Will the real Lynn Morgan please stand up?

At one of the spring candidate forums I submitted this question that asked Lynn Morgan: “There are rumors that you are possibly involved with a Central Valley PAC, the Steve Wilensky/SEIU political machine and have agreed to their agenda. What is your relationship to this organized political faction?” She answered that she attended one of their meetings and nothing more. There is more to this story than is commonly known. Presently there are rumors she travels to Calaveras County, probably for political training, on a regular basis and that she has agreed to their extreme left wing agenda.

During the candidates’ forum at the Jackson Civic Center, Steve Wilensky was in the background acting as puppet master. He is at the center of far left political network in the Foothills and the Valley. Lynn Morgan appears to be their coached and chosen candidate. A major part of this network is the Central Valley Progressive PAC. You can witness them on YouTube: Steve Wilensky Speaking at the October 2013 CVPPAC fundraiser, The Central Valley Progressive PAC Fall fund raiser and Phil Giarrizzo speaks at the CVPPAC Fall fundraiser. While there are probably more, these three make clear a radical agenda, far beyond mainstream liberalism.

Part of this network, of which Steve Wilensky is the listed contact, is SNOPAC, the Sierra Nevada Opportunity Political Action Committee. They sponsor the Campaign Summit and Training “...to win key progressive victories in the Sierra and Central Valley in 2014 and subsequent cycles.” They emphasize “social justice issues” and consider their training to be “part campaign boot camp.” This website was linked to www.closethegap.CA that runs women for the state legislature because women are superior to men to many ways. A link from there led to the California List website where a women praised Communist Cuba because so many of the legislators are women. Clearly, the vote for me because I am a woman has been part of Lynn Morgan’s campaign.

So who is the real Lynn Morgan? Her website contains the usual glib statements and her specific positions on Wild & Scenic, Dollar General, etc; but nowhere does it state her political philosophy. Ultimately, this is the most important question because it determines what she may propose and how she will vote on issues not yet known. Therefore, I am asking Lynn Morgan to directly answer several questions. This format will allow her to answer completely and unlike being on the spot in a live forum, she has sufficient time to write up detailed responses.

1) What is your political philosophy? Do you consider yourself a liberal or a progressive and what do those terms signify for you?

2) What is your political relationship with Steve Wilensky?

3) Have you participated in SNOPAC training and, if so, how many times?

4) You stated that you attended a Central Valley PAC event. Was this the progressive PAC, and was your attendance a onetime occurrence or part of your ongoing involvement?

Ms. Morgan, the voters of Amador County would appreciate your candid answers to these questions.

Copyright 2014, Mark L. Bennett

What is Environmentalism?

Katherine Evatt recently posted on her Facebook page a call to appear at the upcoming Calaveras County BOS to support the Wild & Scenic designation for part of the Mokelumne River. In that posting, she used the expression “anti-environmental forces”. She is defining, based on her point of view, what is environmental and what isn’t. I find this to be a statement of supreme arrogance. Here at the Sutter Gold Mine all the groundwater that seeps into the mine goes through a filtration system that removes the arsenic. This is environmental, and I suspect that all Amadorians agree.

I know what lack of environmental protection is, coming from Buffalo, NY. Every Spring time we would go to the Erie Canal section of river and see dead fish so dense that the surface of the water could not be seen. But after several years, there were no more dead fish because there were no more fish left to die. As I got older, I watched my father’s friends die of liver and kidney cancer. In grad school, I read environmental studies where I could find the childhood homes of those men on the maps of factory smokestack plumes. I have always advocated environmental protection and still do. We can manufacture products in an environmentally safe manner, and I have seen state of the art factories where this occurs.

Instead, we buy goods from Third World countries where the populace is poisoned and smugly state how America is now environmental. We can, and should, manufacture here in a safe manner. Because I care about other people, believe in economic development projects that need water from the Mokelumne River, and well up with tears every time I read another article about the increasing size of our food banks I am considered, as are many others, anti-environmental. I resent this, and suspect many others do.

Carbon Capture Refugees

Their Sunday morning worship was disrupted by gunshots. Soldiers had entered their village and said, “Get out”. Those that didn’t run fast enough were beaten. A sick eight-year-old boy was alone in his house as his mother was out getting medicine. He was burned alive when his home was set afire as they destroyed the entire village - all the homes, schools, livestock, crops, etc. Their land - much of which was given to them or their parents as a benefit for British military service in World War Two - was to now become a carbon capture forest for the international environmental elite. One of the over 20,000 dispossessed stated: “I lost my land. I’m landless. Land was my life. I have no rights. I’m not a human being.” Some of these new homeless now have jobs on the forest plantation. Their sign reads: “Towards a sustainable healthy, and environmental healthy community.” Given the bitter irony of that sign, I couldn’t help but think of the entrance sign that read: “Work Makes You Free” at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

But this all happened in far off Uganda. We are all sadly used to ghastly events in the so-called Third World, and many folks probably possess a rather smug attitude toward all this. Perhaps we are ignoring a dry run of our future. Experiments are made, and procedures perfected on those most helpless. The infamous Nazi doctors practiced on black Africans, in what is now known as Namibia, and the world didn’t seem to notice or care. A few years later, Turkish Muslems murdered one and a half million Christian Armenians. The world-wide public outcry was taken in stride by those in charge. A little more than a decade later, Europeans faced this brutality in their backyards.

This carbon capture project to save the world from a fictitious threat that benefits the few and mighty is not surprisingly blessed by the omnipotent Forestry Stewardship Council, an organization I’ve referred to in a prior Outside the Ivory Tower. One financier is the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, although they prefer to be called HSBC to distance themselves from their origins in bankrolling the opium trade to enslave the Chinese almost 200 years ago. Another backer is the World Bank, an institution many people believe is here to help. The only real environmental problem, the primitive techniques of the farmers which they could have helped improve, was nothing but another excuse for the project. But the New Forests Company, often lauded as socially and environmentally responsible, is confident that it will all work out better in the end based on statistical modeling.

Uganda long ago signed on to the UN Small Arms treaty which Obama has constantly advocated for the USA. Ugandans have no 2nd Amendment rights, so self-defense or a standoff like at the Bundy Ranch was impossible. They were branded as illegal encroachers, just like the Feds told Clive Bundy, that he suddenly had no rights to graze land his family has used for over a 100 years. And just like our veterans who are judged by de facto death panels called wait lists, the Ugandans’ benefit was a sham promise.

Our nation was largely founded by English people who had lost their grazing rights under the Enclosure Acts, and understood the relationship between land ownership and freedom. This became encapsulated into Thomas Jefferson’s concept of the yeoman farmer. Today, we take this to mean a strong middle class as the basis of freedom and social stability. But this is being stripped away, piece by piece, in a process far more subtle than in Uganda. The Wild & Scenic designation for part of the Mokelumne River is part of a much larger picture and a far more ominous future.

Copyright © 2014, Mark L. Bennett