The time has come to start kicking them to the curb, because the state just isn't big enough for the planners and the rest of us. Case in point:
A Marion County planner once attempted to halt Willamette Valley Vineyards’ event business and close its catered kitchen, Bernau said.
Idiocy. Wine tourism employs a lot of people, and the guests pump big bucks into Oregon's economy. Wine and food not only go together, they belong together. For one thing, pairing different foods with different wines provides guests a basis for comparison and for discovery otherwise unavailable to them. It also enhances safety - driving around on winding country roads with a few tastes of wine, absent a food component, seems like a recipe for trouble.
Moreover, vistors to winery events often drop significant amounts of cash into other local businesses, contributing to the local economy. Planners are an impediment to economic recovery.
School lunch programs have always been notoriously sucky - earlier this year, the North Carolina "nuggetgate" exploded into the news when a lunch monitor felt that a four-year-old's home-made turkey and cheese sandwich wasn't healthy enough, and so replaced it with chicken nuggets from the school menu. Really? Chicken nuggets are somehow "healthier" than a turkey, lettuce and cheese sandwich? Last year, a seventh-grader in Chicago led a revolt against his school's ban on home-made lunches; a policy implemented, according to school officials, “to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.” Yeah, those chicken nuggets are really something.
And despite their busy schedules, Congress recently set aside time to find that pizza should be included in the school lunch programs as a vegetable, because it has tomatoes and tomato sauce. Hey, it's a government program, so Congress has an interest in helping out their special interests.
The National School Lunch Program has been revamped (again), so the cost to taxpayers will bump up to $14 billion this fall. Don't expect significant changes, however; just a couple of weeks ago, a Salt Lake City school was hit with a $15,000 fine because, according to USDA rules, a student can buy a can of soda before lunch, take it into the cafeteria and have it with lunch - but it's a violation if a student first picks up a school lunch and then buys a can of soda. The principal remains mystified by the "logic".
Yet, supporters of the school lunch program continue to push for ever more funding and the eventual inclusion of all children in a program offering 100% "free" lunches - and breakfasts. And of course, home-made lunches can't be allowed, lest children whose parents don't make and pack lunches feel stigmatized.
This has just come through the aggregator in the past few hours, while I was out splitting wood. This is absolutely unbelievable, and so weird that I thought it was a joke. It isn't. It's confirmed.
Bureaucrats at Michigan Department of Natural Resources issued an Invasive Species Order declaring that traditional farm livestock are "invasive species" and have now conducted two armed raids on pig farmers in that state, one in Kalkaska County at Fife Lake and another in Cheboygan County. Their purpose: to shoot all of the farmers' pigs.
It gets weirder: the MDNR order further declares that the pig farmers are felons, subject to immediate incarceration.
"I think this is an unconstitutional order, these actions of the DNR are way out of bounds," attorney Joseph O'Leary told NaturalNews in an interview today. He is representing one of the farmers who was targeted in these raids. "To take what was six months ago an entirely legal activity, and suddenly people are felons over it. They're not growing drugs, running guns or killing anybody, they're raising animals pursuant to USDA regulations and state of Michigan regulations. They haven't done anything wrong here, and the DNR is treating them like they are hardened criminals."
Opening trial is scheduled for 9 a.m. this Friday.
With a land area of just 700 sq km, Singapore does not have the watersheds and natural rivers from which to draw water, and must therefore buy a large part of its water requirement from neighbouring Malaysia. To ensure long-term water security, the government has invested hundreds of millions to build water-related infrastructure, including a 7,000km drainage network which directs rainwater into 15 reservoirs, and four plants that recycle sewage water. Using membrane technology, the recycled ultra-clean product has been dubbed "NEWater" and can now meet 30% of Singapore's total water demand.
The City’s legislators of the past decade have collectively taken a city that was once poised to set an example for the world, and turned it into a place that cannot even set an example for the County in which it resides.
Joseph Mailander was talking about Los Angeles, but it's the same old story: "It is better to raise children with backyards than on condominium balconies," urbanist Wendell Cox said in a Wall Street Journal article entitled "California Declares War on Suburbia" this past week.
The backlash against so-called "smart growth" is gaining steam.
In 2011, the Monument Fire ripped through the Huachuca Mountains in Arizona—land belonging to the U.S. Forest Service. Following the fire, floods and torrential mudslides destroyed mountain spring water lines to the town of Tombstone.
Yessir, the United States Forest Service owns that land, and they not only allowed it to be decimated by wildfire - they also have it listed as "wild land". This means that the town can't bring in the equipment needed to restore the water lines, because, you see, even though the land was burned to a crisp, USFS rules don't allow their precious "wild land" to be disturbed.
It gets better: with the spring-water supply taken out, the only water the folks in Tombstone have coming out of the taps is laced with arsenic. EPA sets the limit at ten parts per billion on account of the stuff being so toxic. The tap water's higher than that in concentration, so in effect the government is poisoning the entire town (along with any tourists who happen through, and there are nearly half a million of them in any given year).
But y'see, the feds got rules for wild lands, and they don't much care whether the place has been turned into a giant luau or not - now that they're watching over it, there will by golly be no heavy equipment a-tearin' up the burnt land in order to restore the town's historical water supply.
It's awfully sad that it's come to this, but time and again it seems to come down to government agencies vs. US citizens. The folks in Tombstone may ultimately have to do a live-fire reenactment of their famous showdown at the O.K. Corral. And it may have to come to that in other parts of the West as well. Small wonder that sales of weapons and ammunition have skyrocketed during the past three years.
But when a government is willing to poison citizens rather than allow them to regain access to safe, clean water supplies - well, folks're apt to get riled.
State Sen. Jackie Dingfelder, D-Portland, said she and perhaps a dozen other legislators will ask the Democratic governor to reject exchanging a state-owned water right.
"It allows a private multinational corporation to use a public resource for the economically and environmentally unsustainable practice of bottled water," said Dingfelder, chairwoman of the Senate's natural resources and environment committee.
Jackie Dingbat's been really vocal about private multinational corporations, which is why she's been so adamant in opposing Nike, Intel, Siltronic, Adidas, and Columbia Sportswear. Oh, wait...she hasn't been. Intel and Siltronic use a lot of water - more than Nestle proposes to take, but that's not her problem. No, she just hates Nestle - much as Portland mayor Sham Adumbs hates Wal-Mart. And both politicians will do whatever it takes to disrupt (or better, eliminate) businesses that they, personally, dislike.
Their feelings are way more important than jobs.
And if you support Sierra Club, PSR, or similar organizations, you're not part of a solution - you're part of the problem.
Here in Portland, Oregon, our all-knowing city "leaders" advise against eating meat, even going so far as to tell us not to worry about protein. Not so in Australia, where the government advises consuming 65-100 g. of lean, red meat three to four times a week. And they have data to back up their position, unlike Portland's smarmy know-it-alls: a study of 1000 Aussie women evinced surprise among scientists after concluding that eating red meat halves the risk of depressive and anxiety disorders.
Professor Felice Jacka, who led the research by Deakin University, Victoria, said: "We had originally thought that red meat might not be good for mental health but it turns out that it actually may be quite important.
The results of the study are published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
As we've noted for years, there's a reason why we're omnivorous. Those who insist that we should all become vegetarians are in denial of the physiology and dentition of humans - and may well be suffering poor mental health, as well.
According to the CDC, diseases from imported foods are on the rise. Fish and spices are the main vectors, with imports from Asia accounting for nearly half of known sources of origin. It's not surprising, if you've ever visited, say, a Thai market, where baskets of fish, covered in flies, sit in the sun.
You gonna eat that farm-raised, imported tilapia? Better cook it really thoroughly - and ditto for the peppers. Remember, you are what you eat.
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