Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin
A Digest of Urban
Survival Resources
ISSN 2161-5543
In This Issue:
1. Cheap
factory tour vacations
2. Inventor
creates new water filtration system
3. Coffee
alternatives
4. Turn
your talents into cash
5. Why
it’s unlikely the economy will ever ‘recover’
Progress is not created by contented people…
--Frank Tyger
Coffee
Substitutes and alternatives…
Although I grew up
drinking only tea (I still consume a half-gallon a day of iced tea), over the
past decade or so I have developed a morning coffee habit. Our favorite coffee, Yuban, recently went up
to $16 for a large can. During the holidays
it was on sale for $6.50 a can and I bought 15 cans of it and now that supply
is gone so I winced when I saw how much it and other brands had shot up in
price.
I always thought it
odd someone would pay $4 or more for a cup of coffee at Starbucks, a brand I
find too bitter. A daily Starbucks habit
can be rather costly.
Our emergency
food stockpile includes a dozen jars of freeze-dried instant coffee making it
ideal for consumption or barter. Folgers
makes a good freeze dried coffee even though their regular coffee is only
mediocre.
Popular
Substitutes
Ground roasted chicory root has been sold commercially on a large scale
since around 1970, and it has become a mainstream product, both alone and mixed
with real coffee. It was widely used during the American
Civil War on both sides, and
has long enjoyed popularity especially in New Orleans, where Luzianne has long been a popular brand in this respect.
Nestlé Caro is made of roasted barley, malted barley, chicory, and rye and enjoyed
as a coffee substitute
Roasted grain beverages are common substitutes for coffee.
I’ve never tried any
of these alternatives but they’ve been around for a long time and may be worth
a taste test.
Teecchino is made from
roasted carob, roasted barley, and roasted chicory. It also contains figs,
almonds, and dates for sweetness and a nutty flavor. Different flavors,
including vanilla nut, hazelnut, and java. Must be brewed in a coffee maker or
expresso machine.
You can find coupons
for some brands of coffee at these sites.
White Cloud toilet tissue will save your family
roughly $130 per year versus Cottonelle - both are good brands, but the cost
difference is large enough to make the switch.
PM’s ‘Betty Shocker’ Compendium of
Useful Resources
Survey Shows Employees are Happier and Healthier
Working from Home
The majority of telecommuters say they are more productive in
their home office, according to a new survey from Staples
Advantage.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y11/m07/i25/s04
The majority of telecommuters say they are more productive in
their home office, according to a new survey from Staples
Advantage.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y11/m07/i25/s04
Turn Your Talents Into Cash - PeopleStox
"Do you have a talent and want to make some money? PeopleStox allows you to connect with a huge network of fans and friends who are willing to buy fun Experiences.
"Do you have a talent and want to make some money? PeopleStox allows you to connect with a huge network of fans and friends who are willing to buy fun Experiences.
It’s simple.
There are two types of EXperiences, face to face and remote. Face to Face Experiences are unique services delivered in person, from sailing classes to gourmet dinners prepared by a chef in the comfort of your own home. Remote Experiences don’t require an in person meeting, allowing dreamers and fans to connect from different corners of the world. Some examples are design services, web programming and custom songs amongst many others. It’s Free to join!
There are two types of EXperiences, face to face and remote. Face to Face Experiences are unique services delivered in person, from sailing classes to gourmet dinners prepared by a chef in the comfort of your own home. Remote Experiences don’t require an in person meeting, allowing dreamers and fans to connect from different corners of the world. Some examples are design services, web programming and custom songs amongst many others. It’s Free to join!
Get a peek behind the scenes for factory
tours, usually a no-cost way to
stretch a vacation dollar. Visit: FactoryToursUSA.com
Pat Farrelly is currently in the process of patenting a unique water filtration system that he believes will revolutionize water filtering
for commercial and humanitarian purposes. His invention, Aqua-Nu, took five years to develop in his own kitchen.
Farrelly said that Aqua-Nu had multiple applications,
from filtering water for individual houses and group schemes to rainwater
harvesting and small-scale filtration.
‘‘We can turn any container into a water-filtering
device,” he said.’ ‘We are interesting because we have microbiological
capability. Our technology can prevent a microbe one-quarter the size of a red
blood cell from getting through.”
The finished product is just six weeks old and,
following the verification of independent tests, Farrelly embarked on the
patenting process. Aqua-Nu have applied for patents in 67 different countries,
42 of which have already been granted.
He said that Aqua-Nu had fielded inquiries from
companies in several sectors, including waste water management. It has received
a number of letters of intent, and is engaged with production and licensing
opportunities as far afield as Malaysia.
The humanitarian prospects for the system were also
considerable, said Farrelly.’ ‘We can start saving lives tomorrow. Our
filtering can be as easily used in an Irish kitchen as in a mud hut in Africa.”
Get cash for your old gadgets
A little
unknown clause in Obamacare, beginning in
2012, the U.S. government will demand tracking of all precious metals
transactions worth over $600. That clause effectively kills the saving of
gold to offset a shaky economy for U.S. citizens because even a one-ounce
transaction is worth $1612 as of today.
However, silver is
another matter altogether. It remains reasonably enough priced that purchases
of silver can still fly under the radar of the United States government and
their abusive, confiscatory agencies. And at today's prices you could still buy
a little less than 15 ounces of silver and remain unknown and unseen.
Era 2X Ultra with Oxi Booster cleaned clothes as well
as Tide’s TotalCare but at only 10 cents per load versus Tide’s 30 cents a
load.
Calculating the value of home gardens
Roger Doiron, decided to calculate the value
of the produce he grew in his family food garden. His wife, who majored in
economics in college, set up an accurate way to measure the value of the crops
as they were harvested. Doiron invested roughly $240 in seeds, supplies, and
compost. Growing an average assortment of vegetables and fruits on a relatively
modest sized plot of land, his garden produced a whopping $2,400 worth of food
in one season. What’s even more impressive? Doiron lives in Maine, which has a
shorter growing season compared to much of the country, and he produced
his bumper crop in a garden that was only 1/25th of an acre. If he planted a
full acre, he calculated, he could grow roughly $60,000 worth of food a year.
The Nanny State Updates…
COMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders
from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money
belonging to E.
A one-time
limited GAO audit of the Federal Reserve that was mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer
Protection Act has uncovered some eye-popping corruption at the Fed and the
mainstream media is barely even covering it. It turns out that the Federal
Reserve made $16.1 trillion in secret loans to their bankster friends during
the financial crisis. You can read a copy of the GAO investigation for yourself
right here. These loans only went to the "too big to fail" banks and to foreign financial institutions.
Not a penny of these loans went to small banks or to ordinary Americans. Not
only did the banksters get trillions in nearly interest-free loans, but the Fed
actually paid them over 600 million dollars to help run the emergency lending
program. The GAO investigation revealed some absolutely stunning conflicts of
interest.
So precisely
who got this money?
Well, a recent article
on Raw Story named some of the big Wall Street banks that got some of this
money....
Out of all borrowers, Citigroup received the most
financial assistance from the Fed, at $2.5 trillion. Morgan Stanley came in
second with $2.04 trillion, followed by Merill Lynch at $1.9 trillion and Bank
of America at $1.3 trillion.
But it just wasn't
U.S. banks that were showered with nearly interest-free loans. It turns out
that approximately $3.08 trillion went to foreign financial institutions all over
Europe and Asia.
So who in the world
gave the Federal Reserve permission to bail out financial institutions all over
the world?
Nobody did.
But under our current
system the Federal Reserve doesn't have to get permission. They literally get
to do whatever they want.
On his website, Senator Sanders expressed his outrage over these
foreign loans....
"No
agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign
bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the
president"
Increasing
government regulation and stupidity cost America dearly…
Anyone who reads the
poor man bulletins know few things stick in my craw more than government
bullcrap…this new report verifies what I’ve been saying for years.
Regulatory
nonsense cost Americans $1.7 Trillion annually - a virtual sinkhole!
In the just-released
"Red Tape Rising: A 2011 Mid-Year Report," The Heritage Foundation's James Gattuso and
Diane Katz explain the pervasiveness of government's intrusive regulatory hand
(that oftentimes goes go well beyond ensuring product safety) and how it
controls nearly every facet of your daily life.
Do you heat your home? Light your rooms? Buy and cook food? Watch TV? If the answer is "yes," then you've fallen under federal regulation. And you're paying for it, too. Gattuso and Katz explain how every product imaginable costs more because of regulations
Do you heat your home? Light your rooms? Buy and cook food? Watch TV? If the answer is "yes," then you've fallen under federal regulation. And you're paying for it, too. Gattuso and Katz explain how every product imaginable costs more because of regulations
The Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA battery tested the
best while its Energizer Max tested as the lowest rated battery.
Why the economy will never recover – the Parting
Thought
Since the 1950s our
economy has been based on consumerism which was fostered by the growth of good
jobs with benefits. The population, as a
whole, paid little in the way of taxes and had few expensive regulations to
contend with.
We know that scenario is
not returning. Corporations today pay
little to support ‘their’ country and have almost no regard for the American
worker. Most analysts say our glacial
pace of job creation and lack of consumer confidence, will plunge us into
another recession (did we ever leave the last one?).
The middle class is being
shell shocked and the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen. Although largely unreported by mainstream
press, there is a growing crime wave in the country. Other countries are beginning to experience
the same problem of bankrupt governments and disenfranchised citizens.
For decades consumers (and
government) relied on debt to finance the ‘American Dream.” No one can afford to do this any longer. Even the public sector has caught on to the
fact they can longer spend money like ‘drunken politicians,’ and have shed a
half-million jobs because of plunging tax receipts.
Aside from government
mismanagement the world has been plagued with a seemingly non-stop spate of
natural disasters which is taking a heavy financial toll.
As Congress continues the
carnage is started 35 years ago, we’re all waiting for some real leadership to
appear…perhaps Superman will come to life?
While waiting, I suggest the solution to our problems lies within each
one of us.
It’s up to the American
people to ignore Congress and to once again, become the self reliant nation
we’ve been known for during the past two centuries.
That’s it from your
wandering Poor Man!
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