65 Tips to Save Money Through Self-Reliance

Apply a do-it-yourself approach to personal finance to significantly reduce your living expenses. Follow these tips to save money from our community of readers and experts to start living on less today.

February/March 2014

http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/tips-to-save-money-zm0z14fmzrob.aspx

By Kale Roberts

Throughout the years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS readers have proved to be a clever lot. You’ve shown time and again that you can save a bundle when you apply resourcefulness and a little elbow grease to home economics. Frankly, our consumer culture pressures many of us to live above our means. The good news is that making a personal and household commitment to a more frugal lifestyle can be a fulfilling, healthy choice — and the following tips to save money can start you on that journey. Imagine what your life will be like when you slash your grocery or utility bills in half, or when you’re able to pay down your mortgage.

We’ve assembled the following tips to save money from you, our readers, and from our Amazin’ Archive — 44 years’ worth of articles about living on less and loving it.

After you read our selections, find more details for how to implement the tips that interest you by clicking on the links that follow each tip.

Saving Money on Shelter & Clothing

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average U.S. home built in 2012 was 2,505 square feet. For many families, that’s much larger than necessary. Sizable homes are more expensive to build, heat, cool and maintain. If you’re able to reduce your home size to a cozier and more practical fit that still meets your needs, savings will follow. No matter the size of your house, here are ways to keep your construction, living and maintenance costs down.

1. Learn how to be your own plumber and electrician. Check out how-to books from the library or invest in a class at a vocational school. Read more: Be Your Own Plumber.

2. Join or start a tool-lending library. Power tools are expensive and often only needed for a short time to complete a single project. Read more: Start Your Own Tool-Sharing Program.

3. Build with salvaged materials or scrap materials reclaimed from construction sites. Visit Habitat for Humanity ReStores, search your nearest city’s Craigslist posts, or check with the owners of demolition companies. Read more: Save Money With Used Building Materials.

4. Barter construction labor with friends or neighbors. Read more: Successful Swaps and Barter Agreements.

5. If you’re not ready to own a house, seek an arrangement to provide your labor in exchange for room and board. This is common on farms or in households in need of nannying services. Read more: Volunteer for Sustainable Organic Farming Opportunities.

6. When shopping for land, save on a real estate agent’s commission by browsing for homes listed for sale on the Internet or talking with neighbors and landowners directly. You may even discover an owner willing to sell a plot that’s never been listed. Read more: How to Buy Farmland, Even If You Think You Can’t.

7. Scour thrift stores and consignment shops for unique and affordable clothes.

8. Knit, crochet or sew your own clothes. At the least, sew on new buttons, darn socks, patch jeans and learn how to repair clothing you already own before buying new. Read more: How to Knit and Crochet.

9. Forgo the cost of running a clothes dryer and instead string a clothesline in your yard or on a porch or patio. Put up a line in a greenhouse or sunroom in order to air-dry garments during cold or wet weather, or invest in fold-up clothes-drying racks for indoor use. Read more: The Convenient, Sturdy Outdoor Clothesline.

10. Organize a group clothing swap to trade your gently used threads for new-to-you apparel.

11. Cut your family members’ hair yourself. A quality set of clippers will cost less than $50. Read more: The Tao of Cutting Your Hair.

12. Make your own body care products. Most store-bought options can be replaced by some combo of just four ingredients: water, beeswax, and various edible and essential oils. Read more: Herbal Skin Care Basics: Tools, Ingredients, Recipes.

Saving Money on Food & Gardening

Hold on to your grocery and restaurant receipts for one month to track where your food dollars are going — you might be surprised by what you learn. Many North Americans spend nearly half of their food budgets on restaurants and fast food. Avoid most of that expense by cooking at home: Home-cooked meals cost less, and you’ll cultivate a closer relationship with your food because you’ll know exactly what goes into it.

13. Prepare big batches of food on weekends and refrigerate or freeze leftovers for use throughout the week. Take your own lunch and snacks to work.

14. Forgo pricey coffee-shop lattes by drinking coffee at home and filling your to-go cup for the road.

15. Buy raw ingredients in bulk rather than prepackaged or prepared foods. Start or join a bulk food co-op and place orders directly with food companies to further cut costs. Read more: Save Money on Groceries.

16. Make your own food staples. For example, home-baked bread can cost about 50 cents per loaf, and homemade cheeses cost about one-third of what you’d pay at the store. Read more: Delicious and Easy Homemade Bread; Easy Cheesy: 4 Super-Simple Recipes.

17. Buy dry beans in bulk at a fraction of the cost of canned products, and pressure-cook them to save time. Pressure cooking also tenderizes inexpensive, tougher cuts of meat in a fraction of the time that conventional cooking requires. Read more: Pressure Cooking Basics (Video).

18. Avoid supermarket prices by organizing a larder swap where you and your friends can trade dried, frozen and canned goods or ready-made meals. Read more: Local Homesteading Groups: Why You Need One.

19. Purchase in-season fruits and vegetables at your farmers market and preserve them to eat year-round. Read more: Collection of Food Preservation Techniques.

20. Cold frames, hoop houses, cloches and other cold-weather gardening devices can help you stretch your home food production further into winter and start up again earlier in spring. Read more: Year-Round Gardening: Our Best Plans for Greenhouses, Hoop Houses, Cold Frames and More.

21. Commercial organic fertilizers tend to be overpriced. Instead, you can use grass clippings from herbicide-free lawns — they contain about 2 to 5 percent free nitrogen. Read more: Build Better Soil With Free Organic Fertilizer!

22. Start vegetables from seeds rather than buying seedlings. Save seeds from your heartiest plants and attend (or organize) a seed swap to trade with other local gardeners. Read more: Best Tips for Starting Seeds Indoors; How to Organize a Community Seed Swap.

23. Learn how to hunt and fish. Deer and other wild game will stock your freezer with delicious, lean meat for the price of a hunting license and initial equipment purchases. Read more: Why I Eat Wild Meat.

24. Even in urban and suburban areas, ordinances often allow you to keep a few backyard chickens for egg or meat production. Super-fresh eggs from backyard hens will cost as little as $1.40 per dozen for feed, and you can raise meat birds for about $3 per pound. Read more: How to Raise Chickens in Your Backyard; Raising Chickens for Meat: Do-It-Yourself Pastured Poultry.

25. Do you have children and go through a lot of milk? Love cheese and yogurt? Keep a couple of goats or a home dairy cow, which can produce more than $3,000 worth of milk each year. Read more: Raising Dairy Goats and the Benefits of Goat Milk; Keep a Family Cow and Enjoy Delicious Milk, Cream, Cheese and More.

Saving Money on Family Health

Health care spending in the United States averaged $8,402 per person in 2010 — 72 percent higher than a decade earlier. What herbalists and thrifty parents have known for millennia, however, is that matters of health can often be taken into your own hands for a fraction of the cost, especially when your goal is to prevent illness.

26. Turn the outdoors into your personal gym. Aerobic activity, coupled with a set of dumbbells you keep at home, can eliminate your need for a gym membership. Research shows that being in nature for even a few minutes at a time reduces stress hormones, which in turn boosts immunity. Read more: Your Brain on Nature: Forest Bathing and Reducing Stress.

27. Eating well may be the most enjoyable form of preventive medicine. Organic foods stock your body with nourishing nutrients and are free of toxic chemicals.

28. Grow medicine in your backyard! You can make many effective herbal remedies at home using kitchen equipment you likely already own. Read more: 75 Safe and Effective Herbal Remedies.

29. Mental happiness translates to physical well-being. Find happiness in the stress-reducing aspects of simple living, and your body — as well as your mind — will be less prone to illness. Read more: Simple Living: How to Save Money and Smile More.

Saving Money on Home Energy

Take these steps to improve your home’s energy performance, and you’ll enjoy a triple win: lower utility bills, a smaller carbon footprint and a more comfortable home. Before investing in a solar- or wind-energy system, make your home as energy-efficient as possible. An efficient home requires less energy to run, meaning you’ll be able to purchase a smaller, less expensive renewable energy system. To see calculations that outline just how quickly the measures below pay off, read 8 Easy Projects for Instant Home Energy Savings.

30. Plug your appliances into power strips, and flip the switch off when you’re not using them. This will eliminate “phantom loads” from many appliances that continue to pull power when they’re plugged in but not in use. Read more: Zap Phantom Loads to Save Energy.

31. Adjust your computer’s power-management settings so that it powers down into sleep or hibernate mode after several minutes of inactivity. Read more: Reduce Computer Energy Use.

32. Replace inefficient incandescent light bulbs with light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs or compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). The initial investment will pay for itself after one to three years, and the savings will continue for the remaining life of the bulb — up to 50,000 hours for a quality LED. Read more: Lighten Up With Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs.

33. Rather than relying on air conditioning, open and close windows to regulate home temperature, and use fans to move air throughout your home. Read more: Natural Cooling Strategies.

34. If going AC-free is too challenging in your climate, set your thermostat at 70 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. For every degree you increase your thermostat, you will save seven to 10 percent on cooling costs. Read more: Five Tips to Help You Lower Your Utility Bill.

35. Paint your home — or, better yet, your roof! — a light color to decrease heat gain. Read more: Make Safe, Natural Paint; How to Paint Your House.

36. Wash your clothes in cold water. Friction, rather than heat, does most of the cleaning.

37. Replace your old fridge or freezer with an Energy Star model to save up to $1,000 on energy costs over the appliance’s lifetime. Read more: EPA Strengthens Requirements for Energy Star Appliances.

38. Seal and insulate heating ducts. The cost to insulate ducts is only about 25 cents per linear foot of ductwork, and unsealed ducts can lose up to 30 percent of heated air through cracks and openings. Read more: Insulation Pipes and Heating Ducts; Insulating Your Home Can Save You Money!

39. Insulate your windows with transparent acrylic panels, insulative clear plastic or bubble wrap secured to the interior of your window frames. Read more: Find the Best Energy-Efficient Window Treatments.

40. During cold weather, use a heated mattress pad to keep you warm at night. Similarly, wear sweaters and use a small space heater in a room you can close off. You can then turn down your thermostat. Read more: 8 Easy Projects for Instant Home Energy Savings.

41. If you live in a suitable area and have access to a woodlot, heating your home with a woodstove can reduce your energy costs. Read more: How to Choose the Right Woodstove.

Saving Money on Transportation & Travel

Forty percent of all automobile trips are less than 2 miles. Walking these miles paves the way for you to save at the gas pump while reducing stress, fostering a greater connection to your environment and getting in a workout. More than 80 percent of North Americans support increased federal funding for biking and walking, and at least 16 of the nation’s major public transportation systems reported record ridership in 2012. Clearly, the first step to cutting transportation expenses should be the step you take away from your vehicle.

42. Ride a bicycle. Leave your car in the garage and consider an electric-assist bike for sweat-free commuting. Read more: Ride Green With Electric Bikes and Scooters.

43. Take advantage of car-sharing or bike-sharing programs rather than owning and maintaining a vehicle. Read more: A Growing Trend, Car Sharing Offers a Different Mobility Option; Bike-Share Programs Across the World.

44. Save all of your errands that require a vehicle for a single trip.

45. If you commute by car, set up a carpool with your co-workers to save fuel. Read more: Get With a Carpool: Save Money, Get the Good Lane.

46. Learn how to change your own oil and perform other maintenance on your vehicle to avoid service fees. Read more: How to Change Oil in Your Car or Truck.

47. When shopping for a car, buy the most fuel-efficient model that meets your needs. The difference between a 16-mpg model and a 14-mpg model, for instance, can reach $400 in fuel costs annually. Read more: New Fuel Economy Labels: What You Need to Know; Best Fuel-Efficient Cars by Each Automaker, Now and Later.

48. “Hypermiling” means adjusting your driving habits to save fuel, and these tactics can help you achieve up to 40 percent more miles per gallon. Drive slower on highways, brake less and accelerate smartly. Read more: Every Gallon Counts: Hypermiling Tips to Save Gas; How to Calculate Gas Mileage.

49. You can produce your own ethanol for an ongoing cost of less than $2 per gallon. Just 2 acres of corn can produce enough ethanol to drive 10,000 miles. Read more: Make Your Own Fuel! Alcohol Fuel Basics; Build a Small-Scale Ethanol Fuel Plant.

50. Alternatively, convert your diesel-powered car or truck to run on vegetable oil. You could even build a wood gasifier unit to run your pickup on waste wood from a sawmill. Read more: Wood Gas Wizard; Wood Gas Generator: Run Your Truck on Firewood!

51. When flying, be flexible. Many airlines overbook flights and offer a free trip at a later time to those who are willing to give up their seats.

52. Home swap so you can enjoy free lodging in a new location. Check out AirBnb to find homeowners willing to rent out their homes to travelers, or crash on someone’s couch by connecting with hosts on Couchsurfing.org.

53. Explore where you live. Plan a “staycation” to travel locally and discover something wonderful within a 50-mile radius of home.

54. When renting a car or truck for a trip, choose a model with fold-down seats and pack a sleeping bag. That way, your rented ride can double as instant, snug lodging.

Saving Money on Education

Rising tuition costs coupled with stories of college graduates unable to find work are discouraging to those hoping to further their own education or plan for their children. Meaningful education can come from a variety of avenues aside from expensive university courses, such as vocational trainings, skills workshops and community-based classes.

55. For the college-bound, consider taking most course requirements at a community college, and then transferring your credits to a university to complete your degree. Read more: International Homesteading Education Month’s Event Listings.

56. Attend an in-state, public university, which will subsidize residents’ tuition. If you want to attend college out of state, first establish residency in that state to save big on tuition.

57. Source used textbooks online, at a bookstore that sells used books or directly from other students. Coordinate with students in your degree program early so you can swap books.

58. Audit classes for which you want the knowledge but don’t need the credits.

59. Free video lectures on topics ranging from art history to economics can be viewed online at Khan Academy and Academic Earth. Some universities, including Yale and Utah State, also offer open courses.

60. Trade skills: If you play the piano, for instance, trade your musical training for a photography lesson.

Saving Money on Entertainment

Modern society has replaced creativity with consumption. We choose carryout in place of preparing a home-cooked meal; we listen to music rather than making it. But as Shannon Hayes explains in her book Radical Homemakers, prepackaged pleasures pale in comparison with the joy that comes from fixing, making and tinkering with things. To be entertained isn’t always a passive experience, nor is it wholly personal. Part of the pleasure of attending a community play, visiting an art museum or catching a Little League game is in sharing that time with others.

61. Use free hot spots to avoid paying for Internet use. Some towns enjoy free citywide wireless service.

62. Ditch your TV, or at least your cable service. The average cable subscriber pays about $128 each month for service and associated fees — more than $1,500 per year. If you do watch TV, move your set to a less-used part of your house to discourage mindless viewing. Read more: End Your Family’s TV Addiction.

63. For a night out without the kids, trade babysitting time with other families or join a babysitting co-op. Break the bank: Build Your Local Economy.

64. Cities and towns offer a cultural smorgasbord of free and inexpensive events. Check online bulletins and local announcement boards for summer movies in the park, art gallery openings, benefit concerts and more.

65. During the holidays, save a bundle on gift-giving by crafting handmade gifts. If you do buy gifts, discuss with loved ones the possibility of setting a gift-spending cap. Read more: Handmade Holiday Gifts: Ideas From Our Facebook Friends; 15 Homemade Holiday Gift Ideas.

These tips are only the first steps toward financial freedom. We know you’ll discover more ways to save, because when you tackle projects yourself and embrace the joys of simple living, your pocketbook — and your mind — will instantly reap the benefits.

Having No Exposure to Energy Risk is Risky

By Dennis Miller

Because Marin Katusa is the foremost expert on all things energy, I’ve been eager to pick his brain for our subscribers. Marin, an accomplished investment analyst, is the senior editor of Casey Energy Dividends, Casey Energy Confidential, and the Casey Energy Report. He is also a regular commentator on BNN and other major media outlets.

Dennis Miller: Marin, welcome. Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge with our subscribers.

Marin Katusa: Thanks for having me. It’s my pleasure.

Dennis: I know you are aware that our subscribers are mostly baby boomers and investors on either side of the cusp of retirement. We focus a lot on diversifying among sectors and minimizing risk within each sector. Can you explain where energy opportunities should fit in to our subscribers’ portfolios, including both low- and higher-risk investments?

Marin: It’s a Catch-22 for the mature investor today. Everyone is chasing yield, thereby propping up the prices of yield plays. Dominant companies in the energy sector pay a good dividend and have appreciated very nicely.

Now, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to lock in gains by putting in Casey profit stops. 25-40% gains on big energy companies are equivalent to double and triple gains in the junior market. Don’t be scared to sell.

For your subscribers, only invest in juniors – which are high-risk investments – with money you can afford to lose. That means no more than 10% of your portfolio. Now personally, I don’t follow that advice, but I’m nowhere near the age of your audience. The younger you are, the more time you have to build your non-risk portfolio. While the juniors can make you tremendous wealth, they are also the riskiest investments in the world.

Every investor should also think about the percentage of his portfolio exposed to the energy sector. It’s mind-blowing to me that investors in your age bracket often have 10% of their portfolio in gold stocks, but very little to none in the energy sector. Globally, the energy sector dwarfs the gold sector, and I believe 10% of everyone’s portfolio – including your readers’ – should have exposure to energy investments. For your audience, 90% of that 10% should be invested in less risky energy companies, and 10% should be in riskier junior energy stocks. Nothing is more pleasing to a portfolio than investing in a company at under US $0.25, and having the stock run to over US $7 (an over 2,500% gain).

Dennis: When I talk about speculative picks, I like to use an analogy. When it comes to pharmaceutical stocks, they usually have a lot of intellectual capital. When their research moves along the FDA approval process, a larger company will often buy them out and bring their product to market. In effect, speculative companies are like a research and development arm for the industry. The same is true in junior mining. Once they discover and have provable reserves, a larger company generally buys them out and mines those reserves.

I know big oil companies do most of their own exploration, but a uranium company might not have the ability or capital to build a mine. Can you explain the nuances of the energy sector in this regard and the investment implications for us?

Marin: Let’s start with oil. My publication was the first to publish on the potential of the East African Rift and Africa Oil (V.AOI). It was on no one’s radar, and no majors were in the area at the time we first started writing and recommending stocks in the area. Essentially, the oil and gas play for juniors is to get in early and prove up a new concept, locking up a PSC and getting the license to actually do some exploration work. Africa Oil is a perfect example of that, and AOI was able to attract a much bigger company to fund the risk. That stock had over a 1,000% gain.

There’s a similar game plan with shale gas: get in early, and stake up large blocks of land based on a geological concept that the majors are not looking at. Cuadrilla is a perfect case study in that game plan. It staked up some land for very little, proved a concept, and delivered exceptional returns for its shareholders.

In the energy sector, majors are attracted to juniors that have large sections of land with large, previously unrealized potential. The early days of the Eagle Ford oil shales are a good example of this. Smart companies were buying up land for $100 per acre, and in a few years the same land was going for $25,000 per acre.

Profiting from Energy Now

Dennis: I know you have had some phenomenal success in smaller energy picks in the past. At the Casey conferences, many subscribers have told me you made them a lot of money. Do you see any good opportunities on the horizon? If an investor wanted to take advantage of these opportunities, are they better off with an individual company or with an ETF or mutual fund in that sector?

Marin: I’ve never been a fan of ETFs. Also, I don’t like public mutual funds because few ever beat the indices, and investors pay ridiculous fees.

I think there are some excellent energy investments to be made today. But first, a potential investor has to ask himself: “What is my risk tolerance, and what is my time frame?” Africa Oil, Cuadrilla, and Uranium Energy Corp. were all major successes, but they were all very high risk, and it took over 18 months for each success to be realized.

If you do your homework, investing in an individual company will deliver superior gains than an ETF or mutual fund.

Dennis: I know you spend a tremendous amount of time in the field evaluating opportunities. Do you use a process for evaluation similar to Doug Casey’s Eight Ps?

Marin: The most important P to me is “People.” Actually, average people will screw up the best company, and if you invest in the right people, they can turn around the worst company.

The Projects and Politics are also on the top of my list. All the 8Ps are important, but those are the top three in my book.

American Nuclear Power Dependence

Dennis: I recently watched a webinar you did with some real experts on nuclear power and uranium. You cited some surprising statistics I had never heard before, about the number of homes in the US that rely on nuclear power and the number that rely on uranium from Russia. Can you share some of that information for our readers, as well as the investment and security implications?

Marin: Here is another startling fact that, if you are an American, I’m sure you will have a major issue with. In 2012, more uranium was produced by a Russian company on American soil than by all American producers combined on American soil. I’m sure Russians like that fact, but not so much Americans.

Also, the US imports over 90% of the uranium it consumes annually. It is by far the most contrarian investment in energy today globally.

The only solution for the security issues is to pay a higher price for uranium… or 20% of the homes in the US could go without electricity. Talk about creating a chaotic event. The sector and commodity are cheap, and producers cannot make money at current prices.

Dennis: Once a utility has gone through the long, expensive process of building a uranium facility, it is pretty much committed to that one type of fuel. It doesn’t seem to have the latitude to convert, like a lot of utilities did from coal-fired plants to gas. Is that correct?

Marin: There is a misconception that thorium can be substituted for uranium in the reactors. Nothing can substitute for uranium in the existing reactors. In fact, even if the price of uranium doubled or tripled, the increased costs to creating nuclear electricity would be negligible. Once the plant is built, the big costs are paid for.

I think your real concern is this. If the price of uranium rises – as I believe it will – the US utilities will pay whatever it takes to buy their fuel, and that cost will be passed on to the American consumer. There is no realistic Plan B.

Dennis: Is uranium where you see the next best opportunity for huge investment gains? And if so, what caution would you offer to those subscribers who may be close to retirement and do not have the benefit of a do-over with their investment dollars?

Marin: Every investor needs to know his time frame for investing. If an investor is looking to earn yield from uranium, then he should invest in the larger producers. The way to invest in uranium with the lowest risk is to actually buy uranium. There’s no political, production, exploration, or management risk involved. However, you can’t exactly buy uranium and store it beside your gold and silver coins.

We recently put together a special report in which we discuss exactly how investors can get exposure to the lowest-risk uranium investment in the world, which actually owns uranium (U₃O₈) and also uranium hexafluoride (UF₆).

If you’re looking for higher-risk exposure, we’ve had some great success with Fission, which we recently sold for over 100% gains, but it doesn’t pay out a dividend, and produces no uranium. The company explores for uranium.

The Future of Oil

Dennis: We see the price of oil fluctuate regularly. In the long run, how much effect does that really have on the price of energy? You make a great case for uranium; since demand is going to far outpace supply, prices should rapidly escalate.

Marin: The reality is, most oil reserves are in countries that are not friendly to the US, and that oil is produced and managed by national oil companies.

Take Venezuela for example, which has some amazing oil deposits. The US imports almost as much oil from Venezuela as it does from the Canadian oil sands, and yet it pays almost twice as much for Venezuela’s oil as it does Canada’s oil.

Now, is Venezuela reinvesting the profits back into exploration and replacing produced oil? No. Venezuela is actually decreasing oil production, and yet domestic demand is increasing. This is what we call “the big pinch.” Thus, the only solution for Venezuela is to sell less oil, but for a much higher price.

Venezuela is not alone in this problem. Most of OPEC has this problem. Oil will go higher in the years to come. Porter Stansberry bet me 100 ounces of silver on my oil price prediction, and he lost. I offered him double or nothing, and he refused. And it’s not just oil; all energy fuels are going higher.

Dennis: One final question. Energy stocks have been somewhat out of favor over the last few years. What do you anticipate for the next couple of years?

Marin: That is a good thing. You buy when things are unpopular and sell when they become popular again.

The world will need more oil, uranium, and natural gas to keep the global economy going. Higher prices for uranium will result in increased attention by the hedge funds chasing gains. And because the sector is so small, those who are positioned early will make incredible gains only if they sell when it becomes popular – which we will definitely do when it’s time.

Companies bringing North American technologies to old, proven, producing deposits to enhance production will also see considerable gains. For example, there are areas of Europe that produced oil before the first oil well was ever drilled in Texas. Those areas have never seen modern, North American technology, and the projects are de-risked because we already know the oil is there. These areas have produced in the past, and the infrastructure is in place, which means lower costs for implementing enhanced oil recoveries.

Not to mention, Europe depends on Russia for so much of its energy needs, and it pays a premium for that dependence. I think in the coming years, the European energy renaissance will be an area from which to profit.

Dennis: Marin, it looks like we are on the verge of some major changes here in the US. Not only will nuclear energy prices climb, but our electricity bills will also. I really appreciate you taking the time to teach our subscribers about the energy sector. If we have to pay higher electric bills, we need to profit too. Thanks for taking the time to help us.

Marin: My pleasure, Dennis; thanks for having me.

As the editor of Miller’s Money Forever, I often have the pleasure of interviewing my colleagues on a variety of topics to give our subscribers even greater exposure to different investing sectors. Recent interviews include:

Maximizing Your IRA with Terry Coxon, senior economist and editor at Casey Research;
The Ultimate Layer of Financial Protection with Nick Giambruno, editor of International Man;
Juniors for Seniors with Louis James, globe-trotting senior editor of Casey Research’s metals and mining publications; and
Other esteemed colleagues.

Gain access to everything our portfolio has to offer, as well as access to these top minds through occasional interviews and input, with your risk-free 90-day trial subscription to Miller’s Money Forever.

DICTATOR 2.0

We are witnessing Obama attempting to become a dictator and seize power right before our very eyes.

Obama will make every attempt to bypass our (elected) Congress and run through “executive orders” as he sees fit.

And nobody is calling for impeachment, especially those in Congress whose power is being usurped. Something has to be done before it’s too late….

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Obama to Dems: I’ll act with or without Congress

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has told Senate Democrats he plans to use his executive authority to act in 2014 when Congress stands in his way.

Obama met with senators from his own party Wednesday at the White House. The White House says Obama and Democrats discussed proposals to raise the minimum wage and efforts to pass a comprehensive immigration overhaul. Education initiatives and jobs measures were also on the agenda.

The White House says Obama wants to work with Congress to make progress, but will also act on his own to get things done.

The meeting was the first such session of 2014 and comes two weeks before Obama is set to deliver his State of the Union address.

The senators left the White House without speaking to reporters.

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ARE WE IN THE MIDST OF A SILENT COUP?

Mark Levin opened his show today livid over Obama’s announcement that he will ignore the legislature and use his pen to write executive orders. He says the separation of powers are the key to our Republic and yet today Obama just announced that he would assume lawmaking powers via executive orders.

Mark Levin says what’s going on here is that we are witnessing a gradual, quiet coup:

He’s just announced that he is going to assume lawmaking powers. He does not recognize the majority in the House of Representatives. I don’t know how much more clearly he can say it. You know what this is folks? This is a gradual, quiet coup. That’s what is taking place. It’s gradual. It’s quiet, in the sense that it’s non-violent. But it’s a coup!

WHY NOTHING WILL BE SOLVED

Who Has The Time And Motivation to Comprehend The Mess We’re In? Almost Nobody

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

If we don’t understand the problem or the dynamics that are generating the problem, it is impossible to reach a solution or practical plan of action.

When it comes time to assess our grasp of the dynamics of this unprecedented era, how do you reckon historians will grade our collective political “leadership,” intelligentsia, central state, corporate leadership and the “common man/woman” citizen? Did we rise to the occasion or did we falter, not in acting to counter the dissolution of the Status Quo, but in simply making a concerted effort to understand the tangled web of lies, corruption, perverse incentives, unintended consequences, simplistic (and utterly misguided) ideologies, not to mention the real-world limits of a supposedly limitless world, that have become the key dynamics of this era?

I suspect future historians (presuming the funding of such scholarly assessments survives) will grade all categories either F or D-. The reasons are not difficult to discern, and it behooves us to understand why we are collectively so ill-prepared to understand our era, much less fix what’s broken before the whole over-ripe mess collapses in a heap.

1. Intellectual laziness. Very few people are willing to work hard enough to figure things out on their own. It’s so much easier to join Paul Krugman dancing around the fire of the Keynesian Cargo Cult, chanting “aggregate demand! Humba-Humba!” while waving dead chickens than ditch reductionist, naive ideologies and actually work through an independent analysis.

2. Independent thinking is an excellent way to get fired, demoted or sent to Siberia. Though America claims to value independent thinking, this is just another pernicious lie: what America values is the ability to mask failing conventional ideas and systems with a thin gloss of “fresh thinking.”
In other words, what the American state and corporatocracy value is the appearance of independent thinking, not the real thing. Since the real thing will get you fired, everyone who works for government or Corporate America masters the fine arts of producing simulacra, legerdemain and illusion. This only further obscures the real dynamics, making legitimate analysis that much more difficult.

3. Relatively few have any incentive to question authority, the state or the corporatocracy. Humans excel at figuring out which side of the bread is buttered, and who’s lathering on the butter: self-interest is the ultimate human survival trait (we cooperate because it serves our self-interest to do so).

While we cannot hold the pursuit of self-interest against any individual–after all, who among us truly acts selflessly when push comes to shove?–we can monitor the monumentally negative consequences of self-interest and complicity on the systems and Commons we share.

When roughly half of all households are drawing direct cash/benefits from the central state, how many of those people are interested in doing anything that might put their place at the feeding trough at risk? Sure, people will grouse about this or that (usually related to the conviction that they deserve more or have been cheated out of “their fair share”), but as long as the government payments, direct deposits and benefits keep coming, what possible motivation is there for the recipients to devote energy to investigating the potential collapse of the gravy train?

Corporate America is no different. The store may be devoid of customers, but the employees will strive to look busy to keep the paychecks coming until the inevitable lay-off/implosion occurs. How many Corporate America employees will critique their way out of a paycheck? In an environment this difficult for job-seekers, you’d be nuts to bother figuring out why your division is failing, knowing as you do that the truth will result in the “termination with extreme prejudice” of the naive fools who presented the truth as if it would be welcome
.
Does anyone seriously imagine that any employee of a bloated bureaucracy will ever voluntarily challenge the squandering of revenues when that might cost them their own paycheck, bonus, contract for their brother-in-law, etc.? A few protected people (professors with tenure, for example) can be “brave,” but their “bravery” is cheap: their protestations cannot trigger termination with extreme prejudice, so the gesture of resistance is just that, a gesture.

4. Those relative few who might have a real motivation to undertake independent analysis have little time to pursue this noble project. They are working absurd hours and enduring absurd commutes. Between getting the bundles of diapers into the elevator and planning what to cook for dinner, there is precious little time or energy left for figuring out the mess we’re in. Just getting to a second or third job can suck up a significant amount of time, money amd energy.

And so the busy employee/sole-proprietor/contract worker listens to NPR or some talk radio program for a few minutes, reinforcing their ideology of choice, and turns on the “news” (laughably bad propaganda churned up with “if it bleeds, it leads”) as background noise and spends whatever personal time they have on Roku, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, email, etc. seeking distraction or solace from the daily workload.

In a strange irony, there are plenty of citizens who have plenty of time (recall that Americans manage to watch 6-8 hours of TV a day), but their marginalized status and dependence on the state drains them of motivation to do anything but seek amusement and distraction.

If we don’t understand the problem or the dynamics that are generating the problem, it is impossible to reach a solution or practical plan of action. In other words, the four points above doom us just as surely as the dynamics of insolvency, corruption, debt servitude, Tyranny of the Majority, etc. etc. etc.

Choose your metaphor of choice, but rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic has a nice ironic texture in an election year, when the “news” will be focusing on rearranging the political deck chairs on the first class deck–at least when there’s no celebrity ruckus or “if it bleeds, it leads” to crowd out what passes for “hard news” in a regime dedicated to the distractions of bread and circuses.

The Truth About Sandy Hook

Posted By Mike McDaniel On January 15, 2014 @ 12:00 am

After Newtown, President Obama and gun control advocates were shocked to discover — yet again — that sweeping anti-gun legislation would fail miserably. The nation rejected their pointing to guns as the explanation for the massacre. Obama has since been reduced to speechifying and exploiting the parents of Sandy Hook victims; his political arm — Organizing for Action — has barely made a ripple in the political pond.

The people of Newtown have asked the rest of the world to be kind, and to leave them alone ^[1].

The Danbury Judicial District state’s attorney, Stephen J. Sedensky III, issued his report on the shooting on November 25, 2013 ^[2]. As one might expect, the facts as revealed in his report bear little resemblance to the media and Obama’s narrative regarding the massacre.

(Media/Obama talking points in bold.)

—————-

Adam Lanza and his mother had strong ties to Sandy Hook Elementary School that caused him to attack there. While Lanza attended the school — he happened to live in the neighborhood — nearly a decade earlier, he had no discernible ties to the school thereafter. It’s possible his mother did a little volunteering at the school when Lanza attended, but she was never employed there. The most likely possibility is Lanza chose Sandy Hook merely because he was familiar with it and it was close to his home.

Lanza used multiple weapons, including an AR-15 and a shotgun, in his attack. He used a high-powered “assault weapon” and “high-capacity magazines.” The only weapon Lanza used to kill and injure all of the victims was a Bushmaster AR-15 pattern carbine. The AR-15 is the most common and popular sporting rifle in America. Its cartridge is, in terms of rifle ammunition, of low to intermediate power, and its 30-round magazines have been standard since the Vietnam era. Lanza’s rifle belonged to his mother and was semi-automatic, an action type more than a century old.

A shotgun was found in Lanza’s car, but it was not used in the attack. Lanza also carried a Sig-Sauer P226 9mm handgun, but did not fire it. Lanza killed himself with a shot to the head from a 10mm Glock 20 handgun, and before attacking the school killed his mother with a Savage .22LR bolt-action rifle he left on the floor of her bedroom.

The police response was very rapid; Lanza had five minutes to kill before shooting himself. The first 911 call to the Newtown police occurred at 9:35:39. The first officer arrived at 9:39, but no officers entered the building until 9:44:47, nine minutes and eight seconds after the 911 call. Lanza began his attack at 9:30 and shot himself at 9:40:03, four minutes and 44 seconds before the first officer entered the building. He had more than ten uninterrupted minutes before he shot himself. If he wished, he could have had at least five minutes more.

While the police response was relatively rapid, as in virtually every school shooting in American history, the police had no active role in saving lives or stopping the shooter.

The high-capacity magazines Lanza used contributed to the death toll. Magazine capacity limits would have saved lives. Lanza had multiple magazines and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Magazine changes take only a few seconds; experts can do one in a second. Lanza fired more than 137 rounds, requiring at least four magazine changes. Fifteen round magazines would have required nine magazine changes and an extra 36 seconds. This would have made no difference in the death toll at Newtown and elsewhere. Even if Lanza were limited to ten round magazines, there would have been no difference.

The principal heroically attacked Lanza, saving lives. Unfortunately, there was no video recording system in the school. When Lanza shot his way through a window near the locked main doors to enter the school, Principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach were in a meeting in a nearby conference room. Hearing the gunfire, they stepped into the hallway and were immediately shot and killed. Two other staff members that stepped into the hallway were shot and wounded, but retreated back into their rooms and survived. Caught in a narrow hallway with no concealment, cover, or means of fighting back, Hochsprung and Sherlach didn’t have a chance. No one abandoned their students and there is evidence the four additional teachers killed tried to shield their students. There is heroism in their devotion, but no evidence any of them had the opportunity to fight back.

The remotely locked doors and video system in the school allowed school staff to promptly call the police and saved lives. The school had video only on the remotely locked front doors, video with no recording ability. The video was displayed on three monitors on the desks of secretaries in the main office near the front door. The doors were entirely glass, and a large glass panel adjoined them. It was this panel Lanza shot out with eight rounds to enter the building, taking only a few seconds.

Lanza could have easily shot out the doors, or used a crowbar to pry them open, again taking only seconds. This is true of the doors of virtually any school. Schools are always vulnerable. For obvious safety reasons they can’t be fortified like prisons.

The office staff had no time to call the police and were forced to hide as best they could. After shooting Hochsprung and Sherlach, Lanza actually entered the office and briefly looked around, but chose not to search more carefully and soon left to enter two classrooms where he killed the children; no one in the office was hurt. It was five minutes and 39 seconds into the attack before the office staff was able to make a 911 call. By then, Hochsprung, Sherlach, and many children were dead or dying.

There were warning signs of Lanza’s intentions. Unfortunately, as is the case with virtually all school attacks, there were no red flags. Lanza was interested in firearms and mass shootings, and was known to be a strange young man with obvious social deficits and obsessive behaviors, but no one — including multiple psychologists over many years — detected the slightest propensity toward violence or intention to attack a school. There was no lack of opportunity for professionals and laypeople to see warning signs, but there simply were none.

From the report:

“It is important to note that it is unknown, what contribution, if any, the shooter’s mental health issues made to his attack on SHES. Those mental health professionals who saw him did not see anything that would have predicted his future behavior.”

Lanza liked violent video games, which contributed to the attack. Lanza did play a variety of video games, some of which were popular war and shooter games, but one he particularly favored — frequently playing a commercial version — was a dance game. Lanza also had images of Lego creations and hamsters. There is no evidence these things, and many more, in any way contributed to the attack.

Lanza was bullied. Extensive interviews of friends, acquaintances, family, school personnel, and mental health professionals are contradictory. Some thought he may have been bullied, but more believed otherwise. While some thought him withdrawn and remote, others found him able to interact appropriately with his peers. A friend of Lanza’s from 2011-2012 said Lanza never spoke of being bullied and said and did nothing that might have indicated his intentions.

More mental health laws and more mental health spending could have made a difference and will make a difference in the future. Obama is now spending ^[3] significant federal money on mental health services, but there is no evidence any of it would have made a difference, then or now. As I noted in 2011 ^[4], the political left is largely responsible for the state of the U.S. mental health system since the 1960s, and it remains primarily a creature of the left today.

Involuntary commitment laws are always a matter of balancing individual liberty with public safety. The kinds of changes some on the left have suggested would amount to allowing arrest and indefinite incarceration for thought crime, which is not a power any rational man wants the Obama administration to have. To be sure, some states can use more effective — and constitutional — involuntary commitment laws, but one cannot imprison and “treat” the odd, the unusual, or those who pose no real threat to themselves or others.

Adam Lanza had the full benefit of the mental health system. He was, at various points in his life, prescribed medication. He refused to take it. He was prescribed behavior therapies. He refused to participate. Through all those therapists and all those years, not one considered him a danger to himself or others. Not one saw any sign of what he would eventually do. Not one could present evidence that would have prevented him from owning firearms. He knew right from wrong and functioned in society; he was just odd.

Perhaps the most horrifying realization is that there may be no way to detect and to stop school shooters like Lanza.

What the media has not reported and will never report are the facts about what will work to deter and to stop school attacks: doing away with “gun free” school zones and allowing willing school staff to carry concealed handguns.

Lanza, from the beginning to his suicide, was vulnerable to return fire. In fact, at many points, armed school staff would have had significant advantages in cover, concealment, and superior knowledge of the facility.

If Newtown’s school district publicized that its employees were allowed to carry concealed weapons and that many were — while keeping their names, numbers, and locations secret — it is likely Adam Lanza would never have attacked that school district.

If engaged at or near the point of entry, Lanza would almost certainly have been unable to harm a single child. But because the staff were unarmed, because their only options were trying to run or hide, and because politicians and administrators believed in the magical value of “gun free” school zone signs rather than the unalienable right to self-defense, 26 students and teachers died.

That is the lesson, and tragedy, of Newtown.

Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-truth-about-sandy-hook/

URLs in this post:

[1] asked the rest of the world to be kind, and to leave them alone: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/1209/Newtown-asks-for-privacy-and-kindness-as-Sandy-Hook-anniversary-approaches

[2] issued his report on the shooting on November 25, 2013: http://www.ct.gov/csao/lib/csao/Sandy_Hook_Final_Report.pdf

[3] Obama is now spending: http://seattletimes.com/html/politics/2022433314_apxbidenmentalhealth.htm

[4] noted in 2011: http://pjmedia.com/blog/after-tucson-getting-involuntary-commitment-right/

TAXING THE POOR & ELDERLY TO DEATH, TO PAY BLOATED GOVERNMENT UNION PENSIONS

The morons running the state capitol of Pennsylvania – Harrisburg – already had to file bankruptcy due to their incompetent management of city finances. Now the brain surgeons running the city of Scranton have decided that dramatically raising taxes and fees on the elderly, poor population of Scranton will solve their budget woes. The government pension obligations haven’t even really kicked in yet. The required pension payments for government workers will skyrocket in the next three years. The real unemployment rate in Scranton is north of 15%. Businesses have closed. The population has declined by 7.5% since 1990. It is a decaying, dying city with only the college supporting the few remaining residents. The government drones running Scranton and other towns across PA are delusional if they think they can raise taxes and fees on aging and unemployed people with no income to pay the bloated pensions of government workers. Math is hard for idiots. Scranton will declare bankruptcy. Book it Dano.

Scranton Residents Plead for Bankruptcy vs. Higher Taxes; Different Than Detroit

City officials in Scranton Pennsylvania have ignored pleas from residents pleading for bankruptcy.

Instead, the city raised property taxes and trash fees nearly 60% and tripled rental registration fees. The city’s school district, which faced a $4-million deficit, raised taxes 2.4%. The City Council, which in 2012 passed a 5% amusement tax on live entertainment, is now discussing a 10% drink tax.

As a result, taxpayer who can are fleeing the city.

The LA Times reports For Scranton residents, bankruptcy is an inviting option

When Detroit filed for bankruptcy, hundreds of residents took to the streets to protest what they saw as a drastic approach to fixing the city’s budget problems.

But in this hilly town of 76,000 in northeastern Pennsylvania, residents have a different view of Chapter 9: They want the city to declare bankruptcy. And soon.

“The silent majority would like to see bankruptcy,” said Bob “Ozzie” Quinn, president of the Scranton and Lackawanna County Taxpayers Assn. “Basically, it’s down to a point where people cannot afford to pay the taxes and are moving out of town.”

The City Council, which in 2012 passed a 5% amusement tax on live entertainment, is now discussing a 10% drink tax. The city’s parking authority is in receivership, and it recently privatized its parking meters: The company in charge upped rates and extended meter hours to 6 p.m., which bar owner Mert Gavin says has motivated workers to skip happy hour and head home to the suburbs straight after work.

“I am one of the last two bars that’s still downtown. Tink’s is gone. Whistle’s is gone, Banshee’s is gone, Molly Brannigan’s is gone,” said Gavin, who runs Mert’s. “Do they expect I’m going to bail the city of Scranton out myself?”

The taxes are especially egregious to some because so many of the city’s residents are elderly and living on fixed incomes. The median household income in Scranton is $37,000, and nearly one-fifth of residents live below the poverty line.

The city’s financial problems were accelerated by a 2011 Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that found that the city owed its police and firefighters unions back pay — about $21 million. The settlement money became due in 2013, but the city bickered over how to come up with the funds for so long that Moody’s warned in November that Scranton faced the threat of default.

“It’s been nonstop. They raised the water fees, the electric, the gas,” said Richard Laytos, a Scranton native who moved back to the city to retire in 1997 after 44 years in New Jersey.

Gary Lewis, who once ran a blog, scrantonisbroke, that urged city leaders to consider bankruptcy, took a drastic step when they failed to do so: He moved out of the city where he’d spent his whole life.

“I did the math — realized how much it was costing me to live in the city,” said Lewis, who now lives in Indiana, where he says he makes $2,500 more a year because of lower taxes. “That’s the story of my generation. There’s a lot of kids like me, who grew up, went to college at Scranton, but they turn 22 and move out of the city, and they don’t move back because it’s not a financially attractive proposition.”

bankruptcy won’t solve the city’s financial woes, said John Judge, president of the local firefighters union. “It’s a horrible idea — you take local control out of the hands of policymakers, and put it in some judge’s hand,” he said.

Neither the city’s new mayor nor his predecessor, Chris Doherty, returned calls for comment, but former City Council President Janet Evans said she and Doherty had been determined to avoid bankruptcy.

“We are in a different situation than Detroit,” she said. “We were willing and able to do everything within the scope of our authority to continue the recovery of the city of Scranton until it sits once again on sound financial ground.”

My Thoughts

Officials in city hall are either complete financial-morons, beholden to the unions, or beholden to their own pension plans that would take a hit if the city declared bankruptcy.

I suspect a combination.

Different Than Detroit

“We are in a different situation than Detroit,” says former City Council President Janet Evans.

Indeed.

Detroit is better off.

In bankruptcy, Detroit has a chance to dump union contracts and onerous pension promises. Detroit may have hit bottom.

The economic-jackasses in Scranton are going to extract every ounce of blood they can from taxpayers, then eventually declare bankruptcy anyway.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

WHITE POVERTY

An article for Billy. Where I live isn’t much different. Obama has killed off thousands of good paying coal jobs. 50% of the population in the county are on food stamps. Welfare and disability are a career path. And the upper crust, the 1%’ers around here? Doctors or business owners? Nope, union drone government employees. They’re making $120,000 a year and retiring at 50 with massive pensions. Welcome to socialism/communism in the USSA.

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Vast Stretches Of Impoverished Appalachia Look Like They Have Been Through A War
By Michael Snyder, on January 15th, 2014

If you want to get an idea of where the rest of America is heading, just take a trip through the western half of West Virginia and the eastern half of Kentucky some time. Once you leave the main highways, you will rapidly encounter poverty on a level that is absolutely staggering. Overall, about 15 percent of the entire nation is under the poverty line, but in some areas of eastern Kentucky, more than 40 percent of the population is living in poverty.

Most of the people would work if they could. Over the past couple of decades, locals have witnessed businesses and industries leave the region at a steady pace. When another factory or business shuts down, many of the unemployed do not even realize that their jobs have been shipped overseas. Coal mining still produces jobs that pay a decent wage, but Barack Obama is doing his very best to kill off that entire industry. After decades of decline, vast stretches of impoverished Appalachia look like they have been through a war. Those living in the area know that things are not good, but they just try to do the best that they can with what they have.

In previous articles about areas of the country that are economically depressed, I have typically focused on large cities such as Detroit or Camden, New Jersey. But the economic suffering that is taking place in rural communities in the heartland of America is just as tragic. We just don’t hear about it as much.

Most of those that live in the heart of Appalachia are really good “salt of the earth” people that just want to work hard and do what is right for their families. But after decades of increasing poverty, the entire region has been transformed into an economic nightmare that never seems to end. The following is a description of what life is like in Appalachia today that comes from a recent article by Kevin D. Williamson…

Thinking about the future here and its bleak prospects is not much fun at all, so instead of too much black-minded introspection you have the pills and the dope, the morning beers, the endless scratch-off lotto cards, healing meetings up on the hill, the federally funded ritual of trading cases of food-stamp Pepsi for packs of Kentucky’s Best cigarettes and good old hard currency, tall piles of gas-station nachos, the occasional blast of meth, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, petty crime, the draw, the recreational making and surgical unmaking of teenaged mothers, and death: Life expectancies are short — the typical man here dies well over a decade earlier than does a man in Fairfax County, Va. — and they are getting shorter, women’s life expectancy having declined by nearly 1.1 percent from 1987 to 2007.

In these kinds of conditions, people do whatever they have to do just to survive. With so much poverty around, serving those on food stamps has become an important part of the local economy. In fact, cases of soda purchased with food stamps have become a form of “alternative currency” in the region. In his article, Williamson described how this works…

It works like this: Once a month, the debit-card accounts of those receiving what we still call food stamps are credited with a few hundred dollars — about $500 for a family of four, on average — which are immediately converted into a unit of exchange, in this case cases of soda. On the day when accounts are credited, local establishments accepting EBT cards — and all across the Big White Ghetto, “We Accept Food Stamps” is the new E pluribus unum – are swamped with locals using their public benefits to buy cases and cases — reports put the number at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers — of soda. Those cases of soda then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits into $250 in cash — a considerably worse rate than your typical organized-crime money launderer offers — or else they go into the local black-market economy, where they can be used as currency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescription painkillers — by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus service is nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.” A woman who is intimately familiar with the local drug economy suggests that the exchange rate between sexual favors and cases of pop — some dealers will accept either — is about 1:1, meaning that the value of a woman in the local prescription-drug economy is about $12.99 at Walmart prices.

I would encourage everyone to read the rest of Williamson’s excellent article. You can find the entire article right here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367903/white-ghetto-kevin-d-williamson/page/0/1

In Appalachia, the abuse of alcohol, meth and other legal and illegal drugs is significantly higher than in the U.S. population as a whole. In a desperate attempt to deal with the pain of their lives, many people living in the region are looking for anything that will allow them to “escape” for a little while. The following is an excerpt from an excellent article by Chris Hedges which describes what life is like in the little town of Gary, West Virginia at this point…

Joe and I are sitting in the Tug River Health Clinic in Gary with a registered nurse who does not want her name used. The clinic handles federal and state black lung applications. It runs a program for those addicted to prescription pills. It also handles what in the local vernacular is known as “the crazy check” — payments obtained for mental illness from Medicaid or SSI — a vital source of income for those whose five years of welfare payments have run out. Doctors willing to diagnose a patient as mentally ill are important to economic survival.

“They come in and want to be diagnosed as soon as they can for the crazy check,” the nurse says. “They will insist to us they are crazy. They will tell us, ‘I know I’m not right.’ People here are very resigned. They will avoid working by being diagnosed as crazy.”

The reliance on government checks, and a vast array of painkillers and opiates, has turned towns like Gary into modern opium dens. The painkillers OxyContin, fentanyl — 80 times stronger than morphine — Lortab, as well as a wide variety of anti-anxiety medications such as Xanax, are widely abused. Many top off their daily cocktail of painkillers at night with sleeping pills and muscle relaxants. And for fun, addicts, especially the young, hold “pharm parties,” in which they combine their pills in a bowl, scoop out handfuls of medication, swallow them, and wait to feel the result.

Of course this kind of thing is not just happening in the heart of Appalachia. All over the country there are rural communities that are economically depressed. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, economic activity in about half of the counties in the entire nation is still below pre-recession levels…

About half of the nation’s 3,069 county economies are still short of their prerecession economic output, reflecting the uneven economic recovery, according to a new report from the National Association of Counties.

So what are our “leaders” doing to fix this?

Well, they plan to ship millions more of our good jobs overseas.

Unfortunately, I am not kidding.

Republicans in the House of Representatives are introducing “fast track” trade promotion authority legislation that will pave the way for rapid approval of the secret trade treaty that Barack Obama has been negotiating. The following is how I described this insidious treaty in a previous article…

Did you know that the Obama administration is negotiating a super secret “trade agreement” that is so sensitive that he isn’t even allowing members of Congress to see it? The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being called the “NAFTA of the Pacific” and “NAFTA on steroids”, but the truth is that it is so much more than just a trade agreement. This treaty has 29 chapters, but only 5 of them have to do with trade. Most Americans don’t realize this, but this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, health care, the trading of derivatives, copyright issues, food safety, environmental standards, civil liberties and so much more. It will also merge the United States far more deeply into the emerging one world economic system.

Once again, our politicians are betraying the American people and millions of jobs will be lost as a result.

Not that the economy needs another reason to go downhill. The truth is that our economic foundations have already been rotting away for quite some time.

But now the ongoing economic collapse seems to be picking up steam again. For example, the Baltic Dry Index (a very important indicator of global economic activity) is collapsing at a rate not seen since the great financial crash of 2008…

Despite ‘blaming’ the drop in the cost of dry bulk shipping on Colombian coal restrictions, it seems increasingly clear that the 40% collapse in the Baltic Dry Index since the start of the year is more than just that. While this is the worst start to a year in over 30 years, the scale of this meltdown is only matched by the total devastation that occurred in Q3 2008. Of course, the mainstream media will continue to ignore this dour index until it decides to rise once again, but for now, 9 days in a row of plunging prices is yet another canary in the global trade coalmine and suggests what inventory stacking that occurred in Q3/4 2013 is anything but sustained.

Soon economic conditions will get even worse for Appalachia and for the rest of the country. The consequences of decades of very foolish decisions are rapidly catching up with us, and millions upon millions of Americans are going to experience immense economic pain during the years to come.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/vast-stretches-of-impoverished-appalachia-look-like-they-have-been-through-a-war

SHOCKING NEWS

Who coulda predicted this development? I hate to tell the new CEO, who was the old CEO, before he was replaced by another CEO, that 33 stores ain’t gonna cut it. He should have added a zero to the 33. That would be their only hope. This piece of shit is going down in flames.

The Wall Street shysters will be telling you to buy the stock tomorrow on this wonderful news, just like they told you to buy it at $40 a few years ago.

Next up. Sears will be announcing they are closing 50 to 100 stores as they reposition themselves for long term growth. And the beat goes on.

Ghost Malls get spookier by the day.

The Blistering Recovery Continues: Week After Macy’s, JC Penney Fires 2000, Closes 33 Stores

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/15/2014 16:14 -05000

A week ago, Macy’s fired 2500 and announced the closure of five stores. Moments ago, the company which we have been warnings since late 2012 is a meltin ice cube that ends with bankruptcy, JCPenney, which a week ago provided the following glib summary “JCPenney reported today that the Company is pleased with its performance for the holiday period“, turns out was merely joking and just echoed the Macy’s sentiment, announcing the termination of some 2,000 jobs and the closure of 33 stores.

JCPenney today announced that as part of its turnaround efforts, the Company will be closing 33 underperforming stores across the country in order to focus its resources on the Company`s highest potential growth opportunities.

These actions are expected to result in an annual cost savings of approximately $65 million, beginning in 2014. In connection with this initiative, the Company expects to incur estimated pre-tax charges of approximately $26 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013 and approximately $17 million in future periods.

Remaining inventory in the affected stores will be sold over the next several months, with final closings expected to be complete by early May. The closings will result in the elimination of approximately 2,000 positions. Eligible associates who do not remain with the Company will receive separation benefits packages. Meanwhile, the Company is continuing its plans to open a new store location later this year at the Gateway II development in Brooklyn, N.Y.

“As we continue to progress toward long-term profitable growth, it is necessary to reexamine the financial performance of our store portfolio and adjust our national footprint accordingly,” said Myron E. (Mike) Ullman, III, chief executive officer of JCPenney. “While it`s always difficult to make a business decision that impacts our valued customers and associates, this important step addresses a strategic priority to improve the profitability of our stores and position JCPenney for future success.”

What can one say but: this is just the kind of recovery that justifies an S&P500 at all time highs.

Investors initially cheered… but now not so much…

OUR MASTER, ISRAEL, HAS SPOKEN. THEIR WAR MUST BECOME YOURS

The American people don’t want war. The Iranians don’t want war. Nobody wants war, except the Israelis, and the treasonous American Israel-firsters, Fundy Christian nutballs and evil NeoCon scum. At this very moment they are bribing their way to a veto-proof majority over their sanctions bill. Every GOP senator is on board except two (Rand Paul is dithering but for now he is one of them). The Democrats are for the most part holding back (for now) but even from them there is silence rather than support for their President. Obama stands virtually alone.

From an Iranian standpoint, if this bill passes, the interim agreement is dead. The Americans will have proven to be an untrustworthy negotiating partner. What nobody is telling you, for obvious reasons, is that there is no need for another stick aimed at the Persians. The world will know everything they are doing for the next six months. If they were to make the smallest move towards initiating a weapons program, all deals would be off, they are would be an international pariah; the neocons would be held prescient in the eyes of the world. It is the other hand that Netanyahu (and the Saudis) are terrified about…that the Iranians would keep their end of the bargain leading to a permanent agreement, the lifting of sanctions and the beginning of the normalization of Iranian relations members of the US empire. Peace. Then Netanyahu, Kristol and the rest would be expose as the evil, lying bastards they are and attention would suddenly focus on the injustices inflicted upon the Palestianians by these criminals.

This can not stand, therefore we must have war. It won’t be our war, but rather Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s. Will China and Russia sit on the sidelines as we initiate an unneccessary, illegal and immoral war on a peaceful country with which they conduct billions of dollars in business?

Of course the effect on a fragile, hydrocarbon fueled economy will be disastrous regardless. There is an option. We can agree that Israel and Saudi Arabia are simply too evil and dangerous to allow to exist and wipe them from the face of the earth. That would be a war worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.

A Blank Check For War on Iran

Tuesday – January 14, 2014 at 12:05 am

By Patrick J. Buchanan

As we approach the centennial of World War I, we will read much of the blunders that produced that tragedy of Western civilization.

Among them will be the “blank check” Kaiser Wilhelm II gave to Vienna after the assassination by a Serb terrorist of the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand.

If you decide to punish the Serbs, said the Kaiser, we are with you.

After dithering for weeks, Austria shelled Belgrade. Within a week, Germany and Austria were at war with Russia, France and Great Britain.

Today the Senate is about to vote Israel a virtual blank check — for war on Iran. Reads Senate bill S.1881:

If Israel is “compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” the United States “should stand with Israel and provide … diplomatic, military and economic support to the Government of Israel in the defense of its territory, people and existence.”

Inserted in that call for U.S. military action to support an Israeli strike on Iran, S.1881 says that, in doing so, we should follow our laws and constitutional procedures.

Nevertheless, this bill virtually hands over the decision on war to Bibi Netanyahu who is on record saying: “This is 1938. Iran is Germany.”

Is this the man we want deciding whether America fights her fifth war in a generation in the Mideast? Do we really want to outsource the decision on war in the Persian Gulf, the gas station of the world, to a Likud regime whose leaders routinely compare Iran to Nazi Germany?

The bill repeatedly asserts that Iran has a “nuclear weapons program.”

Yet in both 2007 and 2011, U.S. intelligence declared “with high confidence” that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

Where is the Senate’s evidence for its claim? Why has Director of National Intelligence James Clapper not been called to testify as to whether Tehran has made the decision to go for a bomb?

Why are the American people being kept in the dark?

Are we being as misled, deceived and lied to about Iran’s “weapons of mass destruction,” as we were about Iraq’s?

The bill says that in a final deal Iran must give up all enrichment of uranium. However, we have already been put on notice by President Hassan Rouhani that this is an ultimatum Iran cannot accept.

Even the reformers of Iran’s Green Revolution of 2009 back their country’s right to a peaceful nuclear program including enrichment.

Senate bill S.1881 imposes new sanctions if Iran fails to live up to the interim agreement or fails to come to a final agreement in six months.

Yet the Senate knows that Iran has warned that if new sanctions are voted during negotiations, they will walk away from the table.

Why is the Senate risking, or even inviting, a blowup in these talks?

When the interim agreement was reached, it was denounced by neocons as “worse than Munich.” Now the War Party piously contends this Senate bill is simply an “insurance policy” to ensure that the terms of the deal are met and a final deal reached.

It is nothing of the sort. This bill is a project of AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, designed to sabotage and scuttle the Geneva talks by telling Tehran: Either capitulate and dismantle all your enrichment facilities, or face more severe sanctions which will put us on the road to war.

What terrifies AIPAC and Bibi is not an American war on Iran, but an American rapprochement with Iran.

Who are the leaders of the push for S.1881? Sens. Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez, the biggest recipients of AIPAC campaign cash.

Last weekend, the Obama National Security Council finally belled the cat with a blunt statement by spokesperson Bernadette Meehan:

“If certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action [against Iran], they should be up front with the American public and say so.”

Exactly. For whether or not all these senators understand what they are doing, this is where their bill points — to a scuttling of the Geneva talks and a return to the sanctions road, at the end of which lies a U.S. war with Iran.

A majority of Democratic senators have thus far bravely bucked AIPAC and declined to co-sponsor S.1881. However, all but two Republican senators have signed on.

If, after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the GOP has once again caught the war fever, the party should be quarantined from the White House for another four years.

Press Secretary Jay Carney says that if S.1881 passes, Obama will veto it. The president should tell Congress that not only will he veto it, but that if Israel decides on its own to attack Iran, Israel will be on its own in the subsequent war.

Obama should order U.S. intelligence to tell us the truth.

Is Iran truly hell-bent on acquiring a nuclear bomb? Does Iran have a nuclear bomb program? If so, when did Tehran make that decision?

Or are we being lied into war again?

BULLY PULPIT

The Trouble With Chris Christie by Chris Hedges

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Michael Krieger

– Chris Hedges in his latest article: The Trouble with Chris Christie

Chris Christie is bad news. I have been saying this for a while now, and published my first post about it back in late July in the piece: Chris Christie Calls Libertarianism a “Dangerous Thought.” There is no doubt in my mind that Christie is a egomaniac with fascist tendencies, coupled with a temperament and consciousness that craves power for the sake of power itself, as well as to stoke his own sense of self-importance.

On that note, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and courageous, American patriot, Chris Hedges, has written an excellent expose of Christie. I have highlighted some excerpts below.

From Truth Dig:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been Wall Street’s anointed son for the presidency. He is backed by the most ruthless and corrupt figures in New Jersey politics, including the New Jersey multimillionaire and hard-line Democratic boss George Norcross III. Among his other supporters are many hedge fund managers and corporate executives and some of the nation’s most retrograde billionaires, including the Koch brothers. The brewing scandal over the closing of traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge apparently in retaliation for the Fort Lee mayor’s refusal to support the governor’s 2013 re-election is a window into how federal agencies and the security and surveillance apparatus would be routinely employed in a Christie presidency to punish anyone who challenged this tiny cabal’s grip on power.

Christie is the caricature of a Third World despot. He has a vicious temper, a propensity to bully and belittle those weaker than himself, an insatiable thirst for revenge against real or perceived enemies, and little respect for the law and, as recent events have made clear, for the truth. He is gripped by a bottomless hedonism that includes a demand for private jets, huge entourages, exclusive hotels and lavish meals. Wall Street and the security and surveillance apparatus want a real son of a bitch in power, someone with the moral compass of Al Capone, in order to ruthlessly silence and crush those of us who are working to overthrow the corporate state. They have had enough of what they perceive to be Barack Obama’s softness. Christie fits the profile and he is drooling for the opportunity.

Wall Street was unable to mask Mitt Romney’s cloying sense of entitlement and elitism, along with his Mr. Rogers blandness. But Wall Street sees in the profane, union-busting New Jersey governor the perfect Trojan horse for unfettered corporate power. Christie, eyeing a bid for the presidency in the 2016 election, has been promised massive financial backing by the Koch brothers; hedge fund titans such as Stanley Druckenmiller, Kenneth C. Griffin, Daniel S. Loeb, Paul E. Singer, Paul Tudor Jones II and David Tepper; financiers such as Charles Schwab and Stephen A. Schwarzman; real estate magnate Mort Zuckerman; former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso; former AIG head Maurice “Hank” Greenberg; former Morgan Stanley CEO John J. Mack; former GE Chairman Jack Welch; and Home Depot founder Kenneth Langone. David Koch has called Christie “a true political hero” and said he is “inspired by this man.” Rupert Murdoch, whose ethics seem to align with Christie’s, is similarly besotted with the governor.

Even worse, Henry Kissinger is a huge Chris Christie fan.

Christie is pitched to the public, as was George W. Bush, as a regular guy, someone who speaks bluntly and candidly, someone you would want to have a beer with. But this is public relations crap. He is and has long been a hatchet man for corporate firms and big banks. He began his career as a corporate lobbyist in Trenton, N.J., working for clients such as the Securities Industry Association. He has done their bidding ever since. His wife, Mary Pat Christie, is a bond trader who has worked at JPMorgan Chase, Fleet Securities and Cantor Fitzgerald and is currently a managing director at Angelo Gordon, an investment firm in New York.

When Romney met with Christie at the governor’s mansion in Princeton to obtain his endorsement, Christie not only demurred but warned Romney he better not approach any major donors in his state. “If you jump the gun and start raising money here, you can certainly kiss my support good-bye,” Christie told Romney, according to the book. The authors describe the conversation as “something out of ‘The Sopranos.’ ”

The Romney campaign, which reluctantly agreed to Christie’s incessant demands for private jets, ungainly entourages and expensive hotel rooms in return for campaign appearances by the governor in behalf of the GOP nominee, decided against selecting him as running mate because, as the authors write, Romney’s vetters were “stunned by the garish controversies lurking in the shadows of his record.”

The visceral need by Christie to ridicule and threaten anyone who does not bow before him, his dark lust for revenge, his greed, gluttony and hedonism, his need to surround himself with large, fawning entourages and his obsequiousness to corporate power are characteristics our corporate titans embrace and understand. They see in Christie versions of themselves. They know he will enthusiastically do their dirty work. They trust him to be a real bastard. If Christie and the billionaires behind him take the presidency and begin to manipulate government agencies and pull the levers of our Stasi-like security and surveillance apparatus, any pretense of democracy will be gone.

Well said Chris.

In Liberty,
Mike

They’re Not Gods — They’re Not Even that Smart

They’re Not Gods – They’re Not Even that Smart

FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE

I hear people making all sorts of predictions of what the powers that be (TPTB) will allow or not allow. Honestly, they treat this group as though they are omnipotent.

Just to be clear, the term, “powers that be” generally refers to the partnership between central banking cartels, mega-corps, and governments (including military, spy agencies, and secret police). I will use it in that way also.

And while these groups have tremendous power in certain areas, they are not gods. In fact, they are, as individuals, not much more capable than the average person. Many of them, particularly at the higher levels, hold their positions by birth and not necessarily (or usually) for any meritocratic reason.

Given that, TPTB can maintain their edge in two ways:

By hiring especially smart people.
By being focused and ruthless.

I’ve known politicians and government officials, and few of them have struck me as exceptionally bright. I’ve attended meetings with a few central bankers, and they struck me as possessing a well cultivated air of separation, but not as being exceptionally bright. (Some of their hired analysts were very bright.)

But far more important than my impressions are a couple of facts:

If they were so smart, they would have killed the Internet in 1989, when the death would have gone unnoticed.
They could have, if they were so great, killed Bitcoin in 2009, before it proved to the world that crypto-currencies were both effective and durable.

We could add plenty of other examples, including several rulers who tried invading Russia in autumn. However we look at it, the big, dominating bosses have almost never been mental giants. Ruthless, yes. Geniuses, no.

Nor are TPTB all-powerful. Just look at how well their two big prohibitions worked. (You could, even through the worst days of the War on Drugs, find a marijuana seller in every area of every city in the Western world.)

Our Attitudes Need To Change

There’s a useful old story about tying an elephant to a stake, like we tie dogs to parking meters:

A trainer ties a juvenile elephant to a stake, and the elephant learns that he/she is not strong enough to get away. After a while, it stops trying. Then, when the elephant is grown, and easily strong enough to escape, it never tries.

So far as I know, this story is true (though I’ve never examined it closely). But this is certainly the way most of us act. We think TPTB are so overwhelmingly powerful that we have no hope of resisting them. So, rather than injuring ourselves by fighting the rope around our legs, we simply give in.

The truth, however, is that TPTB have only the power we all give them. If people simply stopped obeying – stopped taking them seriously – TPTB would crumble in short order.

What the productive people of our time need is moral courage. They need to know that they have a right to retain their earnings, that it is right for them to see to their own needs and the needs of their families. And, most of all, they need to know that their morality is better than that of the thieving, manipulative powers that be.

It’s time to start pulling out our stakes and building a world that suits us, not them.

If enough of us take that statement seriously, TPTB will soon be on their way OUT.

Paul Rosenberg

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]

Contrarians’ Wildest Dream Coming True

By Jeff Clark, Senior Precious Metals Analyst

As most readers know, Doug Casey’s most notable characteristic as an investor is his highly successful contrarian nature. It’s how he bagged some of his biggest wins—not just doubles and triples, but 10- and 20-fold returns.

There’s only one way to realize these kinds of gains: You must buy when the asset is out of favor. Buying an investment that has already run up is at best chasing momentum and at worst a portfolio wrecker.

So, what’s the greatest contrarian investment today? Consider this pictorial data…

At the end of 2013, the sector with the highest level of pessimism, as measured by SentimenTrader, was the gold industry. It actually registered “zero” in mid-December.

Meanwhile, price-to-earnings ratios of the 15 largest gold producers are at their lowest level in 14 years, and less than half what they were when the bull market got under way in 2001.

The ratio of gold to the S&P 500 Index is currently at 0.66, its lowest level since the market meltdown of 2008.

The next chart, from our friend Frank Holmes at US Global Investors, measures gold’s 60-day percent change in standard deviation terms. It shows the metal’s actual gain or loss in relation to its average price change—and it’s never been this low.

Another chart from US Global Investors demonstrates that last year’s decline in the Philadelphia Gold and Silver Index (XAU) was the greatest on record, and further, that consecutive annual declines are rare. The XAU is one of the two most-watched gold stock indices in the world, and in 30 years it’s never had a losing streak of more than three years.

Also, JPMorgan noted last week that speculative positions in gold (defined as net longs minus shorts) dropped to record lows at the end of 2013.

(Source: Zero Hedge)

Finally, the XAU/gold ratio is at its lowest point in history, and the HUI/gold ratio—the other major gold stock index—shows that gold stocks are now cheaper than they’ve been since the beginning of this secular bull cycle in 2001.

Of course, just because something is cheap today doesn’t mean it will soar tomorrow. But given gold’s historical role as money, butted up against monetary recklessness today, the outcome seems all but certain.

As Casey Editor Kevin Brekke recently put it: “We are in this sector because of our belief that monetary and fiscal excesses have consequences. The only variable is the timing. We may not know where we’re going in the short term, but the long term is inevitable.”

And right now, some of the most successful resource speculators and investment pros are seeing the early hallmarks of a turnaround in the gold sector—which makes this the best time to invest in the yellow metal as well as top-quality, undervalued gold mining stocks.

New to the gold market? Don’t despair: the FREE 2014 Gold Investor’s Guide, a Casey Research special report, gives you all the basics on precious metals investing. Click here to get it now.