Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin
Your choice for urban survival resources
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com
In This Issue:
Sweet Deals from RedPlum
Analyze your food storage needs calculator
Concerns of EMP attacks
Every Way to Make Money site
How to Disappear
Phantom Alert-Beat traffic tickets
This week’s rumor mill
Limit all US politicians to two terms.
One in office
One in prison
Mini-Survival/Bug Out Kit
Longtime readers know I experiment and test ideas for new products on eBay…maybe that’s why I get in trouble with them and sometimes customers (had another one frustrated that many of our PM products are now provided as downloads vs. CD ROMs).
Well as many of you know, prepackaged bug out kits are convenient but costly. Most often you can build your kit from local suppliers at a substantial savings. Power bars, instant soups and freeze dried meals are easily packed along with some cash, clothes, a knife, ammo and more.
Always the idea guy, I came up with a package that should prove useful to hunters, campers, and everyday folk…the Poor Man’s Min-Bug Out kit. It includes a small first aid kit, a survival whistle with lanyard/compass, signal mirror & waterproof storage compartment for matches, fish hooks, etc. It also includes an 11-function survival tool (flat & includes case) plus one of those folding multi-tool devices with pliers, screw driver, etc…all of which come in handy.
I also included some of our Poor Man II preparedness items and an offer to subscribe to this bulletin to get even more bonus reports…all at a cost of $22.95 and that includes Priority shipping. I don’t think this is a bad price but we’ll see how they go. If they do well, I’ll order more inventory.
I share this with you not only to alert you to our new offers, but also to give your brain a whack. No doubt many of you have ideas as to how you might re-package something and could sell it at a profit. My advice, buy cheap (many, many wholesalers out there) and come up with a good offer, then test it on eBay or elsewhere before investing a lot of loot in inventory.
You can always visit my eBay storefront to see our inventory of sufficiency books and other items. Go to: www.OldBookNook.com
Listerine therapy for toenail fungus: Get rid of unsightly toenail fungus by soaking your toes in Listerine Mouthwash. The powerful antiseptic leaves your toenails looking healthy again.
The Weekly Roundup (of rabbits)?
Meat Rabbits
Raising rabbits for meat is a great, cost-effective way to keep your freezer full. Also, rabbit meat is very lean and healthy for those who are trying to cut fatty foods from their diets. Since raising rabbits doesn't take up a whole lot of space, you don't need to live on a farm to do it. People in the city who have a decent-sized garage can join the program and get a little taste of the country life. There are a few things that everyone should know before getting - read the rest at:
http://www.offthegridnews.com/2011/01/03/raising-meat-rabbits-from-the-country-to-the-big-city/
Balm for broken blisters... to disinfect a broken blister, dab on a few drops of Listerine, a powerful antiseptic.
Two new websites from subscriber Steve I‘m sure you‘ll find useful.
http://www.everywaytomakemoney.com
That's a big claim in the name, impossible to fulfill even, but there are hundreds of pages on the site and you'll find some truly interesting and useful content there. I have personally written over half of the pages, and I found a good researcher/writer to do the others. There will be a hundred more "ways" (pages) added in the coming months.
The other new site is all mine (so far--but I may hire a writer). It's about using what you have to get ahead in life. More specifically it is about using what you have in new and creative ways which you may not have thought of. You can just look down the list on the home page, pick out something you have, and then click through to see a list of different ways you can use it. The site has the name you might expect:
http://www.usingwhatyouhave.com
New way to beat traffic tickets…drivers helping drivers with-
http://www.phantomalert.com/
"The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in
what we are free not to do."
-- Eric Hoffer
Organize & Analyze your food storage free from Emergency Essentials
www.BePrepared.com/Analyzer
Kills fleas instantly... Dawn Dishwashing Liquid does the trick. Add a few drops to your dog's bath and shampoo the animal thoroughly. Rinse well to avoid skin irritations. Good-bye fleas. (use Dawn straight from the bottle and massage in for 10 minutes, works wonders )
Something free to encourage your children to read
Welcome to Read.gov - a site dedicated to encouraging reading by people of all ages. On the left hand side of the page, you'll find links that break up the site by age level: Kids, Teens, Adults, and then Educators & Parents. That is a great way to get started browsing. Beneath those categories you'll find even more categories under resources
http://www.read.gov/
eBay Falls off List of Top-visited Websites in 2010
eBay dropped off the list of Experian Hitwise's top-ten most
visited websites in 2010, but remained among the top-10 most
searched terms for the year.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y11/m01/i04/s01
Protecting your wireless network
Many would like to have a secured network, however most have no inclination as to how they would accomplish such a goal. What they may not be aware of, is that there is two major layers of security to a network that protect computers against attacks. Each individual layer adds additional protection to stop people from gaining access to your network. More importantly, it prevents them from having access to your personal computer and sensitive information.
http://www.worldstart.com/secure-your-wireless-network/
Freebies, coupons, promo codes & more at Redplum
www.RedPlum.com/sweetfinds
Product sourcing-get inventory for auction, flea market sales. Returned electronics, designer handbags, and more. Buy by the pallet load or smaller quantities. Years ago when the PM first started selling online, this was a source we used.
www.liquidation.com
Concerns are rising about the threat of an EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) attack, aimed at destroying our electronic guts. What if our computers and other electronics didn't work? What if electronic records of your bank account were immobilized? What would happen to our technology—dependent transportation, financial, and production systems?
America's vulnerability to EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) attack looms large in the minds of many. Public attention was focused on the topic by the release in 2005 of a government—sponsored study by the congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack. The results were further publicized by Frank J. Gaffney in a widely—read article, 'EMP: America's Achilles' Heel',� and was also featured in his recent book, War Footing —10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World.
Abstract: Most Americans—whether members of the public or politicians in Congress—ignore or are unaware of the very real threat of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. A nuclear device detonated high in the atmosphere above the American mainland can easily disable the country’s electrical grid—shutting down nearly all communications, transportation, and service systems. Overnight, daily life as Americans know it will be a thing of the past. There are ways to prevent devastation from an EMP — and the U.S. must invest in them now before it is too late. Two of the country’s preeminent national security experts explain how to prevent the worst
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/11/EMP-Attacks-What-the-US-Must-Do-Now
During the American Revolution, pins were used as barter items as
They were in short supply since England cut off shipments to America.
How To Disappear
Your own interesting times may require that you disappear and start a new life. I certainly don't want to encourage any criminal behavior here, but there are plenty of scenarios possible (including escaping criminals) where adopting a new identity is justified. This is a large subject, though, and the treatment here is just a quick outline, so get a book on the subject if necessary. (Poor Man I contains a lot of this info)
Your New Identity
There are a couple basic ways to get the paperwork necessary to establish a new identity. The first is to simply get fake papers. This is the fastest and easiest way. If you have no idea who to ask for help with this, become friends with illegal aliens. They often need this kind of service, and should know who can help you and roughly what it will cost.
The problem with this approach is that it tends to be a temporary fix. Since the drivers license you get is not real, it will not be in the records of the state. That can cause some trouble for you if you are stopped by police at some point.
Since the social security card you get has a fake number on it, you will run into problems with employers too. You might get by for a few months by...
(Continued in Chapter Nine of A Survival Guide for Interesting Times)
Get your copy here: http://www.thesecretinformationsite.com
I seldom advocate violence, the government does enough of that on its own.
More government folly-your tax dollars at “work”
Armed agents raid on raw milk plant
This summer armed government agents raided Rawesome Foods, a Venice, California health food co-op. What were the agents after? Unpasteurized milk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioN0ehlyyXI&feature=player_embedded#!
Jury Nullification
The discombobulated deputy attorney of Missoula County, Montana, called it “mutiny.” The quiet courtroom insurrection was sparked by the prosecution of a man accused of possessing 1/16th of an ounce of marijuana. One of the 27 potential jurors asked why taxpayer money was being wasted in such a manner; thereupon the judge polled the entire jury pool. Most of them affirmed their refusal to convict on such a minor possession. Earlier, other potential jurors had been excused over “philosophical objections
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/headline/jury-nullification-remedy-or-danger/
The Week Ahead" Has A Stunning Look At The National Debt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4POrM_PqChs
Are We Really Less Free Today?
Interview with the Freeman editor about the state of liberty today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0tD6_EOqTI&NR=1
Colgate Toothpaste makes an excellent salve for burns? ( and bee stings )
Reader Comment…
I got your How to Save Money on Utilities report. Good stuff & I followed many of your recommendations but my water bill, which had gone down, now went up even though we’re using less water?
A: We experienced the same thing where we live as the city, which provides water here, jacked up their rates to shore up city finances. We use less water, but pay more. We even tried having a well dug but too deep to justify the cost…as we’ve reported, all cities & states are creating new ways to extort money from its citizens ranging from traffic fines, to new ‘user’ fees.
Time Magazine just reported:
“A combination of rising food and energy prices could ignite a repeat of the food riots that spread across the world in 2007 and 2008, provoking violent clashes from Haiti to Cameroon to Bangladesh.”
The National Debt Relief Amendment. Learn more about this group at:
http://www.restoringfreedom.org/
The Rumor Mill…A second unidentified missile was spotted over Padre Island, TX on the 2nd of Jan-just like the recent unexplained missile sighting over the CA coast. Rumor has it that it must be a Chinese missile (China just announced its stealth fighter program) or it might be our own government?!
Got young kids, tell their financial future lies in either internet security and spying or in artificial intelligence development…don’t waste those college funds on liberal arts.
The stock market might actually do well this year, especially for those with foreign investments in the portfolio as growth in the US will be slight.
Food price index, according to the UN set new high levels and are expected to go higher.
…highly unlikely ObamaCare will be repealed, big changes in it? Maybe.
More proof the US is becoming a Marxist Nation
http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/freedom-watch/index.html?%2Fv%2F4460997%2Fis-the-us-turning-marxist%2F%3Fplaylist_id=157991#/v/4460997/is-the-us-turning-marxist/?playlist_id=157991
*An episode of Jim Cramer’s popular TV show, Mad Money, touted Police State stocks such as FLIR, a provider of thermal imaging systems as the “ultimate police state stock” in America!
The University of Michigan's latest poll showed that U.S. residents expect prices to rise at an annual rate of 3 percent over the next year. That has almost doubled in the past two years. The Fed may not see inflation pressures building, but the average man or woman on the street clearly does.
Parting thoughts on our continuing destruction
…despite some positive signs, most of us don’t feel the economic situation is better
As the U.S. is being stripped of industry and is being deindustrialized, the American middle class is being absolutely devastated. Since the year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs. Sadly, the millions of jobs that have been sent overseas are never coming back.
Meanwhile, our national wealth is being drained from our bank accounts. Back in 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was just 6 million dollars for the entire year. But for this past August alone, the trade deficit with that same nation was over 28 billion dollars.
In other words, the U.S. trade deficit with that one Asian nation in August was more than 4,600 times larger than the U.S. trade deficit with that Asian nation was for the entire year of 1985.
Our national economic infrastructure is being absolutely ripped to shreds....
*Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
*The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
*Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.
*As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
*Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
The latest issue of Money magazine is warning of a significant trend for the coming year — the Federal Reserve will reinflate the economy, spurring significant inflation.
Our government has chosen to respond by further eroding our rights. For example:
It’s becoming illegal to record the police in several US states, Canada, and the UK. You know, we used to be able to rely on the mainstream media to keep governments in check... but these days they've become shills and cheerleaders.
Example of injustice-A NJ court sentenced Brian Aitken to seven years in prison for legally owned weapons. He had just moved from CO to NJ and within days was arrested for having a locked, unloaded pistol in his trunk. No criminal record but he had failed to register them in NJ quickly enough. The perfect storm of governments violation the Constitution.
Fortunately, the Internet is a great equalizer, and videos abound of illegal police actions and the like which show the absurd lengths that police forces and government agents will go to intimidate and subordinate the masses.
There have already been arrests, charges filed, and lawsuits pending against citizens who have recorded the police and posted it online... You know governments will pass laws which legally prohibit such action.
A quick note - your materials and newsletter exceeded my expectations. No fluff or puff! --RufRider,CA
Now for the fun stuff…delightful, once banned Betty Boop -or how ObamaCare works!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q2T_9UCTiI&feature=related
That’s it for this issue from the Minister of Truth-The Poor Man
Feel free to share this with your friends!
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com
http://www.OldBookNook.com
http://www.GreenIrene.com/Poorman
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
Our Mission: To protect and promote your freedom, civil rights, financial well being and overall self reliance in these turbulent times.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
The Three Liars of Society
Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin
Your choice for urban survival resources
In This Issue:
Surviving the Three Liars of Society
PM’s Health Concoction
Finance is the new warfare & Chinese are winning
McAlvany Intelligence Advisor
Free ebooks for Kindle Readers
Legitimate ways to check your credit score
Emergency water purification methods
Top Money Savers in 2011
Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money.
--Thomas Hobbes
The Three Liars of Society
There is no longer any stability in our legal system. Once our nation shifted from Natural and Common Law ideals to those of Political Law, no one can predict from one administration to the next what is permissible and what is not. Most recently, this, along with our uncertain tax laws has caused uncertainty among business leaders which prevents them from hiring.
Most larger businesses know doing business in America is a joke due to its constant court ordered mandates, unlegislated bureaucratic rules and other constant changes. In short, we’re always in a state of flux which causes turmoil in the markets.
Political law has also kept our God given rights in a state of flux. The government seems to think they grant us permission to travel, to do business, to write publish or speak. Government at levels is quick to deny those rights on the slightest, unfounded whim since 911 and the creation of the unPatriot Act.
America is the most heavily regulated society on earth and it’s been reported state lawmakers issue some 200 million laws every ten years. Collectively, we have more than 500 million laws, something no rational society can keep up with, but then again, our government is no longer rational. As I write this a MI prosecutor has filed charges again a man for looking at his wife’s email without her permission. If convicted of this non-crime, he faces up to five years in prison and the flatworm of a prosecutor will get on TV in her indignant manner and chastise anyone who dare dream of performing this felonious act.
The legal system has ruined this country and discouraged business and job growth. There are many firms who will not do business in America because of our out of control legal system. No doubt you recall the time when all the states got together with a big law firm to sue Big Tobacco with the promise the proceeds would benefit children’s education. With one exception, the state government lied to the world and of course, the lawyers got rich and the states blew their ill-gotten gains on pork projects. You cannot trust a government based on political law.
What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes
In any new branch of commerce when he knows not
That his plans may be rendered unlawful before they
Can be executed? --James Madison
The American Trial Lawyers Association is a very successful lobbying group. As a result of their efforts, we are the only country in the world which does not have tort reform, a very costly mistake for American jobs.
When in doubt…Sue! The American National Motto
In the previous issue I wrote there are two basic laws. Allow me to remind what they are:
Do all you have agreed to do.
Do not encroach on other persons or their property
Since the 1930s America has been falling into the Dark Ages of law. Laws vacillate in the wind, according to the whim of whichever party is in office. Politicians of both parties have sought to make us more of a democracy rather than a republic and this is something our founders absolutely warned against as majority rule is dangerous. Any sociologist will tell of the bandwagon factor which influences how people vote. Rarely does the individual look at the long term effect of any law and its true cost to society. Marijuana laws are a good example. No one ever got ‘juiced up’ on pot and went on a crime binge. History is filled with examples of folks who got drunk and committed crime, yet pot is bad and offenders fill our jails and penalize our community resources.
The Three Liars of Society include >Legislators >Lawyers and >Lobbyists. No other group in history has done more damage to our Bill of Rights and Constitution.
As far as I’m concerned, Washington has sold our Liberty Bell for scrap. Instead of common sense or common law, prosecutors and politicians now use the blackjack approach to hijacking our rights and undermining our system.
Protection of the innocent is no longer a concern. The law is strictly a punitive tool to enforce whichever behavior is no longer in vogue. In recent years just about everything has come under attack, from gun ownership and tobacco use to wearing a seat belt. Most of the time, it’s not for public safety, it’s to put more cash in government coffers.
As citizens, these government agencies and prosecutors are supposed to be working for us. When they don’t perform, they need to be removed from office. Most of them seem to have forgotten they took an oath, perhaps they need a strong reminder.
Natural law and common law are superior to political law and was made famous prior our American Revolution by Rev. Jonathan Mayhew. Political law is arbitrary.
The vigor of Mayhew’s sermons established his reputation. It was published not only in Boston, but also in London in 1752 and again in 1767. In Boston, John Adams remembered long afterward that Mayhew’s sermon, “was read by everybody.” Some would say later that this sermon was the first volley of the American Revolution, setting forth the intellectual and scriptural justification for rebellion against the Crown.
Natural law or the law of nature has been described as a law whose content is set by nature and that therefore has validity everywhere. As classically used, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior.
If our country were under external attack, we’d all race to the rescue. Why aren’t we defending our freedom and rights from these domestic political terrorists?
In the US the sanctimonious maxim that “Ignorance of the law is no excuse’ puts every citizen at risk. This notion may have been a sound rule in simpler times, when the catalog of offenses was limited to traditional offenses…but it’s a sinister joke when applied to the 6 foot shelf of criminal codes at the federal and state level. Moreover, no one today can rely on a straightforward meaning of the law as they have become twisted, subject to the whims of whichever prosecutor is in office becoming utterly arbitrary and deliberately unclear! In many respects, these prosecutors would be considered traitors under Colonial law.
I’ve included a link below to legal resources that are either free or low cost and which cover many areas of law. Although geared primarily to MI contacts, many of the resources lend themselves to folks in any state…use it as a starting point.
http://julieslist.homestead.com/LegalResources.html
…This is part of an ongoing series of the Poor Man’s take on how our political system has been corrupted.
This n That…
PM’s New Year’s Health concoction
My wife won’t go near this, but I find it healthful and a good way to begin a healthier New Year. I have been drinking this each morning for about eight days and already feel the benefits of rejuvenation. Remember, all recipes are merely guides. Feel free to experiment with other ingredients. I use a blender to make a large cup of this each day.
1 tbs of apple cider vinegar
4-5 ounces of cranberry-pomegranate juice
1 chopped apple, ½ banana, 1 fresh pineapple slice
1 ounce sesame oil
1 ounce blackstrap molasses
1 teaspoon flax seed
¼ cucumber
Bunch of fresh spinach
Small slice of fresh ginger root
The sesame oil gives it a nutty flavor and the ginger root gives it a flavor boost too. This plus a couple of slices of raisin toast and coffee carry me through most of the day-try it!
PM is on a health kick this month…this might prove useful to many of you!
You can figure out which foods your body is efficient at digesting, your eating becomes much more efficient. Also, many raw foods contain some of the natural enzymes required to digest them. When you cook them, you kill some/all of the enzymes and put more of the stress of digestion on your gut and causing you to get fewer net calories. One free tool you can use to figure out the foods that are best for you is from, Dr. Joe Mercola. You can use it by going to: http://nutritionaltyping.mercola.com/PreTest.aspx
Weekly Roundup of Useful Stuff
How to Purify Drinking Water in an emergency
http://www.prepare-for-emergency.com/purify-water.htm
*Something I often neglect to mention about preparedness…keep an extra tank or three of LP gas filled at all times. Your BBQ can be used for cooking & these tanks are usable for other devices such as heaters and stoves.
Free ebooks for Kindle Readers
This Christmas, I noticed a trend among the gifts my friends and family received. A lot of them were now owners of a Kindle. Here’s a source of free e-books to put on their e-readers.
This site is the best of a ton of them that I looked at because the books are 100% free with no hidden membership costs.
http://manybooks.net/
Amazon Launches Kindle eBook Lending, BN.com's Nook Is a Bestseller
Amazon.com is now allowing owners of its Kindle eBook reading
devices to lend eBooks to others through the Kindle Book Lending
program. Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble said its Nook eBook reader is
its most popular product ever, and said it now sells more digital
books than physical books on BN.com
Atomic Mall Launches Auctions Very Different from eBay-Style Listings
Online marketplace AtomicMall.com launched its anticipated
auction format on Saturday. The sealed-bid auctions are designed
to eliminate the shortcomings of the traditional online auction
format found on sites like eBay. Atomic Mall founder Mike Shannon
tells AuctionBytes he launched auctions to attract unique items,
and believes product diversity will be a powerful force for
attracting buyers to the site.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y11/m01/i03/s01
Gift Cards Are Out
After nine consecutive years of gains, gift cards are on the wane. Sales of gift cards are expected to drop to $86.2 billion, an 11% decline from their peak in 2007, according to CardHub.com. Shoppers want to avoid pitfalls like expiration dates and inactivity fees that can quickly erode a card's value, says Kwame Kuadey, chief executive of GiftCardRescue.com, which buys and sells gift cards. Even if you use a portion of the gift card, these inactivity fees can kick in if the rest of the card remains unused for at least 12 months. However, the Card Act eliminated other loopholes, including extending expiration dates to at least five years after the gift card is issued. Before, expiration dates could kick in at any time and often did within one year.
The first goal of any off grid electrical system is to reduce the electrical usage of your household as much as possible.
How to do that you say?
Non-electric or hybrid appliances. Let's talk possibilities, starting with refrigeration.
With a propane refrigerator you get a lot less for you money in terms of size and luxuries than you do with an electric unit. It's the price you pay for refrigeration where there isn't any electricity. But let's face it, a cold drink, ice, and preserved food are worth it.
http://www.realgoods.com/product/home-o ... gerator.do
End of Days starts May 21st according a group of Christian groups going about the country to warn the rest of us. Guess that ties into the Mayan Calendar prediction?!
Libertarian Party to participate in "Stripping of Freedom" TSA conference
WASHINGTON - Libertarian Party Executive Director Wes Benedict will join Ralph Nader and Cato Institute information policy expert Jim Harper this Thursday, January 6, as a panelist at a public conference examining TSA security procedures.
The conference is sponsored by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and titled "The Stripping of Freedom: A Careful Scan of TSA Security Procedures." It is open to the press and public. (Advance registration is preferred.)
Benedict commented, "TSA agents strip-scan and grope us when we want to take an airline flight. We need to treat their security theater with just as much scrutiny. Terrorists win by tricking us into letting government trample on our rights."
Top 15 Money Saving Tips for 2011
"Every year, ShopSmart publishes hundreds of tips to help consumers slash their bills," said Lisa Lee Freeman, editor-in-chief of ShopSmart. "So to help them kick off 2011 right, we pulled together our best cost-cutting measures that could save hundreds of dollars."
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shopsmarts-top-15-money-saving-tips-for-2011-111821089.html
>>Use vegetable spray as a quick lubricant on squeaky doors, bike chains, etc.<< As the Poor Man recently reported but for new subscribers… For those of you who don’t know, the DHS has started launching a campaign, as of yesterday, encouraging people everywhere that if you see “something suspicious or out of the ordinary” then “say something” to local authorities—or even your local retail store Manager! They are looping this warning video in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores across the U.S. and will soon have them at bus stations, the Mall of America, and other key gathering locations such as sports venues, concerts, etc American Nazis at it again.. Recently an everyday Mom who also is a faithful blogger who believed in self-reliance and would frequently voice her concerns about the world around her—had her child subjected to extensive questioning while at school—illegally of course. These questions were about whether or not her mother owned any guns, took the kids camping, stored food, or has remodeled her home? Who dared to ask a child these questions while she was at school? Nope, it wasn’t the Nazi’s, the KGB, or the CIA. It was an even more intimidating foe that tends to believe they are outside of the reach of the law and justice—the Child Protection Services division of Georgia. They then proceeded to charge the mother with child endangerment, based on the faulty theory that the mother blogged 20 hours a day and thus must be neglecting her daughter. (See http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/2010/12/is-govt-trying-to-find-out-who-has-what.html) >>>Legitimate ways of checking your credit score. Even if you no longer use credit, a bad score can hurt your chances at a job and will affect premium prices paid for auto insurance (which makes no sense whatsoever but our anti-consumer gov’t allows them this unfair practice…guess that’s why they call it ‘free enterprise.’)
None of these services are free >>>>
True FICO Score @ Fair Isaac 800-319-4433 or MyFICO.com
Equifax @ 866-493-9788 or Equifax.com
Transunion @ 800-888-4213 or TransUnionCS.com
Beginner’s Guide to Investing in Silver-Free
http://silver-shortage.blogspot.com/
PMs Political Hacking…
Get links to our intelligence services, preparedness checklists & more at Don McAlvany’s Intelligence Advisor. Don has been around a long time and has always provided useful content (hey, he’s a Phx boy)!
http://miatoday.com/today.asp
Will Congress order changes at the U.S. Postal Service?
Postal reform could be the sleeper issue of the year -- and a politically tricky one. (Which lawmaker wants to become the champion of closing post offices?) But make no mistake: This is the year the Postal Service will really run out of money -- unless Congress seriously addresses postal reform. Pensions are ballooning, mail volume and revenues are plummeting and -- most perilous of all -- a $15 billion line of credit with the U.S. Treasury dries up this year. Two substantive legislative proposals are on the table and after years of avoiding the issue, it appears Congress will have to deliver a serious solution in 2011.
Use a coffee filter to hold a taco or hot dog or other messy food-they make a sleeve!
Most wealthy simply do not pay income taxes. Today, it is estimated that a third of all the wealth in the world is held in offshore banks. So why is so much of the wealth of the globe located in places such as Monaco, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Isle of Man? It isn't because those are fun places to visit. It is to avoid taxes. The super wealthy and the international banking elite think that it is really funny that our paychecks are constantly being drained by federal taxes, state taxes and Social Security taxes while they literally pay nothing at all. These incredibly rich elitists make a ton of money doing business in wealthy western nations and then they transfer virtually all of their profits offshore where they don't have to contribute any of it in taxes. It works out really great for them, but it sucks for the rest of us.
It is estimated that approximately $1.4 trillion is held in offshore banks in the Cayman Islands alone. According to an article in Forbes magazine, there is a total of approximately 15 trillion to 20 trillion dollars in offshore bank accounts, brokerage accounts and hedge fund portfolios.
A recent article in the Guardian stated that a third of all the wealth on the entire globe is held in offshore banks and that the vast majority of international banking transactions take place in these tax havens....
On a conservative estimate, a third of the world's wealth is held offshore, with 80% of international banking transactions taking place there. More than half the capital in the world's stock exchanges is "parked" offshore at some point.
All of the biggest banks in the world are involved in playing this game.
>>>Help abused animals at www.TheAnimalRescueSite.com - become a sponsor or donate!<<< <<>>
PM’s Rumor Mill>>>Italy will be the next European nation requiring a bailout!
Our country no longer hold the international respect it once did, Asia is the new empire. Even street vendors in Switzerland are trying to dump the dollar. Even the Euro is likely to fall within two years, as is the US dollar. Asia has far fewer job killing bureaucratic regulations than the west. With strong encouragement from the Chinese government, their people are buying up gold. Paper dollars lost 16% of their value at the end of 2010. Asians are laughing at what they perceive as “dumbed-down Americans,” and plan to have their gold-back currency become the world currency within a few years. Despite this, many are saying the dollar will remain strong throughout 2011. Are we laughing yet? Finance is the new form of warfare.
<<>>
"Coercion by government, the main fear of our founding fathers, is now its most common attribute."
-- Philip K. Howard
New York attorney
Wanted to say thanks. You obviously put some thought and research into your site and your weekly newsletter. I pay for other publications which aren’t nearly as good or on target! --Dave of TN
>>Buy American-Each time you go to a store, ask where the ‘made in USA’ aisle is. If they don’t have any, say thanks & let them know you’ll go elsewhere. Go to TV star (Cheers) John Ratzenberger’s site: www.Ratzenberger.com to find US made products.<< The Parting Shots… It's mind-boggling the blinders our politicians have. I mean, surely that must be the reason. No sane person acts as fiscally irresponsible as they do. If not blinders, then they are deliberately running this country off a cliff and it's criminal at the least. Treasonous is more like it. This financial debacle we're in affects not only the jobs we do or do not have, it affects everything else as well, including energy infrastructure and our food supply. This country is the basis and standard of all the currencies in the world, and we're being run like a banana republic. Given that this train wreck we call a government is still intentionally driving us over a cliff, what can one do? Stop the Police State in America-Ron Paul http://peterschiffchannel.blogspot.com/2011/01/ron-paul-stop-police-state-repeal.html Too many Americans have been ‘dumbed down’ as the Chinese believe (actually, many Asians have felt that way about America since WWII). We’ve been scorned and admired at the same time for our freedoms (which are evaporating) and lifestyle. Consider that Nine out of Ten Americans are hurting financially… More Americans are on food stamps than are enrolled in college Home foreclosure notices were issued at the rate of 322 per hour in 2010 There are 5.5 job seekers for every job & most US jobs pay a fraction of what they used to…dropping significantly from the 80s More than $7 trillion in US household wealth-lost since the Recession began The number of laws that confiscate property and new fines by cities and states (aka: traffic offenses) has jumped 23% …laws such as anti-smoking, no texting, seat belt laws, etc….all in an effort to squeeze more revenue from citizens. Every single month tens of billions of dollars of our national wealth is transferred to the rest of the world. We buy far more from the rest of the globe than they buy from us, and this difference is called a trade deficit. Most Americans don't even think about the trade deficit, but the truth is that it represents a transfer of wealth that is almost unimaginable. Every month when the oil-exporting nations of the Middle East send us oil, what do we send to them? Our dollars of course. So we burn up their oil in our vehicles and end up with nothing at the end of the month, and they end up with a big pile of our money. So what happens the next month? The exact same process repeats again. But it is not just oil-exporting nations that we are transferring our national wealth to. Back in 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollars for the entire year. For this past August alone, the trade deficit with China was over 28 billion. Why Rich People are Leaving http://kiyosaki-blog.blogspot.com/2011/01/donald-trump-rich-people-are-leaving.html In other words, the U.S. trade deficit with China in August 2010 was more than 4,600 times larger than the U.S. trade deficit with China was for the entire year of 1985. That is why China has so much money to lend back to us - we have been transferring tens of billions of dollars of our national wealth to them month after month after month. Just think of we saw in 2010: - The TSA 'tip of the spear' enforcing subordination to government authority - Canada's government authorizing its agents to search homes without a warrant - Gold hitting all-time nominal highs due to unprecedented monetary inflation - Governments around the world raising taxes with immediate effect - Homeland Security began seizing domains without due process - The beginning of the end of the Eurozone - World governments engaging in mutually assured destruction currency wars - FBI raiding the homes of war protestors - Passage of the HIRE Act in the United States, a precursor to capital controls - Political heavyweights openly calling for the assassination of Julian Assange - Switzerland settling with the US government - Panama caving to pressure and signing a Tax Information Exchange Agreement - Homeland Security encouraging US citizens to spy on each other at Wal Mart Barron's: US Will See Run on Treasurys, Hyperinflation Investors in U.S. debt around the world are worryingly near a "psychological breaking point" that could force a "run on the bank" against Treasuries. If that happens, hyperinflation quickly follows and gold will soar much, much higher from its now record-setting levels, argues author and longtime trader Victor Sperandeo in the latest issue of Barron's. It’s our hope the Poor Man bulletin, web site, special reports and CDs have given you some means of preparation. You should always be stockpiling cans of oil, ammo, liquor, food, silver coins (I know, they go up weekly), batteries, toiletries, etc. for use in barter and for your family. Soon, your $20 bill might be worth a whole lot less. Please, please, please…share this with your friends and family who may not have stockpiled anything. I know, there are still many who don’t believe. Better off being a Boy Scout. Final shot…if you are an entrepreneur who desires more, learn from one of the best marketers on the planet, Jay Abraham on this 26 minute live video. http://jeffwalker.com/eben-pagan-jay-abraham/ Happy trails till next issue! --the Poor Man
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com
http://www.OldBookNook.com
http://www.GreenIrene.com/Poorman
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
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
11 Predictions for '11
Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin
Your choice for urban survival resources
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com
In This Issue:
1. Interview with Elizabeth Warren
2. Why has the war on terror become a war on our freedom?
3. Remember when using Time Warp
4. What new tax laws mean to online sellers
5. New-free reports now available/Happy New Year!
6. Austerity cuts in Europe-a harbinger of things to come here?
7. 11 Predictions for the coming year-Gas Prices to Rise is #12
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are."
-- Ayn Rand
(1905-1982) Author
Source: Atlas Shrugged.
Americans of our Revolutionary War Period were better educated than most college grads of today
Nearly a half million copies of Thomas Paine's Common Sense pamphlet were sold in the years leading up to our American Revolution. Although most folks were self-educated or home schooled in those years, most were better read than today's college graduate. Natural Law and human rights had a very real value and respect then, lawyers were actually respected and common law was considered to be a science.
Most of our common laws were derived over the centuries and judges found their roots in the clergy. In its early years common law was a private legal system, independent of government. Because law had no connection with government, judges would instruct offenders to make restitution to the victim (unlike today where fines are paid to the government instead of the victim).
If the offender refused, the judge used a procedure called outlawry, meaning if the criminal chose not to obey or to act outside the law, their legal status was reduced to that of a wild animal and this fact was publicized so that anyone could hunt that person down (the origin of bounty hunting) and kill him or enslave him.
Under Clovis, founder of the Frankish kingdom, a book of laws were compiled called Lex Salica, with its main premise is the criminal's first liability was to the victim, not the state. A range of offenses and fines were listed in this book and restitutions were split 50-50 between the victim and the state.
Common Law became so logical and sensible, that most colonists studied and understood it. In fact, the British stateman, Edmund Burke observed “In no country in the world, is law so general a study.”
Essentially, there are two laws. They are universally understood in ALL religions and little argued (though sadly ignored today by the US legal/political system which has become one and the same). They are:
>> Do all that you have agreed to do
>>Do not encroach on other persons or their property
The basic precepts of common law are no longer understood by our citizens or practiced in our legal system. Essentially we are left we political law which is constantly subject to change, challenge and twisting by politicians and bureaucrats who ignore the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Learn more at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
NOTE: Our newest free report, How the Washington-Wall Street Cartel is Robbing America contains new & pieces previously published. Additional new how-to reports are included in this file for downloading and represents our ongoing effort at providing our readers useable information. Feel free to share these files -- my way of saying Happy New Year!
Be sure to see the 11 trends forecast from our friend Gerald Celente at the bottom of this week’s edition. Normally, I provide such predictions, but Gerald hit pretty much all that I had come up with on the head…not a pretty site.
As governments become corrupt, they have need of more laws to dominate its citizens.
The Weekly Round up
Make your shower self cleaning with daily use of this MIY cleaner. Combine 1/3 cup rubbing alcohol and 1 cup water into a spray bottle. Spray walls and tub after each shower…the alcohol will dissolve shower grime & evaporates quickly!
Profile-Interview with Ms. Warren-New Consumer Chief
If Elizabeth Warren offers you a cup of tea, don’t accept. I’ve been known to pinch a penny myself, but when President Obama’s choice to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau pulls a rumpled gray object with a tail out of her desk drawer, even I blanch. It looks more like a dead mouse than a used tea bag.
“I know,” she says, laughing, when I express surprise. “But I just can’t stand the waste of throwing out a tea bag after one use. It’s like a knife in the gut for me.”http://www.vogue.com/magazine/article/elizabeth-warren-held-to-account/
Minimum Wage rises for some in 2011-PM maintains that by not taxing the first $25K of income would give everyone a much needed boost!
The , a New York-based advocate for workers, estimates that about 647,000 people will see their paychecks go up in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington
Retail clerk Kimberly Bobian of Denver agreed. Bobian stopped by a corner grocery to pick up a can of tomato sauce and said it's hard to keep her pantry stocked on the .
"It's going up 11 cents? That's a big deal, definitely," she said. "Food prices are going up, everything goes up, so any little bit helps
State-by-state minimum wage laws: http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/america.htm
What the New Tax Law Means to Online Sellers
Just before the Congress adjourned, the Tax Relief, Unemployment
Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 was signed into
law. Barbara Weltman explains what it means to self-employed and
small businesses, including online sellers.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y10/m12/i27/s01
Upcoming UPS and USPS rate changes -- review your shipping costs-PM tried getting the new rates but they weren’t yet available so check them.
Carrier rates are changing, effective January 3 for UPS and January 2 for USPS (check USPS.com in January for rates).
eBay's top-selling items in 2010 include iPhones, Barbie dolls
and military jackets, according to its just-released ''Top Shopped'' report.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y10/m12/i29/s02
How the Washington-Wall Street Cartel is
Selling your children into slavery, mortgaging & destroying
Your future…and what you can do to
Restore your freedom.
If you’re happy with TSA pat downs, no knock warrants in the middle of the night, diminishing property rights, no middle class jobs, over-paid government bureaucrats, unfair tax laws, a once prosperous country now bankrupt, a Congress bought and paid for, government spying on your email, finances & more…then read no further.
This ‘serious-as-a-heart attack,’ jaw clenching report will reveal how Americans are being financially raped and terrorized by a government which is supposed to protect us…mostly in the name of ‘keeping us free’ from terrorism.
You’ll also find some other reports here including how to Do Your Own Pig Roast, Basics of Plumbing, Coping w/ Farm Emergencies, 3-Day Emergency Food Supply & more.
http://tinyurl.com/GovCartel or go to www.PoorManSurvival.com and click on the Citizen Preparedness tab.
45 Tons of CDs & DVDs wind up in landfills each month. AbundaTrade.com refurbishes & re-circulates used discs. Enter the UPC code for a price quote, then swap them for cash or gift cards, ipods, etc.-or donate them to DiscsforDogs.org-benefits SPCA!
To save money when dining out, book a reservation in advance online through DinnerBroker.com or OpenTable.com. You will get discounts and points that can be turned in for cash -- exact amounts depend on the restaurant and time of reservation. Also, clip coupons from Sunday newspapers, mailbox coupon packs and free penny-saving publications. Restaurants often offer discounts this way. The Entertainment Book (about $30*) offers a wide variety of restaurant discounts -- using just two or three discounts pays for the book (888-231-7283, www.entertainment.com). If you like a specific restaurant, sign up for its reward program -- you will get special deals by E-mail. Watch for promotions, such as Kids Eat Free or Early-Bird Specials.
Government mandated costs have all gone up (our state has among the highest in the US). We got our property taxes, water bill and auto insurance all in December…put a real strain on our holiday finances. It also virtually eliminated our charitable donations this year as we had to feed the government instead! --Margaret
Nonprofits getting first shot at bank foreclosures
Rebuilding Together obtained the home for free from ., the bank that foreclosed on its previous owner. Honeywell International Inc. provided the labor to renovate it and $25,000 cash for the materials.
In a market hot with speculators snapping up cheap foreclosures, Rebuilding Together's program is one of many that give a leg up to nonprofits and redevelopment agencies trying to stabilize neighborhoods dotted with vacant houses.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_foreclosures_families_first
http://www.rebuildingtogether.org/section/about/
It's not who wins or loses, but who gets to control the wreckage
The $20K Pet-High Vet Bill Under Scrutiny
Vet bills are increasing and many Americans can no longer afford treatment for fido – Read more at: http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/health-care/the-20000-pet-1292884111206/
People have more to fear from governments than from terrorists. Terrorists come and go but power-hungry politicians will always be with us. We must ensure that each new debacle caused by government incompetence is not converted into another coffin nail for individual freedom as has happened in the United States.
Remember when:
When it was assumed the next generation would have it better than their parents
When most high school kids could read and knew American history
When poverty was declining
When home ownership was a viable step up
When a middle class family could exist on one paycheck
When income taxes were almost an afterthought & didn’t require CPAs
When good jobs were commonplace
Speaking of ‘Remember When’ here’s a free site that will whisk you back as far as 1900 and it let’s you peek at what life was like during each decade, even what kind of toys kids played with. For a good description of what all you might find on this site you may want to check out the Time-Warp Project button at the top of the page. The Research button yields some great information too. Just scroll down and check out the timeline.
http://www.time-warp.org/
How it works in the US workplace...no health insurance, no first aid kit – it's cheaper to simply replace the worker!
Parting thoughts...
Why has the war on terror become a war on freedom?
How many people is a government allowed to kill accidentally?
A number of years ago when I owned a chain of newspapers, we tried to find out how many people were killed accidentally by police. No one would provide us with that information. No knock 'shock and awe’ style SWAT break ins to the wrong home have killed countless people such a retired minister in Philadelphia who was reading his Bible when police broke down his door screaming at him to get on the ground. He died of a heart attack. Oh, an informant had given them the wrong address.
Last year in Detroit, police SWAT killed a young child when they entered the wrong home and a police firearm went off. Indeed, statistics show more Americans are killed accidentally by police than terrorists.
In most years since the 1990s, Americans were at far greater risk of being gunned down by local, state, and federal law enforcement agents than from international terrorists. In 2001, the Washington Post reported, for example, that Prince George police (MD) shot 122 persons, killing 47 – half of those citizens were unarmed.
A Human Rights Watch report observed “police officers engage in unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and unnecessary roughness in cities all across America, while their superiors fail to act or even to record the problems.”
The FBI killed 80 men, women and children in Waco after dousing the buildings for six hours with flammable gas and prevented fire trucks from approaching the inferno. If this had been carried out my Muslim fanatics, it would be classified as one of the worst terrorist acts in history...instead, Attorney General Janet Reno was treated like a hero!
Between 1980 and 2000 governments around the world killed more than 10 million people. In the 20th century, governments were responsible for killing more than 120 million people, while wars only accounted for 35 million deaths. Year in and year out, governments kill 100 times more people than terrorists.
In Serbia US & allied war planes killed between 500 and 2000 civilians and even more in Afghanistan...but when government kills it doesn't count and it usually gets white washed as the government investigates its own incidents. Many would agree that any action done by a private citizen that would be considered terrorism should also be considered terrorism if done by government agents.
The notion put forth by our “Department of Justice” that governments cannot be terrorists (unless of course, our government says another government is a terrorist) doesn't hold a lot of water by those on the receiving end. US sponsored torture, using other countries at our behest, makes us hypocritical in the eyes of the world.
One of the reasons why our government is so often despised in other countries is due to our need to not only control US citizens, but to also stick our nose into the business of foreign citizens acting as the policeman to the world. We just can't seem to get enough of our addiction to control or to act as big brother to the world. Noted in this recent story...
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Drug Enforcement Administration has grown into a global intelligence organization whose reach extends far beyond international drug trafficking, The New York Times reported.
Citing documents from the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, the newspaper said the DEA's operations had become so expansive the agency has had to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies.
One August 2009 cable reported Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli as having sent an urgent BlackBerry message to the US ambassador asking the DEA go after his political enemies. Speaking of Panama, I always found it odd that our country could ethically invade (we called it extradition) another country simply to nab someone (Pres. Noriega) it no longer liked and the rest of the world said nothing.
Too bad our politicians didn’t lean more toward the advice George Washington gave us in his farewell speech about avoiding entangling alliances and foreign intrigues…guess we can learn from history.
Finally, are the austerity cuts & protests witnessed across Europe a harbinger of things to come in the USA? Remember, it doesn’t take much to get a populace angry and many Americans are becoming fed up with the direction this country is headed toward as well.
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/12/revolt-2011-coming-dark-ages-2010.html
Also, check out Gerald’s 11 predictions for the coming year…not pretty & don’t forget as the Poor Man has been saying, oil will rise, meaning gasoline will rise, meaning in turn, food prices will rise. Costs will be passed onto consumers for a variety of items in addition to food.
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/12/gerald-celente-top-predictions-for-2011.html
Yours for better living in ‘11--the Poor Man,
"Congressman is the trivialist distinction for a full grown man."
-- Mark Twain
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com
http://www.OldBookNook.com
http://www.GreenIrene.com/Poorman
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
Your choice for urban survival resources
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com
In This Issue:
1. Interview with Elizabeth Warren
2. Why has the war on terror become a war on our freedom?
3. Remember when using Time Warp
4. What new tax laws mean to online sellers
5. New-free reports now available/Happy New Year!
6. Austerity cuts in Europe-a harbinger of things to come here?
7. 11 Predictions for the coming year-Gas Prices to Rise is #12
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are."
-- Ayn Rand
(1905-1982) Author
Source: Atlas Shrugged.
Americans of our Revolutionary War Period were better educated than most college grads of today
Nearly a half million copies of Thomas Paine's Common Sense pamphlet were sold in the years leading up to our American Revolution. Although most folks were self-educated or home schooled in those years, most were better read than today's college graduate. Natural Law and human rights had a very real value and respect then, lawyers were actually respected and common law was considered to be a science.
Most of our common laws were derived over the centuries and judges found their roots in the clergy. In its early years common law was a private legal system, independent of government. Because law had no connection with government, judges would instruct offenders to make restitution to the victim (unlike today where fines are paid to the government instead of the victim).
If the offender refused, the judge used a procedure called outlawry, meaning if the criminal chose not to obey or to act outside the law, their legal status was reduced to that of a wild animal and this fact was publicized so that anyone could hunt that person down (the origin of bounty hunting) and kill him or enslave him.
Under Clovis, founder of the Frankish kingdom, a book of laws were compiled called Lex Salica, with its main premise is the criminal's first liability was to the victim, not the state. A range of offenses and fines were listed in this book and restitutions were split 50-50 between the victim and the state.
Common Law became so logical and sensible, that most colonists studied and understood it. In fact, the British stateman, Edmund Burke observed “In no country in the world, is law so general a study.”
Essentially, there are two laws. They are universally understood in ALL religions and little argued (though sadly ignored today by the US legal/political system which has become one and the same). They are:
>> Do all that you have agreed to do
>>Do not encroach on other persons or their property
The basic precepts of common law are no longer understood by our citizens or practiced in our legal system. Essentially we are left we political law which is constantly subject to change, challenge and twisting by politicians and bureaucrats who ignore the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Learn more at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
NOTE: Our newest free report, How the Washington-Wall Street Cartel is Robbing America contains new & pieces previously published. Additional new how-to reports are included in this file for downloading and represents our ongoing effort at providing our readers useable information. Feel free to share these files -- my way of saying Happy New Year!
Be sure to see the 11 trends forecast from our friend Gerald Celente at the bottom of this week’s edition. Normally, I provide such predictions, but Gerald hit pretty much all that I had come up with on the head…not a pretty site.
As governments become corrupt, they have need of more laws to dominate its citizens.
The Weekly Round up
Make your shower self cleaning with daily use of this MIY cleaner. Combine 1/3 cup rubbing alcohol and 1 cup water into a spray bottle. Spray walls and tub after each shower…the alcohol will dissolve shower grime & evaporates quickly!
Profile-Interview with Ms. Warren-New Consumer Chief
If Elizabeth Warren offers you a cup of tea, don’t accept. I’ve been known to pinch a penny myself, but when President Obama’s choice to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau pulls a rumpled gray object with a tail out of her desk drawer, even I blanch. It looks more like a dead mouse than a used tea bag.
“I know,” she says, laughing, when I express surprise. “But I just can’t stand the waste of throwing out a tea bag after one use. It’s like a knife in the gut for me.”http://www.vogue.com/magazine/article/elizabeth-warren-held-to-account/
Minimum Wage rises for some in 2011-PM maintains that by not taxing the first $25K of income would give everyone a much needed boost!
The , a New York-based advocate for workers, estimates that about 647,000 people will see their paychecks go up in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington
Retail clerk Kimberly Bobian of Denver agreed. Bobian stopped by a corner grocery to pick up a can of tomato sauce and said it's hard to keep her pantry stocked on the .
"It's going up 11 cents? That's a big deal, definitely," she said. "Food prices are going up, everything goes up, so any little bit helps
State-by-state minimum wage laws: http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/america.htm
What the New Tax Law Means to Online Sellers
Just before the Congress adjourned, the Tax Relief, Unemployment
Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 was signed into
law. Barbara Weltman explains what it means to self-employed and
small businesses, including online sellers.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y10/m12/i27/s01
Upcoming UPS and USPS rate changes -- review your shipping costs-PM tried getting the new rates but they weren’t yet available so check them.
Carrier rates are changing, effective January 3 for UPS and January 2 for USPS (check USPS.com in January for rates).
eBay's top-selling items in 2010 include iPhones, Barbie dolls
and military jackets, according to its just-released ''Top Shopped'' report.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y10/m12/i29/s02
How the Washington-Wall Street Cartel is
Selling your children into slavery, mortgaging & destroying
Your future…and what you can do to
Restore your freedom.
If you’re happy with TSA pat downs, no knock warrants in the middle of the night, diminishing property rights, no middle class jobs, over-paid government bureaucrats, unfair tax laws, a once prosperous country now bankrupt, a Congress bought and paid for, government spying on your email, finances & more…then read no further.
This ‘serious-as-a-heart attack,’ jaw clenching report will reveal how Americans are being financially raped and terrorized by a government which is supposed to protect us…mostly in the name of ‘keeping us free’ from terrorism.
You’ll also find some other reports here including how to Do Your Own Pig Roast, Basics of Plumbing, Coping w/ Farm Emergencies, 3-Day Emergency Food Supply & more.
http://tinyurl.com/GovCartel or go to www.PoorManSurvival.com and click on the Citizen Preparedness tab.
45 Tons of CDs & DVDs wind up in landfills each month. AbundaTrade.com refurbishes & re-circulates used discs. Enter the UPC code for a price quote, then swap them for cash or gift cards, ipods, etc.-or donate them to DiscsforDogs.org-benefits SPCA!
To save money when dining out, book a reservation in advance online through DinnerBroker.com or OpenTable.com. You will get discounts and points that can be turned in for cash -- exact amounts depend on the restaurant and time of reservation. Also, clip coupons from Sunday newspapers, mailbox coupon packs and free penny-saving publications. Restaurants often offer discounts this way. The Entertainment Book (about $30*) offers a wide variety of restaurant discounts -- using just two or three discounts pays for the book (888-231-7283, www.entertainment.com). If you like a specific restaurant, sign up for its reward program -- you will get special deals by E-mail. Watch for promotions, such as Kids Eat Free or Early-Bird Specials.
Government mandated costs have all gone up (our state has among the highest in the US). We got our property taxes, water bill and auto insurance all in December…put a real strain on our holiday finances. It also virtually eliminated our charitable donations this year as we had to feed the government instead! --Margaret
Nonprofits getting first shot at bank foreclosures
Rebuilding Together obtained the home for free from ., the bank that foreclosed on its previous owner. Honeywell International Inc. provided the labor to renovate it and $25,000 cash for the materials.
In a market hot with speculators snapping up cheap foreclosures, Rebuilding Together's program is one of many that give a leg up to nonprofits and redevelopment agencies trying to stabilize neighborhoods dotted with vacant houses.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_foreclosures_families_first
http://www.rebuildingtogether.org/section/about/
It's not who wins or loses, but who gets to control the wreckage
The $20K Pet-High Vet Bill Under Scrutiny
Vet bills are increasing and many Americans can no longer afford treatment for fido – Read more at: http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/health-care/the-20000-pet-1292884111206/
People have more to fear from governments than from terrorists. Terrorists come and go but power-hungry politicians will always be with us. We must ensure that each new debacle caused by government incompetence is not converted into another coffin nail for individual freedom as has happened in the United States.
Remember when:
When it was assumed the next generation would have it better than their parents
When most high school kids could read and knew American history
When poverty was declining
When home ownership was a viable step up
When a middle class family could exist on one paycheck
When income taxes were almost an afterthought & didn’t require CPAs
When good jobs were commonplace
Speaking of ‘Remember When’ here’s a free site that will whisk you back as far as 1900 and it let’s you peek at what life was like during each decade, even what kind of toys kids played with. For a good description of what all you might find on this site you may want to check out the Time-Warp Project button at the top of the page. The Research button yields some great information too. Just scroll down and check out the timeline.
http://www.time-warp.org/
How it works in the US workplace...no health insurance, no first aid kit – it's cheaper to simply replace the worker!
Parting thoughts...
Why has the war on terror become a war on freedom?
How many people is a government allowed to kill accidentally?
A number of years ago when I owned a chain of newspapers, we tried to find out how many people were killed accidentally by police. No one would provide us with that information. No knock 'shock and awe’ style SWAT break ins to the wrong home have killed countless people such a retired minister in Philadelphia who was reading his Bible when police broke down his door screaming at him to get on the ground. He died of a heart attack. Oh, an informant had given them the wrong address.
Last year in Detroit, police SWAT killed a young child when they entered the wrong home and a police firearm went off. Indeed, statistics show more Americans are killed accidentally by police than terrorists.
In most years since the 1990s, Americans were at far greater risk of being gunned down by local, state, and federal law enforcement agents than from international terrorists. In 2001, the Washington Post reported, for example, that Prince George police (MD) shot 122 persons, killing 47 – half of those citizens were unarmed.
A Human Rights Watch report observed “police officers engage in unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and unnecessary roughness in cities all across America, while their superiors fail to act or even to record the problems.”
The FBI killed 80 men, women and children in Waco after dousing the buildings for six hours with flammable gas and prevented fire trucks from approaching the inferno. If this had been carried out my Muslim fanatics, it would be classified as one of the worst terrorist acts in history...instead, Attorney General Janet Reno was treated like a hero!
Between 1980 and 2000 governments around the world killed more than 10 million people. In the 20th century, governments were responsible for killing more than 120 million people, while wars only accounted for 35 million deaths. Year in and year out, governments kill 100 times more people than terrorists.
In Serbia US & allied war planes killed between 500 and 2000 civilians and even more in Afghanistan...but when government kills it doesn't count and it usually gets white washed as the government investigates its own incidents. Many would agree that any action done by a private citizen that would be considered terrorism should also be considered terrorism if done by government agents.
The notion put forth by our “Department of Justice” that governments cannot be terrorists (unless of course, our government says another government is a terrorist) doesn't hold a lot of water by those on the receiving end. US sponsored torture, using other countries at our behest, makes us hypocritical in the eyes of the world.
One of the reasons why our government is so often despised in other countries is due to our need to not only control US citizens, but to also stick our nose into the business of foreign citizens acting as the policeman to the world. We just can't seem to get enough of our addiction to control or to act as big brother to the world. Noted in this recent story...
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Drug Enforcement Administration has grown into a global intelligence organization whose reach extends far beyond international drug trafficking, The New York Times reported.
Citing documents from the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, the newspaper said the DEA's operations had become so expansive the agency has had to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies.
One August 2009 cable reported Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli as having sent an urgent BlackBerry message to the US ambassador asking the DEA go after his political enemies. Speaking of Panama, I always found it odd that our country could ethically invade (we called it extradition) another country simply to nab someone (Pres. Noriega) it no longer liked and the rest of the world said nothing.
Too bad our politicians didn’t lean more toward the advice George Washington gave us in his farewell speech about avoiding entangling alliances and foreign intrigues…guess we can learn from history.
Finally, are the austerity cuts & protests witnessed across Europe a harbinger of things to come in the USA? Remember, it doesn’t take much to get a populace angry and many Americans are becoming fed up with the direction this country is headed toward as well.
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/12/revolt-2011-coming-dark-ages-2010.html
Also, check out Gerald’s 11 predictions for the coming year…not pretty & don’t forget as the Poor Man has been saying, oil will rise, meaning gasoline will rise, meaning in turn, food prices will rise. Costs will be passed onto consumers for a variety of items in addition to food.
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/12/gerald-celente-top-predictions-for-2011.html
Yours for better living in ‘11--the Poor Man,
"Congressman is the trivialist distinction for a full grown man."
-- Mark Twain
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com
http://www.OldBookNook.com
http://www.GreenIrene.com/Poorman
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
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Who stole your piece of the pie?
Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin
Your choice for urban survival resources
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com
In This Issue:
1. A homegrown revolution
2. The Zombie Bank-fun stuff
3. The Working Poor Families Organization
4. Recipe for creating the ‘cuddle’ hormone
5. End of America-Senator Tom Coburn Warns
6. Everything in America is now a crime
7. Destruction by Design-Sen. Bernie Sanders
P. J. O'Rourke
The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to.
Shattered Dreams for Too Many Americans
Washington is destroying the future of our children…
“Business is up,” said Linda, and “that’s not a good thing.”
Linda runs our local church ’soup kitchen’ and food bank for the needy. They serve free meals twice a week and help families who have been devastated by natural or man made disaster.
The truth is that there are millions upon millions of American families that have been pushed to the edge of despair by the lack of jobs. In August 2009, only 10 percent of the unemployed had been out of work for 2 years or longer. Today that number is up to 35 percent.
One very disturbing sign of the times is that many churches are now holding "blue Christmas" services to comfort those who are going through hard times. Back during the "good times" such a thing would have been unimaginable, but now they are being held from coast to coast.
All over the nation, food banks, aid agencies and homeless shelters find themselves absolutely overwhelmed this winter.
Despite White House propaganda and mainstream news reports of how the ‘economy is slowly improving,’ there are many long term unemployed and the odds of finding a job that pays more than $10 an hour are slim. The one segment of the nation doing well are those making more than $180,000.
What is perhaps saddest of all is what this economy is doing to so many children.
The richest 1% of U.S. households had a net worth 225 times greater than that of the average American household in 2009, according to analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. That's up from the previous record of 190 times greater, which was set in 2004.
According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
Poverty is absolutely exploding all over the United States. The number of Americans living in poverty has increased for three consecutive years, and the 43.6 million poor Americans in 2009 was the highest number that the U.S. Census Bureau has ever recorded in 51 years of record-keeping.
So, no, this Christmas is not "a season of joy" for many Americans. For example, a commenter on the Unemployed-Friends website identified only as "jobless_in_MA" says that her holidays are going to be quite depressing since she has been out of work for 2 Christmases in a row now.
No one in this country should go hungry or go without affordable medical care. If we can afford billion dollar aircraft carriers and multi-million dollar jet fighters to attack street thugs in the mountains of Afghanistan, we should be able to take care of our own.
There are many, many flaws in the medical program Obama pushed through as it doesn’t address costs, the need for Tort Reform or the shortage of nurses and doctors (we also have a shortage of vets in the US) and by all rights, it should eliminate the need for Workers Comp costs for small business owners…perhaps it is just a start.
Today, one out of every six Americans is now enrolled in a federal anti-poverty program. As 2007 began, "only" 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but now 42 million Americans are enrolled in the food stamp program and that number keeps rising every single month.
Sadly, there are millions upon millions of Americans that do have jobs and yet barely find themselves able to hang in there. Many Americans have been forced to grab whatever job they can find. In fact, the number of Americans working part-time jobs "for economic reasons" is now the highest it has been in at least five decades.
It is becoming increasingly more difficult to make a living in the United States. Today, half of all American workers earn $505 or less per week.
Could your family get by on $505 per week?
America's economic pie is rapidly shrinking. As our national wealth continues to be destroyed, even more American families are going to suffer. Indeed, watch for the price of oil to head up to as high as $120 a barrel in the coming year…that, of course, will mean another round of higher priced commodities such food. There are many reasons this will take place but I’ll skip the economics lesson this issue (suffice it to say it has more to do with greed and speculation than demand).
Here’s the Poor Man’s message to Washington-Stop killing us (I like making these little animated movies) http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/8198351
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EKS1dN-2Ao
A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one Year and out the other.
Free, Interesting or low-cost resources
Get it free-TV & Movies & More
http://www.crackle.com/c/Backwash/?cmpid=1662
Nimble ways to manage your social life
http://www.pcworld.com/article/214926/a_nimble_way_to_manage_your_online_social_life.html?tk=nl_wbx_h_topnews
When preparing fresh vegetables…save the scraps & trimmings. You can freeze them or turn them into soup quickly just by boiling them with a bouillon cube or two and water, then puree them until smooth!
Compare online & store prices instantly-check out this site:
http://www.SwoopThat.com
Opt out of catalog mailing lists. Holiday shopping frequently finds your name on a variety of mailing lists. If you want to stop the junk mail & save few trees, go to:
www.CatalogChoice.org
What Does the New HEALTH CARE LAW Mean for You?
The Affordable Care Act means that today, insurers can't:
deny coverage to kids with pre-existing conditions;
cancel your policy without proving fraud; or
put lifetime limits on benefits.
Also, your children may be able to stay on your insurance plan until they are 26; and, if you've been denied insurance due to a pre-existing condition, you may be eligible for coverage through your state's high-risk pool.
Learn more and search for insurance options available to you at healthcare.gov.
JOB TRACKER: Shining a Light on Outsourcing
Want to know what corporations are doing in your community? Just pick a ZIP code and enter it into our Job Tracker. Take 44115, in the Cleveland area: 47 companies sent jobs overseas, 130 had mass layoffs and 2,963 had violated safety and health laws.
Job Tracker is a publicly available, ZIP code-searchable database exposing companies that have been exporting jobs, laying off workers and violating safety, health and labor laws. Go to workingamerica.org/jobtracker to search your area.
"The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender."
-- Proverbs
The News Roundup
Candice Miller R-MI sent this new pledge to me just before Christmas regarding-
reforms recommended by the transition team and are expected to be adopted as the new House rules are:
• Requirement for every bill to cite its specific constitutional authority and for every bill to be available online for the American people to read and review;
• A prohibition on the consideration of any “suspension” bill that creates a new program unless it eliminates or reduces a program of equal or greater size, also known as “cut-as-you-go;”
• A prohibition on the consideration of any “suspension” bill that increases authorizations, appropriations, or direct spending in any given year unless fully offset;
• And, for the first time among either party, a requirement that internal Republican Conference rules and resolutions are made available online for the American people to read and review: http://rules-republicans.house.gov/News/Read.aspx?id=442.
“Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.”
–Lewis H. Lapham
Destruction by Design? The war on our middle class continues. Watch Sen. Bernie Sanders speech in the senate as how we’re being screwed.
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/12/senator-bernie-sanders-war-against.html
Rumor Central…Fiscal vampires push for new world currency
Over the years, several ideas to replace the dollar have surfaced. The latest is called the SDR, a fiat currency of the IMF (Int’l Monetary Fund) run by Swiss bankers and our Fed…the plan is to reduce the size of the US economy and remove the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. These vampires have been meeting in Switzerland over the past year.
Corporate America screwing the little guy
As the American unemployed continue to struggle, Wall Street is making record profits and shelling out huge bonuses. With the US government is spending billions on wars abroad but neglecting its own people at home the holiday season looks bleak. Economist Max Fraad Wolff says because so many people are without a job, the social division between profits and wages has tilted further towards profit.
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/12/max-fraad-wolff-corporate-america.html
The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more intrusive police state, more unemployment and home foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by the US government of US law, international law, the Constitution, and truth, more suspicion and distrust from allies, more hostility from the rest of the world, and new heights of media sycophancy.
Everything in America is rapidly becoming a crime. Learn of some of the most ridiculous ‘crimes’ under our rising totalitarian government at:
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com/legalresources
Path to Freedom presents 'A Homegrown Revolution' A collaboration of selective media clips which feature their urban homestead and farm which focus on the need of radical action -- growing food in the city.
This self produced, short music video was shown at Peter Seller's Cultural Art's class at UCLA followed by a short presentation by urban farmer, Jules Dervaes founder of Path to Freedom. The class focus was on the art of slow food and among other guests invited were Michael Pollan, Alice Waters and Eric Schlosser.
Like Victory Gardens of yesteryear, start your own homegrown revolution, grow your own food in your back or front yard -- for more information visit the urban homesteaders at http://www.PathtoFreedom.com
Or on their online journal at: http://www.urbanhomestead.org/journal
The End of America - A Tsunami of debt is growing and will drown the United States by 2020
U.S. Senator Tom Coburn warned Americans this Sunday of an apocalyptic economic future, with Great Depression levels of unemployment and a destruction of the country's middle class.
The Oklahoma Republican told Fox News that unless Washington cuts spending and reduces the national debt, unemployment in the United States could rise dramatically from less than 10 percent today to 18 percent or more.
At the same time, Coburn says the nation's economic output could drop calamitously -- by 9 percent. Once that happens he predicts the middle class could be destroyed
A Tsunami of debt is growing and will drown the United States by 2020. Unfunded entitlemnet promises will be ruinous to keep and if cut will likely bring civil unrest. Sovereign insolvency is likely to spread across the Globe as higher interest rates are demanded for government borrowing. America faces a terminal decline as an economic Superpower as stagnation and high unemployment sap its strength.
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/12/end-of-america-tsunami-of-debt-is.html
What will the next generation think of us when they
Learn our government has cannibalized their country, their opportunities?
--The Men Who Sold out America
Guest Editorial
The middle class and its jobs continue to be wiped out, little or no relief in site-poverty to
increase. Today, nearly one out of every three families in the United States is considered to be "low income". Millions of American families are finding that they can barely make it from month to month even with both parents working as hard as they possibly can. Blue collar American workers from coast to coast are having their wages decreased at a time when it seems like the cost of virtually every monthly bill is going up. Unfortunately, there is every indication that things are only going to get worse and that average American families are going to be financially squeezed even more in the months and years to come.
The Working Poor Families Project has just released their policy brief for the winter of 2010-11. What they have discovered is that the number of working poor in the United States is higher than they have ever seen it before and it continues to increase at a staggering pace. The following are some of the key findings for 2009 that were pulled right out of their report....
* There were more than 10 million low-income working families in the United States, an increase of nearly a quarter million from the previous year.
* Forty-five million people, including 22 million children, lived in low-income working families, an increase of 1.7 million people from 2008.
* Forty-three percent of working families with at least one minority parent were low income, nearly twice the proportion of white working families (22 percent).
* Income inequality continued to grow with the richest 20 percent of working families taking home 47 percent of all income and earning 10 times that of low-income working families.
* More than half of the U.S. labor force (55 percent) has “suffered a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or have become involuntary part-time workers” since the recession began in December 2007.
Unfortunately, things are not going to be getting any better for the working poor. In the new "one world economy" that our politicians keep insisting is so good for us, millions upon millions of American workers now find that they have to compete for work with laborers on the other side of the globe that are willing to work for slave labor wages. This is causing millions of jobs to leave the United States and it is forcing wages down.
Millions of Americans now find that they are making substantially less than they used to. If that has happened to you, perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that you are not alone. Or perhaps it is not that comforting. In any event, American workers are not just competing with each other anymore. Now there is the constant threat that all the jobs could just be sent overseas.
As wages are forced down, a record number of working Americans are finding themselves forced to turn to food stamps and to other government anti-poverty programs. Millions of Americans have been forced to take part-time jobs in order to supplement their incomes. Millions of others have been forced to take part-time jobs because that is all they can find.
This is all part of a long-term trend. The numbers don't lie. About the only people doing well are those on Wall Street and the very rich. Nearly every other segment of the population is getting poorer.
The following are 10 statistics that I have shared previously, but I think that they do a really good job of highlighting the plight that the working poor in this country are now facing....
#1 In 2009, total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined in the United States.
#2 Since the year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs. Meanwhile, our population is getting larger.
#3 As 2007 began, only 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but now 42 million Americans are on food stamps and that number keeps rising every single month.
#4 Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.
#5 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.
#6 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#7 The number of Americans working part-time jobs "for economic reasons" is now the highest it has been in at least five decades.
#8 Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. In 2010, the United States has fallen to seventh.
#9 In 1976, the top 1 percent of earners in the United States took in 8.9 percent of all income. By 2007, that number had risen to 23.5 percent.
#10 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010.
The United States is becoming poorer as a nation even as the boys up on Wall Street are busy grabbing a bigger share for themselves.
We are rapidly becoming a nation that will have a very small privileged class of ultra-wealthy and a very large class of "workers" that is just barely trying to survive.
So is the answer even more government handouts and even more government social programs?
Of course not.
There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress."
-- Mark Twain
What middle class Americans need are middle class jobs.
http://www.workingpoorfamilies.org/
I’m a new subscriber & had a chance to look through your previous issues too. You are indeed a passionate political muckraker. I enjoy your comments and resources and I’m making a small donation to the ‘cause.’ --Lifeworks/MaryAnne, TX
I am where I am because I believe in all possibilities
--Whoopi Goldberg
Parting thoughts-enjoy your New Year Celebration
I leave you with a bit of New Year’s trivia to brighten your celebratory weekend…
>>Bond with a midnight kiss. When the countdown ends & the ball drops (doesn’t Congress do enough of that), be sure to give your loved one a kiss-it will spur production of the cuddle hormone oxytocin which will fill you with love!
>>If that doesn’t work, try this recipe: In a large pitcher, stir together 2-½ cups of OJ, 1-½ cup of pineapple juice, ¼ cup apple juice, ¼ cup lime juice, ¼ cup of grenadine and a cup or so of bourbon…add 2 Tbs of light brown sugar until dissolved, cover & chill. Before serving, add 2 cups of 7-up and garnish.
>>The first New Year’s ball dropped from a flagpole at One Times Square at midnight in 1908. That ball was made from wood & iron weighing 700 lbs. Today’s ball weighs over 11,800 lobs.
>>The Rockettes home, Radio City Music Hall opened its doors in NYC in 1932 (has a wonderful Art Deco interior)…so who was better - the Rockettes or the June Taylor Dancers who used to appear on the Jackie Gleason show? You decide!
May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions!
Finally, here’s a fun little ditty called The Zombie Bank
http://economycollapse.blogspot.com/2010/12/zombie-bank.html
A hearty happy New Year to all of you!
The “getting-too-old-to-enjoy-it” Poor Man
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com
http://www.OldBookNook.com
http://www.GreenIrene.com/Poorman
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
Your choice for urban survival resources
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com
In This Issue:
1. A homegrown revolution
2. The Zombie Bank-fun stuff
3. The Working Poor Families Organization
4. Recipe for creating the ‘cuddle’ hormone
5. End of America-Senator Tom Coburn Warns
6. Everything in America is now a crime
7. Destruction by Design-Sen. Bernie Sanders
P. J. O'Rourke
The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to.
Shattered Dreams for Too Many Americans
Washington is destroying the future of our children…
“Business is up,” said Linda, and “that’s not a good thing.”
Linda runs our local church ’soup kitchen’ and food bank for the needy. They serve free meals twice a week and help families who have been devastated by natural or man made disaster.
The truth is that there are millions upon millions of American families that have been pushed to the edge of despair by the lack of jobs. In August 2009, only 10 percent of the unemployed had been out of work for 2 years or longer. Today that number is up to 35 percent.
One very disturbing sign of the times is that many churches are now holding "blue Christmas" services to comfort those who are going through hard times. Back during the "good times" such a thing would have been unimaginable, but now they are being held from coast to coast.
All over the nation, food banks, aid agencies and homeless shelters find themselves absolutely overwhelmed this winter.
Despite White House propaganda and mainstream news reports of how the ‘economy is slowly improving,’ there are many long term unemployed and the odds of finding a job that pays more than $10 an hour are slim. The one segment of the nation doing well are those making more than $180,000.
What is perhaps saddest of all is what this economy is doing to so many children.
The richest 1% of U.S. households had a net worth 225 times greater than that of the average American household in 2009, according to analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. That's up from the previous record of 190 times greater, which was set in 2004.
According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
Poverty is absolutely exploding all over the United States. The number of Americans living in poverty has increased for three consecutive years, and the 43.6 million poor Americans in 2009 was the highest number that the U.S. Census Bureau has ever recorded in 51 years of record-keeping.
So, no, this Christmas is not "a season of joy" for many Americans. For example, a commenter on the Unemployed-Friends website identified only as "jobless_in_MA" says that her holidays are going to be quite depressing since she has been out of work for 2 Christmases in a row now.
No one in this country should go hungry or go without affordable medical care. If we can afford billion dollar aircraft carriers and multi-million dollar jet fighters to attack street thugs in the mountains of Afghanistan, we should be able to take care of our own.
There are many, many flaws in the medical program Obama pushed through as it doesn’t address costs, the need for Tort Reform or the shortage of nurses and doctors (we also have a shortage of vets in the US) and by all rights, it should eliminate the need for Workers Comp costs for small business owners…perhaps it is just a start.
Today, one out of every six Americans is now enrolled in a federal anti-poverty program. As 2007 began, "only" 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but now 42 million Americans are enrolled in the food stamp program and that number keeps rising every single month.
Sadly, there are millions upon millions of Americans that do have jobs and yet barely find themselves able to hang in there. Many Americans have been forced to grab whatever job they can find. In fact, the number of Americans working part-time jobs "for economic reasons" is now the highest it has been in at least five decades.
It is becoming increasingly more difficult to make a living in the United States. Today, half of all American workers earn $505 or less per week.
Could your family get by on $505 per week?
America's economic pie is rapidly shrinking. As our national wealth continues to be destroyed, even more American families are going to suffer. Indeed, watch for the price of oil to head up to as high as $120 a barrel in the coming year…that, of course, will mean another round of higher priced commodities such food. There are many reasons this will take place but I’ll skip the economics lesson this issue (suffice it to say it has more to do with greed and speculation than demand).
Here’s the Poor Man’s message to Washington-Stop killing us (I like making these little animated movies) http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/8198351
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EKS1dN-2Ao
A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one Year and out the other.
Free, Interesting or low-cost resources
Get it free-TV & Movies & More
http://www.crackle.com/c/Backwash/?cmpid=1662
Nimble ways to manage your social life
http://www.pcworld.com/article/214926/a_nimble_way_to_manage_your_online_social_life.html?tk=nl_wbx_h_topnews
When preparing fresh vegetables…save the scraps & trimmings. You can freeze them or turn them into soup quickly just by boiling them with a bouillon cube or two and water, then puree them until smooth!
Compare online & store prices instantly-check out this site:
http://www.SwoopThat.com
Opt out of catalog mailing lists. Holiday shopping frequently finds your name on a variety of mailing lists. If you want to stop the junk mail & save few trees, go to:
www.CatalogChoice.org
What Does the New HEALTH CARE LAW Mean for You?
The Affordable Care Act means that today, insurers can't:
deny coverage to kids with pre-existing conditions;
cancel your policy without proving fraud; or
put lifetime limits on benefits.
Also, your children may be able to stay on your insurance plan until they are 26; and, if you've been denied insurance due to a pre-existing condition, you may be eligible for coverage through your state's high-risk pool.
Learn more and search for insurance options available to you at healthcare.gov.
JOB TRACKER: Shining a Light on Outsourcing
Want to know what corporations are doing in your community? Just pick a ZIP code and enter it into our Job Tracker. Take 44115, in the Cleveland area: 47 companies sent jobs overseas, 130 had mass layoffs and 2,963 had violated safety and health laws.
Job Tracker is a publicly available, ZIP code-searchable database exposing companies that have been exporting jobs, laying off workers and violating safety, health and labor laws. Go to workingamerica.org/jobtracker to search your area.
"The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender."
-- Proverbs
The News Roundup
Candice Miller R-MI sent this new pledge to me just before Christmas regarding-
reforms recommended by the transition team and are expected to be adopted as the new House rules are:
• Requirement for every bill to cite its specific constitutional authority and for every bill to be available online for the American people to read and review;
• A prohibition on the consideration of any “suspension” bill that creates a new program unless it eliminates or reduces a program of equal or greater size, also known as “cut-as-you-go;”
• A prohibition on the consideration of any “suspension” bill that increases authorizations, appropriations, or direct spending in any given year unless fully offset;
• And, for the first time among either party, a requirement that internal Republican Conference rules and resolutions are made available online for the American people to read and review: http://rules-republicans.house.gov/News/Read.aspx?id=442.
“Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.”
–Lewis H. Lapham
Destruction by Design? The war on our middle class continues. Watch Sen. Bernie Sanders speech in the senate as how we’re being screwed.
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/12/senator-bernie-sanders-war-against.html
Rumor Central…Fiscal vampires push for new world currency
Over the years, several ideas to replace the dollar have surfaced. The latest is called the SDR, a fiat currency of the IMF (Int’l Monetary Fund) run by Swiss bankers and our Fed…the plan is to reduce the size of the US economy and remove the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. These vampires have been meeting in Switzerland over the past year.
Corporate America screwing the little guy
As the American unemployed continue to struggle, Wall Street is making record profits and shelling out huge bonuses. With the US government is spending billions on wars abroad but neglecting its own people at home the holiday season looks bleak. Economist Max Fraad Wolff says because so many people are without a job, the social division between profits and wages has tilted further towards profit.
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/12/max-fraad-wolff-corporate-america.html
The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more intrusive police state, more unemployment and home foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by the US government of US law, international law, the Constitution, and truth, more suspicion and distrust from allies, more hostility from the rest of the world, and new heights of media sycophancy.
Everything in America is rapidly becoming a crime. Learn of some of the most ridiculous ‘crimes’ under our rising totalitarian government at:
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com/legalresources
Path to Freedom presents 'A Homegrown Revolution' A collaboration of selective media clips which feature their urban homestead and farm which focus on the need of radical action -- growing food in the city.
This self produced, short music video was shown at Peter Seller's Cultural Art's class at UCLA followed by a short presentation by urban farmer, Jules Dervaes founder of Path to Freedom. The class focus was on the art of slow food and among other guests invited were Michael Pollan, Alice Waters and Eric Schlosser.
Like Victory Gardens of yesteryear, start your own homegrown revolution, grow your own food in your back or front yard -- for more information visit the urban homesteaders at http://www.PathtoFreedom.com
Or on their online journal at: http://www.urbanhomestead.org/journal
The End of America - A Tsunami of debt is growing and will drown the United States by 2020
U.S. Senator Tom Coburn warned Americans this Sunday of an apocalyptic economic future, with Great Depression levels of unemployment and a destruction of the country's middle class.
The Oklahoma Republican told Fox News that unless Washington cuts spending and reduces the national debt, unemployment in the United States could rise dramatically from less than 10 percent today to 18 percent or more.
At the same time, Coburn says the nation's economic output could drop calamitously -- by 9 percent. Once that happens he predicts the middle class could be destroyed
A Tsunami of debt is growing and will drown the United States by 2020. Unfunded entitlemnet promises will be ruinous to keep and if cut will likely bring civil unrest. Sovereign insolvency is likely to spread across the Globe as higher interest rates are demanded for government borrowing. America faces a terminal decline as an economic Superpower as stagnation and high unemployment sap its strength.
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/12/end-of-america-tsunami-of-debt-is.html
What will the next generation think of us when they
Learn our government has cannibalized their country, their opportunities?
--The Men Who Sold out America
Guest Editorial
The middle class and its jobs continue to be wiped out, little or no relief in site-poverty to
increase. Today, nearly one out of every three families in the United States is considered to be "low income". Millions of American families are finding that they can barely make it from month to month even with both parents working as hard as they possibly can. Blue collar American workers from coast to coast are having their wages decreased at a time when it seems like the cost of virtually every monthly bill is going up. Unfortunately, there is every indication that things are only going to get worse and that average American families are going to be financially squeezed even more in the months and years to come.
The Working Poor Families Project has just released their policy brief for the winter of 2010-11. What they have discovered is that the number of working poor in the United States is higher than they have ever seen it before and it continues to increase at a staggering pace. The following are some of the key findings for 2009 that were pulled right out of their report....
* There were more than 10 million low-income working families in the United States, an increase of nearly a quarter million from the previous year.
* Forty-five million people, including 22 million children, lived in low-income working families, an increase of 1.7 million people from 2008.
* Forty-three percent of working families with at least one minority parent were low income, nearly twice the proportion of white working families (22 percent).
* Income inequality continued to grow with the richest 20 percent of working families taking home 47 percent of all income and earning 10 times that of low-income working families.
* More than half of the U.S. labor force (55 percent) has “suffered a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or have become involuntary part-time workers” since the recession began in December 2007.
Unfortunately, things are not going to be getting any better for the working poor. In the new "one world economy" that our politicians keep insisting is so good for us, millions upon millions of American workers now find that they have to compete for work with laborers on the other side of the globe that are willing to work for slave labor wages. This is causing millions of jobs to leave the United States and it is forcing wages down.
Millions of Americans now find that they are making substantially less than they used to. If that has happened to you, perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that you are not alone. Or perhaps it is not that comforting. In any event, American workers are not just competing with each other anymore. Now there is the constant threat that all the jobs could just be sent overseas.
As wages are forced down, a record number of working Americans are finding themselves forced to turn to food stamps and to other government anti-poverty programs. Millions of Americans have been forced to take part-time jobs in order to supplement their incomes. Millions of others have been forced to take part-time jobs because that is all they can find.
This is all part of a long-term trend. The numbers don't lie. About the only people doing well are those on Wall Street and the very rich. Nearly every other segment of the population is getting poorer.
The following are 10 statistics that I have shared previously, but I think that they do a really good job of highlighting the plight that the working poor in this country are now facing....
#1 In 2009, total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined in the United States.
#2 Since the year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs. Meanwhile, our population is getting larger.
#3 As 2007 began, only 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but now 42 million Americans are on food stamps and that number keeps rising every single month.
#4 Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.
#5 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.
#6 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#7 The number of Americans working part-time jobs "for economic reasons" is now the highest it has been in at least five decades.
#8 Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. In 2010, the United States has fallen to seventh.
#9 In 1976, the top 1 percent of earners in the United States took in 8.9 percent of all income. By 2007, that number had risen to 23.5 percent.
#10 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010.
The United States is becoming poorer as a nation even as the boys up on Wall Street are busy grabbing a bigger share for themselves.
We are rapidly becoming a nation that will have a very small privileged class of ultra-wealthy and a very large class of "workers" that is just barely trying to survive.
So is the answer even more government handouts and even more government social programs?
Of course not.
There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress."
-- Mark Twain
What middle class Americans need are middle class jobs.
http://www.workingpoorfamilies.org/
I’m a new subscriber & had a chance to look through your previous issues too. You are indeed a passionate political muckraker. I enjoy your comments and resources and I’m making a small donation to the ‘cause.’ --Lifeworks/MaryAnne, TX
I am where I am because I believe in all possibilities
--Whoopi Goldberg
Parting thoughts-enjoy your New Year Celebration
I leave you with a bit of New Year’s trivia to brighten your celebratory weekend…
>>Bond with a midnight kiss. When the countdown ends & the ball drops (doesn’t Congress do enough of that), be sure to give your loved one a kiss-it will spur production of the cuddle hormone oxytocin which will fill you with love!
>>If that doesn’t work, try this recipe: In a large pitcher, stir together 2-½ cups of OJ, 1-½ cup of pineapple juice, ¼ cup apple juice, ¼ cup lime juice, ¼ cup of grenadine and a cup or so of bourbon…add 2 Tbs of light brown sugar until dissolved, cover & chill. Before serving, add 2 cups of 7-up and garnish.
>>The first New Year’s ball dropped from a flagpole at One Times Square at midnight in 1908. That ball was made from wood & iron weighing 700 lbs. Today’s ball weighs over 11,800 lobs.
>>The Rockettes home, Radio City Music Hall opened its doors in NYC in 1932 (has a wonderful Art Deco interior)…so who was better - the Rockettes or the June Taylor Dancers who used to appear on the Jackie Gleason show? You decide!
May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions!
Finally, here’s a fun little ditty called The Zombie Bank
http://economycollapse.blogspot.com/2010/12/zombie-bank.html
A hearty happy New Year to all of you!
The “getting-too-old-to-enjoy-it” Poor Man
http://www.PoorManSurvival.com
http://www.OldBookNook.com
http://www.GreenIrene.com/Poorman
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)