Big government gone wild: Social Security on the verge of insolvency

(NaturalNews) Do you remember the recent debate in Congress and the White House to raise the government’s ability to borrow even more money? The “debate” that was long on raising the debt ceiling but short on actually cutting government spending ? It wasn’t enough that our leaders failure to effect long term, meaningful budget reform resulted in a leading credit rating agency downgrading U.S. credit for the first time in our history, but now the budgetary chickens are really coming home to roost. High unemployment, combined with the rapid growth in baby boomer retirements has strapped Social Security for cash and it is now being pushed to brink of insolvency . The longer the economy remains in the tank, the more strain it will put on this massively expensive entitlement program. We have known for more than a decade that Social Security was going broke . As far back as 1997, the Brookings Institute, among many other think tanks, predicted that an enormous amount of seniors born in the years following World War II were about to retire, and that doing so would put an equally enormous fiscal strain on Social Security. What many analysts didn’t predict, however, is the amount of Americans who would come to rely on Social Security’s disability benefits (and others) as a result of a tanking economy. It’s all adding up, and it’s doing so much faster than anyone anticipated. The government says applications for benefits are up 50 percent from a decade ago, and that there is such a backlog now some people wait two years before their cases get resolved. New estimates by Congress aren’t encouraging; they forecast that the trust fund that supports Social Security will run out of money in just a few short years, by 2017, meaning the system will be unable to pay full benefits by then. The long-term prospects for this aren’t any better. In about 20 years, Social Security’s retirement fund will run out of funds too, meaning it also won’t be able to pay full benefits. Unless Congress acts, that is. And what are some of the proposals? Raise the retirement age. Conduct means testing to see if wealthier Americans (who are still paying into the benefit) can be denied. Raise taxes. Most lawmakers and policy wonks are suggesting everything to save or extend this costly entitlement, but nothing to privatize or end it so the taxpayer can get off the hook financially for funding it. At the rate the system is being drained, even if the economy improves and fewer Americans seek benefits in the short term, the system will still have to pay out trillions in benefits for baby boomers. The best way to prevent the system from bankrupting itself is to reduce the amount of benefits it pays. That seems pretty simple. But when you demonize the issue for the sake of votes, there isn’t much chance that’s going to happen. So the next best thing is to eliminate the liability altogether, and that means adopting a small-government, personal liberty solution. Give workers the right to opt out of the government system by giving us choices in how to save for our own retirement. The Congressional Budget Office has studied how other nations, including Chile, Argentina and Great Britain, have done so, and successfully. It’s clear we can’t afford this forever. Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. Sources: http://news.yahoo.com/social-security-disability-verge-insolvency-090119318.html http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=1065&type=0&sequence=7 http://www.brookings.edu/articles/1997/summer_saving_gale.aspx

Congress sticks it to U.S. farmers with passage of food safety bill that will actually cause fresh produce to be more dangerous

(NaturalNews) The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2751 yesterday with a 216 to 144 vote (yes, many members of the House did not even vote). The so-called Food Safety Modernization Act now heads to the President to be signed into law. When witnessing such a moment in history when the federal government greatly expands its power over an entire industry, it’s important to understand the Law of Unintended Consequences . Virtually everything bad that happens after a bill gets passed is due to this Law of Unintended Consequences. On the surface, the intention behind the food safety bill seems innocent enough: Let’s all protect the food supply and prevent people from getting sick due to e.coli and salmonella exposure. But the reality of the result that emerges from the law is quite different. Get ready for more dangerous, pesticide-ridden food from south of the border Because the S.510 / HR 2751 food safety bill places an enormous new burden on U.S. farmers — yes, even small farms that are supposedly “exempt” — it’s going to drive many farmers out of business . It will also erect new barriers to farmers entering the food production business, and this is especially true for the small local farmers who grow food for local co-ops, farmers’ markets and CSA organizations (Community Supported Agriculture). What we’re going to see from all this, then, is the following: • A reduction in the available SUPPLY of fresh local produce. • A loss of local farming know-how and food sustainability. • The financial failure of CSAs, food co-ops and small local markets. • The loss of countless jobs that were related to local food production. • An INCREASE in the price of local food, especially organic food. Food safety bill does nothing to address food imports At the same time these huge regulatory burdens are thrust upon U.S. farmers, there are no new regulations required for food grown outside the United States . This means that food coming into the USA from Mexico, Chile, Peru or anywhere else does not have to meet S.510 food safety regulations at all. The FDA, after all, doesn’t inspect greenhouses in Mexico or grape farms in Chile which export their products to the United States. Furthermore, many dangerous chemical pesticides that have been banned in the USA are legal to use elsewhere , and foods treated with those pesticides are perfectly legal to import into the United States. So instead of buying food grown in the United States on small, organic farms, more U.S. consumers are going to be buying food grown elsewhere that’s treated with extremely toxic pesticides. Here are some of the unintended consequences of all this: • An INCREASE in the importation of fresh produce from other countries. • A worsening of the agricultural trade imbalance between the U.S. and other nations. • An INCREASE in the pesticide contamination of fresh produce sold at U.S. grocery stores. • An INCREASE in agriculture jobs in Mexico, Chile, Peru and elsewhere, even while agriculture jobs are lost in the USA. • A DECREASE in the overall safety of the food supply because now the proportion of foods imported from foreign countries with little or no regulatory oversight will greatly expand compared to U.S. grown foods. In effect, then, what Congress has done is impaired the competitiveness of U.S. farms, shifted farming jobs out of the country, increased the pesticide residues in fresh produce sold in U.S. grocery stores and harmed local food security and sustainability by driving small, local farmers out of business. Such is the nature of the Law of Unintended Consequences. And such is the nature of just about everything that Big Government tries to do when it threatens to “solve problems” by expanding its regulatory control over almost any industry. We need food security in America What Congress fails to understand is that we need food security far more than we need more FDA regulations. The knowledge base of local farmers who know how to grow, harvest and distribute food is far more valuable to the security of our nation than preventing a relatively small number of people from getting sick from e.coli each year (even if such a trade-off were a simplistic equation, which it isn’t). Because if we lose food security, then we become slaves to the big corporate food producers who are attempting to centralize food production and place food, seeds and crops under their absolute control. A cynic might even suggest that was the whole purpose of the food safety bill in the first place: To destroy small farmers and centralize food production power in the hands of a few wealthy corporations. Whether that was the intent or not, it is certainly going to be the effect. What Congress has done with this food safety bill, in effect, is to cripple America’s food production know-how and poison the population with far more dangerous pesticide-ridden produce that will now be imported from other countries instead. This bill should have been called the “Mexico Farming Jobs Act” because it’s going to shift countless jobs south of the border as farms in the USA realize they simply can’t operate under the immense burden of FDA regulatory tyranny. What’s the definition of insanity? It all makes you wonder what the members of Congress are really thinking. Don’t they ever step back and attempt to consider the real-world ramifications of their actions? Time and time again, the U.S. government seems to do the opposite of what would reasonably be required to solve problems. Think about it: When the U.S. government wanted to stop Wall Street bankers and investment firms from wasting money, it simply handed them a few trillion dollars in new money so they could waste more. When the government wanted to end debt spending, it spent more debt money out of the foolish belief that you can somehow end your debt by going deeper into it. When the government claimed it would reduce your health care costs and cover everyone with health insurance, it passed a sick-care law that has only seen health care costs spiraling out of control while insurers cancel policies and end coverage for many children. And now, the government claims to be making your food safer even though the real impact of the new law will be to make your food far more dangerous while destroying U.S. farming jobs. This is why those who really know government also know that they who govern best govern the least . Instead of trying to “fix” all the nation’s problems by meddling with the actions of hard-working people trying to make a living (such as organic farmers), the government needs to simply get out of the way and let farmers produce their food without the heavy regulatory burden of the FDA — an agency that we know is frequently engaged in actions that can only be called criminal in nature (http://www.naturalnews.com/030461_Senate_Bill_510_Food_Safety.html). Get ready for skyrocketing food prices in 2011 – 2013 With the passage of this food safety bill, I am now publicly predicting skyrocketing food prices over the next two years. We will see fresh, local produce become increasingly more expensive and more difficult to acquire. Many local farmers will shutter their businesses, and farming know-how will be lost for perhaps a generation. The damage that will be done to America’s food security and agricultural base is incalculable. Such is the price we shall all pay for allowing our representatives in Washington to once again violate our Natural Right to grow food and exchange it for goods or cash with our neighbors. The reason this Natural Right was never even mentioned in the US Constitution, by the way, is because the right to grow your own food without government interference is such an obvious “Natural Right” (a God-given right, or a right that is self-evident) that our forefathers never imagined such a right would be infringed by the federal government. Or if a right were ever infringed by the federal government, our forefathers were certain that the citizens of the United States of America would exercise their other Constitutional rights to nullify the attempted overreaching authority of the federal government and thereby restore their freedoms. Sadly, such a solution does not work when the majority of the population is lulled into a false sense of freedom by a government that deliberately lies to them on a daily basis. Freedom does not exist with the vast majority of the population has no interest in defending it. Vegetable gardeners can learn something from marijuana growers Better buy yourself some heirloom seeds while you have the chance. Plant your stealth garden and cover it with camouflage so the government can’t see it and order you to destroy it. Soon, backyard vegetable gardeners will need to operate like marijuana growers and start hiding their food from government’s prying eyes. No doubt the U.S. federal government will start using spy satellites to identify “unregistered gardens” that will be targeted for termination. Soon, small farmers may even be raided by armed FDA agents who terrorize their operations and seize cabbages. Seriously. It sounds crazy today, I know. But a decade ago, no one thought the government would ever outlaw raw cow’s milk and arrest ranchers for selling milk to their neighbors, and that’s now happening on a regular basis. In five years, FDA farm raids may be routine. That is, if there’s anything left of the federal government (as we know it) in five years. I’m not sure how long they can keep up the financial house of cards, frankly. Always remember this enlightening fact: The entire federal government is just one paycheck away from collapse . I wonder how long FDA inspectors will keep harassing farmers if their paychecks stop? Remember, FDA employees have no loyalty to anything other than their paychecks. Once the money from Washington stops, the army of FDA mercenaries collapses virtually overnight. And the resilient farmers of America will win in the end, I have no doubt. If I had to choose to live on a deserted island with either ten North Carolina farmers or ten FDA bureaucrats, you’d find me working the land with the farmers; and we’d all probably discover the FDA bureaucrats dangling from really short ropes tied to really tall trees.

Diabetes drug researcher admits drug trials are unethical and dangerous

(NaturalNews) A drug researcher who presided over the trial that first raised concerns over the diabetes blockbuster Avandia has warned that further tests of the drug’s safety would be unethical. In 2009, David Juurlink of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto was the lead author of a study that compared rates of heart failure and death among older diabetics taking Avandia (known generically as rosiglitazone) and those taking Actos (pioglitazone), another drug in the same family. That study found that patients taking Avandia were 30 percent more likely to suffer heart failure or death. Now Juurlink has joined with Sidney Wolfe, director of health research for Public Citizen, to call for the cancellation of another planned Avandia-Actos comparison study, known as the Thiazolidinedione Intervention in Vitamin D Evaluation (TIDE) trial. The TIDE trial is to be performed by Avandia manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline at the behest of the FDA, which in 2007 ordered the company to conduct further safety studies of the drug. The FDA’s order came after it required the company to put a “black box” warning on the drug’s packaging about the risk of heart attack and heart failure. The strong results of the 2009 study make any further comparison unethical, Juurlink and Wolfe have warned. The TIDE trial would expose “thousands of high-risk patients with diabetes to a drug with an unfavorable safety profile and clinical advantage over its comparator,” they wrote in an open letter to the FDA. The TIDE study is due to be carried out in 14 different countries, including Third World countries such as Chile, India, Latvia, Mexico and Pakistan. “[The] price of definitive proof” that Avandia is unsafe, “will almost certainly be measured in the lives of study subjects who have been incompletely informed about the risks and benefits of participation,” Wolfe and Juurlink wrote. All drugs in the thiazolidinedione class, including Actos and Avandia, have also been linked to increased risk of anemia, edema, macular edema, bony fractures and acute liver injury. Sources for this story include: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/05/diabetes-drug-trial-unethical-and-dangerous-researcher-charges.html.

Loja and Vilcabamba, Ecuador: Destinations for health-conscious people

(NaturalNews) Are you a health-conscious person looking to visit the Valley of Longevity in Ecuador? The small town of Vilcabamba sits in that valley, just 45km South of the city of Loja. For people who are new to the area, it’s sometimes difficult to know where to find healthy foods and products, so here’s a quick guide for visitors: In Loja, you’ll want to stop at the health food store called Alivinatu . Located just half a block East of the Southeast corner of the Loja town square, Alivinatu offers fresh juices, soy burgers for lunch, nutritional supplements, herbal medicines, vitamins and even a health spa on the second floor. It’s not quite a Whole Foods, but it’s the closest thing you’ll find in Loja. The owners and staff are friendly, too. Prices are a bit on the steep side for Ecuador, but they aren’t terrible. Just 1-2 blocks down the street to the East of Alivinatu, you’ll find another juice store with much better pricing (and no crowds). I don’t recall the name, but it’s on the same side of the street as Alivinatu and has a large yellow sign with a sun symbol on it. They offer fresh fruit juices, carrot juice and other medicinal juices. Service is frustratingly slow, even when it’s not busy, but the owners are friendly and you can chat with them while they’re working on your order. Looking for fresh fruit and nuts? You’ll want to visit the Frutaria on 18 de Noviembre . No, that’s not a date, it’s a street name. Ecuadorians often name their streets after famous holidays. I don’t know what happened on the 18th of November, but it was a significant date in Ecuador’s history. In any case, if you head South from the main town square on 18 de Noviembre , you’ll pass a street market area on your right. A few blocks later (to the South), you’ll reach the furniture district. On the left side of the street, look for a small green awning and the word “Frutaria.” Inside, you’ll find a tiny shop that’s jam packed with fresh fruits and nuts. The owner is talkative, and once he realizes you’re actually spending some money there, he’ll treat you to all sorts of free samples. Here are some of the amazing items you can find in this store: • Organically grown hydroponic tomatoes from a local grower in Loja. • Pitahaya cactus fruit grown on the owner’s own farm in Vilcabamba. • Almonds, macadamia nuts and pistachios. • Pineapples, papayas, babaco fruits, mangos and berries. • Flax seeds, flour, corn meal and other staples. • Dried figs, dates and other fruits. It’s a wonderful shop with an impressive variety of foods considering how small it is. Service isn’t speedy, but the selection is fantastic, and visiting this shop gives you a chance to practice more Spanish, too. The local grocery store Continuing South on 18 de Noviembre , you’ll shortly arrive at Super Maxi on your left. This is the main grocery store for the town. While it’s not a health food store, there are nonetheless many items you can find there that are quite healthy. In the fresh produce section, of course, you can find everything from cactus fruit to blackberries. They usually have a good selection of avocados, citrus fruit and vegetables. You’ll pay a lot for apples (because they’re imported from Chile), and you can find avocados at half the price in Vilcabamba, but if you want the convenience of everything in one place, check out Super Maxi. Near the cereal section, you can also find quinoa flakes . In the peanut butter section, check out the local, Ecuadorian-made peanut butter. It’s non-hydrogenated. Raw, local honey In Malecatos, the town just North of Vilcabamba, you can find raw local honey! It’s not easy, though: You have to ask around. Just ask for “miel de abejas” which means “honey of bees.” People can point you in the right direction. Eventually, you’ll end up at a house where a guy is selling small plastic containers of honey out of his living room. I paid something around $3.50 per pint container, I believe. It seemed like a reasonable price, but prices always vary depending on how good your Spanish is. Healthy food in Vilcabamba Virtually every restaurant around Vilcabamba serves fresh, raw fruit juices. You can also get Tomate de Arbol, which is a “tree tomato” fruit that’s actually not a tomato, but it sort of tastes like one. (I like this juice a lot.) There are several good restaurants around town, too. Sambuca Cafe is right on the town square, and you can get some good salads there. Papaya’s Cafe , owned by an American, is a great destination for healthy food in a really fun atmosphere (nice decorations, too!). The La Roca restaurant, located two blocks North of the town square (next to the police station) is owned by an Ecuadorian family from Cuenca . They offer a nice Sunday brunch, and at times they have live music on Friday or Saturday nights. Just one block to the East of the main square, you’ll find a vegetarian restaurant, and a few miles South of town, you can enjoy the kitchen of the Hosteria Izhcayluma . On the other side of town, the North side on the way to Loja, you can find Madre Tierra which has a nice kitchen, too. In that same direction, you’ll also find the Hosteria Vilcabamba which offers a very nice fruit plate and some fresh juices. Sunday markets And then, of course, you always have the Sunday markets, both in Vilcabamba and Malecatos. In these markets, you can often buy a huge quantity of fresh fruits like mangos, papaya, oranges, etc. My friend Matt likes to buy 40 – 50 mangoes, then he takes them home, dices them and freezes the chunks for use in smoothies. You can also find fresh coconuts from time to time, depending on what’s available. Ask around for fresh cocos and you might get lucky. Now, all the fresh produce available at the Sunday markets is not necessarily organic (even if they tell you it is). Pesticides are used in Ecuador, and some local farmers in the Valley of Longevity are definitely using pesticides. So you have to be careful about your sources. Or better yet, grow your own… Growing your own The best way to get healthy food in the Valley of Longevity is to grow your own . That’s what I’ve been doing for most of the past two years, and the food production capability of the region is downright legendary. I’m convinced it is among the very most land on the planet for producing large quantities of food year-round. The really amazing thing about growing food in Vilcabamba is that you can plant garden veggies any day of the year. So you can grow and harvest carrots, celery, cucumbers, tomatoes and other similar plants every single day of the year. There are no cold seasons: It’s Spring-like weather year round! There are a few properties for sale right now in the deep topsoil area of the Hacienda San Joaquin, located just outside the town of Vilcabamba. One piece of land is 2.5 acres selling for five figures. Another piece is 20 acres selling for mid six figures (it has a house, a working well, massive gardens and a young orchard). A third piece is smaller but is a world-class estate with tennis courts, indoor pool, a 5,000 square foot house and more. It’s selling in the low seven figures. If you’re interested in any of these, email us at vilcaland@gmail.com and let us know what interests you. We’ll forward your email to the correct party where you can see photos and a full description of various properties that might interest you. You can see some pictures of my own food production property here: http://www.naturalnews.com/Valley-of-Longevity-Property.html Growing your own food in Ecuador is ridiculously easy, and we used neem oil, tobacco juice and pepper juice as our organic pesticides. They worked great! The irrigation water is FREE (since it comes from your own well), and labor is extremely affordable, too. If you do visit Vilcabamba, be sure to check out the properties that are available — and be sure to check the soils at each property, because soil quality varies widely throughout the valley. Some areas are mostly rocks, other are deep top soil. So you have to check before you buy. Again, contact us at vilcaland@gmail.com if you’re interested in food production land there. Enjoy Loja, Vilcabamba and the Valley of Longevity!