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Even Commies are free to smoke…
Adding injury to insult, the latest is a government mandate that cigarettes be made with “Fire Safe” paper (FSC). How is this done? By adding CARPET GLUE. Holy shit!
“The Harvard School of Health reported that when comparing FSC cigarettes versus regular cigarettes, the FSC cigarettes produced 13.9% more naphthalene and 11.4% more carbon monoxide than regular cigarettes. Naphthalene is commonly found in mothballs, and exposure in high amounts can result in headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, malaise, confusion, anemia, jaundice, convulsions, and coma. Therefore, it has been proven that FSC cigarettes contain higher levels of chemicals that are harmful to smokers.” (Bold print from Harvard)
“We’re from the government and we’re here to help you.” Help you do what, die sooner? They’re doing a pretty good job of it, paid by lobbyist to keep the public ignorant about the dangers of Genetically Modified Organisms, High Fructose Corn Syrup, nuclear power plants and industrial farming. Now the government, this time on the payroll of power companies, wants farmers to put waste from coal-fired plant smoke-scrubbers on their fields. Not knowing what else to do with the mountains of stuff, why not sell it, and who cares if it’s full of mercury, arsenic, lead and other heavy metals we’ll be ingesting in our food. Hey, it worked to get rid of toxic fluoride from aluminum smelters; just put it in our drinking water and toothpaste. Voila! Problem solved.
I don’t know how much more public safety we can survive…and we wonder why cancer is ten times more prevalent now than when two-thirds of us smoked. Oh well, it makes a great scapegoat. It isn’t that simple though. Smoking is undeniably unhealthful but recent findings show that stopping leads to sugar-craving, weight-gain and diabetes, all significantly more damaging to most people’s health than puffing on a cigarette.
Aren’t we lucky to have the best government money can buy! I’ll be a Chief Petitioner on a statewide initiative this year to get money completely out of politics in Oregon. Please consider it carefully.
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A conversation with my old high school buddies
A conversation with my old high school buddies, six against one as usual.
Why am I always the one in the minority? I am a bit comforted by the old saws, “Everything you know is wrong!” And, “The minority is always right.” Anyway, here’s a recent missive I sent to my debate group of redneck Texas friends. We don’t let politics get in the way of friendship. No one would have ANY friends if they did…
You rotten bastards…
…for whom I have a profound esteem, I know we’ve gone round and round about single-payer but here’s the main reason I think it would improve things remarkably: I read a Reader’s Digest article years ago. A journalist went to a university dental school to find out exactly what work he needed. With this information in hand, he sought out 50 different dentists all over the eastern U.S. One dentist got it right. One other dental school got it right (with a professor supervising). The other 48 dentists had bids ranging from $4,500 to over $40,000 to “fix” his teeth (he had one small cavity). It occurred to me after reading this that physicians couldn’t be any more ethical than dentists as a general rule. I’ve read that up to 85% of surgical procedures are unnecessary. No idea how many prescriptions are also. I’m always hearing of some doctor having his patient bring in all his prescription drugs only to have the doctor throw them all away.
While I believe all should be handsomely rewarded, free enterprise is not a game physicians or dentists should be playing, lawyers either in my book. This all makes me happy that firemen are socialized; otherwise they’d be out setting fires to make more money.
Peace,
Jerry
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Public employee unions take notice…
If elected I will disband public employee unions in Oregon by Executive Order. You exempt yourselves from legal accountability. You systematically loot the public treasury with your gold-plated salaries, perks, pensions and “pay to play” fees. You bribe the legislature to jeopardize the finances of both the state and local governments, not to mention the finances of your employer, the taxpayers. If not constrained you will ruin us as assuredly as the United Auto Workers ruined American auto companies.
I will tie your pay scales and benefits to match the private sector, about a 34% reduction in pay and a 70% reduction in benefits. You will be treated like taxpayers in every way. You can get promoted, demoted, hired and fired on merit, just like everyone else.
Download this PDF to read more
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Don’t Talk to the Police!
Professor James Duane explains why innocent people should never talk to the police.
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What are we waiting for???
Back in ’92, as a Chief Petitioner on an Oregon Initiative to close the Trojan Nuclear Plant, I published a full-page treatise in the New York Times and all Oregon newspapers calling for the U.S. to build a solar power infrastructure based on a McDonnell Douglas invention called a GenSet. Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque has been tinkering with it for years to make it slightly more efficient but we could have been installing these things 20 years ago to supply 100% of the nation’s power – at one-tenth the cost of the Middle East wars for oil. Our shuttered auto factories could have been mass-producing these things. Detroit would not have a 50% unemployment rate and we could have eliminated our biggest national security threat, the radioactive fuel pools at commercial nuclear plants.
Oil companies weren’t too keen on this renewable fuel idea since these GenSets can also produce hydrogen gas for our cars and trucks and to heat our homes. Thanks to our lobbyist-controlled government, the public interest doesn’t always coincide with private interest. You can read more on this in Chapters 21 & 22 of my autobiography. Click on the book cover on the right.
A national Apollo type program to create a solar/hydrogen infrastructure would save us from the impending and certain economic collapse of our currency and economy. Worth doing, eh!
It’s time to email your congressman. Send them these links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjUvxtwJ1OM&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95kmrb-5Ugw&feature=channel
http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2008/solargrid.html
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My Press Blackout
Not permitting myself to believe in illusions I’ve boldly gone beyond politics as usual and done the unspeakable – some actual thinking. This is just too much for the gate holders to public office, the fourth estate. The press still buys in to the illusions that recovery is just around the corner, that our institutions still work and that capitalism will save us. No one in the know believes that but the illusion is so much more palatable than reality.
It was our militarism on credit that destroyed our currency yet the press endorsed and promoted it for 60 years. It was our Prussian education system that left us without the skills to run a democracy or the ability to even think for ourselves but the press forever encouraged us to spend more and more on it. It was a government for sale that sold us out. Our newspapers never spoke out in protest and now they’re on their way out too. What goes around comes around. How fitting.
Has the press ignored me because I’ve ignored them, not included them in my campaign? Well, wait no longer. If elected I intend to subsidize this faulty institution. Newspapers, for better or worse, are the glue that holds together the civic fabric. Increasing their revenues with state-paid sections would save them, keep them in business. As a Chief Petitioner on the upcoming statewide initiative for campaign finance reform, the question of how elections and debates are to be paid for is the first one I must answer. I envision at least an eight-page section daily to adequately cover the multitude of city, county and state candidates and issues about which the public needs to become, and stay, informed.
I don’t want newspaper owners telling us how to vote anymore. After their pusillanimous track record they should keep their opinions to themselves and let voters and candidates do the talking and deciding. Think what you will of newspapers but we need them to continue publishing because they offer us the most accessible means of conducting the social intercourse that leads to a better understanding of where we are, and with that, where we should go.
Here’s another suggestion worth considering: http://www.truthout.org/1231096
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Government by Ponzi
The U.S. budget deficit for 2009 is $1,400,000,000,000. That’s not the budget, that’s the DEFICIT! $1.4 Trillion is $12,600 per family. The interest on this borrowing will cost another $2.8 Trillion over the life of a 30-year T-Bill. This year’s deficit alone will cost our kids and us $37,800; more than the average family earned in 2009. The 2010 deficit is going to be even bigger.
Is this nuts or what? Almost all the deficit spending went to military adventures and government employees. A tiny fraction was put into infrastructure capital, the remainder wasted, gone forever. Jesus.
Speaking of Jesus, we should follow his example and kick over the moneychanger’s table. Our moneychanger is the Federal Reserve; that privately owned franchise to legalize usury. Why are we paying interest on our own money! It’s unconstitutional of course but the constitution is whatever the judge says it is even when it says exactly the opposite! Judges, like the politicians who appoint them, watch the election returns. These elections are brought to us courtesy of the Republican and Democratic National Committees who dictate the candidates we’re allowed to choose between. This is no democracy. It’s a Ponzi scheme.
Yeah, but what can one person do about it? Well, you can vote for me. If elected I will establish (by executive order) a state bank to make interest free loans to develop and expand Oregon infrastructure projects and fund new sustainable manufactures. I will also (by executive order) ban political contributions (bribes) to office seekers and office holders. I’m a Chief Petitioner on an upcoming statewide initiative calling for campaign finance reform. What can one person do?
Quite a bit actually, like this man: “The refusal of King George III to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators was probably the prime cause of the revolution.” Benjamin Franklin
Or this man: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies…if the American people ever allow private banks to control the currency…the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” Thomas Jefferson
Uh oh, we have both a private bank and a huge standing army.
Viva la revolución!
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Money made simple
So what’s with gold prices rising 40% in the past two years? Precious metal prices are an index of paper money’s real value. Paper money spent for expenses is 100% inflationary. Paper money invested into infrastructure capital isn’t. Why does government misdirect paper money? Republicans should know this better than anyone but they’re the worst perpetrators of squandering the nation’s credit on a permanent war economy. It’s great to love our military but it is an EXPENSE, a socialist make-work program that consumes half our industrial output annually. Is this any way to run our company? Yes, a very stupid, self-defeating one.
It isn’t like this is anything new. Two and a half centuries ago Volatire writes to the Controller-General, ”Sir, You think that we can increase the national wealth by printing paper money. This is not wealth but a sham for the real wealth of produce and manufacture. You have made ten times as much in paper notes as we have in real wealth in money and goods; you are ten times mad.” No sooner had he finished than he was conducted to the lock-up…
Paper money is a double-edged sword. In the hands of fools it will slice up our national wealth. Employed properly into real capital it will accurately reflect the new wealth created by labor. That isn’t so difficult to comprehend. Unless of course, you’re an economist.
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Things we should manufacture
I used to ask my Learjet charter customers how one gets in the backseat of the plane. They all responded with the same answer, “Why son, you have to MANUFACTURE! The manufacturer controls the whole process.” Makes one wonder why congress offered tax incentives to ship our jobs offshore. Nevertheless, it’s never too late to begin manufacturing again. But manufacture what? Things that make life better, safer or save money. Here are a few things that would:
DRIVING SIMULATORS to train drivers like airlines train pilots. This would reduce costly accidents and insurance rates by up to 90%. Simulations would include every possible hazard, including driving drunk, to condition a proper response. Driving simulators are simple enough to mass-produce and would sell themselves because they would pay for themselves over and over.
DRIVING MONITORS to act like flight recorders on airliners. Wireless devices would send deviations (speeding, weaving, signal violations) directly to insurance companies and be used to set one’s premiums. For those worried about privacy, state law could prevent any government access. These devices are ideal products to be manufactured in our own silicone valley. They would insure obedience to traffic rules by making it too expensive to drive dangerously. It would save money for the user in fuel burned, fewer accidents and lower taxes (no traffic police). Cops could be redirected to solving crime.
STEEL STUDS are vastly superior to lumber. All internal commercial building walls are steel by code. External steel studs did not meet insulation code until recently with the invention of the Tri-Cord stud, which exceeds lumber insulation values. Seven out of every ten trees cut yearly are used in residential construction. We are subsidizing the wrong industry to make lumber appear cheap. It isn’t. Harvest practices destroy streambeds, wildlife habitat, increase erosion and flooding and even change the weather. Lumber companies could be subsidized to make the transition to manufacture these studs. Timber holders could be paid to protect and maintain the health of their trees.
CAR TRAINS. Tractors towing multiple cars save gas, lots of gas. For a token fee one could be towed between cities. The towing link connecting devices could be designed and manufactured here.
Only American ingenuity can turn around Oregon’s economy. We must be a state of manufacturers. The state bank I want to set up would be a low interest lender and partner with new and existing companies to launch ventures deemed to be most likely viable.
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Jerry on KPOJ Podcast
Listen to the KPOJ morning podcast from December 9, 2009: Carl and Christine interview Jerry Wilson.
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