Home Meat Curing, Protect Your Child from ID Theft

Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

http://www.PoorManSurvival.com

ISSN 2161-5543

In This Issue:

1.       Home Meat Curing

2.       Safeguarding children from ID Theft

3.       Consumer guide to downloadable gifts

4.       Vanishing jobs and the underground economy

5.       Green business forum - 2012

By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and
unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no
subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to
debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law
on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a
million is able to diagnose."
-- John Maynard Keynes
(1883-1946) British economist

Your child or grandchild may be 51 times more likely to have his or her identity stolen than you.

Carnegie Mellon's report scanned over 42,000 children and found:

>Better than one in ten had someone else using their Social Security number.

> Adults in the same population showed a 1-in-200 identity theft rate.

>19% of victims were younger than 10 years old.

These are some of the primary drivers for child identity theft:

Illegal immigration – to obtain false IDs for employment;

Organized crime – blatant financial fraud;

Criminal identity theft – a criminal substitutes the child's identity when caught in a criminal act;

Friends and family – studies suggest 13% of all victims (adults included) had their identities stolen by someone they knew.

What's worse is when the thief is someone the child or family knows personally. It could be a neighbor, a friend, a trusted professional with access to your child's records (school or doctor, for instance), an aunt or uncle, even the child's mother or father.

This known thief may face financial difficulty and be looking for a fast and easy way out. The family member may suffer from addiction to alcohol, drugs, or gambling. Or, the "friend" may simply have an abusive personality. No matter the reason, this can emotionally impact the child and family. If you or a loved one face this kind of situation, read the IDTheftCenter.org's Fact Sheet 115: When You Personally Know the Identity Thief.

Easier vegetable peeling for potatoes or carrots…line your empty sink with newspaper first, making clean up a snap.

PM’s Compendium of Useful Resources

Home Meat Curing

From GRIT magazine, by Caleb D. Regan

Trying to get back to our roots, my household has upped its involvement in home meat-processing projects in the last few years. Fall chicken processing, dove and pheasant hunting, whitetail deer hunting, plus aspirations to process lambs and eventually pork and cattle – just like my great-grandparents did on the farm where I was raised – means each year we get some of the best meat available, but it also means we receive a surplus of more and more local and wild meats.

With that abundance, the need arises to be more creative in the ways we preserve the meat and even use it. Just as a youngster growing up on a cattle ranch tires of the same steaks night after night, there’s only so much venison chili and meatloaf a guy can eat before the taste becomes all too familiar.

So last fall, I listened as intently as ever when my father-in-law talked about a yearly occurrence among his circle of friends – one day sometime after deer season a group of six or so people gather to make their own venison snack sticks, summer sausage and more. I wanted in, and I wanted to understand the curing and sausage making that not only allowed Native Americans to preserve buffalo and deer meat so many years ago but also was the reason our family farm had that still-standing yet ancient-seeming smokehouse located right next to the root cellar.

Above all, with home meat processing thankfully accounting for a larger portion of the meat we consume, I wanted to experiment with additional uses for this valuable meat – especially the less desirable cuts – I was processing.

A timeless tactic

Sausage making and curing meats is one of the oldest practices of processing food, and a logical outcome of home butchery today. The word sausage comes from the Latin root, salsus, meaning salted or preserved. It goes way back, dating to perhaps as far back as 1000 B.C. Homer mentioned a type of blood sausage in The Odyssey, made from a goat stomach filled with fat and blood, roasted over an open fire. Read the entire article at:

http://poormansurvival.com/GuestColumn.aspx

Consumer's guide to downloadable gifts

Remember when gifts were objects, purchased or crafted and wrapped with a bow, then presented with a flourish?

Over the last few years, gift cards have become a popular alternative, and now as we become increasingly connected to our smartphones, laptops and e-readers, gifts are going digital, too. Here's what you need to know to navigate a holiday shopping season without gift wrap or envelopes or even little plastic cards.  More at:

http://news.yahoo.com/consumers-guide-downloadable-gifts-230928707.html

Green Business Forum - 2012

Sustainability in business is a story of determination, perseverance, and constant change. 2011 has been a whirlwind of activity in the world of green business, from advances in energy management and green technology to the continuing challenges of integrating sustainability into core business functions. Staying current on what's changed in green business in 2011 and the coming trends for 2012 is mandatory for all sustainability professionals.

Mark your calendar for the fourth annual GreenBiz Forums, in San Francisco, Minneapolis, and New York. These one-day, information and action-packed events coincide with the release of GreenBiz.com's "State of Green Business 2012," the acclaimed annual status report on corporate environmental trends and progress.

The GreenBiz annual GreenBiz Forums draw hundreds of professionals from all over the country. The 2012 events in Minneapolis, New York and San Francisco are sure to do the same. Register now, and take advantage of over 50% savings.

http://www.greenbiz.com/

Use vinegar to fix an earache.  Drop four or five drops of white vinegar into your ear three times daily.

The Nanny State Updates…

The Benefits of Using Cash-Avoid ludicrous prosecutions

http://www.howtovanish.com/2009/10/the-sweet-sound-of-cash/?awt_l=9mqfI&awt_m=1n.Vvv7YnCxNxm

Reason.tv: Post-Punk Icon Joe Jackson on The Nanny State, Smoking Bans, and His Next Musical Adventure
"A smoking ban in bars is saying that adult citizens are not allowed to use a legal substance even though they're very highly taxed for doing so in a place that is private property," explains Joe Jackson, the hitmeister behind indelible tunes such as "Look Sharp!," "Is She Really Going Out With Him?," and, yes, "(Everything Gives You) Cancer." Jackson's not a smoker himself but he insists that smoking bans and other for-your-own-good restrictions infantalize us all and challenge basic concepts of freedom. "You're throwing out the window the property right of the owner of that establishment, freedom of choice, a lot of things, compared to a health risk [from second- and third-hand smoke] that is really unproven." Jackson sat down with Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie and talked about his frustrations as an anti-smoking ban activist, the "gathering storm of prohibitionism," and the bold and risky evolutions of his signature musical style over the years.

Are you an inventor?  Once you’ve created a prototype and performed market research, find out how to get your product to market or how to work with a manufacturer by joining local clubs which you can find at:  InventorsDigest.com/resources/inventor organizations

The Parting Thought – Vanishing Jobs & the Underground Economy

What If Middle-Class Jobs Disappear?

by Arnold Kling

American Enterprise Institute

In recent decades wage improvements have tended to be concentrated at the high end, and employment gains have tended to be largest at the low end of the skill distribution. So what about middle-class jobs? With the deficiencies seen of stimulus proposals, the more power is concentrated in governmental units, the less likely it is that our collective institutions will be geared toward achieving outcomes that are charitable and make efficient use of resources. A scenario in which many people have dignified jobs and enjoyable lifestyles is more likely to emerge in an environment with decentralized voluntary charities than one with concentrated, coercive government.

URL: www.american.com/archive/2011/november/what-if-middle-class-jobs-disappear

Related Story…

Co.Exsist: The Rise of the Underground Economy

It’s the second largest economy in the world. Within the decade, it may sustain two-thirds of the planet’s workers, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and even rival the United States. But it’s not China: It’s the bazaars, vendors, and informal markets of the world.

Robert Neuwirth’s new book, Stealth of Nations, reveals the dealings of back-alley capitalism. And unlike the austerity of the developed world, it’s doing pretty well. After several years living in the slums and cities of Brazil, China, and Africa, Neuwirth argues the world’s governments should embrace informal (and mostly legal) markets as an alternative form of economic organization. That’s not just because they improve the lives of millions of entrepreneurs and their customers, creating upward mobility in otherwise dysfunctional systems, but because we have no choice. Either we cooperate with the off-the-books economic activity exploding in the developing world, or we clash counter-productively with them at every turn.

The feds’ funny money system caused the export of millions of good jobs to emerging markets.


Rise up, ye debt-trodden masses! Rise up against your real enemy: the feds. You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Yours for “a better America”, the Poor Man

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