It's nice when something like this happens so close to home. Sedgwick may be a small town, but with big ideas and a hefty dose of attitude. Most all of us here in Maine hate the way that regulations and regulators have crept in and tried to micromanage nearly every aspect of life, and the phoney federal "food safety" bill had no legitimate place here. Thus the bottom line wording of the local ordinance aimed at protecting the rights of producers and consumers: "It shall be unlawful for any law or regulation adopted by the state or federal government to interfere with the rights recognized by this Ordinance."

Earlier this week, Maine became the first state to be granted a waiver on ObamaCare, and now other states are hoping to do the same.

Of course it probably doesn't matter, because ObamaCare has already been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge in Florida because it required Americans to buy healthcare insurance or face a penalty. The Obama regime is appealing that decision, and the case will likely go to the Supreme Court after a hearing at the appeals court in Atlanta.

"The Obama regime is appealing"? Sorry, Rick; But there is NOTHING 'appealing' about the Obama Regime! Sorry, I couldn't resist!!!LOL

That's quite okay, Jim. Good joke. Besides, you're not the first to quote me out of context, and probably won't be the last.

Rick

Probably not the first time i've done it, but at least this time, it was done with toungue firmly in cheek, and no intention to actually misrepresent what you were saying. Just going for the joke, Jim

Yesterday, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker signed into law legislation that will accomplish two sorely needed objectives:
1. The new law will allow Wisconsin to avoid defaulting on debt payments, and to avoid the otherwise necessary layoffs or terminations of many state employees. Voters had elected Walker in November on his promise to reign in runaway deficit spending which was threatening to bankrupt the state, and rightfully expect results. In order to accomplish this objective, there obviously must be cuts in state spending, and any special interest group that is currently receiving bloated, unwarranted, unjust, or unnecessary state payments are a legitimate target for spending cuts. A review of the facts showed that the largest deficit item by far was the massive and ever growing cost of providing excessive wages, healthcare, and retirement benefits to state employees, a situation which is repeated in nearly every other state across the USA. Naturally, any group that is affected by a spending cut proposal is going to whine and complain, but this group is overdoing it. After all, even when their relatively small loss in compensation is accounted for, they will still be earning considerably more than their private sector counterparts.

Wisconsin state employees claim that they are already paying 100% of their pension costs, and that taxpayers are not paying any part of this, but is this true? Well, yes and no. If taxpayers directly paid for 100% of state worker pensions, it would be considered as illegal gifting, so union bosses figured a way around this. Intead of the public directly paying 100% of the cost, the union contracts negotiated for enough additional wages, beyond fair and just compensation, to cover the full cost of pensions. Then the money paid into the pension fund was said to be "deferred wages," or wages the employees earned but elected to receive at a later date in the form of pension payments when they retire. In other words, it is an entitlement program. A small portion of benefits costs actually is deducted from state employee paychecks, but in reality it is just a small part of a bloated total compensation package. And who pays for the cost of that compensation package? The taxpayers, of course. Irate taxpayers who realized that compensation for their own work in same or similar private sector jobs was considerably less.

So how did this situation come about? Why, over the years, have state governments agreed to the exhorbitant compensation demands of state employee unions? Why not just set compensation at rates the state could reasonably afford to pay, and let state employeess decide whether to work for that amount or work elsewhere? It's quite simple, actually. In the past, getting elected (or reelected) to a state political office was practically assured if a candidate promised, or delivered on earlier promises, to work towards higher compensation packages to state employees. In return for that assurance, the union bosses funneled huge campaign contributions to these candidates to assure their election. As soon as a candidate becomes elected to state office (and this is also true of federal government), they immediately begin seeking donations to assure their reelection in the next election cycle. And why would they waste time seeking out many small individual private contributions when it is so much easier to meet with a small handful of union lobbyists who have the big money in hand? All of this money, of course, comes from dues paid by unionized employees regardless of whether or not any of those employees would choose to vote for the candidate receiving the payout. And in states which have laws allowing forced unionism (and union dues payments) as a condition for holding a job, workers have no recourse to such extortion. And this brings us to point #2.

2. The new Wisconsin law contains a right-to-work clause that allows state workers (with the odd exception of construction workers) to individually determine whether or not they wish to be in, or pay dues to, a union. The law does not restrict employee freedom to join a union of their choice if they so wish, and does not prevent employees from engaging in collective bargaining for wages, as mass media and Wisconsin Democrats would have us believe. The law only removes healthcare and pension benefits packages from the bargaining process, allowing Wisconsin to adopt benefit packages that are affordable and within budget. Union bosses and politicians (especially Democrats) are extremely worried by this development in Wisconsin, which is likely to spread to other states as they wrestle with bringing budgets into control, and are vowing to fight to overturn the new law. Union thugs and liberal progressive socialists are fanning the flames and doing their best to intimidate Wisconsin Republicans while attempting to convince the public that the Walker administration is their enemy. It looks as though things could really get ugly now.

For some reason, police and firefighters are exempted from the provisions of the new law. Realistically, these are the very last group of employees that should be allowed to be in a position to hold the state hostage, but it appears that Wisconsin lawmakers feared that including them in the new law would probably cause them to "call in sick," like the teachers did, and that panic would ensue in the case of emergencies not being responded to. In my opinion, any employee who falsely called in sick to take false advantage of sick pay, while actually attending protest demonstrations, should have been fired from their jobs. And the action of Democrat lawmakers to leave the state, rather than perform their jobs and vote on the legislation, was deplorable. They too should rightfully be fired or recalled for refusal to perform the job they were elected to.

Yeah, Ohio is headed in that direction now. John Kasich was elected governor here in ohio. He spoke at a tea party rally and he has every intention on reducing the deficit here.

Hi Nadda,

Yes that's right, and the time has come to either follow through on promises and do whatever is necessary, or suffer the consequences of failure to act. The states cannot continue to go on borrowing and spending so recklessly, and are already at the brink of catastrophe. They must either cut spending or raise taxes in order to stay afloat, but raising taxes is not a viable solution and must not be tolerated. Our tax burdens (for those of us who pay them) are already way too high. That's what gave birth to the TEA Party movement and kicked out many of the career politicians who were happy to maintain the status quo and do nothing. It was good to see them go, and I expect we will be seeing a lot more of that in 2012.

Rick

Good overview, rick, as usual.There are additional details.Unions not only can contribute funds to a candidate, or his opponent; they also have very well organised voter registration and get out the vote organising abilities.

In the private sector, there are certain restraints on a union, when they are negotiating; if they demand too much, they know they risk putting the Business out of Business; but a government can't (theoretically) go out of business.And, the heads of the business, that they are negotiating with, work for the stockholders, not them.

With a government official, who was elected with campaign contributions and election support FROM the unions, you can't say that.Its kind of like if the union had something to blackmail the person they are supposed to be negotiating with; they are 'threatening' with a strike, which is always what a union has as its 'trump' card, but they are also threatening the person on the other side of the table with their job.Not really a fair negotiation.

So, its been a skewed system for a long time. Now, people are trying to 'level the playing field', and as you say, people are complaining.People got a 'good thing' feeding at the trough, they don't want it to end.So what.
Even Democratic govenors, faced with the same kind of #'s, are looking at similar solutions.Its overdue. Jim

Stockholders are granted special privileges depending on the class of stock. These rights may include:

The right to sell their shares, provided there is a buyer.
*
The right to nominate directors (although this is very difficult in practice because of minority protections) and propose shareholder resolutions.
*
The right to dividends if they are declared.

Therefore, contrary to popular opinion, shareholders of American public corporations are NOT the (1) owners of the corporation, (2) the claimants of the profit, or (3) investors, as in the contributors of capital.

Shareholder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Al

Hey, I didn't mean my post to be misinterpreted as a defence or advocacy of corporations, just a contrast of the situations of unions with private companies, as a contrast of public sector unions.Corporations are NOT democracies, I agree.When it comes to unions, and big corporations, I say "Shoot them all, and let God sort it out!" LOL Jim

Paradox - US Corporation Is Not A Democracy?
YouTube - Democracy:2 Wolves And A Sheep Voting On What's For Dinner! WATCH!

YouTube - U S is not a democracy Milton Friedman
Al

What we are experiencing now is only the illusion of democracy, we think we hold the cards but we couldn't be more wrong. There is a handful of people that control everything from finances to politics and we might never actually know what goes on around us.

Democracy is the best thing that humanity came up with until now, but it is very far from being perfect because it enables a select few to obtain too much power.

In the meantime i dont think anymore that it is only a small Group of Peoples, when i think about all the Clubs, like Lion Club Club of Rome and whatelse, and that they are tied to everwhere, Politic Economy and Healthcare to Peoples, when they reach a certain Level at the payroll.

except for all the others."Seeing whats going on in Japan, etc. I am reminded of the cartoon; shows a bearded, bedraggled guy holding a sign; it says "Repent, the end times are near", and he's crossed out "near" and written "Here". Hope you all were stocked up with iodine, and are taking it.Some Suppliers are back ordered now.Its pretty obvious the Japanese gov't is downplaying this, as their reactors keep popping off like firecrackers.Jim

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.

Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"

-- Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)


That is why our Founding Fathers gave us a Republic, rather than a democracy, why each state has 2 senators regardless of the state's size or population, and why we the people have the non-infringible right to bear arms.

The commerce clause of the Constitution has been used for some time now, as a way to justify a massive expansion of Federal powers.The Obamacare healthcare bill is just the latest and most agregious example.I'm looking forward to the Supreme Court striking down Obamacare, but I hope its not a narrow decision; I hope they also put some realistic limits on the Federal Government using this clause as justification for way oversteping their bounds.Jim

"If the people let the government decide what foods they eat, and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as the souls who live under tyranny."

- Thomas Jefferson (1778)

I highly recommend that anyone who has not already done so should watch the video titled End Of Liberty

Much of what the video points out has been aired in this thread previously, but makes for a good review on these subjects. other subjects are also included that we haven't talked about, and which many folks probably haven't even considered. Don't be confused and think that the title of this video refers to a future possible scenario where our liberties have vanished. That isn't what this is about. Instead, the video documents how nearly all the liberties that we once took for granted have slowly eroded, and how the few remaining ones are now under attack and being systematically stripped away through unconstitutional and abusive governmental regulation and executive orders.

If you don't have a computer that can view streaming video, visit a friend or relative who does have the capability, or visit your local public or university library, or an internet cafe.

Rick

With warmer weather approaching, there is no better time than now to plan for a home vegetable garden. 2011 may well prove to be the most important year ever to plant, grow, and harvest vegetables. We are rapidly approaching a state of hyperinflation, and when it begins to hit really hard, prices for all manner of food items will soar. When things get really bad, supermarkets will close and you will have a hard time finding quality food items at any price. Good planning and planting of a crisis garden this season is a wise move that I urge everyone to undertake. Even if it turns out that your garden isn't a critical factor this year in helping your family to get by, you will still reap the rewards of good tasting and nutritious, low cost food. One also should establish a well thought out and protected seed bank for their 2012 garden, and this should be done using seeds that will grow fruits and vegetables capable of bearing new viable seeds for future plantings. As you may already be aware, practically all of the commercially available seeds sold in stores are genetically modified and will not produce items with viable seeds.

Here is a link to a new e-book titled Food Shock that will help you get started with the right kind of planning:

http://www.offthegridnews.com/otgN451/Food_Shock.pdf

Symbollically, at least. Today I'm getting my 1953 Spartan Imperial mansion travel trailer delivered.They are the ones that look like an airstream, but with the wrap-around window on the front.Gonna do some basic restoration, and then wife and I are moving into it, to live.Got my Postal cargo van (step van) to pull it, so our bug-out box is our house!
Got my t-shirts already, long and short; you know, for bare arms, as in they'll pry them from my cold dead fingers.Going to have a little victory garden, hydroponic, on the front porch.Solar panels on roof.Looking at doing the plasic into fuel for diesel fuel for the truck, and propane for cooking, its in another thread.I just hope I can get my **** all together, before the **** all falls apart!
Anyway, bought the trailer 6 years ago, off the I-net, and had it stored in Kentucky, so I've never seen more than pictures.its coming today, and I'm pretty pumped!! Jim

Senator Rand Paul introduces proposal to cut 200 billion from budget. As he points out on the chart shown in this video, the Democrat proposal to cut 6 billion from the $1.5 trillion budget is so small that you would need a magnifying glass to even see it when compared to the size of the budget that has been proposed. He also points out that the Republican proposal to cut $60 billion doesn't go nearly far enough, and that even the 200 billion cut that he suggests is not considered enough by a public strongly opposed to excessive government spending. Watch here.

Any time I see any discussion of this, on the boob tube, everyone says the same thing; you can't get anywhere without tackling entitlements.Thing is, each is daring the other, to jump off the cliff first.Like 2 kids, down on the subway tracks, talking about the "3rd rail". "I'm not gonna touch it! YOU touch it!"
We've known since the 60's that the "Baby boom" was going to 'hit', and no one has had the courage to tackle it, head on.Social security is a ponzi scam, plain and simple.
I learned a long time ago; if you change the name of a government agency, to reverse the basic meaning, you'll be much closer to the truth"Social Insecurity", "Dept. of economic insecurity" ( the state dept here that distributes food stamps, unemployment, etc.)
Neither of the political parties want to tackle entitlements, cause they believe it is a career ender.They all believe what the Dems keep saying; that when you poll people in a general way, Do you want the deficit reduced? the answer is "yes", but when you get into specifics, the answer is "No, I don't want to lose my benenfit/subsidy, whatever."
I like to think the American people understand the situation better than they are given credit for by the politicians, and are willing to accept SHARED sacrifice, for the common good.
What they AREN"T willing to accept, is something like the bailout, where wall street and banks got billions, and we got,...what $400 in 'stimulas' $??
Screw that!Jim

The root of the problem is the monetary system scam and of course corrupted people in power positions.

Remove all that and most likely we'll see that the only sacrifice to be made is the elite benefits being extremely cut down.

There is no point in trying to fix or make sense of the system. It has to be redone form scratch.

Perhaps Mother nature is in the process of "scratching" out our mistakes to even the playing future for the "next" human civilization.

But more seriously, I totally agree. Things have gone way to far, for way to long. Only a complete world disaster rendering nearly everything useless, excepting a man's ability to personally maintain / survive... something so huge not even money can solve... will turn the tides of greed and power.

Modern man, (biologically) as opposed to cro magnum, etc. has been on this earth for 100,000 years. The earliest evidence of 'civilisation', grain silos, is 15,000 years old.Before that, for 85,000 years, man lived as 'hunter/gatherers, in groups of less than 250, traveling 100's or 1000's of miles every year.They had little government, or specialisation, no $, no 'keeping up with the Joneses', and very little STRESS. And that is the life our bodies evolved to live.
I figure this is a 15,000 year old experiment, (Civilisation) thats about to come to an end.If we will survive, it will be as hunter gatherers once again.

When you arise in the a.m., your concerns are; what am I going to eat and drink, TODAY.Where am I going to sleep, TONITE. And how am I going to shelter from the elements, (heat in summer, cold in winter) today.And thats about it.Your possesions are few, and useful; things you can carry with you, and use to obtain what you need.

Watch the first 20 minutes or so of :The Gods Must Be Crazy"; yes, the one about the coke bottle.Its for entertainment, but the first 20 minutes, in order to set up the premise for the movie, show so very clearly, the difference between the lifestyle of 'civilised' man, and the lifestyle of the African Bushman, living on the edge of the Serrengetti desert in Africa.

The Bushman has very few stressful events, and they are spaced widely apart.The 'civilised' man has constant high levels of stress, from alarm clock in morning, to last thing at nite.Our bodies never evolved to this.It leads to adrenal fatigue, and that leads to all sorts of consequences for individuals and society.

Its an experiment, (civilisation) and its time for it to end.Jim

That's one of the funniest slapstick comedy movies I've seen.

I think it depends on civilization. Many indigenous groups are way more
civil than technologically advanced societies. In that sense, they are
civilized and we are not.

"That's one of the funniest slapstick comedy movies I've seen."
However, its also one of the most accurate depictions contrasting the lifestyles of 'civilised' man with so-called primitive societies.
Read up on "adrenal Fatigue" and the long term consequences; it effects our health, our ability to think clearly, etc.We become 'addicted' to stress, as we get into a kind of 'feedback loop'.If their is nothing stressful in our lives at the moment, we mentally 'scan the horizon' looking for potential challenges.If we see one, no matter how distant or peripheral to us, we 'gird our loins', and 'marshall our forces' and prepare to do battle.
Actually, stress is a bad word, as many will say "I'm not stressed'. A better word is challenge.Our brains become addicted to the chemicals released when we percieve a challenge or threat.
The first stage of adrenal fatigue is almost never percieved by those in it; it involves high levels of cortisol and adrenaline, ALL THE TIME.Very hard on our system.This can go on for many years, until eventually, our adrenals have a kind of 'breakdown', resulting in low levels of cortisol and sometimes aldosterone.Often this is misdiagnosed as "Fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue."
Anyway, now that I have gone thru this, and come out the other side, I see it all around me, but no one will listen, very sad.Jim

Just 2 days ago, a federal jury convicted Bernard Von NotHaus of making, possessing, and selling his own coins. NotHaus designed and minted his high purity "Liberty Dollar" gold and silver coins and sold them to coin collectors. Many of the coins can still be found in eBay auctions. NotHaus had founded an organization called NORFED, an acronym for the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code, which also became known as Liberty Services. Naturally, the Federal Reserve did not like NotHaus' ideas of making and distributing coins that actually had real value backed by their gold or silver bullion content. A 2007 FBI raid on the coinage facility in Evansville, Indiana confiscated coins and bullion valued at 7 million dollars.

Here is a TV news segment, featuring Bernard Von NotHaus, which aired in 2007 shortly after the FBI raid.

“Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism,” U.S. Attorney Tompkins said in announcing the verdict. I would agree with that statement, however the true terrorists are actually those who operate or support the Federal Reserve system. The "legitimate currency of this country" is not Federal Reserve notes. It is strictly limited to gold and silver by the US Constitution. The banking cartel which operates the Federal Reserve has systematically worked to "undermine the legitimate currency of this country" since its 1913 debut, and has successfully devalued the US dollar by 97% over the FED's lifetime. It should be quite clear who the real terrorists are, but it is highly unlikely that we will ever see any of them behind bars. Instead, we see Bernard NotHaus accused and convicted of conspiracy against the United States. Bernard is currently out on bail and appealing the decision. A separate case regarding forfeiture of the confiscated items will resume April 4th.

US Attorney Tompkins went on to state that, “While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as insidious and represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country. We are determined to meet these threats through infiltration, disruption, and dismantling of organizations which seek to challenge the legitimacy of our democratic form of government.”

Hmmmm, sounds like any organization which challenges the legitimacy of the Obama regime, unconstitutional laws passed by the US Congress, or our current and corrupt monetary system, will face certain "infiltration, disruption, and dismantling" in the guise of big brother protecting us.


On December 13, 2007, Representative Ron Paul introduced the Free Competition in Currency Act of 2007 in the U.S. House of Representatives, saying: "One particular egregious recent example is that of the Liberty Dollar, in which federal agents seized millions of dollars worth of private currency held by a private mint on behalf of thousands of people across the country .... We stand on the precipice of an unprecedented monetary collapse, and as a result many people have begun to look for alternatives to the dollar .... I believe that the American people should be free to choose the type of currency they prefer to use. The ability of consumers to adopt alternative currencies can help to keep the government and the Federal Reserve honest, as the threat that further inflation will cause more and more people to opt out of using the dollar may restrain the government from debasing the currency." The bill seeks to legalize the use of currencies — including the Liberty Dollar — that compete with the Federal Reserve's US dollar. Ron Paul has recently reintroduced this bill, along with a 2011 version of the "Audit The Fed" bill. These bills deserve our strongest efforts to force lawmakers to enact them, or to suffer defeat in the 2012 elections.

Rick

my preferred form of alternative currency; they are round, and metal. Some say "Smith and Wesson, Remington, etc".Every time I buy some, I'm giving someone a worthless piece of paper, and getting something 'good as gold'.Jim