Uneasy lies the heads of those who always want more. New worlds to remold into their vision. Times have changed — the elite used to pretend they cared about us: now all they care about is their vision.
In Tompkins County; when sacrifices have to be made: they don’t ask what? – They ask who? And the county’s rural residents are at the top of the list. We are the stumbling block to Cornell’s completely homogenized and conforming community vision – and their Legislature is always removing our services and increasing our taxes. How can they do this? Why don’t you ask the 30,000 students that give them that power – they’re our future.
Tompkins County planners don’t counsel – they conspire.
We no longer create our communities by living in them – we just inhabit the communities our government creates.
They do all the planning. They have all the planners. They have all the power. They have all the cards.
Exposing misconduct, corruption, and cronyism in Tompkins County is not just digging into the past – it’s yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
“Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” documented only small piece of the overarching policies and actions that dominate and control the lives of the county’s rural residents – and includes nothing that has occurred since its publication.
An unfinished and unpublished companion piece to the “Truck Route” chapter [Road Weary] has even more jaw-dropping disclosures of the actions of local and County authorities; and their ongoing displacement and oppression of the rural community – actions that only those who feel beyond the reach of social justice and legal oversight would commit.
I have sent copies of the book to many people who, I thought, would be open to change – without even getting an acknowledgement – and bringing readers up to date would do nothing to change the situation – it would only increase the “body count.”
It’s hopeless – but I have a plan – as my cousin used to say: “Don’t force it; get a bigger hammer.”
Ithaca is the place where everybody wants to live: because it’s the only place in the county where people have individual worth.
While Ithaca rules the county – it never leads by example. Their plan to blanket rural Lansing with CAFOs is balanced by their own petition to the New York State Supreme Court: enumerating serious concerns about lack of CAFO and Agricultural regulation and oversight, lack of disclosure, and the possible effects of modern farming practices on their own residents and the their own town’s environment. Lansing’s puppet government has expressed no concerns at all.
Ithaca is Camelot: A castle community where people dump their slop on the unprotected commoners outside the walls – without a second thought.
Where would you want to live?
Tompkins County is all about coincidences – but those days are about over: the strata of the New Society is clearly defined by Doctrine. There is no longer any reason to obscure the facts – just be more “important,” be “owed,” or “identified as a need” – and your ascension is a matter of public proclamation.
As for Tompkins County’s poor, marginalized, and underserved rural people – Well, there can’t be a higher; unless there’s a lower — and those “Good-old boy, hillbilly, redneck, lily-whites” don’t deserve to live there, anyway.
Important corporations in Tompkins County: like Cargill and Cornell, receive tax cuts — while the rural areas receive cuts in services. Having basic services in rural areas, like Sheriff’s patrols, cut entirely; because they’re “too expensive” – is the definition of “unimportant” in Tompkins County’s Ivy-league-corporate planning – and it helps the bottom line – while the County’s rural tax assessments are the closest thing to Prince John since Robin Hood’s time.
Progressive thinking is always based on their own superiority – not the recognition of the worth of other people: and the foundation of their policy making is not having that superiority questioned – ever.
The lie of Biden’s Social Policies is their claim to be the instrument of equitable treatment for all those who are poor, marginalized, and underserved.
Tompkins County’s rural population, like rural communities throughout America, is the poorest, most marginalized, and underserved segment of the population — and is beaten, robbed, and disrespected in every trumpeted policy of its overwhelmingly Progressive government.
When a lie is the basis – like the Emperor’s New Clothes: anyone who claims to see through it is labeled “unworthy.”
Progressives always set themselves above other people – assuming their right to question and judge everyone else on the basis of their own beliefs. This Holier-than-God attitude relies on themselves being unquestionably and unjudgably right.
My investigations show Tompkins County’s braggingly Progressive government to be self-serving, bigoted, and oppressive; and riddled with misconduct and cronyism – but they refuse to disclose or debate anything: The hubris of their pride is only outweighed by their instinct for self-preservation.
Contrary to the American Planning Association’s Policy Guide on Smart Growth’s guideline of “refocusing a larger share of regional growth within central cities, urbanized areas” – Tompkins County planners are destroying the rural town of Lansing, NY by bulldozing it’s woods and meadows; and building thousands of new houses for Cornell’s workers along with affordable housing units for Ithaca’s unwanted poor, criminal, and substance addicted. The City of Ithaca is frequently listed as the best college town in America and is characterized by wood-frame houses and small shops. This artificially maintained “small town feel” city is also one of the most expensive cities in the country to live in – and is surrounded on three sides by the Town of Ithaca’s parks, preserves and many tree lined winding roads with small houses that only the rich can afford.
Lansing’s rural/agricultural community has been fragmented and destroyed by an Ithaca urban sprawl bedroom community “mini-city” — with sewers, water, utilities, and Form Based Codes being added to insure its continued growth.
Tompkins County’s “Best Planning Practices” are based on career longevity and cronyism — and Cornell calls all the shots.