How Free Are You?

Woodcut - "The Ship of Fools"

What happens if you live off-grid?

If you live independent of utilities, water, and sewer, and provide your own energy through solar panels, have your own sewer system, and use rainwater, you may run into problems with your local government. Robin Speroni of Cape Coral, Florida, was sued by local officials that her off-grid home was illegal, citing the International Property Maintenance Code. She was found guilty of not being hooked to the water supply.

“Speroni is still being hassled by the municipality of Cape Coral for not having a connection to city water or property sewage. This is in spite of the fact that the city capped her sewers themselves.”http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/03/09/florida-makes-off-grid-living-illegal-mandates-all-homes-must-be-connected-to-an-electricity-grid/

What happens if you don’t send your kids to public school?

It is certainly against the law not to send your children to school and charges vary from state to state. You may lose public assistance such as food stamps. According to the U.S. Department of Education in some states you may have to go to jail. If you home-school, you have to follow laws specifically designed for home-schoolers. https://howtoadult.com/consequences-not-sending-kids-school-13544.html

What happens if you want to worship in a church that is not sanctioned as a church but deemed a cult?

To answer this question you must study both sides of what happened to the people at Ruby Ridge and Waco.  Here is a link for the liberal version of the fiery events that resulted in the deaths of many people, especially innocent children. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/oregon-standoff-fbi-negotiator_us_568a956ee4b014efe0daf42c

What happens if you don’t have a driver’s license?

Driving without a license is considered a crime in all 50 states. You have a right to travel but you cannot operate a vehicle without a license. If you are an illegal alien, the law is much laxer, as the law breaker will get a slap on the wrist and will be released back into the streets to repeat his/her behavior.

What happens if you jay walk?

Jaywalking is an infraction that requires in some states a fine but a misdemeanor with a court appearance in other states. Penalties vary by state and by municipalities. Fines range from $1 to $1,000.

What happens if you refuse to have your child vaccinated?

In most states, vaccines are required for your child to enter day care, schools, and universities. Laws vary from state to state.

What happens if you refuse to be molested by the TSA in an airport?

It is obvious that you cannot fly and you will be promptly escorted out of the airport by TSA agents. If you are belligerent and vocal in your refusal, you will be arrested in most states.

What happens if you disagree politically with a group?

You will be shunned, may lose your job, you will become a pariah, you will be tracked and possibly beaten by the opposition, your home and property, including your car, will be vandalized, and you will be forbidden from expressing your divergent opinion on an American campus. Those opposing you will resort to violence and fascistic means in order to prevent you from being on their campus to express your opinion guaranteed by our Constitution because your opinion hurts the feelings of campus snowflakes and they will label your views as “hate speech,” in essence cutting off your freedom of speech.

What happens if you go to college and dare to express your conservative or divergent opinions from those of the teachers and the majority of snowflakes?

Your teachers will prevent you from speaking in class, you will be ridiculed, marginalized, and possibly given a lower grade in class than you actually earned. You will be relegated to a designated corner on campus where you might be able to express your opinion without being physically assaulted and verbally insulted.

What happens if you protect your property and shoot an intruder?

It depends on the state. The intruders have been known to hire eager attorneys who successfully prosecuted those protecting their homes, resulting in the loss of their homes and land which is awarded to the intruder and his family and even jail time for those who engaged in self-defense.

What happens if illegal aliens try to steal from you and you shoot them?

The most recent case in Kansas City, Missouri, involves David Jungerman, a business owner who shot a home intruder in the leg. A 39-year old attorney, Tom Pickert, who represented the home invader and won millions of dollars in a civil lawsuit against Jungerman, was shot and killed in his front yard. http://heavy.com/news/2017/10/david-jungerman-kansas-city-trump-raytown/

What happens if you express your opinion that illegal immigration is illegal and should be stopped by building a wall?

At best you are considered a conspiracy theorist nut-job and heartless who does not understand that America was built by such illegal immigrants; at worst you are a xenophobe and racist. Irrational globalists will hide the fact that America was built by LEGAL immigrants who were vetted for their health in quarantine at Ellis Island and, who did not come to America for the welfare system because the welfare system did not exist at the time.

What happens if you criticize the theocracy of Islam, Sharia Law, and genital mutilation?

You will be publicly humiliated, accused of Islamo-phobia, and marginalized, your home and property vandalized, threatened with lawsuits, become a potential victim of a fatwa, and possibly fired from your job.

What happens if you try to home-school your children in certain states?

You must jump through incredible hoops in order to be allowed to home-school your child.

What happens if you object to your children being subjected to the Islamic curriculum indoctrination of Common Core?

You are ignored, you are banned from any school property or meetings, you are told that it is required by the Common Core Curricula, and security will be called to prevent you from entering the school building. You will not be allowed to attend or speak at public school board meetings. The principal and the teacher(s) in question will not answer your calls or letters.

What happens if you object, as a parent, to the teaching of your children in kindergarten and elementary schools about sexual perversions?

Your opinions and wishes will be overridden by the school, the principal, and the teacher. The curriculum will be taught as planned with or without your knowledge.

What happens if you object to mentally-ill grown men or boys, pretending they are women, use the restrooms and lockers that your little girls use?

You will be labeled a homophobe who does not respect their freedom of expressing who they are inside their heads. The fact that your child is in danger of molestation and rape does not matter. They have rights that supersede your rights or your children’s rights.

What happens if you object to the Common Core curricula and do not wish that your Christian children be indoctrinated into the Five Pillars of Islam?

Your child will still be made to wear hijab in order to feel what a Muslim feels like and they will attend a mosque despite your protests. They will be made to recite by heart the Five Pillars of Islam, and to pray in the mosque, thus indoctrinating them into Islam.

What happens if you refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple because of your religious beliefs?

You will pay huge fines, lose your business, your savings, and possibly serve time in jail for protecting your religious beliefs. http://www.gospelherald.com/articles/54265/20150205/christian-bakers-lose-business-face-150-000-fine-for-refusing-to-bake-same-sex-marriage-cake.htm

What happens if you refuse to pay taxes?

You will pay confiscatory fines, have property seized, and possibly go to jail.

What happens if you protest the takeover of your property via eminent domain or the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) shows up with agents to confiscate your land that has been in your family for generations?

You will lose your land and home. Cliven Bundy protected his ranch and grazing rights. Following a 21-year legal dispute between the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Cliven Bundy, for allegedly “failing to pay over $1 million in withheld grazing fees for Bundy’s use of federally owned land adjacent to Bundy’s ranch in southeastern Nevada,” an armed confrontation between supporters of the cattle rancher and law enforcement ensued in 2014. LaVoy Finicum was shot and killed in Oregon in 2016.  http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/18/politics/nevada-bundy-ranch-land-rights/index.html

What happens if you try to collect rain water or snowmelt on your property?

Gary Harrington from Oregon served 30-days in jail for nine misdemeanors and paid a fine of $1,500 for diverting snow runoff and rainwater into three reservoirs on his property, thus violating “an antiquated law governing personal water use.” https://www.naturalnews.com/046359_oregon_rainwater_collection_big_governemnt.html

What happens if you don’t pay HOA fees?

HOA will take you to court and eventually may foreclose on your home and sell it in order to pay overdue fees, depending on the state in which you reside. HOAs retain attorneys for such offenders. http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-associations-20141109-story.html

What happens if you try to fly the American flag and Muslim or hard-core liberal neighbors who hate America object?

You will be ordered to take it down, fined, and possibly told to move if you are renting the property. Crosses have been removed from churches and monuments in order to appease Muslims and atheists. Statues have been torn down to appease the racist BLM who were offended by the alleged racist intent of the monument. Large crosses that have been part of a landscape for decades, honoring the fallen or our Christianity, have been ordered removed by the courts in order to satisfy atheists.

What happens if your favorite NFL team players kneel during the National Anthem for the alleged “social injustices” and “deliberate police racism” against blacks, while insulting the veterans present?

The middle class white men will stop buying tickets and attending NFL games, buying jerseys and other football memorabilia, giving the owners and the overpaid players a clear message that their faux political antics do not have a place on a stadium where they are paid to entertain the public with a game, not give the public their two cents of misinformed opinions. Americans still have the power of the purse. You have the freedom to protest in a very public venue but expect consequences of your insulting behavior.

What happens when Hollywood bash conservatives? What happens when slutty starlets pretend to be paragons of virtue, lecturing the rest of us, and claim to be the ultimate source of knowledge because they played a role in a movie?

Americans still have the power to stop buying tickets to their movies and concerts. Boycotts work quite nicely as many actors learned this summer when their movies tanked at the box office. You may fancy yourselves political gurus and know-it-all, but, at the end of the day, you are just script memorizers who act in a movie. You dropped out of high school because you did not have academic ability; you had talent to act in a movie and to impersonate a certain character.

What happens when academia and public schools turn your children into hard-core socialists/fascists who hate their country while you think they are getting an education?

The results are evident in the millennial generation joining ANTIFA, an organization run by communist anarchists who employ fascistic violence to protest those whose divergent opinions they want to squash yet they call them fascists and their organization anti-fascism when in reality they are the violent fascists.

The results are also evident in the brainwashing of several lost generations of American voters who believe that the communist Democrats are the “real” Americans, U.S. should be socialist/communist, and everything that made this country the success that is today must be destroyed. They spit, defecate on, and burn the American flag, demand the abolition of the National Anthem, of the Star-Spangled Banner, the replacing of the Constitution with their own Marxist version, and the Bill of Rights with the Socialist Bill of Rights.

What happens if you try to plant a bush or cut down a tree next to a rain puddle and environmental NGOs show up with paperwork telling you that you are not allowed to do so?

Martha Boneta can tell you volumes about her farm and the NGO’s interdictions that plagued her ownership rights in the rolling, gentrified hills of northern Virginia. http://www.conservativehq.com/article/14081-fitzgibbons-recounts-harassment-martha-boneta

Obama has promised that, if Obamacare was passed, you can keep your doctor and the insurance premiums would go down.

How many of you were actually able to keep your doctors and how many were unable to see doctors and specialists because they no longer accept Medicare patients due to low and slow reimbursement rates? Why would that be? Because the Obama administration robbed billions from Medicare in order to fund his socialized medicine jewel, Obamacare. And millions of Americans who previously had other forms of affordable medical insurance now cannot afford the high premiums and deductibles driven by Obamacare’s regulations. In essence, Obamacare insurance and regulations have destroyed middle class Americans' formerly stellar medical care and sky-rocketed their previously affordable insurance premiums.

As an American, can you cross the border without a passport?

International banks and the Federal Reserve which is neither federal nor a reserve control your money supply, interest rates, and gold reserves.

And there are many other freedoms that you think you still have but they are highly restricted or no longer exist except in theory.

Do you still think you are free?

 

Freedom to Farm or Bust

Martha Boneta at Liberty Farm
Photo credit: Susan Lider

Virginia, like many other states, offers land preservation tax credits of $100 million a year.  Land preservation tax credits are tied to conservation easements which are binding agreements between a land preservation trust (usually a NGO) and a farmer who receives tax breaks in exchange for “legally restricting future development of their property” for a number of years or in perpetuity, as specified in the contract.

Martha Boneta, who was instrumental in passing the two bills now dubbed Boneta Bill-1 and Boneta Bill-2, bought a farm that had a conservation easement which was administered by the Piedmont Environmental Council, a non-governmental organization, and the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, a state government agency.

The Piedmont Environmental Council is a conservation group that holds 51 easements on 7,600 acres of land in Virginia. According to Kevin Mooney, when Boneta bought her farm in 2006, “she did not receive either tax breaks or money.”

Boneta purchased her 64-acre Liberty Farm in Paris, Virginia, from the Piedmont Environmental Council with the easement already in place from the previous owner. For eight years, Boneta fought the PEC’s frequent farm and intrusive closet inspections, video and photographic surveillance, and other forms of excessive harassment.

Bryant Osborn wrote in Culpeper Star Exponent, “Martha has charged that PEC has trespassed repeatedly on her farm and has attempted to drive her off the farm through unwarranted and overly invasive conservation easement inspections, and an IRS audit she says was instigated by one of PEC’s board members.”

Susan Lider said in a press release, “PEC was caught on video engaging in abusive inspections that involved interrogations and demands to inspect closets, attics, and even photographing the farmer’s laundry.”

The Boneta Bill 1, HB 268, which became law in Virginia with bipartisan support on July 1, 2014, protects “certain activities at agricultural operations from local regulation in the absence of substantial impacts on the public welfare.” This is meant to protect farmers like Martha from intrusive local governments that can go to excessive lengths to harass and prevent an honest farmer from engaging in simple farm activities such as growing organic vegetables, selling sheared wool, and jars of honey.

The Boneta Bill 2, HB 1488, which passed both houses in February 2015, and is awaiting the governor’s action by March 29, 2015, “allows a landowner or other party to a conservation easement to request that the Virginia Land Conservation Foundation use the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act to resolve a dispute relating to the interpretation of the easement.” If and when the bill is signed by the governor, it would control land trusts that currently have few standards, predictability, accountability, consistency, or transparency.

Martha Boneta’s farm has been in the crosshairs of PEC from the beginning but she has not given up. After a November 6, 2014 hearing in front of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, a motion to take over all easement enforcement, if both Martha Boneta and PEC agreed, resulted in a trustee vote of 6-0 to approve a resolution. The VOF was chartered by the Virginia General Assembly in 1966 to promote land conservation and to monitor easements.

If you might think that Boneta’s troubles are over, you would be wrong.  Kevin Mooney reported that, on December 10, 2014, the PEC’s attorney sent an email to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation declining the amendment proposed by VOF on grounds that it “would likely confer improper private benefits” to Martha Boneta.

In the face of this “preposterous” claim, Bonner Cohen of the National Center for Public Policy said, “For eight years, she has been subjected to harassment and humiliation by the PEC’s reckless enforcement of the easement, and she has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending herself. Whatever the original intent of Virginia’s conservation easement statute, the PEC’s well-documented deplorable behavior calls out for the General Assembly to reform the program, lest other landowners be subjected to the hell she has gone through.”

Back to square one, Martha Boneta refiled a lawsuit in Fauquier County Circuit Court on March 4, 2015 against PEC, the non-profit land trust in which she alleges that “PEC colluded with realtors and government officials to issue zoning citations against her property in order to force her into selling her farm.” Martha Boneta had withdrawn the original lawsuit in order to allow the opportunity of mediation. Since the mediation has failed, she refiled her lawsuit.

According to a press release of March 5, 2015, “Martha also is considering filing a second lawsuit at the federal level against PEC, based on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, commonly known as RICO.”



Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson portrait taken at a Spotsylvania County farm on April 26, 1863, seven days before his mortal wounding at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia   Photo: Wikipedia image

New evidence emerged that constitutes the basis of the federal RICO lawsuit. In the signed and filed versions of the easement, PEC makes the claim that Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, the Confederate War General, encamped on Martha’s property on the evening of July 18, 1861. According to the press release, “Historical accounts of Jackson’s movements in Fauquier County place the encampment at another location.” https://books.google.com/books?id=IZI_y8Td5HUC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=%22STonewall+Jackson%22+Paris%2c+Virginia%22&source=bl&ots=2fmgq8IkxJ&sig=CWgTBXszYAzp-eejTIl_M-OHFC8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ujzTVMbZLMehgwTAkYPQBw&ved=0CGgQ6AEwDA#v=onepage&q=%22STonewall%20Jackson&f=false

The press release continues, PEC “makes a similar historical claim about Jackson’s whereabouts in the easement documents it has associated with Ovoka Farm, also located in Paris, but on a separate parcel of land from Liberty Farm.”  https://vof.app.box.com/s/tycexiapro4vhkl9smsvflfwp7oae7kd/1/2913997329/24711587393/1

This historical connection with Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson hyped the price of Liberty Farm beyond its actual value, thus Boneta paid $425,000 in 2006. She lost revenue for two years when she was told to fence off 18 acres of the Oak Grove section of the property where no farming was allowed because of the stated connection with the now-debunked historical encampment.

Stay tuned for the next development from Liberty Farm, Virginia, where a determined American is fighting for her farming rights and indirectly ours against a well-funded environmental goliath.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

Agenda 21, Cooked Science Data, and Property Rights

The State House voted 79-36 on February 4, 2015 on HB490 introduced by Rep. Becky Currie. “The State of Mississippi and all political subdivisions thereof shall not adopt, nor implement, the creed, doctrine, principle or any tenet of the United States Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and the Statement of Principles of Sustainable Development known as ‘Agenda 21,’ adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and development, held from June 3-14, 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, or any other international law contravening the Constitution of the United States or the Constitution of the State of Mississippi.” A companion Senate Bill, SB2809 has been introduced by Sen. Melanie Sojourner. Other states have proposed similar bills, Maine, Wyoming, Washington, Tennessee, and Missouri.  http://overpassforamerica.com/?p=4820

As I’ve demonstrated in my best-selling book, U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy, the globalist governance uses “Agenda 21” to control every facet of our lives: global land use, education, population control, health care, reduction of economic activity, and population reduction to a “manageable size” determined by the global elites who drive U.N.’s  “Agenda 21.” http://www.amazon.com/U-N-Agenda-21-Environmental-Piracy-ebook/dp/B009WC6JXO/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1423586115&sr=1-1&keywords=UN+Agenda+21%3A+Environmental+Piracy

These globalists, who use the global warming/climate change industry and Agenda 21 as tools of control and wealth redistribution, have deemed “not sustainable” most human activities that form our modern civilization: private property, fossil fuels, consumerism, farming, irrigation, commercial agriculture, pesticides, herbicides, farmlands, grazing of livestock, paved roads, golf courses, ski lodges, logging, dams, reservoirs, fences, power lines, suburban living, and the traditional family unit.

Paul Homewood wrote on his blog on January 25, 2015, an article titled, “Massive Tampering With Temperatures In South America.” According to Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), one of the “hottest ever year” regions was South America, Brazil, Paraguay, and northern Argentina. Homewood stated that “much of this is fabricated, as they have no stations anywhere near much of this area,” as NOAA map showed. https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/massive-tampering-with-temperatures-in-south-america/

Homewood found out that there are only three rural stations in Paraguay that are operational – Puerto Casado, Mariscal, and San Juan. All three “show a clear and steady upward [temperature] trend since the 1950s with 2014 at the top.” When he looked at the raw data available on the GISS site through 2011, “the past has been cooled.”

Homewood collected raw data from GISS here http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v2/ and the adjusted data here. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

 

According to Homewood, the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), an integrated database of climate summaries from land surface stations across the globe, “show the extent to which they have adjusted temperatures [upwards], the best part of 2 degrees.” He continued, “Even by GHCN standards, this tampering takes some beating.”

Traust Jonsson, who ran the climate research for Iceland met office, was surprised to see how Iceland’s sea ice years had been disappeared around 1970, “when a period of extreme cooling almost devastated his country’s economy.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html

It is sad to reflect that government policies and scientists around the earth rely on these tampered data to fight phantom global warming, giving rise to a huge climate change industry that does nothing but redistribute wealth and fleece the population.

And educators frighten and brainwash children into the same man-made global warming fantasy, using cuddly and lonely polar bears floating on ice floes as examples of a vanishing species due to global warming, when in reality the polar bear population has increased five-fold.

When the frequently adjusted data by NOAA is questioned, the response usually includes the word “consensus.” Consensus, a word that denotes agreement of opinion, does not constitute science. “Government climate scientist Peter Thorne, speaking in his personal capacity, said that there was consensus for the adjustments.” http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/20081-global-conning-temperature-data-cooked-in-biggest-science-scandal-ever

Christina Figueres of Costa Rica, London School of Economics graduate and chief of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, told reporters that U.N. is redesigning the world economy on purpose: “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” She continued, “The international community is quite grateful for the fact that in his second term, President Obama has turned his attention quite clearly and quite decisively to climate change.”

Should the American public be happy that EPA will finalize in 2015 the rules to cut carbon emission even further on new and existing power plants, thus negatively affecting our economy through more job losses and higher energy prices? Since there is no such thing as carbon, except on the table of elements, they are going to cut CO2 emissions, the gas necessary for plant life to thrive. Can any global warming expert explain how millions of years ago the atmosphere had more than four times the CO2 that is currently in our atmosphere yet there was no industrial activity or humans to cause it?

Should the American public be grateful that the EPA has released a 344-page rule to make wood stoves more environmentally friendly, forcing millions of Americans to buy more expensive wood-fired stoves? We have more EPA rules affecting poor people who cannot afford the higher natural gas and electricity prices, forcing them to pay more for using wood-stoves. The EPA says, at a cost of $45.7 million per year, 360 to 810 fewer deaths will occur from reduced carbon emissions. But, “there are no cordwood test methods yet for many appliance categories, much less data using such test methods.” http://dailycaller.com/2015/02/05/epa-wood-stooves/

The one hundred plus bankrupted green energy companies that squandered billions of taxpayer dollars can add one more case to the roster – FutureGen clean-coal facility in Illinois that would have used carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. FutureGen, with proper environmental permits and funded with 2009 stimulus package money ($1 billion) and some private investors, touted “the future of coal in the United States” by President Obama, will be suspended “to protect taxpayer interests,” pending litigation with Sierra Club. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/4/obama-pulls-funding-top-clean-coal-project/

Michael Bastasch wrote about a March 2009 EPA memo sent to officials to convince them to connect its regulatory agenda to “personal worries” of average Americans. “Polar ice caps and the polar bears have become the climate change ‘mascots,’ if you will.” The memo wants to use children in an effort to fight global warming and to “ramp up clean air and water regulations.” EPA wants to change the discussion from the mascots to people with respiratory illnesses and to environmental justice. EPA chief Gina McCarthy said, “Asthma disproportionately affects African-American kids.” Yet we all breathe the same air. http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/26/exposed-epa-memo-tie-fighting-global-warming-to-americans-personal-worries/

Helping the United Nations with its new world order “sustainability” goals, the Bertelsmann Foundation publication, “Winning Strategies for a Sustainable Future,” can be purchased on the Brookings Institution website. Bertelsmann Foundation “recently awarded former Secretary General of the U.N., Kofi Annan, € 200,000 ‘for his exemplary efforts to promote sustainable development around the world.’” Sustainable Development is the lynchpin of U.N.’s Agenda 21. Bertelsmann is quite influential in its publishing empire of social justice, wealth redistribution, and anything that promotes a one world government. According to Susan D. Harris, “Since 2001 the Poky Little Puppy [Little Golden Books] has been providing revenue for Bertelsmann to employ covert political and economic transformations around the globe.” http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/02/poky-little-puppys-covert-nwo-agenda/

U.N.’s Agenda 21 is so insidious that people do not connect the dots between global warmists, the climate change industry, extreme environmentalists, property rights battles with NGOs around the country, main stream media, publishers of textbooks and other publications, Common Core education standards, International Baccalaureate schools, land conservation, conservation easements, regionalism, living in tiny homes and tiny spaces, re-wilding of America, removing Americans from their cars into public transportation or bikes, taking roads out of commission, sustainable development, smart meters, destroying suburbia, smart grid, and the green agenda with wind and solar power.

Nobody batted an eye when a small organic farm in Arlington, Texas, was raided in 2013 by a SWAT team who searched for ten hours. The Garden of Eden had been cited for code violations such as “grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean premises.” http://huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/texas-swat-team-conducts- n 3764951.html

Martha Boneta has been fighting the intrusive Piedmont Environmental Council, the NGO that holds the conservation easement on her Liberty Farm, for eight years. She was instrumental in bringing to the public the plight of small farmers who are being pushed out of business by environmental groups who want to preserve the land unspoiled and put an end to farming.

The small farmers in Virginia rejoiced when Senate Bill 51 and House Bill 268, dubbed the “Boneta Bill,” passed both houses and the Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe signed it in 2014. The bill gave farmers legal protection from overreaching and overzealous county bureaucrats who imposed unreasonable requirements and unnecessary fees on small farmers. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/62043

 

The new 2015 “Boneta Bill,” the Virginia House Bill HB 1488, passed on February 2, 2015 by a vote of 87-9 addressed conservation easements, tax benefits, and disputes over easement terms. The bill now goes before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Conservation, and Resources on February 12, 2015. This bill “allows a landowner or other party to a conservation easement to request that the Virginia Land Conservation Foundation use the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act to resolve a dispute relating to the interpretation of the easement.” http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?151+sum+HB1488S

 

A conservation easement is a contract between a private property owner and a land trust. Conservation easements are signed because some people want to protect their property from unwanted development in the future but they also want to retain ownership of the land. The donation of an easement to a land trust may give financial advantage to the donor.  The conservation easement is passed on to any future owners of that land. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56159

 

I dedicated an entire chapter in my book in 2012 to Martha Boneta’s story, to her organic farm in lovely Paris, Virginia, and to her ordeal with the local board of supervisors and PEC, but her harassment is far from over and continues to this day. She has vowed to continue her fight until small farmers are free to do what they love best, provide wholesome food to America’s table, exercising freely their property rights.  http://www.varight.com/news/virginia-land-trust-falsifies-stonewall-jackson-slept-here-claim-by-michael-thompson/

But land conservation is one arm of U.N. Agenda 21. All across the U.S. land is locked in conservation projects and easements contracts are convenient financial hooks to take land out of agricultural use in perpetuity under the guise of protecting it.

President Obama included for example up to $37.8 million in the Fiscal Year 2016 Budget to fund land conservation projects in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. We all want clean water, soil, air and want protection of watersheds. But the money is used for public access to our waters or lack thereof. Governor McAuliffe of Virginia stated on February 4, 2015, “If enacted by the Congress, these funds will protect key land areas for habitat, water quality, scenic views, and cultural resources.” The money authorized trails, historical parks, and civil war battlefields. But this is done by taking agricultural land out of production and using it to run a few show horses on perfectly manicured miles of green grasses. https://governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/newsarticle?articleId=7656

The Virginia Land Conservation announced 14 grants totaling $1.7. Such grants “are used by private land trusts, local governments and state agencies to protect and acquire special lands in the following categories: farmlands and forestry, historic areas, natural areas, and open spaces and parks.” Five of these grants are slated for conservation easements and seven are to purchase land from farmers in order to “protect” them, a euphemism for taking prime farm land out of agricultural use or lock land from residential/commercial development and turn it into wild habitat for “rare animals and plants.” https://governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/newsarticle?articleId=7634

“Nearly 150 conservation projects have been made possible through VLCF grants since 1999, when the foundation was created,” said Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Molly Ward, who chairs the foundation’s board. “The program provides an economical and efficient approach to conserving precious lands, protecting rivers and streams, and preserving farms and historic places for future generations.” http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/virginia_land_conservation_foundation/

The “visioning” grants and “challenge” grants are not really just meant to protect a clean environment for future generations to enjoy, they are part of a region-wide and country-wide plan to force local and state governments into Sustainable Development when we should be concerned about our Sustainable Freedom.  If the government was so worried about future generations, they would not spend us into oblivion and destroy our language, borders, and culture with unchecked invasion of illegal immigrants who have no desire to assimilate into the western way of life.

All these progressive platforms pushed by academia and the regime, i.e. social justice, environmental justice, green growth, equality are not cures for war, famine, pestilence, genocide, and poverty, they are recipes for global communism and control by moneyed elites, politicians, and U.N. bureaucrats who fancy themselves the arbiters of humanity’s rights and of the climate. They are intent on restricting and denying us freedoms.

What is morally repugnant to real scientists and logical thinkers are the lies and deceptions surrounding the manufactured global warming crisis with all its strings attached, created for political and financial gain at the expense of billions of people around the globe who must suffer the consequences of treaties, laws, rules, and regulations controlling their lives and economic activity so that a small number of global elites can enrich their bank accounts.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

 

 

 

 

 

Time to Counter Land Trust Abuse Against Farmers

A chapter is dedicated to Martha's story.

Tired of land trust agents frequently abusing the public trust and the rights of property owners, Tom DeWeese, President of the American Policy Center, Martha Boneta, owner of Liberty Farm in Paris, Virginia and other major property rights advocates are organizing a property rights rally, conference, and an early morning hearing before the Virginia Outdoors Federation on November 6, 2014 in Richmond, Virginia at the Department of Conservation and Recreation.

“It’s time to counter the powerful Green voices that are dictating policy and harassing property owners,” said Tom DeWeese in an open letter to the American public.

Farmers are demanding land trust reform to stop abusive practices of land trust agents who often disregard the rights of property owners and use local officials to intimidate and harass farmers with onerous fines and audits. A glaring example is the video showing a Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) agent who, in a German Stasi police manner, demands to inspect Martha Boneta’s closets.  http://youtube.com/watch?v=LAywKw93ucs

According to Tom DeWeese, “The Piedmont Environmental Council, an elitist cabal masquerading as a conservation group, has repeatedly overstepped its authority under the Virginia Conservation Easement Act.”

The fact that PEC was successful in bullying for eight years Fauquier County farmer Martha Boneta in spite of the well-publicized and well-documented “transgressions” against her farm is an indication that other “control and power-hungry groups” could violate property rights of Virginians across the Commonwealth and of Americans across the country.

Allowing the public trust to be violated in one area is setting a bad precedent for other well-funded groups like PEC to impose their control and will through underhanded venues on farmers, landowners and businesses in general as has been the case around the country.

Preserving private property and the rule of law in our nation is essential to safeguarding liberty.  If the rule of law is no longer respected, the Founding Fathers’ America is in jeopardy. “The first act of a tyrant is to take away your property rights,” said DeWeese.

Virginians and the American Policy Center are calling for:

-          The General Assembly to enact Land Trust Reforms “to end welfare to the rich in the form of sale of tax credits”

-          Virginia General Assembly to create Land Trust “fair business practices, consumer protections, and sanctions when Land Trust abuse occurs”

-          Virginia General Assembly to develop a “framework” to safeguard the public interest against Land Trust agents who engage in malicious and counterproductive business practices

-          Legislation enactment by the Virginia General Assembly to curb and “reign” in abuses of the Piedmont Environmental Council and other analogous land trusts.

I dedicated a chapter to Martha Boneta’s story in my book, “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy.” http://www.amazon.com/U-N-Agenda-21-Environmental-Piracy-ebook/dp/B009WC6JXO/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2/186-3038350-6259617?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414163958&sr=1-1&keywords=UN+Agenda+21%3A+Environmental+Piracy

The glaring, behind closed doors collusion is evident in Martha’s ordeal which has stretched for eight years. The Daily Signal ran her story recently. http://dailysignal.com/2014/10/20/farmers-harassment-claim-against-green-group-to-get-airing/

It is vitally important to protect our property rights in a Constitutional Republic. Unfortunately, the left brainwashed our society into believing that we live in a democracy where the will of the leftist majority is forcing the rest to comply. But we live more and more in a corporatist atmosphere where the international bankers have stripped individuals of their rights bit by bit with the help of “green” legislators and environmentalist NGOs.

As John Adams so eloquently said, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” (John Adams, A Defense of the American Constitutions, 1787)

Butler on Business, April 2, 2014

My two segments with Alan Butler on Cannibalism in China and Martha Boneta's latest indignities by the conservative easements environmentalists. I come on at the 28 minute mark.
http://host1.cyberears.com//25510.mp3

The Environmentalists Are Not Giving Up

Liberty Farm, Paris, Virginia
Photo: Martha Boneta, March 2014

The small farmers in Virginia rejoiced when Senate Bill 51 and House Bill 268, dubbed the “Boneta Bill,” passed both houses and the Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe signed it. The bill gave farmers legal protection from overreaching and overzealous county bureaucrats who impose unreasonable requirements and unnecessary fees on small farmers.

The bills, sponsored by state Senator Richard Stuart (R-Montross) and state Delegate Bobby Orrock (R-Thornburg), protect “agricultural operations from local regulation” and limit the government’s ability to require “special-use permits” for farm activities. Among many things, “Martha’s bill prevents counties from imposing a $100 fee to grow tomatoes.”

Martha Boneta, the farmer at the center of this protracted battle in Virginia said, “No Virginian should be forced to lose everything when they fight city hall.” Her farm is embroiled in a costly legal battle with Fauquier County supervisors over the use of her own farmland.

Boneta explained, “Corn mazes and pumpkin carvings were considered ‘events’ that required site plans and a mile-long list of red tape that can be suffocating.”

“There is an illusion that farmers are allowed to sell all their products because there are farmers markets and one-day bake sales. ... These are exemptions granted at the whim of government. I have 33 acres with cows. If I had the ability to sell all my farm products (including raw milk) directly to the public, I could make $56,000 a year. But not under existing regulations.” (Bernadette Barber, founder of Virginia Food Freedom)

Martha Boneta found herself at the center of the battle for farm freedom and property rights when she held a birthday party for eight 10-year-old girls at her Liberty Farm. Fauquier County deemed this party illegal because it lacked a permit. “Why would I need a permit for pumpkin carving?” Boneta said.

Boneta was issued a special license in 2011 which allowed her to run a “retail farm shop” in which she sold handspun yarns, fresh vegetables, eggs, herbs, honey, and craft items such as birdhouses. Fauquier County Board of Supervisors changed in 2011 the “farm sales classification” to require a special permit for activities that were previously included in the permit that Boneta had already been issued. Faced with fines of $5,000 per violation under charges that she held a birthday party for eight 10-year-old girls without a permit and a “site plan,” advertised one wine tasting, sold postcards with pictures of her rescued farm animals, sold wool fiber products from her sheep and alpacas, and sold organic tea from herbs grown in her garden, even though she had a business license, Martha paid $500 to appeal these unjust administrative charges. “The county zoning administrator told her at the hearing that “Martha was out of line,” for appealing these charges.”

Mark Fitzgibbons wrote that “Fauquier County also passed a winery ordinance that blatantly violates property rights and civil liberties.  It gives Fauquier zoning administrator Kimberley Johnson discretion to create penalties and to prohibit private personal gatherings.”http://washingtonexaminer.com/virginia-vintners-taste-the-police-state/article/2504381

Fitzgibbons said that “A local but powerful group called the Piedmont Environment Council (http://www.pecva.org/index.php/our-region/fauquier/711-fauquier-farm-winery-ordinance)

wholeheartedly backed that illegal, anti-liberty winery ordinance.  The PEC seems to have an unusual if not disturbing amount of influence over Fauquier County officials. http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/the_environmentalists_police_and_welfare_states.html

Barber described the Boneta Bill victory as “opening the barn door for the blossoming farm-to-table movement.” However, bureaucrats and NGOs do not give up easily. Undaunted, no sooner had the ink dried on the signatures on the bill, the environmentalists came calling for a farm inspection of Martha’s Liberty Farm.

Property owners and farmers are fined, bullied, threatened based not just on zoning ordinances, but also via environmental conservation easements with onerous requirements, and farm inspections.

Martha Boneta’s farm is the only farm in the state of Virginia that has four required inspections per year. Inspectors used to come several times a month until Boneta complained. She gets a seven day notice.

The inspections are intended to “measure” the size of an apartment that Boneta is permitted to have. However, nobody lives on the farm; they have not built an apartment yet. Instead, PEC inspectors (at times as few as 2 and other times as many as 11) come into the converted barn that holds tools, tables, furniture with drawers, wool bundles, closets, and rummage through drawers, open closets, inspect the contents, an obvious violation of the farmer’s privacy.

According to Martha Boneta, the inspectors came on March 25, were rude, angry, aggressive, and disrespectful, pushing their way into her cottage although she told them they were fine outside. They took pictures even though Martha did not give them permission to do so and it is not stipulated in her conservation easement. “They are running roughshod over people because there is no oversight over these people.”

During this recent visit, an observer commented that seeing the two inspectors rummaging through Martha’s personal belongings, opening closets, drawers, touching and going through personal items reminded her of what “must have been like during Nazi Germany. I feel invaded, I feel violated, and I feel like I need to go take a shower.” When questions were asked of the inspectors, they responded, “we don’t have to answer you.”

Martha Boneta had a conservation easement with Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), an NGO, when she bought her farm from the previous owners. Donna Holt explained that “PEC holds the easement and that makes them a stakeholder in the property although they don’t own the land or pay taxes on it.  They have the right, under the terms of the contract, to inspect it for compliance of the terms of the easement. The language is vague, they make rules as they see fit, and the courts usually uphold them.”

Martha used tires on her property to “help hollow fields for plowing, train animals to move in a certain direction, and assist in planting. PEC sued Boneta, saying that the tires violated her agricultural conservation easement, and she was forced to store them in an enclosure.” Tires were the least of her numerous and constant problems with PEC. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/60623

A “conservation easement” imposes certain restrictions on the homeowners’ use of their property in exchange for tax breaks. These easements have a specific length or can be permanent.

A private citizen described PEC on Facebook, “This group has even sued about a $25 hose attachment because it interfered with the "view-shed." They claim to want to protect us but they really want to take away our property rights.” He explained that the Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF), “the parent organization of PEC only inspects farms maybe once every three years and are not subjected to inspections of drawers and personal belongings, don’t have pictures taken of their families or drive-bys by the PEC or their agents.” They are empowered by the federal government and the state and act as agents of the local county of Fauquier.”

The Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) protects more than 725,000 acres of open space in Virginia, mostly through conservation easements.http://www.virginiaoutdoorsfoundation.org/

Joel Sallatin warns American farmers and land owners about those “sincere conservation easements” because “Ultimately, these easements reduce farm viability and gradually turn Virginia’s pastoral landscape into a wilderness area.” This type of green environmental movement is probably not what the average American envisions. “Giving over farm decisions to people who neither farm nor adapt their approaches jeopardizes farmers’ livelihoods. Ultimately, preserving farmers is the only sustainable way to preserve farms.” http://flavormagazinevirginia.com/conservation-easements/

The tax breaks are a welcome relief for farmers who struggle to make a living on their land but they are presented through rose-colored glasses. But, at a time when food is expensive, we are using more crops for biofuels, and we have to import food from other nations, the obvious and most important question is - why would a landowner place good farmland under perpetual conservation easement in order to preserve it? Preserve working farmland for what? Land owners and farmers should seek and request opt-out policies before they sign onto conservation easements.

Conservation Easements for Unsuspecting Farmers

Paris Barn Virginia (Martha Boneta's Farm)

After Delegate Bobby Orrock introduced on January 8, 2014, HB 268 http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?141+sum+HB268,
and Senator Richard Stuart filed a companion bill, SB51, http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?141+sum+SB51,
Delegate Bob Marshall introduced on January 17, 2014, HB 1219.

The first two bills reintroduced the Right to Farm Act HB 1430 (Boneta Bill) which passed in the House but was defeated in the Virginia Senate last year. I have discussed the battle in my recent article, “Boneta Bill Part Deux.” http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/60539

In case you wonder, why would anyone care what is happening in another state, rest assured that it is coming to your state or is already there. It is an important battle not just in Virginia. Property owners and farmers are fined, bullied, and threatened around the country based on zoning ordinances and environmental conservation easements with onerous requirements and inspections.

HB 268 addresses agricultural operations and local regulation of certain activities, “protecting customary agritourism activities from local bans in the absence of substantial impacts on the public welfare and requires certain localities to take certain factors into account when regulating agritourism activities.”

Because local boards of supervisors have abused their power in the past, “there has to be a basis in health, safety, or public welfare for a local ordinance to restrict activities such as agritourism, sale of agricultural or silvicultural products, related items, preparation or sale of foods that already comply with state laws, and other customary activities. Local boards are “prohibited from subjecting these activities to a special-use permit requirement.”

Delegate Bob Marshall’s bill HB 1219, introduced on January 17, 2014, “provides that local governments violating constitutional rights through zoning shall pay their victims (1) the amount of fines they sought to impose, and (2) actual damages including attorney fees. Local government officials who intentionally violate this law would also be liable.” http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?141+ful+HB1219

Had these bills been in place, Martha Boneta would not have been bullied and threatened with $5,000 fines per day by her county government when she held a pumpkin carving party for 10-year olds on her own property.

Mark Fitzgibbons, a Constitutional attorney, is of the opinion that “There is great but underutilized precedent for remedies against government officials who abuse their power to violate the rights of citizens. Virginians don’t need to go broke protecting their rights on their own property.”

HB 1219 will “authorize private citizens to file suit for damages, Virginia’s Attorney General to defend the victims, and give whistleblower protection to government employees who expose violations of this law.”

The problems with land use restrictions in Virginia run deep. For example, a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Warrenton, Virginia, Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), with its “comprehensive planning” of Virginia’s rural areas, has been successful in blocking Disney from opening a theme park in Prince William County twenty years ago.

More recently, PEC battled Trump Virginia Acquisitions, LLC, who bought Patricia Kluge’s Estate Winery and Vineyard in 2011 with the intent of expanding its dormant 9-hole golf course into an 18-hole course. The problem was that 216 acres of the 1,200 acre property had been placed by the former owner, Patricia Kluge, under “conservation easement” in 2006.

A “conservation easement” imposes certain restrictions on the homeowners’ use of their property in exchange for tax breaks. According to Dr. Cohen, “golf courses with conservation easements are common throughout the United States, including on courses owned by Donald Trump.”

PEC considered the project “inconsistent with the rural and agricultural character of the area,” citing traffic and noise. “In addition to the traffic and noise impacts, we also have concerns about water use, run-off, and septic issues.”

Martha Boneta had a conservation easement with PEC when she bought her farm. Martha uses tires on her property to “help hollow fields for plowing, train animals to move in a certain direction, and assist in planting. PEC sued Boneta, saying that the tires violated her agricultural conservation easement, and she was forced to store them in an enclosure.” Tires were the least of her numerous and constant problems with PEC. http://www.cfact.org/2013/11/05/trumping-a-golf-course-over-pec-adillos-in-northern-virginia/

On January 21, 2014, the new Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, announced more than $1 million in farmland preservation grants - “Eight localities receive funds to place working farmlands under permanent conservation easements.”

The counties of Albemarle, Clarke, Fauquier, Isle of Wright, James City, Stafford, and the City of Virginia Beach will receive $149,678.46 each. Rappahannock County will receive $11,000. Since 2008, the Commonwealth of Virginia allocated $8.68 million in state matching funds for permanent conservation easements.

“Localities must use the grant monies to preserve farmland within their boundaries through local Purchase of Development Right (PDR) programs. PDR programs compensate landowners who work with localities to preserve their land permanently by voluntarily placing a perpetual conservation easement on it.”

At a time when food is expensive, we are using more crops for biofuels, and we have to import food from other nations, the obvious and most important question is - why would a landowner place good farmland under perpetual conservation easement in order to preserve it? Preserve working farmland for what?

A quick check of United Nation’s Agenda 21 40-chapter document on Sustainable Development, signed and adopted by 178 nations in 1992, reveals under Chapter 10 (Integrated Approach to the Planning and Management of Land Resources) a section 10.7 (c) which mandates to “establish a general framework for land use and physical planning within which specialized and more detailed sectoral plans (e.g., for protected areas, agriculture, forests, human settlements, rural developments) can be developed.”

http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf

Check the rural “comprehensive planning” in your area in synch with UN Agenda 21 and see how much of your property rights have already been taken away by regionalism, conservation easements, and through zoning laws passed by Boards of Supervisors without your knowledge, input, approval, or opportunity to vote.