WSJ Economist: Ron Paul’s 0% Income Tax = Massive Insourcing of Jobs into America

The Artificial Imposition of Poverty

Most of the world’s poverty is not self-inflicted, yet apparently many seem to think it is.

My experience, living in Africa, tells me otherwise. Much of global poverty is imposed and I don’t mean by evil “multi-national corporations” or “globalization.” Those myths are easily debunked. The real causes of poverty in these nations are not hard to find.

Read the complete article here on the Huffington Post

The poor people that the author describes in this article have been robbed of their freedom and individual liberty. They are oppressed, economically and politically. They are attempting to use the free market to better their lives, but entrepreneurship is squashed. The powerful elite eliminate all competition through rules and regulation. They keep the masses where they want them, trapped in poverty.

Freedom and liberty made America the most prosperous nation in the world. We’ve forgotten our history and the latest Occupy Wall Street movement demonstrates the economic and political misconceptions in this country. People around the world would die to have the rights that we are slowly having stripped from us in this country.

The OWS protestors are angry and say they want change. Everyone agrees that the U.S. is on the wrong track. Truth is we’ve been in decline for over a century, beginning with the expansion of the military-industrial complex. The creation of the federal reserve, increased regulations, bad monetary policy, and the restriction of individual liberty have further eroded democracy in this country.

Have you heard a single protester articulate a coherent understanding of how the U.S. got into this mess and how we should go about solving the problems in this country? All I’ve heard is complaints about evil corporations and demands for free healthcare and education. Are these the only viable solutions we’ve come up with? Let’s replace  fascism with socialism?

It’s as if all these Americans forget that corporations exist and grow powerful because we support them. Even the poorest Americans own cellphones and TVs. Every time you buy shoes, a computer, a big mac, fill up your car with gas or buy any kind of good or service- you are supporting a business or corporation. What is so evil about that if it is improving your standard of living?

Many  blame the government for bending to corporate interests and allowing them to run the country. Still, we the people elect our representatives. We have to hold our government responsible. Granted the mainstream media blocks real debate, while flaming the hateful rhetoric that further divides the country along racial, class, and party lines. But if both parties have failed us, should we not seek an alternative?

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

If pitching a tent on Wall Street and fighting police isn’t your style, I suggest voting for a candidate who values liberty and has a plan to Restore America. Things will change one way or another.

 

 

Jammu Africa by Ismael Lo

Tajabone  is my favorite song by Senegali artist Ismael Lo.

Jammu Africa speaks to me in a similar way. It conveys a message even though I don’t understand or speak a word of Wolof. If you look up the lyrics, you’ll begin to understand the sorrow and hope that Lo brings to this song with his haunting voice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL7V_SgP_oA

Los países más contaminantes del Planeta

Principales causantes del caos climático.

Foto: NASA

Esta foto, tomada por la NASA el 2 de marzo de 2011, es el registro más detallado que se ha tomado de la Tierra en la historia. El deterioro de la capa de ozono, la contaminación mundial, la emisión de CO2 y el cambio climático atentan contra su esplendor.

Bosques talados, terrenos erosionados, ríos contaminados. Los recurrentes atentados del ser humano por su planeta generan desórdenes en el clima, la extinción de cientos de especies, desastres naturales, destrucción y miles de muertes. Y si bien el cambio comienza por cada uno, los responsables son grandes naciones que, a su manera, deterioran el Planeta día a día.

Cumbres, encuentros mundiales y acuerdos multimillonarios parecen quedarse cortos frente a las soluciones necesarias. Se pueden hacer esfuerzos, pero lo cierto es que economía y la industria no frenará por preservar el medio ambiente. La solución luce imposible, el activismo se volvió una moda y sólo el paso de las décadas dirá si el temor por la destrucción natural tiene sustento.

Acá, el ‘Top 10’ con los países más ‘destructivos’ del mundo y cuál es su cuota específica en el deterioro del Planeta.

View the top 10 list here

How the US media marginalises dissent

The US media derides views outside of the mainstream as ‘un-serious’, and our democracy suffers as a result. Ted Rall Last Modified: 04 Aug 2011 10:50

“Over the past few weeks, Washington has seemed dysfunctional,” conservative columnist David Brooks opined recently in The New York Times. “Public disgust [about the debt ceiling crisis] has risen to epic levels. Yet through all this, serious people – Barack Obama, John Boehner, the members of the Gang of Six – have soldiered on.” Here’s some of what Peter Coy of Business Week magazine had to say about the same issue: “There is a comforting story about the debt ceiling that goes like this: Back in the 1990s, the US was shrinking its national debt at a rapid pace. Serious people actually worried about dislocations from having too little government debt …” Fox News, the Murdoch-owned house organ of America’s official right-wing, asserted: “No one seriously thinks that the US will not honour its obligations, whatever happens with the current impasse on President Obama’s requested increase to the government’s $14.3tn borrowing limit.” “Serious people.” “No one seriously thinks.”

Read the complete article on Al Jazeera 

When antibiotics no longer work

Scientists fear the growth of “super-bugs” in livestock, and worry that meat recalls could become much more common

BY PETER FINOCCHIARO

iStockphoto/Salon

Turkeys are flying off the shelves as Cargill races to recall 36 million pounds after a salmonella outbreak in California was tied to the company’s poultry.

There may be nothing more viscerally unsettling than the idea that our food is tainted and could make us seriously ill. Those anxieties were stoked this morning when Cargill, the third-largest turkey producer in the country, announced the recall of 36 million pounds of poultry for fear of salmonella contamination. The scare was precipitated by an outbreak in California — which left at least one person dead and more than 70 sick — which was traced back to Cargill’s products. The recall is one of the largest recalls of meat in American history.

Read the rest here

Wealthy Chinese begin farming after food-safety scares

By Martin PatienceBBC News, Beijing

Watch the video here

Fears about food safety have prompted some young Chinese professionals to try growing their own

Juggling their iPhones with spades, a group of young professionals are getting their hands dirty – digging vegetables.

During the week, they are teachers, PR consultants, and computer programmers. But at the weekend, these city slickers return to the soil.

Read the complete article on BBC

Farmers of the Future: An Interview with Taylor Reid of BeginningFarmers.org

POSTED BY NELSON HARVEY ON JUNE 22, 2011

Photo: Nelson Harvey

In the United States, the “family farmer” is one of our most worn and cherished archetypes. On milk cartons and cereal boxes, in ads for health insurance and pickup trucks, we honor the valiant farmers who continue the legacy of their parents and grandparents, struggling to eke out a living in the face of fluxuating commodity prices and soaring costs for seed, fertilizer and equipment. But what about those who weren’t born into the food business, who stumbled onto farming out of college, or developed an interest in it despite their urban or suburban backgrounds? A growing number of young farmers today are coming at the profession from roots like these, and although they have a much steeper learning curve than their farm-bred counterparts, they are often the ones developing original and innovative approaches to farming, constructing farms from the ground up, and taking advantage of new markets for organic and local food that are sprouting up across the country.

Read the rest on Turnstyle

Why Are Young, Educated Americans Going Back to the Farm?

Originally published on Turnstylenews.com, a digital information service surfacing emerging stories in news, entertainment, art and culture; powered by award-winning journalists.
By Nelson Harvey

I am a 25-year-old college graduate with a degree from a fairly prestigious eastern university, and I pull weeds for a living. At first blush, you might think I’m overqualified, and after four hours of weeding the squash beds, when the stiffness begins to set in, that’s what I start to believe, too. In fact, nothing in college prepared me for this. My only credentials are the past two summers, spent learning by doing: planting, thinning, trellising, fertilizing, tilling, harvesting, washing, packing and, of course, weeding.

I am a farm intern, and to me, the only thing more remarkable than the fact that I have spent much of the past three summers happily stooping over vegetable rows (I am 6’4”) is that I am not alone. Across the country, college students and graduates like myself, many with little or no farming background, have been flocking to small farms in droves, shacking up in old farmhouses, trailers and tents, and working for free or for peanuts, all in exchange for a little instruction in the fine art of running a farm.

“It’s almost like a third education after college,” said Kelly Coffman, 30, a second-year apprentice at Rain Crow Farm in Paonia, CO. Coffman studied at Prescott College in Arizona and Naropa University in Boulder, CO, and worked in the California state park system and as a kindergarten teacher, before deciding to work on farms. “When you have [a liberal arts] education, you get to a point where you realize wait, I need to have a more basic fundamental education about being human. Food, water, shelter…these things are important,” she said.

Read the rest on the Huffington Post