Anyone Who Lives In A Desert Should Not Have A Lawn! Californians Are Learning This The Hard Way!

California Flooded With People Tattling on 'Water Wasters'

Saturday, 05 Jul 2014 01:36 PM

By Sandy Fitzgerald

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California's drought is creating a deluge of tattletales, after government officials encouraged residents to snitch on their neighbors for wasting water.

The state declared a drought emergency five months ago, but residents have only cut their water usage by about 5 percent, reports The New York Times, cutting back much less than the 20 percent Gov. Jerry Brown asked for in January.

And since people aren't heeding the warnings from the state, cities in the state are asking residents to report their neighbors for wasting water, and are finding that people are all too willing to tell on each other.

Sacramento has already received 6,000 reports this year, or 20 times more than last year, and proudly posted a comparative photo on Twitter showing its lawns turning from green to gold.




Loretta Franzi, who insists she doesn't feel comfortable telling on people she knows, says she's called the hotline "a number of times" in recent months.

"You can hear people running their sprinklers when it’s dark because they don’t want to get caught watering when they’re not supposed to be — it’s maddening,” Franzi, a 61-year-old retiree told The Times. "You can tell the people who are conserving because their lawns are brown. The lawns that are really green, there’s something wrong."

Franzi said her neighbors are now looking at each other, and one elderly woman in her 90s is convinced she's the one who turned her in, which she denies.

As a result of informants like Franzi, Sacramento has handed out more than 2,000 violations since January, including some to Franzi's neighbors. The enforcement means Sacramento and its surrounding region has reduced its water consumption by 10 percent from previous years, marking the highest amount saved statewide.

"It’s becoming a competition to not have the greenest lawn anymore," said Sacramento Utilities Director Dave Brent. "You want to have a lawn that’s alive but on life support.”

And some Californians aren't just tattling on each other, but going out of their way to shame water wasters on social media, on the radio, and other public places.

They're trying to embarrass their neighbors and relatives for taking long showers, washing their cars, and watering their lawns, reports The Times.

“Is washing the sidewalk with water a good idea in a drought @sfgov?” Sahand Mirzahossein, a 32-year-old management consultant tweeted, posting a picture of a San Francisco city employee hosing off a sidewalk. 

Officials at water agencies around the state say they don't want to shame people, but instead are calling the conservation push an "education" or even a "competition. But still, they're hoping to spark a public sense of outrage when it comes to wasting water. In Los Angeles, residents will be able to get door hangers that they can hang anonymously on the doorknobs of neighbors whose sprinklers also water sidewalks along with their grass, to remind them about the drought and water rules.
And the Irvine Ranch Water District is also turning the shortage wars into a competition, showing resident how their water use compares with their neighbors and putting labels on customers' bills that label them as either being "low volume" or "wasteful."

Such actions underscore the seriousness of the situation, said State Water Resources Control Board Chairwoman Felicia Marcus.

“Just showing people what they’re doing vis-à-vis their neighbors motivates them," said Marcus. "Shaming comes in when you’re worse. You want to be as clever as your neighbor."

But then there are neighbors who are using the informant hotline to get back at neighbors over old grudges.

"You get people who hate their neighbors and chronically report them in hopes they’ll be thrown in prison for wasting water,” said Eileen Cross, Santa Cruz’s water conservation manager.

Marcus said that it's especially difficult to get people in urban areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco to cut back, as they're not seeing the water woes going on across the state.

“I might turn the faucet off when I’m brushing my teeth or something,” said Ragan Wallake, 34, a West Hollywood resident. “But I don’t feel like that three seconds of turning off the water is going to make a difference.”

Related Stories:

• Cattle at Record Signals Higher Beef Costs for Grillers
• In Dry California, Water Fetching Record Prices

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Environmentalists Want To Restrict Millions Of Acres For The Sage Grouse

Bird Known for Mating Dance May Decide Senate Control

Saturday, 05 Jul 2014 09:32 AM

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An obscure, chicken-sized bird best known for its mating dance could help determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the U.S. Senate in November.
The federal government is considering listing the greater sage grouse as an endangered species next year. Doing so could limit development, energy exploration, hunting and ranching on the 165 million acres of the bird's habitat across 11 Western states.

Apart from the potential economic disruption, which some officials in Western states discuss in tones usually reserved for natural disasters, the specter of the bird's listing is reviving the centuries-old debates about local vs. federal control and whether to develop or conserve the region's vast expanses of land.
Two Republican congressmen running for the U.S. Senate in Montana and Colorado, Steve Daines and Cory Gardner, are co-sponsoring legislation that would prevent the federal government from listing the bird for a decade as long as states try to protect it.
"Montanans want locally driven solutions," Daines said in an interview. "They don't want bureaucrats thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C., dictating what should happen."
Environmentalists and the two Democratic senators being challenged, John Walsh in Montana and Mark Udall in Colorado, oppose the idea. They say they don't want a listing, either, but that the threat of one is needed to push states to protect the bird.
"A bill like what some in the House are proposing that would delay listing the bird would actually undermine locally driven efforts," said Udall spokesman Mike Saccone.
The greater sage grouse is described in the journals of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and it once roamed widely across the massive sagebrush plateaus of the West's interior.
The bird is perhaps best known for its unusual springtime mating dance, during which it puffs its bulbous chest and emits odd warbles. But livestock grazing eroded the bristly plant that the bird depends upon, development chopped up its habitat and energy exploration erected towers that chased it away from its home range.
Rachel Carson warned in 1962 of the bird's possible demise in "Silent Spring," her classic environmental book.
Three environmental groups sued to force the federal government to protect the bird after the government declined to list it as endangered in 2005. In a 2010 settlement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to decide on listing by September 2015.
A major factor will be whether the federal, state and local landowners whose land it inhabits protect the grouse. Many environmental groups say the bird is a stand-in for a vanishing Western ecosystem that needs preserving.
"This is the great landscape of America, when you travel west and see open spaces. This is all the stuff you grew up watching on television," said Randi Spivak of the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Arizona, one of the groups that sued to force grouse protection. "And that land has been drilled, subdivided."
Industry groups and state governments worry about the cost.
A study by the Western Energy Alliance, a Denver-based trade organization of independent oil and gas producers, estimates that from 5,000 to 31,000 jobs could be lost should the federal government take steps to protect the grouse.
Kathleen Sgamma, the group's vice president of government and public affairs, said that as the federal government starts to draw up protections, energy leases are being deferred, drilling projects shut down and bureaucratic hurdles raised to any kind of development in the bird's range.
"It's another issue that's slowing economic growth and job development in the West," Sgamma said.
Local officials are alarmed, too.
Udall and other Colorado lawmakers pushed for the Obama administration to delay a decision on a far less prevalent species, the Gunnison sage grouse, until after the November elections. Federal land managers have already declared more than 400,000 acres off-limits to development to protect that bird. The Western Governors Association last month urged the federal government to defer to states on protecting the bird.
The administration announced last month that it would spend $32 million over 10 years helping ranchers in Nevada and California preserve the bird's habitat.
Industry leaders and environmental groups agree that the grouse can be protected without serious economic damage. Some point to Wyoming, the state with the greatest amount of both energy exploration and grouse, which has put in place a plan to conserve the bird's core habitat.
"It's based on sound science and helps us advance meaningful conservation of the species," said Jerimiah Rieman, energy and natural resources policy director for Gov. Matt Mead, R-Wyo.
Gardner, the Republican congressman from Colorado, and others opposed to a listing point to Wyoming as an example of why states should take the lead. "The states are working right now very diligently," Gardner said. "Once you list it, there's sort of a wall that comes down between people."
But environmentalists say the proposal amounts to a needless delay. Even Democrats who argue the federal government should defer to states don't support the Republican legislation.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., has warned against listing the bird and led a task force of Western governors who are trying to deal with the issue. A spokesman said Hickenlooper doesn't support the legislation because it lacks adequate bipartisan support.
Brian Rutledge, vice president of the Audubon Society's Rocky Mountain Region, said no one wants the bird to be listed but that the Endangered Species Act is working as intended in this case, to push local agencies to do conservation.
He was dismissive of the Republican proposal. "A lot of this," he said, "is just pandering."

___Online:
Greater sage grouse: http://www.fws.gov/greatersagegrouse
Western Governors Association: http://tinyurl.com/l4nunhs

© Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

What Are The Strategies Of Those Who Want Global Control?

Understanding The Globalist Strategy

July 1, 2014 by Brandon Smith 

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In 1928, Edward L. Bernays, the “father of public relations,” wrote in his book,Propaganda:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …

[I]n almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind…

There is a trap in the mind of the average person, like a steel box or a great wall, which prevents him from rationally considering the premise of organized evil. For one reason or another, it is far easier for him to process the darker actions of men and governments as random consequence, as merely a symptom of wild greed, ignorance, stupidity, miscalculation, jealousy and confusion. Destructive tendencies and institutions are seen as nothing more than a chaotic afterthought of the self-centered human ego. Our ailing society is viewed as a victim of its own malicious nature, a self-deprecating edifice. In the minds of the unaware and uneducated, the world is a cannibalistic beast, rather than the crippled victim of a foreign parasite.

This mentality is a product not only of naivety, but of fear. If people fear anything more than death, it is the idea that the reality they have always known is just a thin veneer, a deceptively simple wallpaper covering something eternally complex and potentially horrifying. The common mind is not prepared to handle the unrecognizable. Normalcy bias becomes god, and blind assumption becomes truth.

It is in this vast fog of the unrecognizable that a cabal of power cultists thrive, a cabal that many people in our culture refuse to believe exists.

They feed on prejudice and bias. They are empowered by apathy and nihilism. They revel in the condescension of the academic. They are invigorated by the arrogance of the self-serving. They twist facts, manipulate world views, hold humanity back from its better potential and terrify or kill the defiant. They do this in concert. They do this as a choir. They see themselves as almighty engineers, as architects with a “pure insight,” as philosopher kings. They are often referred to as “globalists.” And their goal is, and has always been, a “New World Order.”

If you do not understand that this directed and organized effort exists, then you cannot possibly comprehend why global events happen the way they do. If you really believe all tragedy and so-called triumph is random, then you become nothing but debris in the wake of a massive tsunami of time and tide. For the most part, the overwhelming firestorms of history are nothing more than plot points in a carefully crafted screenplay. If you know how the writers of our global theater think, then it becomes much easier to predict how they intend our story to progress. Even the tales of “philosopher kings” become contrived as they attempt to force an obsessive narrative. These men (and women) are not necessarily ingenious. They don’t have to be. They are born into a world of stolen wealth and philosophical nepotism, and they are bound together by fear as much as zealotry. They are a hive of insects who believe themselves to be gods. And though deluded by their own hubris, such organized malevolence is still a terrible force to be reckoned with.

Here are just a few of the strategic methods they commonly use to survive, thrive and keep the masses in the dark.

The Illusion Of Separation

In Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and mentor to Bill Clinton, wrote:

It must not be felt that these heads of the world’s chief central banks were themselves substantive powers in world finance. They were not. Rather they were the technicians and agents of the dominant investment bankers of their own countries, who had raised them up and were perfectly capable of throwing them down. The substantive financial powers of the world were in the hands of these investment bankers (also called “international” or “merchant” bankers) who remained largely behind the scenes in their own unincorporated private banks. These formed a system of international cooperation and national dominance which was more private, more powerful, and more secret than that of their agents in the central banks.

Labels and titles are often designed to deceive. The insidious lie that many people, including some in the liberty movement, have been led to believe is that a concrete separation exists among international bankers along the lines of nationality.

I find it fascinating that some otherwise insightful researchers still cannot grasp the fact that there is no distinction between different central banks or globalists acting within various governments. All central banks are front organizations for private international banks. All central banks act in concert with each other. All central banks are centrally tied to the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements. This includes the central banks in countries like China and Russia. Any country infested with a central bank is dominated by that central bank and, thus, dominated by globalists.

If Vladimir Putin, for instance, were actually opposed to the corruption of international banking cartels (as he is often painted to be), then he would have abolished Russia central bank long ago and cut off ties with the IMF and BIS. Instead, Putin continues to promote centralization under the IMF and the use of the IMF’s world currency, the Special Drawing Rights (SDR).

The globalists are known by many names under many institutions. They hide behind such fronts in order to confuse and distract the curious, while conjuring false paradigm conflicts like that brewing between the East and West today.

False Nationalism

On July 20, 1992, Strobe Talbott, who was at the time a columnist for TIME and who went on to become President Bill Clinton’s deputy secretary of state, wrote:

I’ll bet that within the next hundred years (I’m giving the world time for setbacks and myself time to be out of the betting game, just in case I lose this one), nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. … perhaps national sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.

I cannot stress this point enough: Globalists do not possess a sense of loyalty to any one nation or culture. International bankers see countries and societies as tools with limited usefulness. The usefulness of the U.S. for instance, is now ending. That’s why a vast shift in the global economy is taking place, which will end the dollar’s reserve status and the American financial system in the process.

There are no “American” globalists or “Chinese” globalists. They are all members of the same banking establishment with the same goal: to end all sovereignty and construct world economy as well as world government. Globalists use national affiliations to create international wars and fiscal calamities that can be exploited to further centralize power under a single authority, which they hope the peoples of the world will accept without question.

War As Psychological Conditioning

In February 1920, Winston Churchill wrote an article that appeared in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, stating:

From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.

Whether cold wars or hot wars, what we are told about the motivations behind international conflicts is almost always untrue.

Wars are not fought over resources. They are not fought over territories. They are not fought over assassinations, dictatorial conquests or human rights abuses. If you believe that Libya was about freedom, Iraq was about oil, Vietnam was about the spread of communism or that the Civil War was about slavery, then you have bought into the facade hook, line and sinker. There are hundreds of excuses for war. But in the end, all wars — save the ever so rare revolutions of common people — are triggered deliberately in order to achieve psychological transformation.

War and economic collapse are the two faster methods to achieve full spectrum change in a society’s principles and loyalties. War allows for the trampling of freedoms, the accumulation of wealth and political authority, the destabilization of the average person’s means of survival and the desperation of the population, leading to the centralization of control in the name of safety and security.

Governments do not wage wars against each other; they wage wars against their own citizens.

How Can Americans Welcome Illegal Immigrants When One Third Of Working Age Citizens Are Not Working?

Americans Want Jobs, Not Immigrants

June 30, 2014 by Sam Rolley 

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A new poll finds that Americans are in favor decreasing immigration levels. Meanwhile, separate research from the Center for Immigration Studies shows that net employment growth in the U.S. since the year 2000 has gone entirely to immigrants, both legal and illegal.

“Americans’ views on immigration have varied a bit in the past 15 years, with the dominant view shifting between decreasing immigration and maintaining it at the current level,” Gallup reported. “Some of these changes may reflect the ebb and flow of Americans’ reactions to the 9/11 attacks in 2001 as well as rocketing unemployment in 2009, with both events triggering a temporary surge in anti-immigration sentiment.”

According to Gallup, 41 percent of Americans report that they would like to see government make moves to reduce the number of immigrants coming to the U.S. Among those who prefer a reduction in immiffgration, 50 percent are Republicans, 43 percent independents and 32 percent identify as Democrats.

Thirty-three percent of respondents said that immigration is fine at its present levels, and just 22 percent of those polled wanted to see an increase.

One of the most important factors in determining whether Americans are accepting of increased immigration is the economy.

“Deciding how many new immigrants to welcome each year can be controversial, particularly when unemployment is high, and seeming competition for good jobs already fierce,” Gallup said.

According to the Center For Immigration Studies, for the past 14 years immigrants to the U.S., both legal and illegal, have had an easier time finding employment in the Nation than people who were born in the Nation.

“All of the net increase in employment went to immigrants in the last 14 years partly because, even before the Great Recession, immigrants were gaining a disproportionate share of jobs relative to their share of population growth,” the report found. “In addition, natives’ losses were somewhat greater during the recession and immigrants have recovered more quickly from it.”

The study found that 58 million working-age Americans who are native to the country are out of work, including: 8.7 million native college graduates, 17 million Americans with some college education and 25.3 million natives with no more than a high school education.

The study’s authors contend that their findings shoot holes in many of the arguments that are made for increasing immigration.

“The long-term decline in the employment for natives across age and education levels is a clear in­dication that there is no general labor shortage, which is a primary justification for the large increases in immigration (skilled and unskilled) in the Schumer-Rubio bill and similar House proposals,” the study said.

Obama's Recess Appointments Defeated By Unified Court Unanimously! Isn't It Time He Learns That He IS NOT A Dictator!

Obama’s Supreme Lesson

July 1, 2014 by Ben Crystal 

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By now, it should be patently obvious that President Barack Obama’s word is almost as ironclad as Wendy Davis’ resume. Heck, in taking his oath of office, the man swore on the Holy Bible — twice — to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That might placate the dwindling mob of self-titled “progressives” who still grovel slavishly at the altar of Obama, but I’m less confident about how well that’s going to be received by the man upstairs.

At some point, justifying Obama’s Presidency — not to mention the series of crimes and misdemeanors that have defined it — became an exercise in futility. His acolytes simply do not care, beyond blaming each successive scandal on either former President George W. Bush, racism or some combination of the two. Yet last week, a brief glimmer of the “hope” Obama promised (without any intention of delivering) appeared in a particularly unlikely corner of the Nation. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, Obama is going to have to start paying closer attention to the little things — like the Constitution he generally treats with the respect most people reserve for toilet paper, Davis’ “campaign” andThe New York Times.

In a landmark ruling, the Court determined that Obama’s appointment of three new members to the National Labor Relations Board violates the Constitution. And when I say “the Court determined,” I don’t mean “the qualified Justices eked out a 5-4 win over the Democratic appointees.” I mean “the Court ruled in a 9-0 decision that Obama violated pretty much every part of the Constitution that deals with the separation of powers.” The court, including Obama’s own appointees, ruled that the President lacks the authority to declare the Senate “in recess.” It’s pretty basic separation of powers stuff. Writing for the unified and unanimous Court, President Bill Clinton appointee Justice Stephen Breyer noted: “The Senate is in session when it says it is.” (Emphasis added.)

Given that the complaints from the regressives center on logic like “But, Bush,” it’s clear that the Democratic Party’s objection is merely another example of their conflation of partisanship and principle. (See also: Obama’s illegal alterations to Obamacare post-passage, deployment of Internal Revenue Service against political opponents, etc.)

But the part that really ought to worry us is the fact that a purported Ivy League graduate, Harvard Law Review editor and former University of Chicago Law professor who claimed in 2007, “I was a Constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current President I actually respect the Constitution,” needed the Supreme Court to remind him of something a first-year law student would have to know in order to become a second-year law student, much less the President of the United States.