By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
If you live in New York City, be sure to turn your ballot over tomorrow and vote on three propositions. I recommend NO (Campaign finance limits), NO "Civic Engagement" Commission), YES (Term limits for community boards).
I particularly urge you to vote NO on Proposition 2, the so-called "Civic Engagement" proposition -- it's stealth socialism at its worst.
By using the term "Civic Engagement," the stealth socialists hope that people will simply think, 'Oh, that sounds nice, more involvement from the public, I'll vote for that". It's why I loathe stealth socialism -- they can never stand up and call themselves what they are, and stand for what they actually think, but they have to smuggle in their agenda in part, in order to ram it through in full later.
This particular proposition promotes another seemingly-innocuous concept called "Participatory Budgeting". It's also designed to lull the unsuspecting into thinking, "Oh, more involvement of people in spending public money." But again, that's crap.
Let me suggest there is a way you ALREADY have to "get involved" in spending public tax money. It's called DEMOCRACY and ELECTIONS. You elect people you trust who campaign on principles that you support and delegate them to spend funds because that is what modern liberal democracies do. They have delegation and division of labor, they don't pretend that you can mass-decide anything by "everybody" just "clicking". This is populism at its worst, and both extreme left and right love the concept -- because under the guise of "the public," small groups of determined cadres can take over.
What you get when you push through such methods is what I call "the tyranny of who shows up." Remember the student council in high school? Did you ever bother to follow what they were doing? Did you try to get elected? Or give up because you weren't one of the cool kids? That's how you lose your freedom.
"Participatory Budgeting" is a staple of every socialist party and group in the US and has long been a cult of these groups they have been trying to push through -- and now they're succeeding (it will likely pass due to lack of involvement and stupidity). Google it and you'll see. Yes, I understand what socialism means, no, I don't suffer from a false definition of it, and no, I don't suffer from "propaganda" and "fake news". Do you? Have you visited socialist countries of various types and lived in them, as I have? Did you go to the Socialist Scholars' Conferences in the 1980s, like me -- and Obama?
The "participators" are the "tyrants who show up" and even if any of us do, they show up already from cadres organizations with hidden agendas that we can find difficult to suppose -- especially if they wave the cards of "civility" or "the need to be positive" to suppress criticism.
Who wouldn't want to be involved in spending public money -- especially as a socialist? It's not your organization's, and you didn't vote for or support the people actually elected to do this because you're in a tiny, sectarian minority. You want to have, say, "Public Bikes" or "Bike Paths." This isn't something good just for its own sake, but smashes corporations and is good for dismantling capitalism. That New York already is overrun with Citibikes that aren't even used in many corners (ask me if you want documentation) and actually cost way more than their supporters let on doesn't matter. That bike paths already slow traffic and take away parking spots for people who use cars even if they are poor (or taxis) doesn't matter. That clean, safe public bathrooms would be a better call for spending this million is something that hipster socialists won't get -- they have the disposable income to spend on buying a slice of pecan pie in a diner to go to the bathroom -- unlike some of us, with two kids in a public park or on a fixed income. Socialists are often good at spending other people's money in fact because they have more of their own than others, as I've found.
"Participatory Budgeting" might be benign if it involved only advice, recommendations, and not actual spending of money. But it involves actual spending -- that's why they show up. It's often discretionary funds or open-ended pots of money that can get spent without too much attention. The socialists imagine they are stopping "corporate greed" or "political graft" or whatever by spending YOUR money. But that's insane, as New York City politics are very transparent and very criticized and very contested by the media of all types. But something like this falls below the radar.
I've found that if you try to criticize "Participatory Budgeting" or even just ask some pointed questions about its methods and means and full agenda, you are silenced, banned, muted, harassed on social media. That's how you know it's a socialist cult.
If you don't believe or don't understand anything I am telling you now, think of this: what do you know of "Participatory Budgeting"? Did you ever hear of it? Did you ever read a single article on it? *Is* there a single article that is balanced and critical about it, or can you only find pieces by its ardent supporters by Googling? Are even "critical" articles only advice on how to ram the concept through better in the face of skeptics, painting critics as supporters of corrupt oligarchs?
At the very least, then vote NO until you and others in the public can become more educated about what this REALLY means.
I don't have the capacity due to my personal circumstances to go and "participate" with these "participatory budgeters" to call them to account and flush them out for what they are -- although years of reading and debating about this have convinced me. Yes, it would be good to go to the actual meetings. But do you have that capacity? Does anybody? This is how you lose democracy -- by thinking that elected representatives are corrupt or stupid (the view of many Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley [NYC] hipsters) and that such "organized" little groups can "run it better". But they are ideological stealth raiders. Beth Novak, the socialist who got in the Obama White House tech office with these sorts of ideas, tried (and fortunately failed) to destroy the Patent Office with a form of this "community involvement."
Whenever I see the word "community" in NYC, I've learned to take a second look, because the cult "Working Families" or others may be involved. Democracy means all of us. Socialism means some of us as the "advance guard." Don't confuse it. Sooner or later in my experience, socialists suppress freedom of speech and freedom of association to keep themselves in power. That's why I oppose them.
If you don't want to hear it from me, hear it from The New York Times, which while leftist, isn't socialist in the main, and from Gale Brewer, a liberal, leftist politician whom I have supported on a number of issues who in fact questions the hard-left socialist mayor on this issue:
“The mayor already has control over the Department of City Planning; why should his appointees help select the community boards’ technical advisers for land-use decisions, too?” Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer argued in an op-ed in The Villager.
Indeed. What Brewer has ferreted out is that if DeBlasio has the power to pick these "community-involved" types who want to "participate," he will pick his friends, the socialists, and they will grab land decisions away from developers they think are "corrupt" and "oligarchic," regardless of the facts -- which even a leftist like Brewer, who is no corporate tool, questions.
The New York Times uses that argumentation as well:
The measure would create a commission, largely controlled by the mayor, whose exact powers would be unclear. It would add yet another layer of bureaucracy without good cause. And in taking up participatory budgeting, such a commission could tread on the authority of the City Council, which now oversees that process. In a city with ample mayoral influence already, it is best that the powers afforded to the Council — most notably land-use and budget oversight — be carefully guarded.
Some of the initiatives the commission would be tasked with overseeing are worthy, such as expanding translation services at poll sites. But it would be wiser to implement them through legislation in the City Council or existing city agencies instead. That would preserve the powers of the Council and prevent the addition of unnecessary bureaucracy, better serving New Yorkers.
The New York Times is at least enough of an institution itself to understand you don't dismantle a democratic institution like the City Council and its authorities lightly, handing them over to latte-drinking hipsters in bike-clipped pants and geometric haircuts who believe "we need to dismantle capitalism" -- except, of course, Google or Ben and Jerry's.
Brewer says term limits will "kill our first line of defense" against developers. But I don't agree with her on this point regarding the third proposition, where I recommend voting YES. The community boards are a total racket in New York City, with hard-core pols getting entrenched in ways that are unstoppable. Term limits helps break up those mafias and that's a good thing. Development is not all evil. Community boards opposed things like the Hi Line on the West Side which in fact have turned out to be wonderful.
Regarding "campaign finance," I advocate NO for lowering limits to $2000 in the socialistic belief that there will now be "a thousand schools of thought contending" with smaller contributions, "like Sanders" (a misunderstanding even of the socialist Sanders campaign -- these things are never decided by Mom and Pop sending in $5, but by socialist corporate hegemons like Ben and Jerry's). Brewer and the New York Times support that argumentation that "more small contributions" will be encouraged. This is baffling, because small contributions of $100 are made regardless of whether limits are $2000 or $5100, and that's not the way to encourage them -- it is disconnected.
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