Censorship: A Tool For Dominating Citizens And Stonewalling Democratic Process

Silence is not golden when it is used to suppress the voice of the People.

In communist countries, we see censorship used to silence the voice of the people in those counties, allowing tyrannical rule and total control over natural resources.

It’s hard to believe that here in America, and even in our home, Siskiyou County California, that the tools of communism are being employed.

“He who controls the language controls the masses”

–Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

Citizens of Siskiyou County are once again being sold a ‘bill of goods’, in the same manner that KRRC came into the County with their team of hired ‘consultants’ selling the People of Siskiyou County on the notion of a mythical salmon migration up the Klamath River. And how a rafting industry would supposedly ease the pain of losing our most valuable resource, water, not to mention the numerous other benefits, like clean energy provided by the Klamath River Dams and the 45-billion gallons of fresh water in the lakes behind them.

Nevertheless, it seems our County fell prey to those salesmen and arguably didn’t fight the best fight they could have. 

Now, it seems our County Supervisors are repeating the same steps and paying $1-million to a consulting firm from outside our area called ‘Mintier Harnish‘, for their arguable left-wing, one shoe fits all General Plan, which will ‘guide’ our futures and the uses of our land and resources. 

Who has our County Board of Supervisors invited into our County and our lives?

For starters, Mintier Harnish, a Sacramento California based company is a known participant with the Planning and Conservation League, a non-profit left-wing organization that promotes values totally inconsistent with those of the citizens of Siskiyou County. 
Mr. Harnish (a lawyer) is a participant and supporter of the Planning & Conservation League (a stealth left-wing action group). 
See the speakers and speaking topicsand also look atpage 54 of this PDF regarding that organization of left wing organizers/supporters: 

https://www.pcl.org/media/prior-2/2011-Symposium-Program.pdf

In fact, among their many questionable views on structuring California, they are pro-dam removal:

The Planning and Conservation League, which hails also hails from Sacramento, CA, seems to have a questionable history of corruption according to Consumer Watchdog:

Excerpt below from this article: 

“When FTCR and other consumer organizations placed Proposition 9 on the November, 1998, ballot in California, the state’s three private utility companies — Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric — panicked.

Proposition 9‘s target was a bill, passed by the California Legislature in 1996, which forced residential and small business to pay a $28 billion tax to bail out the three utilities’ mistaken investments in nuclear and other environmentally destructive power plants. By rewriting the bail-out, Prop.9 would have lowered electricity rates by up to 37%. (Click here for more info on Prop.9 and utility rates.).

The utility companies, desperate to defeat Prop.9, knew they couldn’t argue their own case before the voters. So they paid a variety of organizations to front for them and called in favors from other groups they had supported lavishly (with ratepayer dollars) in the past.

A key focus of the utilities was the environmental movement, now composed of a vast spectrum of non-profit organizations. In addition to recognized and highly respected groups like the Sierra Club, which supported Prop. 9, other organizations formed in recent years are far more amenable to compromise and even collaboration with industrial polluters, among them the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). The latter two groups joined with utility executives to urge voters to defeat Prop.9.

But the dirtiest work of all was undertaken by a relatively unknown California environmental group known as the “Planning and Conservation League” (PCL) based in Sacramento, California.

PCL’s Board of Directors held a meeting in June, 1998, purporting to decide whether to support or oppose Prop. 9. But, apparently unbeknownst to its own board members, the organization’s director, Gerald Meral, had already made a deal with the utility companies.

The group received $30,000 from Edison, $30,000 from Pacific Gas & Electric, $10,000 from San Diego Gas & Electric, as well as $265,000 from Thermo Ecotek Corporation, a power company, according to state campaign reports.”Today, Tuesday August 29th, I wanted the Siskiyou Board of Supervisors to hear my comments on the use of $1-M in our tax dollars for a “comprehensive General Plan Update, Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and associated Zoning Code Amendments.”

So I got on the ZOOM telephonic call-in for the Board of Supervisors Meeting on the General Plan at 8:30, and again at 9:00 AM sharp.  

I dialed-in, was acknowledged by the automated system as being in the ‘waiting room’. When the Board started taking comments, starting with local resident in Yreka, I ‘raised my hand’ by dialing *9. The automated system report that my hand was up. 

Nevertheless, the Chair and the Board didn’t bother to ask if there were any callers waiting to speak. And the person manning the phone system didn’t report that callers were waiting to speak.  As a result, my comments were effectively censored, and I have to wonder who else (how many others) was essentially censored by this issue.

With the formerly used visual ZOOM meeting, everyone could see who was in the waiting room, their names and if their hand was up. The County, for some reason didn’t like that, and discontinued the visual ZOOM meeting. 

The telephonic system is prime for mischief and censorship since there is no transparency; only the person manning the phone system can see who and how many citizens are waiting to comment.

The County must be mandated to resume the use of visual ZOOM, so we can all see whose waiting to comment and their names, and we have the transparency we are due as Citizens and Taxpayers in Siskiyou County.

• Christopher Webb Bayuk
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