VOLUME 6, NUMBER 12 - AUGUST 25, 2001

The City of Leeds, Alabama
Moves into the Twilight Zone

Not a shot need be fired nor need violence be threatened. Through appointed boards such as "watershed" and "viewshed" committees, regulations imposing severe fines called "mitigation fees" will bring "rural cleansing" that will purge the countryside of its human population and restore it to a wilderness state where other species can live their lives without the fear of humankind. The population centers will bulge with numbered numbers of "human resources" displaced by the "cleansing". Each resource then mills about searching for useful employment. Importation of goods needed to sustain life in the population zone will have been severely curtailed due to the low numerical rating assigned it by the computerized digital economic controls that will have been established. This new system will require each population to become totally self-sufficient, to provide all its own needs, including water, and air. "Plant trees" will become the motto of every population center.

Our story moves to reality as we report on a real life pilot program being set up for testing in Leeds, Alabama. The program is entitled "Leeds 2010 - Vision For The 21st Century." Here imagination and reality have merged into a system that marries computer modeling with city management. The new system is dubbed "Total Community Quality Management".

"The City of Leeds, Alabama volunteered to become the site to test the applicability of Community Ergonomics and IDEF modeling technique to municipal enterprise planning, design and management problems. Funding from the Mayor and City Council of the City of Leeds to the Commercial Development Board of the City and support from the Greater Leeds Chamber of Commerce made the project possible." page 3 (of the project book)

The new pilot program is an experiment in the step beyond "Smart Growth" and "Sustainable Development." In order to understand the program we must first define a couple of terms used in the report: "Community Ergonomics" and "IDEF."

"Community ergonomic practice is performed by a new class of human factors engineers educated in behavioral cybernetic science with supporting skills in mathematics, statistics, planning, design, operations, training for, and evaluation of community environment systems." page 25

"The roles of the community Ergonomic Engineer include 1) social monitoring, 2) transformed social tracking and 3) community environment systems or group tracking, 4) function and process modeling of the municipal enterprise and 5) information engineering." page 27

"Integrated definition (IDEF) methodology address the modeling need of a municipal enterprise.....The architecture is utilized to define how municipalities are integrated and organized and how they are controlled." page 31

The report describes in detail how graphically the five core enterprises will be displayed. A box for each enterprise is drawn on a sheet of paper, the name of the enterprise is written in each box. Above the box is the word control. This refers to the rules and regulations that cause the enterprise to produce the desired product. To the left of the box is the word input, meaning the allowable resources that the enterprise will be able to access. Under the box is written the word mechanisms this is the required apparatus (defined by the government) that allows the enterprise to function. And to the right is the word output. The example below is but one of many contained in the plan book. There is one with the center box designated HOUSEHOLD BENEFITS AND CASH FLOW.

Here we will quote from their text:

"Outputs: The results, outcomes, and value added products are produced by the municipal process and function. The data or objects provided by the functions (transformations of the inputs by the process) the output is what the system produces, the product, and the result of the activity (product model). The output of a municipal enterprise is total community." Page 37 (emphasis added)

The "Ergonomic Professional" will use his/her skills by applying a method call IDEF. The community will be divided into 5 "core enterprises". They are: "households, financial institutions, educational systems, businesses, and municipal governments." The modeling/architecture is graphically presented by placing the name of each enterprise in a box. Above the box controls are listed. The report uses the terms "constraint or enhances", meaning that the system being created will inhibit the spending pattern of the home, or prevent or lessen the profit of the lending institution (bank) etc. or, just the opposite, and in the case of a loan from the bank would deposit money to the household's account at a lower interest rate, (so long as the computer model--program--monitoring the transaction is satisfied) or in the case of the household it might mean the individuals in the home would be able to donate time to an authorized social program and receive remuneration. The money could be used to import a desired item from another population center. Observe how the report illustrates this point:

"The proposed community quality program intervenes in the economy to make certain that its techniques contribute to the attainment of economic productivity and financial goals for individuals, families, government and neighborhood groups. The steps include maintaining a proper efficiency between consumption, private investment, government spending and the export of goods and service." page 18 (emphasis added)

The system being tested: "....establishes active performance standards for citizens, public agencies, educational enterprises, the business sector and financial institutions in meeting life span development needs of the municipality. The approach focuses risk management not on tracking failures but on actively regulating hazards which cause human failures and public reliability breakdowns." page 28

If city government is to establish "performance standards for citizens," there will have to be intrusion in the every day lives of the residents. Observe the following quotes.

"Municipal government is expected to manage the life, health and property relationship of community enterprises and therefore must establish technologies to assume these 21st century responsibilities." page 12

"We are challenged to design physical and social environments, organizational structures to manage such environments and virtual technology to supervise the complexity associated with the task." page 14

"....data base networks permit political managers the capability to observe in near real time the dynamic interactions of the community environment system, perceive and attend to the salient elements, decide within the hour and form policies and actions within the same day. The near future evolution of this capacity will include continuous tracking of households, municipal government activity, financial institution, educational programs and businesses in both economic and ergonomic terms." page 18

"Linking the enterprises of a community to detect each other's movements and to initiate coordinated decisions and actions, which achieve desired performance levels, and prevent unwanted economic variation are basic to the practice. The practice also corrects undesirable social or economic changes. These are the fundamental results to be achieved by the Community Ergonomic Process." page 24

The monitoring of households, businesses, government, and financial institutions is nothing less than a transformation of our current form of government, where we enjoy liberty, to a "new statehood". The report states: "It is a voluntary undertaking on the part of the City of Leeds to design, install, and evaluate a municipal supervision and operating structure for the 'new statehood.'" page 7

Standing in the middle of the nebulous, not knowing where your next step will take you, you may be pondering how did I get here. Well, it all started with a group of local "stakeholders," prominent citizens, full of pride and civic duty. Individuals with these characteristics were approached first. We'll let the report speak for itself:

"In order to carry out the technological and accompany (sic) organizational changes to the Leeds Municipal Enterprise the commitment of the major stakeholders of the core community enterprises was needed. To assist in this effort (sic) Steering Council of Leeds 2010 was formed, and a workshop held to simulate the interactions and decision making structure of the design to be created. The Steering Council is comprised of the heads of the five core community enterprises and the head of the faith institutions enterprise.... The Steering Council helps in building the model, documentation of the model, and obtaining its acceptance and use." pages 4 & 5

At the end of each episode of "The Twilight Zone," Rod Serling would describe the probable end scenario for the fictional characters. Usually the viewer would have already drawn a conclusion. In this case the optimist may say, "we shall have security;" and the pessimist, "at what price?" The realist would reply, "total slavery."

The shackles will not be forged by some invading army. They are being crafted through three main instruments: government schools, licensed government churches that refuse to identify the wolf among the sheep, and the media that has filled the movies and TV with mindless moral garbage. Make no mistake about it, any government that will not protect the inalienable rights of the most innocent and vulnerable among us will not protect your personal property rights. Indeed, it considers you its personal property, another resource to be used to advance its continual growth.

There are many fictional accounts of man's attempt to play God. The most familiar is perhaps Mary W. Shelley's "Frankenstein." We are all very much aware of the tragic outcome in that story, man's attempt to create man results in the creation of a monster. Now we find man attempting to improve upon God's design for society. We would replace God's headship with that of the state. In the process we are creating a monster that could destroy us as the creature in "Frankenstein" destroyed its creator.