Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin
A Digest of Urban Survival Resources
ISSN 2161-5543
In This Issue:
1.
5 Best
Ways to make money, Sell stuff with a Tweet
2.
PayPal holding your funds? State regulators want to know
3.
16 Work-at-Home Scams to Avoid
4.
Predator Drones now spying on Americans
5.
Will we ever end the Fed and become a
sovereign nation again?
The Supreme
Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This
wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a
virgin.
Jay Leno
Christmas Gifts Don’t Have to Make you a
Debt-Slave
Finding holiday meaning beyond the
shopping mall…
Retail and credit card
numbers show Americans are spending a lot, so far, this Christmas season. You don’t have to dig yourself into more
debt. Indeed, I find the gifts I enjoy
most are those which are home made.
Among the gifts we’ve
received, our favorites so far have been a batches of venison sausage,
delicious cookies and pastries and homemade cheeses (artichoke garlic…hmmm)!
Our family does a ‘white
elephant’ gift exchange whereby we bring one or two items to the family dinner,
one for women and one for men. These are
items which some call ‘re-gifting’ or items previously received but never
used. It’s always fun to see what odd
items have been included.
One doesn’t always need to
provide material things as a present.
Creating your own services-oriented gift certificate works well
too. Gift certificates for house
cleaning, babysitting, lawn care, and the like can easily spread holiday cheer.
If you are in the business
of say, providing haircuts, remodeling services, tutoring, etc. consider
joining Time Bank.org, a group which essentially swaps services for services.
As their site states, they offer “Nurturing
and expanding a movement that promotes equality and builds caring community
economies through inclusive exchange of time and talent.”
The group has many
volunteers and is expanding throughout the USA.
For more information, visit their site at: http://timebanks.org/
Enjoy this Credit Crunch Christmas video parody
song…it’s fun!
NOTE: No newsletter will be published this weekend in
observance of Christmas. Our very best
wishes to all of you this holiday season!
Recycle your Christmas
tree to avoid landfills (10 million last year).
Visit earth911.com to find a recycling program near you.
PM’s
Compendium of Useful Resources
The 5 Best Ways to Make More Money
No matter how much you have, everyone can use a little extra money. And that's
truer these days than at any time in recent history. Here are some tips to make
more money and keep more of what you make. Read more.
BUY (OR SELL)
STUFF WITH A TWEET
As social networking
grows and everyone hangs out on Twitter, vendors are starting to sell things in
exchange for a tweet. Books, songs, research; anything can be fair game.
In some ways, the Net
has become an intercontinental flea market where it costs bupkes to set up a
stall. Since stall owners can still make money (from ads) even when visitors
don't buy anything, "mentions" become the coin of the realm.
"16 WORK AT HOME SCAMS TO AVOID"
Forbes recently
carried a comprehensive piece on work-at-home scams. Data entry, check cashing
and others are well-detailed. We worked extensively with ABC's 20/20 and
the FTC on the rebate processing case mentioned in the article. For the full piece, click here.
PayPal Holding Your Funds?
State Regulators Want to Know
PayPal holds are every seller's nightmare, tying up cash for 3
weeks or more. EcommerceBytes did some digging and discovered
that sellers can seek redress from state regulators if they feel
the holds are unfair. Today's story on PayPal's practice of
freezing funds is a must-read.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y11/m12/i16/s01
Apply a coating of
non-stick cooking spray onto your snow shovel prior to using it and snow won’t
stick to it, making the job easier.
The Nanny State Updates…
By Mike Kelsey
America’s
out-of-control administrative state can best be compared to a runaway stage
coach—trampling American workers and careening away with their money. This
week, Congress will have an opportunity to bring much-needed oversight to
America’s regulatory process by voting for the aptly named REINS Act
(Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny), which would require any
new regulations costing more than $100 million to be approved by Congress. If
passed, the REINS Act will go a long way toward curbing the excesses of
unaccountable bureaucrats and restoring the constitutional principle of
self-government.
But don’t bureaucrats
decide only the minor details of regulations? In 2010 alone, regulatory
agencies issued a torrent of major new regulations costing a staggering (and
likely underestimated) sum of $26.5 billion. That sticker shock has not slowed
bureaucrats one bit; there are currently 144 major regulations pending that
would each cost at least $100 million.
We are accustomed to Predator drones being used in the "war on terror", but now
they are being used to watch American citizens. The following comes from
a recent article in the Los Angeles Times....
The previously unreported use of its drones to assist
local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public
acknowledgment or debate.
Congress first authorized Customs and Border
Protection to buy unarmed Predators in 2005. Officials in charge of the fleet
cite broad authority to work with police from budget requests to Congress that
cite "interior law enforcement support" as part of their mission.
In an interview, Michael C. Kostelnik, a retired Air
Force general who heads the office that supervises the drones, said Predators
are flown "in many areas around the country, not only for federal
operators, but also for state and local law enforcement and emergency
responders in times of crisis."
Find lots of tricks to make life easier, room by room at:
Householdtips.org
The Parting Thought – Will the demise of the Fed ever
happen?
"It has been said that the greatest
threat to our liberty is from well-meaning,
and almost imperceptible encroachments upon our personal freedom."
-- John Louis Coffey
(1922- ) Judge, U. S. Court of Appeals
The United
States is a sovereign nation and it does not need to borrow money from anyone…
America once thrived
under a debt-free monetary system, and we can do it again. The truth is that
the United States is a sovereign nation and it does not need to borrow money
from anyone. Back in the days of JFK, Federal Reserve Notes were not the only
currency in circulation. Under JFK (at at various other times), a limited
number of debt-free United States Notes were issued by the U.S. Treasury and
spent by the U.S. government without any new debt being created.
According to Wikipedia, United States Notes were issued directly into circulation by the U.S.
Treasury.
Our current debt-based
monetary system also requires very high personal income taxes to pay for it.
In fact, it is no
accident that the personal income tax was introduced at about the same
time that the Federal Reserve scam originally came into existence.
Thomas Edison was once
quoted in the New York Times as saying the following....
That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to
add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt.
Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He
thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own
money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 —
that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovelful
of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the
United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work.
That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our great bond issues the
interest is always greater than the principal. All of the great public works
cost more than twice the actual cost, on that account. Under the present system
of doing business we simply add 120 to 150 per cent, to the stated cost.
But here is the point: If our nation can issue a
dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good
makes the bill good.
Our current debt-based
monetary system was devised by greedy bankers that wanted to make huge profits
by creating money out of thin air and lending it to the U.S. government at
interest. The IRS was created as part of
the Federal Reserve (not part of the government) to ensure collection of funds
to repay the Reserve. This was done
without informing the American people and we’ve suffered ever since.
“Until the
next revolution”, the Poor Man
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