National Heritage Areas and Corridors

By Joyce Morrison
for eco-logic/Powerhouse

April 1, 2006

Our government is spending on invasive programs at an unprecedented rate, while the nation is deep in debt. Property rights are being violated, and our nation is being turned into a zoned, controlled state.

The following report speaks in financial terms of borrowing and spending – never in saving, as you and I have to do. It is beyond our ability to comprehend how income tax alone can continue to cover this extravagance.

The March 6, 2006, Bloomberg Report said:

"The U.S. Treasury, today, took steps to avoid slamming into the government's legal borrowing limit, and to make sure the sale of a 10-year note goes ahead this week."

The report said the U.S. debt on March 2 was $25 million short of the $8.184 trillion limit set by Congress. The Treasury said, in January, it planed to borrow $188 billion from January to March, the most ever for a single quarter. Last month, Bush sent Congress a $2.77 trillion budget request for fiscal 2007, that calls for a deficit of $354 billion, compared with a record of $423 billion forecast this year.

"Congress needs to raise the debt limit, before it goes on recess March 20," Treasury Spokesman Tony Fratto said. The Treasury estimates it will borrow $427 billion in fiscal year 2006.

These figures are far too astronomical for me to understand ... but it sounds like we are in deep debt. I do know that we have no gold or silver standard, and as we sell our national debt to the Chinese, or whoever is buying our debt these days, we need to ask the question, "What are we using for collateral?"

This being said, we continue to fund unnecessary U.N. Agenda21 programs to lock up our land. They are incentive driven (grants), because "they" are counting on "greed" being man's weakness. Whether it is your city council, your county government, stakeholders serving on governing committees, state officials, federal Legislators, or bureaucrats, it can be summed up – "it is all about the money ... and they want it."

My solution to the government debt, would be to do away with the billions of dollars given in grants. Grants are limited on how they can be spent, but "grant hungry" elected officials don't care – they want it – regardless of the strings attached.

Heritage Areas are popping up their ugly heads again, and again. These are some of the most effective federal zoning measures that can be used. If you want to lose all local control, you will love Heritage Areas.

Legislators are in favor of Heritage Areas, as they can get large amounts of pork to bring to their district ... and that buys votes. There is no such thing as "free" money, and they have sold your private property rights to a socialist form of governing, for a mere pittance.

The National Park Service is in charge of the National Heritage Areas. If anyone has followed the actions of the NPS, you should become very uncomfortable, if you are in a designated or proposed Heritage area. Along the New River in West Virginia, which is designated a Scenic River, NPS controls public and private lands. Their goal is to remove homes and farmsteads from the view shed, as they "clutter" the scenic view.

In Washington, D.C. this year, there are 10 study bills introduced on eight areas for Heritage Areas. There are 26 designation bills introduced on 17 areas, and 11 bills to amend existing legislation.

The most alarming is the Mississippi River National Heritage Area. A report by Carole LaGrasse, of the Property Rights Foundation of America, entitled Surgically Removing the Aorta of America – The Mississippi River Corridor is a report that will shock even those who are willing to sell out, for a grant to become a Heritage Area.

LaGrasse said:

"The Mississippi Corridor project is an indication of how all-powerful the environmentalists believe that they have become. This deadly program culminates twenty years of interfering with the rights of people to private property and the pursuit of happiness. The environmentalists' poisoned scalpel will cut into the heartland of the United States of America, the 2,500-mile-long Mississippi River bed, potentially the entire area of ten states. It will dissect the jewel of America, under every imaginable guise, from cultural preservation to biodiversity."

Senate bill S1721 is the bill providing for this designation. Also on the Mississippi River is a bill (S.2114), sponsored by Senator Jim Talent of Missouri, that is multi-jurisdictional between Illinois and Missouri, entitled "Confluence National Heritage Corridor." Jim Talent needs to be ready to "take the heat" from his constituents in Missouri, as they are organizing to do battle over this bill.

It makes one wonder: "What are they putting in the water in Washington?" There is another Heritage bill that guts the center of Illinois, called the "Abraham Lincoln Heritage Area" (HR 1192, S.973). It has bi-partisan sponsors – both conservative and liberals, who want to bring home that pork – regardless of the high price that will be paid to get it.

President Bush is advocating the updating and widening of the Panama Canal's $10 billion project. He said, "It's in our nation's interest that this canal be modernized." The United States does not control the Panama Canal.

What about the lock and dam project in the United States, that is desperately needed on the Mississippi River to update this critical water system, so important to this nation's infrastructure? Wouldn't that be in "our nation's interest to be modernized?"

This same President Bush said the deteriorating locks and dams on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers could last another 50 years, and he cut it from the 2007 budget.

Could this decision have anything to do with keeping the river pristine, with no commerce, on behalf of the environmentalists and their plans for the "Mississippi Heritage Corridor?"

Tourism is the big "sell" to designate Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways. In researching for an article for Range Magazine, I interviewed residents in a small town in Illinois, where Economic Development was using the "tourism pitch" to establish trails, etc. These people did not have "stupid" written on their foreheads. They saw through it, and said, "get real – we have nothing anyone wants to see, unless maybe where Chicago dumps its sludge. We need REAL jobs here."

A quote taken from the article The Port Sell-Out and the Dismantling of America by Jones and Watson:

"As a country, we are not just being robbed of our ability to create wealth, we are being robbed of our infrastructure, our land, and our capacity to work the land. Your currency, your future, and your sovereignty is systematically being dismantled, looted, and sold to the highest bidder. The taxpayer pays for and builds the infrastructure, only for foreign lobbyists to pay off corrupt politicians who 'lease' the infrastructure, or outright sell it to the foreign lobbyists for 50, 60, 70 years."

"The continued weakness of the dollar allows foreign entities to step in, and buy more and more infrastructure, while American families work three or four jobs just to get by."

I urge you to research the issue of Heritage Corridors and Heritage Areas. Contact your Legislators, and tell them you do not want this nation divided into controlled zoned Heritage Areas, where our rights have once again been violated.

Joyce Morrison lives in Southern Illinois. She is a chapter leader for Concerned Women for America, and she and her husband, Gary, represent the local Citizens for Private Property Rights. Joyce is Secretary to the Board of Directors of Rural Restoration/ADOPT Mission, a national farm ministry located in Sikeston. She has become a nationally-recognized advocate for property rights.