Home Schooling Resources, The Bestseller in You, As the World Churns

Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin
Your choice for urban survival resources
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com



In This Issue:

1. Write your own book-make money or get famous
2. Creating a new country at sea-Seasteading.org
3. More swap sites
4. Home Schooling Resources
5. As the world churns-public sector employees get a taste of reality
6. Banks profiting from welfare AND shipping jobs overseas
7. Privacy-RIP



Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of.
--Bill Moyers


Home Schooling - is it right for your family?

I was fortunate in that my grandmother taught me to read and write before kindergarten. That way I could read the TV guide and I knew when my parent’s lied to me about a show I want to watch not being aired that night. It also fostered a life-long love of reading and the fundamental skills necessary to research any topic I needed to learn.

I also was lucky to attend a school in a wonderful school district, all of it geared toward college-prep. It wasn’t until I attended ASU that I began to realize just how dismal some school systems were. Today’s children (along with many adults) don’t enjoy reading…it’s too much work. They all want visual tools or they’re too preoccupied with video games, cell phone nonsense and non-learning activities and it shows.

Currently, there are more than two million students being home schooled, more than double since 1999.

My own boys attended a private Montessori school (which cost more than my college tuition) and I believe it was a mistake. Despite their efforts and our own at interesting my boys in reading, they never developed that interest. In retrospect, I think they needed a more structured teaching environment, such as a military academy!

The education lobby is very powerful and many consider it counterproductive to true educational reform. Here in MI, most teachers make a pretty good salary while only contributing 5% to their medical insurance, and like other teachers, they work only part of the year. (Personally, I do not have the patience to teach youngsters, which is why I taught college level students part time for so many years).

There are many pros and cons to home schooling, much dependent on the parent who teaches and the amount of discipline they use along with the curriculum they choose. Another factor to consider is the amount of time a parent has available to devote to the teaching process. Thanks to taxes and the high cost of living, many families require both parent’s work outside the home. [Some argue it’s cheaper to stay at home than to work outside the home when you factor in commuting costs, clothing requirements, daily lunch costs, the amount of actual take-home pay you net, etc.]

Here are a few resources to consider should you wish to investigate this avenue of learning for your children.

Free-Home Schooling Resources for Parents & Students: 800-538-3742
www.Homeschool-Helpers.info
http://www.freehomeschoolresources.info/
http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/

It’s been colder than a banker’s handshake & here’s why…
Credit card interest rates now average 14.72%, closing in on all time highs
As banks seek to recover what they lost to new rules…Congress didn’t cap % rates!


Weekly Resources Update


More sites to use for swapping stuff

Trade books, movies, video games-create two lists when you join: Wants & Haves
www.Swap.com

This site mostly swaps DVDs-you pay $2 to ship & get a credit DVD back
www.Swapadvd.com

One of our favorite concepts…swapping your time, as little as one hour…pet sitting, baby sitting, etc. Over 100 communities now have one. Check it out.
www.Timebanks.org

New York Library-Public Images Gallery
Here you'll find access to over 700,000 images that have been digitized and placed online in this database so people can browse them easily. You'll find maps, posters, prints, manuscripts, and more for your viewing pleasure.
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm

New Coupon sites - without any work
Let the coupon queens do the work for you with these coupon-sharing sites.
www.LiveFabuless.com
www.TheKrazyCouponLady.com

Learn the basics of making cheese & yogurt at home-free
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese_course/Cheese_course.htm



Conventional light bulbs will be phased out in 2012-yet 13% of Americans say they are stocking up on 100-watt bulbs to use after the ban.


When you send your mail through the Postal Service, chemical sprays and x-ray-type machinery make it possible for governments and sophisticated crooks to read the contents of mail without ever opening the envelope. Mail snoops can simply take a spray can of Freon gas they bought at a spy shop and spray the outside of an envelope, causing it to temporarily turn transparent.
To prevent your outgoing mail from being surreptitiously read while inside the envelope, wrap the contents in a piece of dark paper. Construction paper that kids use for art projects is good, because it is nice and thick.

The price of silver jumped this week to over $31 per troy ounce.

Medical costs remain out of control. Today Charles B. Inlander, founding president of the nonprofit People’s Medical Society and author of Take This Book to the Hospital with You: A Consumer’s Guide to Surviving Your Hospital Stay, reveals three strategies for negotiating a better medical deal on everything from eyeglasses to surgery -- yes, surgery!

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Resources for publishing your own book-get famous!
Whether to fulfill a dream or to make some extra money or to become a best selling author, many have a desire and there is a book inside all of us. The use of ebooks has made the process even simpler. The best attended seminar programs I conducted in pre-internet days were on self-publishing.

Well known author Robert J Ringer’s first book “Winning through Intimidation,” was initially self published. He was unable to secure a mainstream publisher or to persuade book stores to sell his book. After he ran a full page ad in the New York Times promoting his book…and telling readers they could find the book at national chains…they started selling his book when crowds of buyers showed up.

Obviously, Ringer was one heck of a copywriter. If his ad had flopped, he would have been in big trouble with a lot of people!

Although I owned my own publishing company, we primarily published business-oriented newspapers and newsletters. However, I did write and publish my own best seller devoted to small business marketing on the cheap (long before Guerilla Marketing came out & pre-internet days) called Mercenary Marketing: How to promote your business for less than $1000. It also led to many lucrative seminar and speaking fees. It sold well over 35,000 copies but the internet sort of ended it. Below you will find some useful resources.

What I'm usually asked most is how to publish a book on a shoestring budget.
Most people don't have tens of thousands of dollars to write, publish, and market a book, so they're looking for the best and cheapest way to do all three. Use these sites to get started:
http://www.writeandpublishyourbook.com.

http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/publishing/how-to-publish-a-book-on-a-shoestring-budget.html

Preparing a book for publication
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYK2ZgzkiPw

Promoting your self published work on a shoestring budget
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1381358/promoting_your_selfpublished_book_on.html

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We’ll keep our guns thank you…the Swiss overwhelming rejected stricter gun control.
‘we’re not sheep like Americans’ A vote keeps automatic weapons in each home.

Interest Threatens to Swallow Federal Budget
“Interest payments on the national debt will quadruple in the next decade and every man, woman and child in the United States will be paying more than $2,500 a year to cover for the nation’s past profligacy, according to figures in President Obama’s new budget plan. Starting in 2014, net interest payments will surpass the amount spent on education, transportation, energy and all other discretionary programs outside defense.” (Washington Post)
Is default in our future? Keep in mind, most multi-national firms now make their profit in overseas markets now that they’ve essentially dumped the American worker.

Washington will spend $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.

JP Morgan profiting off hungry Americans
The deepest recession since the great depression cost Americans more than 8-million jobs and 787 billion dollars in tax-payer funds for Wall Street.
JP Morgan Chase -a bail out recipient - has recovered well and the fact that that most Americans have not, has become a big bucks opportunity for the investment bank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndSJ2FVhnKw&feature=player_embedded

2010-US worker productivity rose 4%, corporate profits rose 30%,
Workers average wage grew only 2%

Privacy RIP
As reporter Mike Miliard points out in “You are Being Watched,” most recently published by the Sacramento News & Review, those vested in online privacy have been “drawn to a battle between two conflicting notions—and the winner of that battle may determine what kind of Internet we end up with.”

Read more: http://www.utne.com/Politics/Death-Of-Privacy.aspx#ixzz1EK9AitzX

Welcome Aboard
Someone finally did it…planning a new country-at sea on platforms!
http://seasteading.org/


Parting thoughts…

Turmoil Everywhere! As the world churns. Did Tea Party members betray us?

Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by over 95 percent. One of the reasons given for the existence of the Federal Reserve is that the Fed helps control inflation. But that is a huge lie. The truth is that the United States never had consistently rampant inflation until the Federal Reserve took control. In particular, once the U.S. totally went off the gold standard in the 1970s inflation really started escalating out of control....

The price of food, water and oil coupled with political unrest throughout the world is creating escalating prices and headaches everywhere.

*The price of corn has doubled over the last six months and recently hit a new all-time high.
*The price of wheat has more than doubled over the past year and hit a 30-month high on Monday.
*The price of soybeans is up about 50% since last June.
*The price of cotton has more than doubled over the past year.
*The commodity price of orange juice has doubled since 2009.
*The price of sugar is the highest it has been in 30 years.

If prices continue to go up like this we are going to see a lot more food riots all over the globe. Citizens in most 3rd world countries get by on an average of $2 a day. While kings and rulers make billions, their populations suffer. Little wonder to me why there is so much political upheaval.

As the Poor Man began writing more than a year ago, once states and cities figured out they were going broke because of gold plated benefits to public sector employees, they’d have no choice but to make cuts AND now, we’re seeing those employees in a very unhappy light as they mount protests in WI, OH, MI, NJ and elsewhere. Where do these workers think the money is going to come from? Perhaps they should have their pensions eliminated and replaced with voluntary 401(k) plans like the private sector.

The Fed has really screwed things up here at home. Although many Americans can accommodate the spike in food and fuel prices, the picture here isn’t pretty either.

America is rapidly turning into a horrible Big Brother police state and most of our politicians are fully supporting this transformation. In fact, the U.S. House of Representatives gave us quite a Valentine's Day gift the other day when it voted to once again extend provisions of the Patriot Act that allow for domestic surveillance of American citizens, wire tapping of American citizens and warrantless searches of the homes of American citizens.
What was perhaps most disappointing was that a large number of "Tea Party politicians" cast votes in favor of renewing the Patriot Act provisions.

The majority of Americans were absolutely disgusted when the Bush administration instituted the Patriot Act and many other police state measures and they voted for Obama hoping for something different.

Many Americans voted for Tea Party candidates during the last election hoping that they would be willing to stand up for liberty and freedom.
Well, it turns out that many of them caved when it came time to vote on the extension of Patriot Act provisions.

The truth is that this is not a conservative issue and it is not a liberal issue.
This is an American issue.
But doesn't the Patriot Act keep us safe from terrorism?
No.
Just the other day Dr. Vahid Majidi, the FBI’s assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, admitted that even with all of our "security measures" the chance that the U.S. will be hit a weapon of mass destruction is 100 percent....

Who are YOU relying on to secure your future - your financial advisor? An employer? A family member? The government? The fact is there's really no one left you can or should rely on... except yourself.
With traditional methods of protecting your wealth, your privacy, and your future all evaporating very quickly, becoming more self-reliant on all fronts - health, finances, and freedom - has never been more critical…are you sharing your skills with family members and like=minded friends…are you sharing this bulletin and the PM web site?

Prepping before the SHTF Video…another perspective
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2011/02/prepping-before-shtf.html

That’s it for this issue…as we “head to the hills,” the Poor Man!


http://www.PoorManSurvival.com

http://www.OldBookNook.com

Don't Get Caught With Your Pantry Down-New 11th Ed.
http://tinyurl.com/PMBasics

Free Money assistance for women, businesses, more.
http://hop.clickbank.net/hop.cgi?poorman11/mlesko

A Shallow Planet Production