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Health & Fitness

CARPETBAGGERS RIDING ON TROJAN HORSES

In the disastrous aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, Long Beach and Long Beachers were grateful to have received aid and assistance from outside donors:  churches, Scouts, charitable organizations, relief services and state-run agencies.  There were also private, not-for-profit organizations on hand.  Most did their job and left as the crisis abated and normalcy generally returned.  Some have stayed around. Why?

The Long Island Progressive Coalition, New York Communities for Change and Move-On have not gone home.  These groups remain.  For what purpose?  I cannot help but to believe the services they offer to post-Sandy Long Beach is pretext to promote broader agenda of their sponsoring organizations and to gather data to broaden their reach.

The Long Island Progressive Coalition, a Massapequa-based not-for-profit, is present in Long Beach through a subsidiary called “Power-Up” and Move-On, a national organization, is active in walking petitions for the promotion of boardwalk murals.  Power-Up asks to review people’s homes to check for energy-efficiency measures to save on utility costs.  While this activity appears benign (although somewhat duplicative of what utility companies and licensed engineers offer) their agenda may be more complex.  What could Power-Up do with the data assembled if the State should require compliance standards to limit the use of energy to private consumers, or for what might real property buyers use the data if checking on the energy-efficiency of a house they consider to buy?  Certainly would not be the first time that personal data is misused. And what does Move-On need so much personal data for their petition drives merely to promote murals?  Petitioning is encouraged on the Move-On web-site as a means of making presence felt in a local jurisdiction and to assemble personal data.  State-wide New York Communities for Change, with its main office in Brooklyn and a Long Island chapter, is the re-incarnation of the previously-disgraced ACORN.  NYCC comes with a full baggage of agenda that passes well beyond helping service and onto reshaping local communities in their image and likeness.

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The broader agenda of Long island Progressive Coalition, New York Communities for Change and Move-On includes lesbian-gay-bi-sexual and transgender advocacy, so-called “affordable housing”, accessible health care, increased taxation on the wealthy, stringent environmental laws, so-called “sustainable growth” , and have included dedication to national issues like the anti-war movement and gun-control. All of these social and political goals are worthy, in degree.  However, the degree of control advocated, and the degree of state power tolerated and even encouraged, by these groups is where I part company and where I urge others to carefully consider.  Furthermore, these groups are decidedly partisan, with a strong favor for liberal Democrats, an overt support for the Working Families Party (of which Long Beach City Councilman Anthony Eramo has been an officer) and an unveiled contempt for the Republican Party in all its manifestations. 

Where does this leave you, politically?

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The wide agenda of Long Island Progressive Coalition, New York Communities for Change and Move-On bears little relationship to their specific presence in Long Beach and little to the general agenda of Long Beach.  Long Beachers can disagree in good faith on the relative merits of the wider LIPC, NYCC and Move-On agenda, but most would agree that matters of  local concern should be governed by the actions of locally-elected leaders with the input of local residents.

Carpet-baggers?  Trojan horses?  Carefully vet outside groups working Long Beach to understand that which they promote to be sure your efforts, time and money is not co-opted to support an agenda that might, arguably, be not yours.  Don’t let yourself become “a useful idiot to the apparatchik.”  Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth or you might get bitten.





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