at the border gates? Bob Bielek said it: "The automobile is King." TxDOT loves your freedom to choose the automobile - but not the bicycle, not the bus, not the train, not the soles of your own shoes - walking is a communist, U.N., Agenda 21 conspiracy. (Ted Houghton saw to it that big money went to Larry Romero in the election. He vetoed any money that might have gone my way and the way of freedom of choice.)