Fauquier County’s Board of Supervisors in Virginia, presumably Republican controlled, passed an ordinance to force wineries to close at 6 p.m. and to prohibit the sale of food unless the wineries obtain special permits from the zoning administrator. They fined Liberty Farm for having a pumpkin carving that never took place and for having a birthday party for eight little girls without proper permit.
Do we now need government permission to have private parties on our own property? Apparently so, according to these supervisors, it is considered marketing. “The Fauquier ordinance clearly violates Virginia’s Right to Farm Act, which guarantees agriculture activities of growing and selling.” (Mark J. Fitzgibbons, The Washington Examiner, August 12, 2012)
I heard Martha speak to a gathering of 25 friends, farmers, and vintners from Fauquier County. She brought a basket laden with tomatoes and peppers grown on her Liberty Farm, vegetables that she is no longer allowed to sell. She can give them away to food banks. Through passionate tears, she outlined her childhood dream of owning a farm, finding the perfect land in 2006, and the six year nightmare that followed.
Martha’s 70 acre farm is located in Fauquier County, a rural, agricultural community 15 minutes from Washington, D.C. if the traffic cooperates. The rich soil in the area is perfect for growing grapes and producing wine. Many of the rich farm landowners understand farming as running beautiful horses and leaving the land unspoiled – actual farming is a nuisance and an inconvenience. They are the “penny loafer farmers,” as someone had named them. They are offended by Martha’s farm that actually produces food that people need and enjoy.
Martha bought her farm with an agricultural conservation easement. Since there was no mention of any activities that she could not engage in on her farm, she proceeded to repair the historical barn. She built an apiary, harvested hay, grew herbs, and rescued 165 animals, sold chicken, duck, turkey, emu eggs, candles made from beeswax, birdhouses, and fiber from lamas and alpacas. She had a business license. A lot of hard work went into breathing life into the previously abandoned piece of property. The grass was five feet high and the barn was leaning when she bought the property.
What happened to property rights and economic freedom in our country?
She was told through letters and unauthorized inspections on her property that she could not even cut grass on her property. She had to fence off 20 acres for 2 years because it was considered “hallowed ground” although nobody has ever died there during the Civil War; it had been just an encampment area. Animals and children could not seek shelter from heat or play under a beautiful oak grove. The family was never reimbursed for the fencing or the loss of use of their property for two years – it was a “clerical error.”
A trench was dug to prevent parking on her property because it obscured the view shed. Although holding a business permit and special permit to operate a farm store, her business permit has recently not been renewed by the county. Liberty Farm is the only farm in focus for this environmental harassment. What happened to property rights and economic freedom in our country?
Some Americans are waking up to the insidious UN Agenda 21 across the country. Their legal battles come in many forms at the local and state levels, all involving zoning issues, driven by one ultimate goal, global governance.
UN Agenda 21 “soft law” document has been in place and ratified in Rio, Brazil by 178 countries since 1992. The recommendations that are not legally binding but morally obligatory provide specific rules about local organizations and their practices, limiting everyone’s behavior and freedom.
The idea of global governance, a.k.a. UN Agenda 21, was seeded a hundred years ago. Americans and their private property are under such a concerted and well-orchestrated attack, that it has become a full assault on private property and redistribution of wealth in the last stages of full implementation.
Would ordinary Americans succeed in deflecting and destroying the evil UN Agenda 21, the multi-headed Hydra? It is a hard question to answer since a good majority of Americans are blissfully unaware of what is going on under their noses nor do they seem to care.
The privileged elites are so convinced they are best suited to rule the world, that they are willing to dedicate their vast fortunes to achieve global governance. Cecil Rhodes, for example, of the Rhodes scholarship, believed that the whole world should be dominated by the British Empire. His vision is no longer a possibility since the once mighty British Empire is now overrun by hostile Muslims thanks to its failed and misguided multi-culturalism.
The modern granddaddy of globalism is Maurice Strong. “Since Cecil Rhoades, …there has been a group of people who actually believe that society is best served when it is managed by a benevolent government populated by the enlightened intelligentsia.” Many Congressmen on both sides of the aisle support globalism, thus Agenda 21. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a report in April 2010, detailing the creation of a global currency as the path to global economic stability. (Henry Lamb, Founding Director of Freedom21, Inc.)
The main stream media does not discuss Agenda 21
The main stream media does not discuss Agenda 21 and has labeled those that do tin foil hat conspiracy theorists. Americans believe what they are told by the MSM until they have problems keeping their farms, use their land, build a fence, plant a tree, a bush, use rainwater on their property, build a barn, plant a garden, or use trees for shade to animals. Once property owners run afoul of the many permits they are required to get, they become believers.
There is no end to the asinine rules that various Boards of Supervisors write and implement. These boards are populated by individuals who pretend to be Republicans in order to get elected but are Democrats who enjoy controlling the sheeple minions in their counties.
Liberals love to micro-manage other people’s lives. If you are unlucky and belong to a Home Owner’s Association, you will witness first-hand the self-appointed tyrannical behavior of little people with power to turn your existence upside down on your own land.
Obama’s War on Suburbs
The control does not stop there. On August 21, 2012, Dick Morris TV discussed “Obama’s War on Suburbs” - how “Obama wants suburban taxes to fund inner city projects and he applies UN agenda 21 to force people to move to the cities. …Barack Obama opposes suburbs. He wants to force everyone into the cities from whence our ancestors fled. He wants the suburban revenue to subsidize the inner cities.
…Because of carbon emissions and global warming, we have to reduce the dependence on the automobile, increase people walking and biking and we have to reshape the way we live with that in mind.”
The environmentalist concern over carbon emissions and Obama’s funneling resources to the inner cities from the suburbs combine into Obama’s program called regionalism. He has already given regionalism planning grants in Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. Regionalism means getting rid of counties, cities, suburban government and put everything under the regional authority. The regional entity governs and makes all decisions for a large metropolitan area such as transportation, zoning, land use, education, wetlands, funding, open space regulations, and environmental regulations, all designed to force people from the suburbs into the cities.
Unnecessary traffic jams and congestion on suburban roads, taking access roads out of circulation, blocking zones and roads to traffic, narrowing roads, high and frequent speed bumps, arcane and expensive regulations, expensive gas, road fines, drones hovering over our homes, expensive tolls for roads, are designed to force people to move back into the cities. President Obama wants to fundamentally change the way we live.
Global governance restricts individual freedom
Global governance restricts individual freedom by setting up rigid environmental rules and regulations that set limits on individual behavior, on organizations, and on businesses, covering every facet of human life.
Non-elected bureaucrats and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) set policy and decide what is good for a community through “visioning” committees and grants.
“Visioning” grants come from the EPA and other federal agencies to local communities slated to undergo the visioning or zoning change and to the American Planning Association that would help states develop model legislation favoring their re-zoning plans and re-distribution of property and wealth.
Local planning agencies, an NGO, or ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) start the process of sustainable development, sustainable community, or green growth and request a federal grant.
Who is going to oppose the “greening” of their area and protecting the environment for their children’s future? It is land use control plain and simple by the local, state, or federal government bureaucrats.
Control of land use denies “farmers the right to sell their land to city dwellers because of an urban boundary zone, or greenbelt, or conservation area, or because of the ‘unjust compensation tax.’” Worse yet, farmers themselves are not allowed to use their own land and are fenced in, forbidden to use it or develop it at all.
Water can be denied or cut off to an entire village or town. The installation of septic tanks is forbidden in Maryland, discouraging farmers to build on their own property. The conduits of such restrictions of the behavior of land owners and farmers are the Board of Supervisors through re-zoning and permit.
Martha’s plight is one example of thousands across the country who are fighting their local zoning czars for economic freedom, the use of their land, property rights, free of intrusive, photographed, unauthorized, and illegal, often in the middle of the night land and home inspections, and the freedom to engage in encumbered agricultural activities from environmental groups funded by wealthy globalists who would rather see humans disappeared or moved into government approved urban ghettoes where they can be better controlled and herded.
Canada Free Press
