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Posted on 07/23/2026 8:37:16 AM PDT by spintreebob
THOMASVILLE, Ga. — As Earl Williams drove through a historic Black neighborhood, Dewey City, in his hometown, he hardly recognized what he saw.
Homes that once belonged to friends, family, and neighbors had siding covered in mold. Some were boarded up. Others had holes in their roofs.
Black churches once used Oquina Creek, which runs along the neighborhood’s border, to baptize congregants. Today, fecal bacteria and other contaminants have made the water unsafe due to an aging wastewater system.
“Sometimes you get the feeling like you’re in a Third World country,” Williams said. After three decades in Washington, D.C., he returned FOUR YEARS AGO with a mission to revitalize communities such as Dewey City, which he said are “part of what makes Thomasville, Thomasville.”
A $19.8 million Community Change Grant from the EPA was supposed to shift the tides of the neighborhood Williams grew up in.
The city and the Thomasville Community Development Corp., where Williams formerly served as community development director, applied for the grant in 2024.
It was part of a $2 billion effort initiated under the Biden administration to help disadvantaged communities address environmental health risks and create clean energy and climate resiliency projects.
But three months after winning the grant, Thomasville became one of 80 U.S. communities — from Hawaii to Alabama to Massachusetts — to lose funding as priorities shifted in Donald Trump’s second presidency.
On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” It stated that the Biden administration “forced illegal and immoral discrimination” through diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
(Excerpt) Read more at mail.google.com ...
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This culture of expecting FREE MONEY from Washington to solve our local problems does not work. FREE MONEY from Washington only exists because Washington can print money and neither Thomasville nor GA can print money.
Williams was in Washington DC for 3 decades. His time would have been better spent in Thomasville preventing the problem rather than in DC far removed from real problems.
Clean water, clean environment - definately a white, euro-centric thing. DEI should have no problem with this.
Only the left pretend journ-O-listers can link environmental health and DEI. Let us remember that any association between DEI and real science is akin to the relation between ‘Biden the Ignorant’ and integral calculus.
Just hire some qualified people and the problem is solved.
“Sometimes you get the feeling like you’re in a Third World country.”
Yep. That’s where the most reliable democrat voters come from.
Good post. You nailed it.
It’s perfectly emblematic of wanting “free” money from far-away Washington to solve your local problems. That attitude is deeply embedded across the land.
Plus, the “climate resiliency” part of the grant is nothing but staggering BS that produces nothing of any value for anybody. It’s a catchall term that sounds better than “fraud.”
Surprised it wasn’t called a “White Supremacy” thing - clean water, safe communities, high levels of trust, low crime.
Like the Smithsonian declared in their “toolkit:: “politeness, objectivity, and hard work are to linked to ‘white supremacy culture and dominance.’”
How about cleaning up your own community instead of expecting the rest of us, i.e., The Government, to do it for you? We have community clean up days in my community, why don’t you do same.
“”””Homes that once belonged to friends, family, and neighbors had siding covered in mold””””
My siding had mold on it. I borrowed a power washer from my neighbor and washed it. Cost me nothing but a little time. Why is it my responsibility to pay taxes to wash some lazy persons siding?
Because racism, that's why!
“Sometimes you get the feeling like you’re in a Third World country,” Williams said
Wow, nothin’ gets past this guy.
Why is the Smithsonian weighing in on that? I thought they were a museum.
Did they hire some whack job cat ladies? Because it sounds like they hired some whack job cat ladies
in my neck ‘o the woods taxpayers vote for bond issues to finance new and/or upgraded wastewater and potable water systems, and then the utility subscribers fees pay for the paying the bonds back, along with all other expenses of those systems ... see how that works, Thomasville? ... why don’t ya’ll come out and visit us and see how all of that works in action, and then ya’ll will know how to do that too!
maybe DEI mold is much harder to powerwash than regular, non-racist mold ...
“ But three months after winning the grant…”
So, it appears that they hired somebody to write the grant, but no one to implement it. If they had their stuff together, they would have had shovels in the ground within the first week.
“Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.”
It takes a stretch for anyone to think the above meant ending A $19.8 million Community Change Grant from the EPA. So my question is what happened to the money?
And was it laziness that lead to “...made the water unsafe due to an aging wastewater system.” ?
The scope of the grant was certainly too wide but using the grant funds to address infrastructure failures that pose
serious health risks is certainly legit. That might also include removing interior mold infestation though not dirty siding.
“””maybe DEI mold is much harder to powerwash than regular, non-racist mold ...”””
That must be it. Sorry I don’t qualify for DEI so I not be smartest.
It was part of a $2 billion [vote-buying imo] effort initiated under the Biden administration to help disadvantaged communities address environmental health risks and create clean energy and climate resiliency projects.
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
First, SHOW ME the constitutionally required, to-the-penny receipts that prove that this unconstitutional, 16th (direct taxes) and 17th Amendment-facilitated federal funding was at least spent for the reasons that the Biden Administration had claimed.
Article I, Section 9, Clause 7: No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time [emphasis added].
Next, note that the Biden Administration funding for this effort, actually a state power issue, would never have passed the Madison Test for constitutionally justifiable federal spending imo.
Regarding the Madison Test, note that the 14th Congress in the time of President James Madison (4th pres.), Madison generally regarded as the father of the Constitution, had found some EXISTING tax revenues and got all happy about spending it. So Congress drafted the Bonus Bill of 1817 to use the taxpayer dollars to improve military readiness and commerce by authorizing the construction of roads and canals intended to facilitate moving troops and manufactured goods. But Congress had based the bill solely on the General Welfare Clause (GWC) which turned out to be a BIG mistake.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States [emphasis added]; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
More specifically, while Madison AGREED with Congress that the bill would improve transportation, he diplomatically clarified in his veto explanation that while the GWC authorizes Congress to tax and spend, he reminded Congress that the Constitution's drafters, Madison himself a major player, had intended for the clauses that followed it in Section 8 to limit what Congress could spend tax dollars for, no mention of roads and canals for Congress's purpose for the Bonus Bill. Madison also noted that the bonus bill didn't even pass Congress's traditional "wild card" excuse for justifying spending, the infamous "Necessary and Proper Clause."
The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation within the power to make laws necessary and proper [emphasis added] for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States. —President James Madison, March 3, 1817: Veto Message on the Internal Improvements Bill
Note Thomas Jefferson's advice on interpreting Congress's limited powers compliments Madison's veto.
In every event, I would rather construe so narrowly as to oblige the nation to amend, and thus declare what powers they would agree to yield, than too broadly, and indeed, so broadly as to enable the executive and the Senate to do things which the Constitution forbids. —Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793.
In fact, note that the Constitution's drafters appropriately required the constitutionally limited power (hint), peacetime Congress to meet only once a year so that they could approve artwork for new postage stamps government.
Article I, Section 4, Clause 2: The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year [emphasis added], and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution [all emphases added], nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.—Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824. (Abuse of 16A)It is one of a few government agencies explicitly authorized by the Constitution of the United States. (non-FR)
The congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmaker, had clarified the federal government's constitutionally limited powers as follows.
Simply this, that the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen [all emphases added], under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Constitution, is in the States and not in the federal government. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country. —John Bingham, Congressional. Globe. 1866, page 1292 (see top half of third column)
From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]. —United States v. Butler, 1936.
16th Amendment: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived [emphasis added], without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves [emphasis added]. It seems to be the law of our general nature. —Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Edward Carrington January 16, 1787)
The bottom line regarding this GA example of unconstitutional federal funding is this. If the very corrupt Congress wasn't stealing state revenues (peoples' wallets) by means of lawmakers' ongoing abuse of its 16A powers, then the funding in question would have never left the state, the funding therefore available for Georgia to clean up environmental messes.
“If the very corrupt Congress wasn’t stealing state revenues”
Not supported by the facts. State taxes have increased ... to pay for the matching funds.
It all comes down to this:
The Federal government can (seemingly) print and borrow unlimited amounts of money. State and local can’t do that.
DOES THIS MATCH UP WITH THE BLACK KIDS SWARMING THE POOL AT A LOCAL HOA???
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