Just a reminder: You can make more money by using disasters; than by preventing or remediating them. COVID-19 grabbed the headlines; but smart investors know that there are always profitable opportunities in our downward spiraling world.
Ocean-rise investments in real estate is a “global warming-proof” way to ensure you can comfortably live out your natural life in our unnatural society.
Corruption: “An act done with an intent to give some advantage inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others.”
This legal definition is entirely consistent the actions and policies of Tompkins County government.
Although they are public servants; it is no longer the people who are served; the growth and profitability of corporations and institutions is now considered more important to the welfare of Tompkins County — the people have been moved to a secondary position.
Oversight committees short-circuit investigations and ethics complaints are regarded as an annoying interference.
200 years of Collegiate bureaucratic inbreeding has gone county-wide; and the results are Machiavellian.
The urgency of the action is in large part dependent upon the consequences: if you don’t take precautions against the weather and only get wet; that’s one thing — if you die; that’s another matter.
While many countries believe that efforts should be undertaken to prove an action or process is safe beforehand; in America, we are frequently in the position of having to prove something is unsafe after the fact.
And with powerful, rich, and well-connected interests: that can take a lot of proving.
How does Tompkins County save money? By denying public services to the county’s rural poor.
Public transportation is stopped miles away from those farthest from doctors, medication and groceries. And the drugs and crime that poverty produce are handled by a Sheriff’s department that only come when they’re called, write a report, and leave.
The County does maintain one presence; its Assessors are constantly raising rural valuations to enable higher taxes — and rural families living on roads named for them are forced to leave and make room for urban sprawl developments and corporate cronies.
Poverty may be more than color; but public policy isn’t. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough blacks living in rural New York for the community to be worth caring about.
Even the pretense of equal worth has been replaced by an openly dismissive “somebody has to take the hit” philosophy, and disguised with an over the top ladling of “the greater good.”
After all; when “somebody” has to take the hit — it’s always a campaign decision.
A “what’s that?” bumper sticker. Rural Social Justice is the Social Justice that hasn’t happened yet; and if Urban Colonialism continues to hold its grip — it never will.
Urban Colonialism, “characteristic of, or constituting control by a city over a rural area or people,” is the de facto policy in New York State. As urban authorities co-opt increasing amounts the state’s rural land for their food, recreation, infrastructure needs [and as an “out of sight” dumping ground]; they act as if they are “bringing civilization to the natives.”
Rural residents are ungrateful obstructive, and ignorant people, who won’t accept their place in a City-centric social order. Rural communities are resettled, restructured, and the natives are marginalized, driven out, or destroyed.
In Tompkins County’s most recent Comprehensive Plan: there is no rural community — just a scattering of “urban nodes” in a landscape that supplies food, raw materials, and low-level labor to a “vibrant urban center” — can you get more colonial than that?
Rural Tompkins County is a place where residents need to be vigilant when they hang out their wash. Giant agricultural boom-sprayers spray herbicides that drift across the landscape like a toxic fog — coating the toys that children play with, and the sheets they sleep on with glyphosate and other chemicals.
How can Agribusinesses get away with this? Because the regulations aren’t enforced — that’s what friends in high places are for.
There has never been a long-term study made to evaluate the effects of factory farming methods on the rural community. Such a study would not be welcome.
How many rural babies have died because of nitrates in their drinking water? Nobody knows. Autopsies are rarely performed on infants.
If you’re a poor rural family, and a factory farm pollutes your well; what happens? Nothing. That’s your problem. Authorities advise spending a few thousand dollars on a reverse osmosis system or buying bottled water; but that is all they will give: the advice. What can you do? Where can you go? That’s your problem.
Agriculture-funded politicians and colleges are dismissive of the conditions that rural families are forced to endure; they can afford to be — or rather, they can’t afford not to be. Just follow the money.
This board game borrows material from an upcoming book with the working title: “Tompkins County and Tammany Hall [I can’t seem to find any difference at all]”.
This book will present the strongest possible circumstantial case through documented actions, polices, and statements — all pointing in the same direction.
