Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin
A Digest of Urban Survival Resources
For Independent Minded People!
ISSN
2161-5543
"Expect the best. Prepare for
the worst.
Capitalize on what comes."
- Zig Ziglar-
From The
Smiling Dog Saloon Files
In
This Issue:
1. Make Money from your homestead
2. Frugal
homestead security, reduce electric bills, Storage solutions in a small home
3. The Henry
US Survival Kit
4. How
Socialism Came to America & Destroyed Detroit-Part II
Uncle Scam’s Never Ending Quest to End Your Privacy
The
FBI recently closed down and stole the assets of the Silk Road e-commerce site,
an effort led by that flatworm socialist up-Chuck Schumer of New York (seems
too many political jerks hide out in that state). He’s been on a crusade against free and open
markets and is targeting other internet-based and offshore outlets for engaging
in unregulated, under-the-table business (the bane of all bureaucrats).
While it is true some illegal activity took place on Silk
Road, that is hardly unique…you can find the same behavior on most US street
corners (especially New York City). Silk
Road had vowed to protect the privacy of its users but that didn’t fly in the
face of the FBI which hacked and stole millions of dollars of BitCoins from
user accounts.
Other sites may be targeted in the future as well and it
may come to a point where you are forced to provide identification before you
can use sites such as Craigslist. One
should never assume you have any kind of privacy online as long as the
government has unlimited play money to use for spying purposes.
On a related
note…those Black Boxes I reported on several months ago in automobiles – 96% of
cars made in 2013 have these tracking devices or the so-called Event Data
Recorders. These have been pushed down
our throats by insurance firm lobbyists and beginning September 1 of next year, they will become
mandatory for every car. A lot of
politicians got paid off for this so your driver behavior can be tracked by
insurance companies and Big Brother…politicians have never met a bribe they
didn’t like.
Practical and frugal home security
read
more here
PM’s
Roundup of Useful Resources…
If
you live on a homestead or are considering moving to the country, think about
ways you could profit from your slice of the Earth. From animals to cooking and
homesteading skills, there are myriad ways to supplement your income without
leaving your property. Take your woodlot, for example: With proper management,
you can harvest firewood, mushrooms and other wild crops for cash. Already have
a knack for spinning? Sell the yarn from your fiber animals at local markets
and in the community. And don’t discount your baking skills; those muffins,
cookies and baguettes could earn you extra dough from week to week. Making
money from your homestead takes some patience and creativity, but once you find
a system that works for you, you’ll see how easy it can be. From our friends at GRIT magazine.
The Cure for a Shrinking Paycheck!
Find More tools and resources here:
The Henry U.S. Survival kit
If you told me I'd be fascinated by
an Altoids survival kit, I'd have thought you were crazy. This mini Altoids
survival kit is comprised of 26 total parts, including the tin. It's
unbelievable how many items this guy can pack into such a small place.
The
Nanny State- Your Weekly
Dose of Government Misinformation
A
report by the Federal Office of Special Counsel (OSC) offers details of what it
calls a “gross waste of government funds” and a “profound and entrenched
problem”: illegally claimed overtime by DHS employees. The practice, which may
add up to 25 percent to an employee’s paycheck, has become so routine that it
is often promoted as a perk when managers try to recruit new employees.
The
Parting Thought – Nothing to worry in the land of the free!
Part II
How
Socialism Came to America...
and
Destroyed Detroit
In 1961, the last Republican mayor of Detroit, Louis C.
Miriani, lost his re-election bid. He probably would have lost to anyone who
ran against him because he was known to be a crook. He later served 10 years in
prison for tax evasion.
The man who defeated him, Jerome Cavanagh, was a Democrat.
He ushered in a new kind of politics in Detroit. Cavanagh, who was white, got
elected by promising to give Detroit's African American population the civil
rights they deserved. But he didn't stop there. Seeing the political advantage
to serving this community's interests, he did all he could to bring government
benefits and government spending to Detroit's black community.
Cavanagh brought socialism to Detroit.
Mayor Cavanagh was the only elected official to serve on
President Johnson's Model Cities task force. The program was modeled after Soviet
efforts to rebuild whole urban areas in Eastern Europe. At the time, this
centralized approach to urban development was proclaimed as an advantage to the
Soviet system, something that could give them an edge in the Cold War.
Detroit received widespread acclaim for its leadership in
the program, which attempted to turn a nine-square-mile section of the city
(with 134,000 inhabitants) into a "Model City." To help finance the
effort, Cavanagh pushed a new income tax through the state legislature and a
"commuter tax" on city workers. He promised the mostly poor and black
residents of the Model City area that the rich would pay for all of these
benefits. He bought their votes with taxes they didn't have to pay.
It was classic
American socialism.
More than $400 million was spent on the program – and that
was back when quarters still had actual silver in them. The feds and Democratic
city mayors were soon telling people where to live, what to build, and what
businesses to open or close. In return, the people received cash, training,
education, and health care.
But they didn't like being told what to do... or how to
live. Not surprisingly, the Model Cities program was a disaster for Detroit.
Within five years, it had helped trigger a complete breakdown of civil order
and the city's population began to rapidly decline.
On July 23, 1967, police attempted to break up a notorious
"blind pig" in the heart of the new Model City. Blind pigs were
after-hours clubs that featured gambling and prostitution. They were part of
the black culture of Detroit, with many having been in operation since the
Prohibition period. The community tolerated these establishments – but the
political leadership didn't want any blind pigs in the new Model City area.
On this particular night, at this particular club, the
community was celebrating the return of two Vietnam War veterans. More than 80
people had packed into the club. The police decided to arrest everyone present,
including the two war vets. This outraged the entire neighborhood, which began
to riot. The scene turned into the worst race riot of the 1960s.
As Doug Casey likes to say about the War on Poverty,
"The poor lost." The violence killed more than 40 people and left
more than 5,000 people homeless. One of the first stores to be looted was a
black-owned pharmacy. The largest black-owned clothing store in the city was
also burned to the ground. Cavanagh did nothing to stop the riots. (He claimed
a large police presence would make matters worse.) Five days later, President
Johnson sent in two divisions of paratroopers to put down the insurrection.
The situation destabilized the entire city. Most of the
people who could afford to leave did. Over the next 18 months, 140,000 upper-
and middle-class residents – almost all of them white – left the city.
And so, you might ask... after five years of centralized
planning, higher taxes, and a fleeing population, what did the government
decide to do with its grand experiment? You'll never guess...
Seeing it had accomplished nothing but failure... The
government expanded the Model City program with 1974's Community Development
Block Grant Program. Here again, politicians would decide which groups (and
even individuals) would receive state funds for various "renewal"
schemes. Later, big business was brought into the fold. In exchange for various
concessions, the Big Three automakers "gave" $488 million to the city
for use in still more redevelopment schemes in the mid-1990s.
What happened? Even with all of their power and all of the
money, centralized planners couldn't succeed with any of their plans. Nearly
all of the upper- and middle-class citizens left Detroit. The poor fled, too.
The Model City area lost 63% of its population and 45% of its housing units
from the inception of the program through 1990.
Even today, the crisis continues. At a recent auction of
nearly 9,000 seized homes and lots, less than one-fifth of the available
properties sold, even with bidding starting at $500. You literally can't give
away most of the property in Model City areas today.
The failure of the Model Cities program and of the War on
Poverty wasn't surprising. What is surprising is that every single mayor of
Detroit since 1961 has been a Democrat. And extremely liberal, black
politicians have filled almost every major political office in the city since
the mid-1960s.
For example, John Conyers, Jr. has represented most of
Detroit's worst neighborhoods since 1965. Today, Conyers is the
second-longest serving congressman in the House. And his election track record
could be described as "Putin-esque." Conyers doesn't merely win
all of his election campaigns... He wins by margins that aren't explainable in
a normal, two-party system.
He defeated Republican Robert Blackwell in 1964, getting 84%
of the vote. He was re-elected 13 times in a row from that district, all
with a greater margin of victory than 85%. Ironically, the district was so
ill-served by his socialistic policies that about half of the people moved
away. The population losses led to redistricting. From then on, his margin of
victory has fallen... to "only" around 80%.
These election results don't seem reasonable, do they? They
aren't. By controlling the state legislature in Michigan, the Democrats are
able to draw the congressional districts in a way that guarantees them almost
permanent control. It's no different than what despots do all over the world.
They hold an "election." But it's only for show.
And what do the Democrats do with this power? They push a
form of American socialism. This political system features transfer payments,
government jobs, and lucrative government contracts to voters in exchange for
political support – and in many cases, outright bribes. They do all of these
things under the cover of "progressive" politics and "social
justice."
But if you brush away the veneer, what you find is a history
of abuse of power, corruption, and outright bribery. Conyers himself was found
guilty of several minor ethical violations in 2006 – mainly of using his staff
as personal servants, forcing them to babysit and chauffer his children. In
1992, he was one of the most egregious abusers of the House Banking scandal. He
wrote 273 bad checks and left his account overdrawn for nine months. But that's
all small-time graft compared to how things really work in his office and in
his district.
How do I know?
Well... just ask yourself where Conyers' wife slept recently.
Monica Conyers, the wife of the second-longest tenured
congressman in the United States, sleeps in a federal prison in West Virginia.
She pled guilty to bribery in June 2009. She is serving a 37-month sentence
for accepting $60,000 in bribes as the president pro tempore of the Detroit
City Council. And yet, Conyers won re-election handily in 2010.
How is that possible?
How do such people get re-elected?
These people and their political philosophy have destroyed
what was once America's fourth-largest city. There is almost nothing left of
what was the capital of America's industrial heartland. It's not hard to
understand what has happened. When you start taxing people at extremely
progressive rates to pay for socialist "benefits"... when you start
telling them which schools their children must attend... when you start giving
jobs away to people based on political patronage, race, or anything other than
ability... you quash human freedom, you create dependency. And you deter
capital and investment... which bogs down productivity and economic growth. If
continued for long enough, it leads to social collapse.
Source: Stansberry
Research
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