From February 9, 2013:
Sitting down for lunch with the family on Saturday the following headline in the San Mateo Daily Journal caught my eye.
Most people probably read the article and thought "oh how wonderful, they will be able to achieve certain economic efficiencies by consolidating governments, structuring better public transportation connections, and so forth.
Bay Area leaders consider merger
The article begins explaining how business and civic leaders gathered in San Jose to "consider the advantages of merging the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley into a single region, sharing everything from city dumps to water treatment plants as communities sprawl across borders."
The article goes on to say:
So apparently there are economic, environmental, and social crises in the area that need to be addressed. PROBLEM."Leaders attending the State of the Valley conference Friday noted that Bay Area residents, businesses and local governments face the same challenges, from gridlock and earthquakes to steep housing prices and climate change."
Most people would agree that there are a plethora of issues in the Bay Area, but in general it is a pleasant place to live. It's true we have one of the world's most expensive housing markets in the world, but we also have fairly stable and near maximized employment. It's true we have horrific public schools despite collecting an enormous amount of money from property taxes, but most who can afford it send their kids to private schools, or rent houses in Cupertino so their kids can go to amazing public schools. We also have at least 2 separate train systems (Caltrain and BART) that do not coordinate well with each other nor with the bus systems, but apart from Denver, Chicago and New York City no American cities have decent public transportation. Regardless, the Bay Area is running fairly well. Many disagree and therein lies the REACTION.
The articles continues with the stated public objective of the proposal. SOLUTION
If we just merge our diaspora of cities around the bay, we will continue to achieve economic growth. I didn't know that was an issue. I mean we all know that California proper is near bankruptcy following the global economic crisis of 2008, but the Silicon Valley and most of the Bay Area has hardly been disturbed....the region, which amounts to the world’s 13th-largest economy, should continue to boom if they coordinate their planning and consider merging transit systems, police and fire services and even city governments.Technology forecaster Paul Saffo told conference participants that sharing everything from landfills to police helicopters could make the entire area more efficient, save money and help businesses remain competitive.
Saving money, cutting bureaucratic waste, and achieving economies of scale are all wonderful theoretical objectives. That is rarely what happens when power centers are created. Look at Washington DC. But that doesnt stop the virtuous solicitations of POWER.
This must be the true objective. To create powerful city states like Rome, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Perhaps this is to counter the powerless small towns that collectively make up the region at this time.
“Powerful regions are the new basic unit of governments in the 21st century,” said Saffo, pointing to Singapore and Hong Kong. “City states are the powerful nexus of power, commerce, culture and identity.”
The whole conference was setup to meet following the release of a 2013 Index of Silicon Valley which found the region is leading the country out of the recession with 92,000 new jobs last year. It turns out the index and the conference were both sponsored by Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, both nonprofits associated with the region’s businesses and governments.
Who is the Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network and what are their goals and objectives? According to their website it was
Established in 1993, Joint Venture Silicon Valley provides analysis and action on issues affecting our region's economy and quality of life. The organization brings together established and emerging leaders—from business, government, academia, labor and the broader community—to spotlight issues and work toward innovative solutions.They have an interesting list of private sector sponsors, many who have been bailed out or have nefarious connections with the military industrial complex. Interestingly enough the public sector sponsors includes the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Why would they be interested in economic efficiencies and centralized power houses? Well, the Netherlands and the US are signatories to the United Nations Agenda 21 kicked off in 1992. Agenda 21 is a very controversial world government initiative that has been protested since its inception. From the UN USA website, it is defined as:
Many have exposed the nefarious hidden goals of the United Nations as an attempt at world government controlled by a royal elite with a collectivist agenda. Remember the US sponsor of the United Nations was Alger Hiss, a convicted communist spy and since its inception it has been sponsored by powerful tax exempt foundations belonging to the robber barons of the early 20th century, such as the Rockefellers.Agenda 21 encourages, rather than compels, UN Member States to take into consideration the environmental impacts of their land, resources, and transportation development policies. Adopted at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, the document reflects a broad international consensus that worsening poverty and growing stresses on the environment require greater integration between environmental and development concerns.
It is clear that this article is insufficient in revealing the smoking gun behind a global conspiracy to drive us into slavery but it should be a good start to spark legitimate investigation by those who would be affected.
The questions we should be asking are:
- What are the connections to Agenda 21?
- Who would benefit from the merger of regional cities?
- Who would lead such an regional powerhouse? Would they be elected or technocratic appointees of the elite?
- How will a larger bureaucracy of concentrated power be more efficient and to the benefit of local residents? The larger the governmental unit, the greater the prospects for significant corruption. Haven't we seen the Federal Government become a corrupt and tyrannical tool of a wealthy elite?Why would a new city state be any different?
- Where will decisions be made about zoning, licensing, and permits?
- Will it negate or make obsolete the local city councils?
- Will there be a regional banking entity and will it be private or public?
- What will it have in common with the Vatican, DC, and the City of London?
- Wouldn't smaller service suppliers be crowded out to larger organizations that supposedly have greater economies of scale? That means local businesses and start up will be squeezed out of the market. This is what critics of Walmart complain about.
- Where will our food supply come from? If we continue to build and develop housing and industry at the expense of farming, aren't we increasing our dependence on imported foods and our risk associated?
- Will GMOs be acceptable food sources for this new City State?
- How will this affect local public schools?
Paul Saffo has commented that ‘our world is moving from one of nation-states to one of city-states. Rather than the future being one of the US versus China, it is going to be Silicon Valley vs. Beijing or Chicago vs. Paris. Each dominant city will define its region. With the “flattening” of the world, Chicago is no longer vying with US cities like New York for influence, commerce and jobs, but other major cities in the world.’ The MIT 19.20.21 programme is just one of several research studies underway that are looking at future urban environments. Predicting that there will be nineteen cities with over 20 million populations in the 21st century, this sees that ‘the rise of supercities is the defining megatrend of the 21st century’.
Who is Paul Saffo?
"Powerful regions are the new basic unit of governments in the 21st century ... City states are the powerful nexus of power, commerce, culture and identity."Read more at http://www.i4u.com/2013/02/paul-saffo/area-merging-leaders-region-bay-consider#S23PrssUQhjk0kem.99
Our democracy is utterly dependent upon an informed and engaged citizenry. We must talk to each other about politics to form thoughtful opinions and maybe learn something that will help us run our communities. We may as well start at home.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Americans-should-talk-about-politics-more-2336100.php#ixzz2L09wP3BM
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Americans-should-talk-about-politics-more-2336100.php#ixzz2L09wP3BM
- Member WEF Global Agenda Council on Innovation
- Member, WEF Global Agenda Council on Strategic Foresight
The World Economic Forum is a collection of 80 Councils worldwide. GlobalAgenda Council Members are calling for global governance.
By Paul Saffo - Bay Area act like a city state
Paul Saffo is managing director of foresight at Discern Analytics and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
A new Bretton Woods is in our future, a moment when chastened global leaders will commit to building a new institutional order. But it will take another, larger economic crisis before the collective will to do so is found. In the meantime, we must immediately undertake another equally important task: We need to create a global economic observatory, an entity capable of collecting and digesting the data needed to truly understand the global economy in all its shifting complexity.
Only time will tell, just remember the old adage:
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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