Let's propose a new paradigm, one that we can all live with: Let everyone learn to live within their own means, without expecting to encroach on the rights or property of others...
Bluebells, the namesake for your favorite ice cream, still survive in the rolling hills of Grimes County, but the scars of civilization are just beginning...
Stop the
Madness!
Houston: A
half-Century of unchecked expansion
Citizens of
Grimes and nearby counties are once again threatened by wild government schemes
and unconstitutional forfeiture of their property. FOUR major projects are
planned to accommodate the needs of the Houston area while our rights and
convenience are thrown under the bus, and in the exchange, toll roads will
replace our Farm to Market roads, while a monumentally expensive and UNPROVEN
high-speed rail system and two electricity transmission lines destroy our
environment in order to serve others.
This recurring nightmare began decades ago, when reasonable
citizens gradually abandoned the “concrete jungle” in Houston and sought safety,
serenity and a better life. Then just a hungry little gator, Houston, Texas was
already the seventh largest city in the United States, striving to be the
energy capital of the world. Seeing the trend of a perpetual attack on our
quality of life, my family and many others relocated to Grimes County, which
was a comfortable distance from the relentless urban sprawl of Harris County. Anointed by LBJ as “Space City,” the Houston
Metropolitan Area continued to expand like a heartless lava flow all the way to
the extremes of Harris County and beyond. We fled, and found temporary refuge, but we knew
this day would probably come.
Now the
fourth largest city in the United States, Houston has blossomed into the Great
Shop of Horrors, an insatiable overgrown parasite who, like the cute little
plant in The Little Shop of Horrors, one day looked down on its keeper and
demanded, “FEED ME!”
A stomach
with no conscience, it lives to serve itself, and being so powerful, it does
not have to explain itself. We must feed it, or it will make us sorry. The
Houston Shop of Horrors must have water. Lots of it. It must have energy. Lots
of it. It must have convenience… as much as it can make for itself. And like
many rotten and untrainable pets, it MUST have a disgusting potty-box to
deposit all of its excrement. It looks to anyone and everyone outside of its
perimeters to fill these constant needs.
Unfortunately,
Harris County cannot support its unmanageable shop of horrors. It looks to its weaker
neighbors to supply the oceans of water, the megawatts of energy, the miles of
convenient access, and the vast garbage dumps, whatever necessary for its
survival. In blind revenge it routinely
takes what it wants from those who wisely fled from its clutches. And it will
continue to do so until the cows can no longer come home. The high speed rails,
the toll roads, and the utility lines that feed this selfish monster will
continue to butcher and choke the surrounding countryside until the cows will
be totally landlocked; their owner’s farms invaded, confiscated, divided and
violated to serve the “greater good”; the “Greater Houston Metropolitan Area,”
that is. It is time to stop the madness.
It is time for the people, and
especially the governments of the various counties who neighbor with this
conscienceless leviathan to stand up and unite and work together to limit the
damage Houston and its champions would do to us in the name of “progress.”
More than
land at stake.
Grimes
County is one of the last jewels of Texas country life, the veritable “Cradle
of Texas Independence,” land purchased with blood shed at the Alamo, tragically
nestled under the treacherous shadow of an expansive monster that knows no
limits to its mindless appetite. It is time to fight this enemy of OUR greater
good with everything we have got, and stop the tide of ugly, inefficient
suburban sprawl. Houston plans to cut up Grimes County like a cheap side of
beef. It does not know or care the price of the land, the irreversible damage
to it, the value of our lifestyle, or the fate of our irreplaceable heritage
which it would slice and pave.
Houston does not know it, but it
needs us just as we are. We are an enclave of beauty and serenity, and we have
inadvertently become the stewards of its forgotten soul, the keepers of the
flame that has inspired the whole world since the Battle of San Jacinto, wisely
masterminded by none other than Sam Houston.
.bmp)
I grew up in
Houston. But I never felt and loved and relived its history until I was able to
get far from it and experience the land as the pioneers did here in Grimes
County. When my family came here, we were enthralled by this wonderful time-capsule
that had saved the buildings, the fences, the roads and bridges, and the very
lands as the early Texians had seen and worked them. It shaped my character, my
life, and my art. You might label me a poet or an idealist, but few souls like
me are ever spawned between the dark, dangerous fast-lanes of the city. My imagination took root and prospered as I discovered pristine woodlands and breathtaking vistas in the local landscape. So near to Houston, and yet a world away. I feel
so fortunate to have escaped the house of horrors.
A
winnable strategy
We all remember
past struggles to kill other impositions by outside governments. We have won
some and lost some. But some of us learned the game when we successfully fought
Governor Rick Perry’s Spanish Imposition, the grandiose “Trans- Texas
Corridor,” and will fight this battle as well. And we will do it for future
Texans whom we know will need and cherish the inspiration and serenity of the
Texas heartland as we do. We will do it
for the wildlife, once nearly exterminated, now flourishing. Yes, we will do it
for the cows and their owners. And we will do it for those that went before, buried
and resting in this soil, who faithfully farmed parched cotton land, built
fieldstone villages and churches, and wrote the Texas Declaration of
Independence and those famous blues
songs from the Brazos Valley… In the
process, they wrote their fierce spirit into our hearts.
Joining
hands with the American Stewards of
Liberty Alliance, an organization experienced in these battles for land
owner’s rights, we can beat the Houston overreach with public awareness and
Texas Law… if we can afford the lawyers. Every
community must organize to create a formidable gamut of legal red-tape,
insurmountable for mercenary bureaucrats, who are required BY LAW to
COOPERATE WITH EVERY LOCAL INTETY. At every turn we will shame them. This
is one way we derailed the Trans Texas Corridor.
Sam Houston,
the namesake of the City, would be ashamed of its present reality, so
narcissistic and insulting to its neighbors. He once served as our President
and lived here in our neighborhood, just across the river, in the frontier capital
of the Republic of Texas. Houston was baptized in a creek over in Washington
County, and that faith he attained gave him the courage to stand against the enormous
tide of Secession and the subsequent War Between the States. He taught us
something about fighting for right, the value of this land, its worthiness for
personal sacrifice. He won Texas for all
of us, against all odds, by a military miracle, and more accurately the Grace
of God. We will fight these urban Huns
for him too.
You may
never before have had a chance to live and act and feel like a real, old-time
TEXIAN. Here is your opportunity. In fact, this struggle is exactly
like the Texas Revolution, where a powerful and ruthless government used and
abused the citizens at its fringe to enjoy unjust benefits at their expense.
Houston is
the Mexican Army, looting and taking at will, granting no quarter, intolerant
and all-powerful. But this will be no “Runaway Scrape.”
Please get
involved and help turn the tide of injustice and the institutional violation of
land owner’s rights, and join the fight for a virgin wilderness, inhabited by
wild cats and eagles, and people who foster them. Join this fight or see our
Texas heartland finally and forever rolled over like a stinking Chicago parking
lot. Join the fight or live with the shame that you did nothing in a time of
distress while good men struggled for our way of life.
Look at any
map of Texas. It has already been carved and bastardized enough. Help us stop
this madness, this relentless expansion with no end, which has no inspiration
but greed and convenience. Texas is being changed forever by raptors who would
trade our quality of life for speed, profit, and no small amount of personal
gain. Remember the quaint old rice town Katy? Remember Alvin, once the garden
land of Texas? Remember the stately Imperial Sugar plant Sugarland! Remember the
stately trade oaks at the crossroads of Tomball! Remember the virgin forests of
Conroe? Rural serenity is long gone at those hapless doormats for Houston. We are next.
ENOUGH ALREADY! HOUSTON IS BIG ENOUGH. Really! We must band together and force
the great house of horrors in Harris County to accommodate itself; to build its
own infrastructure in order to feed and sustain itself; to supply its own
water, its own garbage dumps, its own energy, and to limit its impositions on
its neighbors. Houston’s appetite will
always be insatiable as long as others provide the sacrifice at its alter.
Besides, we
are now full of people and opportunities ourselves. We all chose our beds, and now we must sleep in them. That would be true social justice. Maybe
then, if Houston has to curtail its own rapaciousness, if it is raping itself,
it will begin to check its own expansion. Only then will it no longer require
so much from those on its fringe, those of us wise enough not to participate in,
or inhabit its hopeless system.
Remember the
ALAMO!
CONTACT your
elected representatives! Many assume that nobody is paying attention and have
their heads in the sand… and are waiting for the political winds to blow… So
BLOW! Here are your bullets:
Specifically,
we are fighting:
1) The Proposed Dallas to Houston High Speed Rail- This will be a political battle. We
call it properly JAPANESE High Speed
Rail, as they will be the only folks who will get any advantages out of
building this… (no benefits to us, only gutting of property values, community sacrifice
and transportation inconvenience) The California High Speed Rail system just
went bankrupt… was 68 BILLION underfunded, will have to be taken over by the Feds…
Contact Kevin Brady , 301 Cannon Building,
Washington D. C. 20515!
2) The Proposed “Brazos Valley Connection” 345 KV Transmission Line which is to stretch from Harris County through Waller County to Grimes County... Both of these
lines offer only sacrifice, inconvenience and decimation of property values.
3) The Proposed “Cross Texas Transmission” 345 KV Line which will run from Grimes County up to Limestone County… transecting Madison, Brazos, Robertson, Leon and Freestone Counties. These two transmission lines are our biggest
hurdles, both will require a legal battle costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Landowners must dig deep in their pockets or this may not be stalled in time.
4) The State Highway 249 Toll Road (from FM 1774 to SH105,
local authorities have withdrawn their support of this incursion). Once again,
no benefits locally, only decimated property values, sacrifice and inconvenience.
“Toll Roads are the new [Public] Utility,” said OUR FORMER State Rep., Lois Kolkhorst with regret in March of
2013 (now elected State Senator in another district) and publicly stated that
this 249 Toll Road was a “boondoggle”
and that she was against toll roads and anticipated that surpluses in future
budgets, “rainy day funds” etc. could take up the slack in building our rural
highways.
Learn more about
all of this at www.communityupdate.org
If you want
to get involved, contact: grimescitizenadvisorygroup@ gmail.com
If you want
to get the play-by-play, then “FRIEND” GCAG on Facebook; SEARCH FOR GRIMES CITIZEN ADVISORY GROUP.
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