I’ve been devoting a considerable amount of time and energy to reporting on the sometimes tedious ins and outs of the upcoming trial of Vernon Hershberger.
Why? What makes this case so important, in my view?
Here are six reasons I see it as being key:
1. It could go a long way toward determining whether Americans will retain the right to privately obtain foods the government may object to. Note, I say “retain.” Americans have always had the right to obtain food privately–whether directly from farm stores or at church suppers or via lemonade stands or from neighbors selling extra milk or cans of food. It’s just that the “right” wasn’t called a right, because it was a custom or a tradition, a part of the fabric of life in communities large and small. Elected and appointed officials didn’t even think to question it because they were getting food that way as well. But in recent years, as government at all levels has begun challenging the custom ever more often and aggressively, we the people have been forced to position this long-standing custom as a “right.”
So while Hershberger says he is making food available to members of a discrete private group of individuals, who have leased his animals and have ownership of their production, the state says there is no such distinction between the mass of shopping consumers, who are part of the public, and members of a private food group. In the dispute I wrote about over instructions to a potential Hershberger jury, prosecutors have taken dead aim at the defense proposal to separate Hershberger’s food club members from “the public.” The state noted that “…defendant requests that the jury be instructed that ‘owners or operators’ of a farm are not members of ‘the public.’…There is simply no such exception in the licensure requirements of (the Wisconsin statute) or in the definition of retail food establishment…” In a footnote, the state adds, ” ‘General Public’ means persons who are served a meal, but are not part of the household.”
2. The case can provide clues to underlying political agendas and ambitions. Political trials, in particular, are great for providing insights into the political priorities of those in charge. In Wisconsin, you have to ask why the state’s popular attorney general, J.B. Van Hollen, has fixated on the Hershberger case. Especially when his priority has been violent crime.
According to his official Wisconsin web site, “Since taking office, Attorney General Van Hollen has prioritized forensic DNA analysis at the State Crime Lab by adding 37 new positions and cutting the average turn-around time for sexual assault cases in half. Overall, the average DNA case turnaround time is a third of what it was.”
The writeup adds, almost comically, “During a time when partisan politics has increasingly polarized the people of Wisconsin, Van Hollen has kept focused on enforcing and following the laws as written without regard to the underlying political and public policy debates.”
Raw milk and food rights have become partisan and polarizing. So why would Van Hollen weigh in so gleefully and aggressively to the Hershberger case, which doesn’t offer anything like the potential public kudos that going after a rapist does?
So you wonder…the only thing the Hershberger trial could offer politically is that it could make the dairy industry happy. And if you’re thinking of running for governor, or U.S. senator, and want to raise the kind of financial war chest that’s needed, well…you have to earn your keep.
3. It is an important educational tool for Americans inside and outside of Wisconsin. Most Americans have little knowledge about the emerging struggle for food rights. The more they learn about the legal case against Vernon Hershberger, the more people will ask themselves a simple question: Why is the government of “America’s Dairy Land” expending huge resources to make this case against a humble farmer such a high priority?
4. It is an important educational tool for judges. Judges have been mostly buying into the regulator-prosecutor argument that there is no right to privately obtain whatever foods we want. The judge that bought into it most completely was Wisconsin Judge Patrick Fiedler, when he upheld the state’s case against two other farmers, Mark Zinniker and Wayne Craig, with his now infamous, no
fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow. But other judges have as well, in the Morningland Dairy and Dan Allgyer cases, just to name two. Now another judge, Guy Reynolds, is hearing the arguments, and being forced to think about hard issues here–the latest being whether Hershberger’s religious rights have been violated.Maybe some of this stuff will begin to take in the judge’s mind.
5. It could be a model for jury nullification mobilizing efforts. The judge in the Hershberger case has helped the prosecution’s effort to prevent the jury that eventually judges the farmer from learning about jury nullification. But a budding organizing effort is seeking to educate Wisconsin citizens about jury nullification. Its success could get Hershberger off the hook, and help build momentum for similar outcomes in other cases.
6. It could be a key component of a growing volume of legal precedent in favor of food rights, building on the Alvin Schlangen acquittal. As we saw in that case, a jury last September laughed at the government arguments nearly as hard as Fiedler laughed at the farmers’ arguments, as the jury quickly acquitted the farmer of similar charges as being faced by Hershberger.
The Wisconsin prosecutors are understandably terrified to be going before a jury of ordinary people, who understandably will wonder why the hell the state is expending so much effort against a single farmer committing the crime of making healthy food available to a small community of eager eaters. Now that the Hershberger trial has been delayed yet again, it is essential that we not fall into the trap of tuning out on the many legal technicalities, and potentially losing sight of the forest for all the crazy and difficult-to-comprehend stuff happening in the trees.
No matter what verdict is returned in this case, and whether the verdict is “legally correct” or not, would change nothing about the Community Food movement’s position, which is that alien government/corporate hierarchies can never play any constructive or legitimate role in food production and distribution, which is naturally local/regional. A foodshed/watershed is the only legitimate economic/political unit.
But since most people don’t yet see it this way, hopefully the experience of the regime’s assault on food will educate them. Just like the experience of how the finance and political system of the time, hostile toward the Farmers’ Alliance co-ops and heavily rigged against them, convinced the Populist movement that it needed to form a political party based on “radical” monetary and political reform.
A movement to educate people about jury nullification is a good start, since it at least implicitly delegitimizes the regime’s fraudulent “law” and reveals its cadres as the truly lawless thugs they are.
Finally, then, what is Caesars business as in: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars?
If rulers are to be a terror to the workers of evil but not to the workers of good, then what is the answer to this question: Is Vernon Hershberger a worker of evil or a worker of good?
I think the old prayer is Heavenly Father, give us this day our daily bread.
Caesar ought not step in.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
In some states, I could rent a church kitchen, and bake stuff and then sell it to anyone. No inspections needed, also cuts down on business costs for me. I think I read, in the past, some state outlawed kids selling lemonade. Sad
You are so very right, “Most Americans have little knowledge about the emerging struggle for food rights.” Education is key and the potential outcomes need to be voiced. Yet, many have no problem with the status quo. Do they grasp the consequences? I don’t know how to change that thought process. Will there be transparency as a whole? It’s a power and money game to tptb.
In the antipathy many feel toward the hair-splitting of the legal system, it’s important to remember that Vernon Hershberger didn’t go seeking out any of this legal stuff. The legal system came after him. He resisted entanglement for many months by refusing to engage a lawyer. But eventually it came down to a choice between being railroaded into a conviction (and possible jail sentence), or mounting the best legal defense possible. He chose the latter. All the more reason he deserves our attention, and our support.
As sincere as he is, his appeal to his religion is – barking up the wrong tree. The Prosecutors will take him apart / embarrass him on the witness stand, pointing out the inconsistencies between his belief system. I find the Amish ridiculous … with the way they pick and choose what aspects of the modern world they’ll use = the Law of God mingled with the taboos of men … they’ll use a telephone but refuse to use a cell phone?! The handiest example of which is – declaring married men are obliged to grow out their beard mean while shaving their mustache … spare me the legalistic hair-splitting!
as for the second question: Vernon Hershberger is a child in all this, a simpleton, bamboozled by the religious racketeers who run the cult in which he grew up. Lately, he’s misled by well-meaning people who are Biblical illiterates. Quick for-instance ; his ( reported) assertion that ‘his religion forbids him going to court.’ = Utterly the opposite of what the Apostle Paul did. A Christian is forbidden to go to the courts of the world against another Christian, but you’ll notice, that, when dragged in to Court by the local authorities, Paul asserted his legal right to stand before Caesar.
The ( so-called ) Pro-Life Movement went through much the same non-sense, 20 years ago. That one was UN-winnable from the start. This one – the Campaign for REAL MILK – is different, with a different outcome
It’s extremely unfortunate that our social structures rely so heavily on money—money is so convenient in a complex society—since bypassing money transactions obviates so many problems. (Perhaps if we understood just how many problems money causes, it wouldn’t appear to be such a convenient tool.)
A question to those who have thought about such things: If goods and services were remunerated with, say, non-coin silver or gold, would there be a legal basis for government control of the transactions?
One of the first things our founding fathers wrote into the U.S. Constitution was Congress’ power to tax, to borrow, and to print money–in other words, control of the money system. (There are those who say much of that power was illegally transferred to the Federal Reserve, which is essentially a central bank and partner of the nation’s banks, and not an official government body.) In the context of government-created paper money, gold and silver have long been seen as a threat (even though American dollars were convertible into gold, for the sake of international credibility, until 1971). The government doesn’t like competition when it comes to control of money. President Franklin Roosevelt actually banned the ownership of gold by individuals in 1933, though the ban eventually fell by the wayside.
So my guess is that if people started using gold and silver to acquire food and clothing and such, the government would find a way to insert itself into the transactions, and collect taxes. Would be interesting, though, to learn how they would value the taxes owed–based on gold at today’s dollar value of about $1,650 per ounce?
Anything which functions as a stable medium of exchange, including barter, is legally taxable and controllable in every other way. Just like with anything else, it’s a measure of people’s willingness to reject the control of an alien “law” and engage in civil disobedience.
For an alternative to any kind of medium of exchange, time banking not only works, but is a transitional form toward natural economies of community credit.
As far as the legal technicalities, when time banking was just a novelty both the US and UK tax bureaucracies ruled it wasn’t taxable barter. Now that it’s catching on, the IRS is taking another look. Of course – as soon as something becomes a real challenger to the money economy, offering a real way for the people to start to detach from money and its social controls, “the law” will seek a way to repress it.
Meanwhile money may or may not be necessary in a complex society, which begs the question of what good is a complex society. (A complex society also requires big, aggressive, centralized government. Indeed history’s biggest chicken-and-egg question is: Did “naturally” rising complexity require governments to congeal, or did would-be tyrannical elites force artificial complexity upon the people in order to justify and help foster these elites’ ever-intensifying tyranny? There’s no question at all where it comes to today’s top-down-imposed, supply-driven, corporate command economy. The industrial food regime is the most clear-cut example of all.)
We’ve let the legal racketeers take over america. It’s too late to change that now and even though the Amish may try not to become a part of the system, it happens subtly, just like everything else our gubment wants to have happen. They let a few win (just for looks, mind you) but the majority lose. That majority includes us.
What do you see as the outcome for the real milk situation?
Control of non-monetary transactions. . . .
The simple answer to government control—is yes, and they even include barter. You can check out the IRS requirements at their Bartering Tax Centeryes it does exist . http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Bartering-Tax-Center. Hard to predict how this sort of control will play out as times are getting tougher and the Long Emergency begins to take shape.
A very important point is that FRN bills are not properly “money”. They’re credit instruments, a form of “specie” if you like, but only gold and silver uttered by the govt. mints are legal money. Not for nothing is the US dollar defined in the Coinage Act as a precise weight of silver. To this day, both the Dominion of Canada and the Republic of the United States of America, are on a bi-metalic money standard, if their people only knew it! See the Currency Act of Canada. Why that matters to us is, because the raw milk controversy is only an outworking of the larger disaster = economic suicide = WHICH HAS BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT DELIBERATELY. It took a century to fruition, but the people who brought in the Federal Reserve Act, knew exactly what they were doing
http://fff.org/explore-freedom/freedom-on-the-web-link/the-milk-cliff/
“In other words, the true cause of the milk cliff is Congresss endless attempts to manipulate markets in favor of the various farm lobbies. ”
A response from a poster on the above link:”Until we outlaw institutional bribery of Congress, the money flow will always buy what the lobbyists want/pay for.”
This is true.
Bingo
Until we as a people acknowledge that the production, sale, and purchase of non-processed food is a right, and that control of it is outside government’s rightful purview, then simple giving is where will find true freedom.
When our church family gathers to build a garage, or re-roof a house, or provide meals or baskets of garden fare to each other, there is no valuation of service, no expectation of either remuneration or even eventual payback, and no interest by government. Faith and love, after all, are things the government knows nothing of, and cannot control.
Some sniff that such a way of life is unrealistic or even impossible. No doubt in a culture where competition and ambition are venerated, where jobs supplant livelihoods, where material acquisition and avoidance of labor are the highest goals, where programs substitute for people, where central control supersedes community decision-making, and where science and wisdom are considered synonymous (http://thesaurus.com/browse/science?s=t) faith and love can seem wholly impractical tools. All I can say in response is that humans can give freely, often do, and the results are far more satisfying and far less mysterious than those created by money transactions.
How much of our lives we give over to money vs. love is a choice we all make. Non-industrialized food, as it turns out, is a pretty simple thing, and is remarkably well-adapted to community/local production. Our individual needs for food are pretty much identical, and all of us can produce something, even those who live in non-farm country (most of my friends produce high quality food of some sort–milk, meat, eggs, fermented items, and most of all vegetables). It is not hard to grow much more food than you need. It is not unusual among my friends to hear the question, What do you need?
Grow something, and give your neighbor what he needs. See what happens. Maybe one of those happenings will be a reviving of respect for each other, and maybe also for farming and gardening as well.
How “control will play out” over the next few years is indeed a very interesting question. The resources needed to chase down bartering are enormous, and government of course is worse than indigent. Oh, the underground…
Dave
A thought about January 2013 pasteurized milk prices skyrocketing.
When milk prices are supper low…. ( like now ), those are true conditions based on low consumer demand and over production from CAFO’s and super allergenic milk combined with lactose intolerance. An artificial set of conditions based on non market based “Fiscal Cliff” Government and default calculations, will finish off the Dairy systems as we know them in America. Low demand combined with high price…disaster. Big time disaster!
Raw milk will continue to flourish….and be cheap by comparison.
Low demand combined with high production…. with artificially high prices….that is a mixture that will kill pasteurized milk. Sales will drop and markets will glut further and the prices will be disconnected and out of reality.
Just because the government defaults to an older price calculation formula does not mean any one will buy the product. To the contrary…this set of default and artificial conditions will be the final “coupe de grace” for the suffering bleeding dairy industry. They will be done.
Raw milk will appear cheap by comparison and continue to grow and flourish under its real market conditions.
Notwithstanding him being a married man with his “quiver full of arrows”, ( and God bless him for that) In this vicious game – the playground of the cult of the Black Robe – Vern is just a mewling kitten with eyes not yet open. He finds his-self floundering in the deep end of the shark tank, but barely able to dog-paddle around in a puddle of warm milk. Like the Marine Corps takes soft citified adolescents and readies them to be a soldier, I’m trying to help him get up to speed.
I strongly recommend you read the Bible, Ma’am – and ALL of it. It’s war from cover to cover. The Amish do well, as long as there’s guys like me – “hostile, Bad Attitude Baptists” – around, to do the fighting for them. Mister Hershberger is going to have to answer the existential question all Christians face = how to live in the world but not be of it.
Milk is added to many processed phoods, in many forms. If the cost of milk goes up, so will other processed phoods. A snowball affect.
“It’s a form of civil disobedience. They think that freedom trumps public health,” Marler said.
Yes, Bill, it does – ever hear of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, read the founding fathers?
“Public health,” yeah, because with people like you in charge of PH the last 50 years, we have gotten sickness, sorrow, and death galore. The fact that you can get quotes in an article as someone who cares about public health shows the laughable and languishing state of modern media in the US.
Me and my family will continue enjoying real foods while you and your friends and croonies stand on the mangled and dead bodies of millions of Americans with cancer, obesity, allergies, inflammation, chrones, gerd, and the dozens of other diseases your “safe” food has brought and caused. Yep, those skittles, sure are tasty and good for you, especially now that they have added “vitamin C,” you can even label them a health food.
Your positions make you a shill for corporate food and big ag, a destroyed of small farms and freedom.
You know, we are only looking at 40% OBESITY by 2030 nationally… let alone just people who are overweight.
But lets clog are already overflowing prison systems with farmers and moms and dads who give their kids foods you don’t approve of Bill (oh, yes, this is how lawyers and pols and others make money now adays, can’t do it honestly, you know by working, so lets make work for ourselves by making criminals out of everyone…) … lets use more violence and threats to make people “do what we think is best.” The hubris and audacity of the “health safety authorities” would make the Greek philosophers warnings look wimpy!
Bill, you are one of the Dolores Umbridge’s of the world.
http://www.jsonline.com/business/farmer-cites-religious-issues-in-raw-milk-case-5786cbh-185236052.html
If this is the case, then so many other ‘foods’ would need to be banned-lunch meats, all dairy products, produce, all meats/poultry/sea food, etc. After all, the public is “exposed”, right?
“She wants testimony from an expert witness from Michigan who would argue that fresh, unprocessed milk has health benefits and is safe when handled properly.”
She needs an “expert” to inform her? I question her thinking capacity. Just think; if raw milk was so poisonous then it wouldn’t be consumed, people would have dropped dead in droves all over the world.
Public? The farms products was NOT for the public. It is private. Who the hell are they to tell others what to consume? Hitler, Stalin et al forced the masses to bend to their will or suffer horrid consequences to include total families.
The truthful and politically effective response to this kind of lie is always the same: Human freedom is always on the side of public health.
(Meanwhile corporate/government license, which is often fraudulently called “freedom”, is always an assault on public health. The Marlers, NGOs, etc., whether out of conscious evil or useful idiocy, are all effectively pro-Monsanto.)
The regime couldn’t care less about “public vs. private” and knows it’s a scam. Only among the people do we find such self-destructive beliefs.
Sometime, I would enjoy dialoguing with you about your views on the public/private. As far as I can tell, that distinction goes back very, very far; indeed, to the beginning of writing/record keeping or close to it. I think it is an important and right and helpful distinction – but I would enjoy hearing you out more, both how you would articulate things and the whys.
With our gubment pushing money at the farmers (as incentives and subsidies) we won’t see a major push for real foods anytime soon. And, as someone stated elsewhere, with guys like Marler pushing the money around from one side into the hands of the other side with legal gymnastics, we are ensuring the success of corporate goblins like monsanto, dean foods and all the rest who have an interest in fake phoods.
At this point, as awful as it sounds, people have to get stingy and grow their own food (if they can) and more or less hoard it by preservation. I don’t see anything good or helpful coming from WADC on this front. The CONgress is less than helpful, which means we now must have a DIY food system – individually. As we’ve already witnessed, they tend to arrest people who are interested in real foods and sharing/distributing such.
Regarding public/private, I meant most of all today’s system. I deny that there’s any qualitative distinction or practicable demarcation between corporations and government. That’s the basis of the term and concept “corporatism”, which is also known as the economic manifestation of fascism: A command economy based on nominally private, government-chartered gangster rackets.
Corporations are artificial creations of government and are really extensions of government. Government is primarily the welfare bagman and thug for the corporations. Any “public interest” function of government is superannuated; no new programs have been inaugurated in a long time. The system’s trying to gut what little is left of such things (Social Security, libraries, public parks, etc.). By now ALL new or expanded government programs – Big Ag subsidies, gasoline subsidies, the Wall Street bailout, the money system and all proposals to “reform” it, the wars, the police state, the prisons, the phony “stimulus”, Obamaromneycare, any change to the tax code, etc. – are primarily corporate welfare. Government sees any possible action purely in terms of maximizing corporate profit, corporate power, corporate domination.
Meanwhile, as fast as possible all effective power is being transferred from nominally “accountable” representative government to formally “private” and unaccountable corporations. This is the goal of neoliberalism – to maintain the trappings of “representative democracy”, all the ballast of elections and petitions and such, while all real power is exercised from beyond the reach of any transparency or accountability. The pseudo-democracy scam is meant to get the people to accept this massive embezzlement of sovereignty as legitimate. Sure enough, we see people agreeing that corporations have a right to secrecy, that their formally enshrined psychopathy (that profit is their one and only legitimate goal) is tolerable among decent human beings, that on account of being “private” entities they have rightful prerogatives to exercise power over us which (some of us) would object to where the nominal “government” tries to do it. Sure enough, many people seem far more angry about FDA and DATCP attacks than they do about these cadres’ bosses: Monsanto, Dean, etc. After all, Monsanto, as a “private” power concentration, has rightful prerogatives which the FDA, a “public” power concentration, does not.
But this is false and stupid: morally, rationally, and on any practical level. The only thing which really exists are power concentrations themselves. Why would anyone care whether the marauders are from the official navy, or a licensed privateer, or an unlicensed pirate ship? They’re all from the same gang, and they’re all the same enemy.
Meanwhile, as we saw with the Zinniker ruling, the regime itself doesn’t actually believe in this “public-private” distinction, and it doesn’t believe in “property”. It only treats these as loaded words to use and abuse for its own power purposes. It really recognizes only big concentrated power.
The “supreme” court enshrined this might-makes-right mutability in the Kelo decision, which formally declared that big power trumps property rights and any kind of “public-private” distinction (eminent domain is allegedly supposed to be only for “public” purposes).
That’s why I say that those who still, at least under these circumstances and under this regime, accept notions like “public vs. private” are letting the enemy dictate the terms, concepts, times, places, and methods of struggle. This is certainly a losing way to fight.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/despite-dubious-evidence-safety-you-may-soon-be-eating-unlabeled-genetically-engineered
Personally, I’m not really as interested in “harming the environment” as I am with harming the wild salmon colonies, which the EPA claims will not happen. Well, maybe it won’t harm the environment or even the wild salmon numbers, which is highly doubtful per their record on this kind of thing, but it’s been proven that it WILL harm people. But we aren’t supposed to be concerned about that. This company needs to get off the ground so we’re just supposed to believe all the wild claims from them and their cohort the EPA.
The whole fat chance package is that some (maybe most) of the general public will believe their hogwash. I, however, do not buy into eating man-made, lab-created slop.
Yes, the corporate bastardization of all things is terrible. Corporate personhood, an oxymoron and great evil…
So the question becomes, how would you frame or handle these issues? How would you practically suggest moving things forward, for instance, in Vernon’s situation? I have seen you post long term ideas/goals, but how does that translate into today concrete actions?
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/CoAction.html
The graphs speak for themselves.
A week after Michael Schmidt had prevailed in the first round, in his contest in Ontario, the Quasi-govt. “Fraser Health Authority” hauled us in to the Supreme Court of British Columbia, for having the temerity to embarrass the Stalin-ist dairy cartel, by demonstrating what people would pay for REAL MILK on the free market. Mrs Jonderden did not prepare a submission. Rather, she related how the cowshare had grown. then = under the unction of the Holy Spirit = ended by leaving the question hanging : “when did private become public?” Of course Madam Justice Miriam Gropper didn’t dare touch that one, ie. the pivotal issue.
All that crap~ola aside … the REAL MILK is flowing today as we assert our right to use and enjoy our private property. Try it some time … it’s the anti-dote to communism, which Wilhelm Reich termed “red fascism”
population references: Wendell Cox’s http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf
p.s. for a real-life “free lunch,” put into practice the teaching in the book “Body By Science” (McGuff M.D. and Little; pub. McGraw Hill; c. 2009). They saw 88 1/2 year-olds, wheelchair bound, walking on their own after 14 weeks. Another study, starting with healthy 70 year olds, saw their evidence of mitochondrial impairment and muscle weakness partially reversed at the phenotypic level, and substantially reversed at the transcriptome level, following 6 months of resistance exercise training (pp. 245-7). Here’s the free lunch part: this requires15 minutes per week.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
I’ve heard numerous stories from both patients and physicians who stopped most or all medications of bed-ridden/wheelchair bound patients and they miraculously were able to ambulate totally on their own or with minimal assistance, their thought processes improved, etc. I’ll seek out the book.
For the question of what to do, here’s some of my personal goals for 2013:
1. Continue learning to grow and preserve my own food, build my soil, save my seeds, etc.
2. Make some money growing vegetables. I’m not yet near being a full-time professional farmer, and I “own” no land, but I have access to some land, and my skills are getting better.
3. Continue my work with our farmers’ market, community garden, herbal medicine garden, and time bank.
4. Try to interest people in forming a citizens’ Food Policy Council (not a government-based or system-NGO-based one).
5. Through these projects talk with as many people as possible about the ideas, necessity, and possibilities of Community Food, and the impossibility and wickedness of industrial ag.
6. Toward the goal of forming the kind of Food Sovereignty movement I’ve discussed in the comments you mentioned.
I’ll do all those things this year, and continue to do them going forward. I think if everyone who wanted to relocalize and decorporatize food were to do similar things, this movement would quickly cohere, and the “long-run” wouldn’t be so long after all. So those aren’t just personal goals, but political goals as well. At the moment I have to do them as an individual and as a member of a basically apolitical community group. But as soon as possible I want to do them as part of a political movement. I’ll try to help bring together the local manifestation of such a movement around here. Others will have to do the same wherever they are.
I’m pretty sure that Army rations are what started the boxed food concept and the corporate world perpetuated it when they saw an opportunity there. We’ve, sadly, gone way past that concept now and moved into a poisonous realm of mass production of fake phood and poorly managed, humongous commercial gardens using questionable fertilizers, etc.
We can still collect rain water here where I live, but I suppose it won’t be long before that changes. I’m not entirely sure of the reasons, but I would imagine the City Water Department’s want people to use water they must pay for, doncha think? Personally, rain water isn’t what it used to be because there’s so much crud in the air that washes down with the rain. We used to eat snow when I was a kid, but I sure don’t encourage that now. We used to be careful not to eat any yellow spots in the snow, now we can’t even SEE what we must be afraid of. We probably should have been afraid to eat snow and collect rain water starting in the 1950’s because of all the military experiments taking place even then, but who knew? And we wonder why there was/is an explosion in allergies and cancer and hundreds of other diseases? Really no mystery to at least part of that story. Chemicals of any kind are really not our friends, and don’t make for “better living”, regardless of the tv ad from the 1970’s. 😉
As an FYI some RX is done by computer and the meds are flagged if not filled/picked up- the flag goes to the doc. Also some “concerned” pharmacists may get a phoned in RX and after so many days, if it isn’t picked up, the pharmacist will notify the doc.
I had a few run-ins with Kaiser Sacramento regarding my dad. A few years ago, after taking Azithromycin, he suddenly had A-fib. 3-4 months prior he was fine, no health issues. Anyway, the doc wanted dad to take coumadin. Dad read about coumadin in my drug book and refused to take the “rat poison”. He also told the doc he thought giving poison was illegal. I can make medical decisions for dad, should he become mentally incapacitated. He is stubborn and pig-headed not senile. The doc called me requesting I “make” dad take the pills. I had a good laugh at that. The doc put that azithromycin causes dad to be “confused”. I know there are good physicians out there some where.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
Sylvia, Zithromax (the Azith you mentioned above) is the stuff that eventually did my Mom in – she had two reactions to that junk and we ended up at the ER with her. Then when she went into a nursing home for the last couple of months of her life, they gave her that stuff and called me AFTER they had given her a couple of doses. I asked them if any of those nurses, well really the doctor for that matter before prescribing it, bothered to read her chart or to at least check and see if there was a notation on there about her having an adverse event/reaction to it. Apparently the ER doc’s never had anything noted about it at all. Now THAT’S really scary.
I should have sued – and could have – because there was ample evidence (from her primary doctor charts).
Nope, the farther away from doctors we can stay, the better. Accidents happen and some surgeries are necessary, but other than that I prefer to avoid those guys.
Does the court in Baraboo, Wisconsin administer “written law in conformity with the Constitution of the United States”? If it does then the “proprietary power” should be clearly identified at the very next opportunity or at least by the very start of the court proceedings. Typically the qualification of jurors (in at least the county courts) includes verifying their status as a United States citizen. That is at least one nexus with the federal Constitution which is one of four Organic Laws, just like it says in my latest copy of the United States Code Vol 1. The judge, the DA and the jurors may not be aware of what all the Organic Law says however the Organic is clearly identified as such in the title page of the aforementioned volume. The Organic Law clearly shows that the jurisdiction of the United States government is based on property owned by the United States of America. All Vernon would need to do is to show he has clear title to the farm land. (An original Land Patent would be ideal.) He now has time to get what he needs to show that the government has no ownership in his farm land. No ownership = no jurisdiction. Case dismissed. Then put up the no trespassing signs and let the agents know that trespassers will be fed to the dogs! I hear Llamas make even better guards. At least they might spit at the trespassers!
Blogged some of this at: http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=2021083
There was a younger nurse who came back to our office, after doing home visits, she was pissed at a patient for putting honey on the wound. She said that was the stupidest thing she ever heard. I did point out there were studies in Australia proving raw honey kills bacteria to include MRSA and different honey’s have different potency. She unfortunately believes any alternative medicine and “Old Wives tails” belong in the trash. I wouldn’t want her for my nurse.
Sometimes suing is needed to make changes, sometimes those changes are for the better, sometimes it just covers the wrong more-so. If enough sue, then the potential to make better changes is there. The changes may take decades.
Around the time they gave dad the azithromycin, my brother also was given it for a leg wound. He ended up in renal failure from the drug. I was closely following both at the same time. I think it was about 2 yrs after mom passed (I ended up calling Schwarzenegger’s office trying to get mom a bloody pain pill-she had GBM-brain cancer). A very stressful period in my life.
Everyone needs a knowledgeable advocate with them when they see any physician.
I haven’t heard of that physician, I googled his name and see that “quackwatch” slandered him, so it must be a good read. I’ll add it to my ‘to-read’ list.
There’s quite a lot to be said about Perfect World Syndrome (PWS), even more so when PWS assumptions are used as a basis of legislation, codifying nonsense, enforced at the point of a gun. In the resulting world, practicing common sense can bring down on yourself fines, jail time or worse.
A good online read is the WWII experiences of private John Chistopher at Ft. Lewis, Washington. They can be found at: http://www.herballegacy.com/
I think this site has the story about Christopher’s mocking neighbor who eventually tried suicide by cayenne, covering his head with a pillow “so his neighbors wouldn’t be disturbed by his dying screams” only to wake up the next morning after his first good sleep in ages and well on his way to being cured of his troubles.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
Mendelsohn was a pediatrician for 30+ years and he tells it like it is. Mostly what it IS is common sense, something many of the parents today lack in a big way. He wrote the book How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, MALePractice, and Confessions of a Medical Heretic. He wrote awesome stuff. In the book about raising healthy children he wrote about how to deal with a fever without running to a doctor, why “well baby” visits are not important and why vaccinations are not always the best choice. I wish he was around now to see what’s happening with vaccinations – he’d be writing ANOTHER book!
A really good book about vaccinations was written by Dr. Tim O’Shea, D.C., called Vaccination is NOT Immunization. You can find his writings at http://www.thedoctorwithin.com
;->
dependent! In other words all of the jurisdiction that has been granted to
the Congress is clearly limited by the written Organic Law and restricted to
those territories and other lands that are owned by the United States of
America.
The commerce powers that were granted to the Congress are limited and
most essentially to their proprietary-based jurisdiction. It is unfortunate
that the proprietary-based jurisdiction is not abundantly clear to the American
people. However, the truth of the matter is no longer the “big secret” that it
has been up till just a number of years ago.
Therefore Vernon Hershberger and every American farmer (as well as
all the rest of the people) are absolutely free to do business as it pleases
them including the use of FRNs without fear of subjugating them selves and
/ or their business to governmental entities.
It’s time to learn the Law!:
http://organiclaws.org/