The Carolina Journal article posted below is the latest in a series exposing a scandalous scam devised by a crook in the NC Department of Commerce who was appointed by Governor Beverly Perdue.  Henry C. McKoy, in league with crooked officials in four NC counties nearly got away with a money laundering scheme to divert federal grant money intended to help low- and moderate-income families.  The money would be diverted through the four counties to a bogus non-profit created and run by McKoy.  All these parties would keep their respective "cuts" of the money.  Next the remaining funds would go to the NC Council of Governments.

Finally the money would go to a software company, SAS, which is under contract to the same Council of Governments to develop software to be foisted upon local governments in NC.  The tale of money laundering and unscrupulous diversion of federal funds is jaw-dropping and absolutely fascinating.

But as you, good reader, justly denounce the public officials who would participate in this nefarious scheme and wonder at the widespread corruption in the Perdue regime, do not overlook the role of the Council of Governments.  This organization is an Agenda 21 scheme which is trying very, very hard to rope-in our county and municipal governments in NC.  This organization pushes "green" agendas and other Agenda 21 initiatives and policies on our participating local governments.  This organization claims to "help" our local governments, and they collect dues from our local governments to fund their schemes.  So, dear fellow taxpayer, you and I are helping to fund our own destruction!  And audits of this organization's budgets have raised questions and issues.

These regional Council of Governments seek ultimately to become quasi-governmental bodies which would begin to transfer decision-making authority from their local government members.  As these Regional "councils" would become more powerful, they would seek to transform into the same kind of regional commissions as have been implemented on the West Coast.  Once they are chartered as regional commissions, their decisions would begin to supercede the authority of individual towns and counties, just as has been implemented in other states across the nation.

Suddenly, the citizens of Moore County and its towns would find that these regional commissions have gained powers over them, but they have no opportunity to elect or recall the members.  This is one major goal of Agenda 21 -- to insulate the governing bodies from the electorate in order to streamline the implementation of favored programs and policies.

Our Moore County government and Towns such as Carthage, Southern Pines, and Robbins, for example, are members of the Triangle J Council of Governments.  I urge others throughout the community to pressure your town and county representatives to get as far away from Triangle J as possible and as quickly as possible.

And, let's elect a new governor and state administration this November which will clean up the halls of government in Raleigh.


Bill Cochrane
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Documents obtained by Carolina Journal show that a plan recently scrapped by the North Carolina Department of Commerce included a provision to pay Cary-based software developer SAS $1.5 million in federal funds meant to assist low- and moderate-income families.

Assistant Secretary for Community Development Henry C. McKoy, who oversees the annual allocation of approximately $40 million in federal Community Development Block Grants, created the plan. Each dollar would have traveled through three other entities, including a nonprofit organization McKoy created, before reaching SAS, documents show.

According to the agreement, four counties selected by McKoy — Orange, Yadkin, Buncombe, and Edgecombe — each would have received $600,000.  Each county would keep $60,000 for participating in the scheme and transfer the remaining $540,000 to the North Carolina Sustainability Center, a nonprofit that McKoy chaired last year.

Under the plan, the NCSC would retain $165,000 from each county — $660,000 overall — and provide some planning services for each county.  The NCSC then would transfer the remaining $375,000 from each county, or a total of $1.5 million, to the North Carolina Association of Regional Councils of Government, also known as COGs.

Finally, COGs would transfer the entire $1.5 million to SAS.

SAS has been working on a software project called NCREPS — North Carolina Regional Economic Prosperity Solution — that would be used by local governments.  The company says it has put $4 million into developing the software but needs additional funds to finish the project.  REPS, in fact, was developed for COGs, and SAS has an agreement with that organization, Carolina Journal has learned.

Sometime last year, McKoy learned of the project and asked to be involved.  He also offered to help pay for it.  McKoy’s plan to funnel money through the four counties to NCSC was outlined in a Jan. 6 memo that he sent to Commerce Secretary Keith Crisco seeking approval.  The money was to come from surplus federal Community Development Block Grant funds from the years 2002, 2004, and 2007.

The plan engineered by McKoy and NCSC President Katie Kross was being finalized as late as March 30, but it was scrapped after CJ Online’s initial report, which appeared April 5.  The SAS connection was not mentioned in the original set of documents CJ obtained for that initial report.

Crisco asked McKoy to resign the day the initial CJ story appeared, according to The News & Observer, but McKoy refused and remains on the job.  Repeated requests to interview McKoy or others in his division about the plan were turned down by Tim Crowley, assistant secretary for communications and external affairs at Commerce.

In a May 21 email, Crowley said:  “We are going to be unable to accommodate your request for an interview.  I can say this.  The economic well-being of our local communities is critical to North Carolina, and we will continue to work with our many stakeholders on finding ways to help them with their efforts.  As I have mentioned previously, the proposal related to the N.C. Sustainability  Center was not approved, no contract was signed, and no money was ever disbursed.”

Even though McKoy remains on the payroll at Commerce, his position may not be active beyond June 30.  The budget adjustment for the next fiscal year, approved May 24 by the House Subcommittee on Natural and Economic Resources, seeks to eliminate his assistant secretary’s position and its $129,288 annual compensation.  The House budget plan would move the employees and staff in McKoy’s division to the supervision of the assistant secretary for energy in Commerce.

At press time, the budget was expected to be approved by the full House.

McKoy is a relative newcomer to public administration.  Gov. Bev Perdue appointed him to the Commerce position in August 2010. He reports to Crisco, and oversees more than 70 employees and a budget of approximately $50 million.

NCSC started in 1998 as an organization named Saving Our State.  It was renamed Sustainable North Carolina in 2004.

An April 2010 report in Philanthropy Journal stated that Sustainable North Carolina “is suspending operations as it re-evaluates its future.”  McKoy declined to comment for that story.

On Aug. 2, 2010, the same day Perdue announced McKoy’s appointment to the Commerce position, McKoy filed a name change form with the N.C. Secretary of State’s Office, renaming the organization the North Carolina Sustainability Center.  McKoy signed the form with the title “Chair, Board of Directors.”  The address of NCSC’s current headquarters is a mailbox at a UPS Store in north Raleigh.

NCSC’s latest Internal Revenue Service Form 990, Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax, indicates the center was not very active.  It received $7,638 in grants and had $8,441 in expenses for the calendar year 2010.  The form lists McKoy as the center’s chairman.  It was dated July 8, 2011, and signed by McKoy as chairman.

CJ Online reported April 12 that the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation authorized a grant of $150,000 to NCSC on May 13, 2011. “Libby Smith [a senior adviser to McKoy at Commerce] was listed as the president and contact person.  Henry McKoy was involved in the pre-grant discussions with the ZSR about the grant request,” foundation executive director Leslie Winner told CJ.

The 2009 Form 990 shows $51,834 in revenue and $89,743 in expenses for that year.  The form, prepared by executive director Cyndy Yu-Robinson, also lists McKoy as one of 11 board members.

The 2008 Form 990, prepared by president Katherine Ansardi, shows total revenue of $225,816 and expenses of $213,297, and also lists McKoy as one of 14 board members.


Don Carrington, Executive Editor, Carolina Journal

Victories are piling up in our battle against the purveyors and advocates of the Agenda for the 21st Century (a.k.a. "Agenda 21").  Not only are counties and municipalities bailing out of I.C.L.E.I. in droves, but the Governor of Iowa just issued a proclamation against Agenda 21 for his state!  And Governor Terry Branstad is Chairman of the Council of Governors.


Bill Cochrane

The Alabama State Legislature has passed Senate Bill 477 unanimously in both houses to ban the Agenda for the 21st Century (a.k.a. Agenda 21).  The bill specifically states:

"Alabama and all political subdivisions may not adopt or implement policy recommendations that deliberately or inadvertently infringe or restrict private property rights without due process, as may be required by policy recommendations originating in or traceable to Agenda 21."

This is great news, and the NC Legislature will be urged to pass a similar bill modeled after this important legislation.

Read more about it here.

But NC's Senator Kay Hagan is not at all on board.  She still denies the truth about this sinister set of strategies and initiatives -- and she defends it as a "good thing".  Read her ridiculous response letter below:

June 7, 2012

Dear Friend,

Thank you for contacting me regarding Agenda 21.  I appreciate hearing your thoughts on this important issue.

Drafted in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Brazil, Agenda 21 is a non-binding plan to encourage nations to use fewer resources and conserve open land.

I do not agree with claims that Agenda 21 is a conspiracy to deny property rights and send people toward cities.  Agenda 21 is not legally binding and only offers policy guidance to governments that want to promote sustainable development and reduce pollution.

While there is no legislation pending before the Senate related to Agenda 21, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind should any such legislation be considered in the future.

Again, thank you for contacting my office.   It is truly an honor to represent North Carolina in the United States Senate, and I hope you will not hesitate to contact me in the future should you have any further questions or concerns.  If you would like to stay informed on my work in the Senate, you can sign up for my e-newsletter, follow me on Twitter at @SenatorHagan, or visit my Facebook page.

Sincerely,

Kay R. Hagan

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Fie on her!  She has been a terrible excuse for a U.S. senator since her unfortunate election on Obama's coattails in 2008.  Her ideology is so far to the Left, of course she is in favor of this socialist/communist ploy to corrupt and transform our government structures.  But people are waking up.  She cannot pull the wool over our eyes any longer.  She's wrong, she's bad for NC and the nation.  She's got to go in 2014!


Bill Cochrane

In 1517 Martin Luther set off the Protestant revolution against the Catholic Church that led to the spread of the then-new movement as a response to the corruption of the Church.  It took time for it to establish itself as an alternative and was greatly aided by the invention of printing and spread of literacy, but mostly because ordinary people had grown weary of the Church’s extravagance, poor governance, and resistance to change.

The selling of worthless “indulgences” as a means to wipe one’s sins clean was the final straw.

Environmentalism has become a modern religion and its “cap and trade” scheme to sell worthless permission slips for the emission of so-called “greenhouse gases” — based on United Nations Kyoto Protocol calling for a reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere — is being rejected by many nations .

As it has become common knowledge that CO2 is vital to all life on Earth and plays no role in affecting the climate, ordinary people have concluded that global warming in particular and environmentalism in general is a giant fraud.

No one argues that nations should not attend to the basic maintenance of clean air and water.  That view predates the environmental movement, but the stranglehold on nation’s economies and the ability to engage in any form of commerce has reached a breaking point.  The fact is, the U.S. has made great strides over the years and there are limits to how “clean” the air and water can or even should be.  The EPA wanted to regulate “dust” at one point until Congress put an end to that insanity.

The lies required to maintain environmentalism and its vast matrix of laws and regulations are being publicly rejected and a recent example is a letter sent to NASA administrator by fifty present and former astronauts, scientists, and engineers who work for NASA is a seminal moment, not unlike Martin Luther’s 95 theses nailed to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg.

The NASA employee’s letter demanded that its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) “refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites.  We believe that the claims of NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data.”

It should be noted that the global warming hoax can be dated to testimony by James Hansen before Congress in 1988 and he is still the GISS administrator!  His apocalyptic predictions helped launch a U.S. response currently seen in the Environmental Protection Agency power-grab, based on the false CO2 claims, that will eliminate one fifth of the coal-fired plants providing electricity to a large swath of the nation and likely end the building of new comparable facilities.

On April 9th, Rasmussen Reports, a polling organization, release the results of a poll that found that 52% of likely voters “think there’s a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection, though 31% disagreed".  Rasmussen stated that “support for investing in fossil fuels like oil and gas is also at a new high amidst near-record gas prices and the on-going development of the Keystone XL pipeline which President Obama blocked for environmental reasons".

The following day, April 10th, Rasmussen released results of another poll that found that 44% of likely voters “believe, generally speaking, that the EPA’s regulations and actions hurt the economy. Just 17% disagree".

On February 21st, Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com, was published in The Washington Times in an opinion about EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s testimony before Congress writing that:  “Over the past three years, the Obama EPA has conducted a scorched earth campaign against fossil fuel producers and users, especially the coal-fired power industry, with multi-billion-dollar rules that provide no meaningful environmental or public health benefits.”

The environmental revolution — a Communist agenda — is being resisted piece by piece by scientists and others who no longer will submit to its utterly false “science” and its UN-inspired Agenda 21 plans to impose control over all aspects of life on planet Earth.  A June Rio conference will largely abandon the fear-mongering of global warming in favor of “sustainability”, a matrix of controls that will enslave the world’s population with the worst totalitarian precepts since the rise of Communism and Nazism in the last century.

Agenda 21 has been at work in America for decades at this point and few have any idea what it represents.  It is destroying property rights in America and that’s just for starters.

On Earth Day — April 22nd — the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, the dictator who imposed Communism on Russia in 1917, the various elements of the environmental movement will flood the world with propaganda.  The connection between these two events should not be ignored.

Environmentalism should be soundly rejected and the emerging movement to overthrow it should redouble its efforts.


Alan Caruba

You may think this story is some kind of early April Fools prank, but it isn't.  This is factually true and verifiable through documents, videos and websites. The state of Michigan seriously intends to unleash a mass murder spree of pigs of the wrong color beginning April 1.

The food and sustainability police are trying to break loose across the country to impose strict controls on what the Big Government bureaucrats consider "unsustainable" or outside of their defined regulatory permissions -- tailored, of course, to benefit their best crony allies and contributors.

This example is the latest assault on the family farm, independent small farmers, food choice, and unwanted competition.  You can read it and chalk it all up to a dispute over the freedom to raise alternative species (which seems to be alright if you are a major agricultural conglomerate who decides to introduce new genetically-engineered species).  But if you are a small independent farmer who decides to raise "heritage" species and to introduce unwanted competition to the conglomerates who partner with the regulators, then not so fast!  You're a felon!

Those who have learned to connect the dots will recognize this as part of a much bigger picture.  But even those who simply treasure freedom, limited government, personal choice, or perhaps, preservation of heritage species of traditional farm crops and livestock should be outraged by this regulatory overreach.  If it's not stopped now, this lust for power and control will only spread.

Read the accounts on Natural News and The Blaze.


Bill Cochrane

Here's the latest update on the Sackett's case.  The Supreme Court has ruled that they can challenge the EPA in court, and the Supreme Court sent a message to Congress that there are serious overreach issues with the Clean Water Act which is being abused by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Hooray for common sense!  Unfortunately, the ruling still leaves these unfortunate victims facing more legal costs and stressful battles against an out of control regulatory agency.  However, it is + one for the good guys and - one for the bad guys.

Read about it:  Supreme Court Sides with Idaho Property Owners Over the EPA


Bill Cochrane