Starve the System Through Gardening

If you've been paying attention, you probably know that things in our country aren't going so great.  Mega corporations who place profit over human and environmental health are running rampant, destroying the financial, physical, and ecological health of our nation.  Monsanto, by far the largest offender, does everything they can to pump their genetically modified "foods" into our homes while blocking any attempts to so much as label their product as modified.  But what can we do about it?

The single most potent answer: Start gardening.

If you grow your own food, you do something about both greedy mega corporations and genetically damaging foods in one fell swoop.  Growing your own food is like printing your own money, and the money you grow holds actual value by its very nature, rather than because someone in power says it does and forces you to accept it as payment.  Growing your own food purchases the kind of security money cannot afford.

Growing a garden for just yourself and your family can be pretty intimidating, especially if you're short on land, but there are ways around this.  In Switzerland, communities work together so that individual families can specialize in one type of food.  Each member of the community grows one or two specific foods on all the space they have, and community members trade with one another so that everyone can get every type of food needed.  In addition to starving mega corporations and keeping GMOs out of your pantry, gardening with your neighborhood in this manner builds incredibly strong communities.

Another idea that is starting to catch in is the idea of a community garden.  Local city governments can designate otherwise unused plots of land that are repurposed to plant massive gardens.  These gardens can be voluntarily tended to by members of the community, and the food can be freely distributed to those who need it.  Any excess food can be used to barter with neighboring communities.  This fosters the same sense of community and security as coordinated neighborhood gardening, and can also help keep kids out of drug and gang activity by giving them something productive to do.  If you want this idea to catch on in your community, attend the next City Council meeting and bring it up.

Sustainable gardening is enormously beneficial.  Not only is it good for the ecosystem, it also allows people to reconnect with a basic part of the Human experience that has been largely lost to the supermarket.  Most people today have no idea where their food comes from before it is nicely packaged and put on grocery store shelves.  The loss of this connection is terrible; regaining it is fulfilling and inspirational.

Gardening is one of the most revolutionary acts in which you can engage.  A return to gardening is one of the most effective ways we can have a true Return to Liberty.

The Many Lies of the Commander-In-Chief

I have a confession to make: In 2008, I voted for Barack Obama.  At the time, it wasn't a hard choice to make.  He was promising to deliver the "Hope and Change" America truly needed.  He was promising to bring an end to unconstitutional behavior and laws within government.  He was promising to zealously protect our rights.  He was promising an end to the death spiral our economy was in.  He told us exactly what we needed to hear after we were utterly molested by the Bush Jr. Administration.  And if we're being honest, I didn't think McCain's heart could handle the stress of a victory.  And yes - the fact that Obama is half African American also played into it: America needed a drastic change, and he was the very embodiment of this change.  So of course I believed in Obama - he promised to be everything a President was supposed to be and drastically change the direction of our country's path to destruction.

I supported Obama for a while.  After all, he'd inherited what I could only describe as a "train wreck" from Bush, and he deserved the chance to set it right.  Like most Americans, I stopped paying attention to what he was doing and went about the endless cycle of bills and trying to keep my head above water, confident that he would deliver on his promises.  At the next election, I came up for air and examined what he had actually done during his first term.  To put it simply, the Liar-in-Chief has lost every bit of support he once had from me, and my vote went to Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.  Let us count the promises Obama made and the ways in which he has broken them:

• Guantanamo Bay will be closed, unconstitutional activities like warrantless wiretapping and indefinite detention without a trial will be put to an end
• Obama has decided it is "probably impossible" to close Gitmo due to political barriers, and instead of closing it, its use has been expanded.  In signing the NDAA, Obama has expanded the practice of indefinite detention without trial of anyone (including U.S. citizens) he deems a threat.  Under Obama, use of the drone program has exploded, and drones have been used to murder American citizens without a trial, along with at least 360 innocent children overseas.  Warrantless telephone monitoring has exploded to encompass the entire country under new NSA programs, and under PRISM, all electronic communications are now monitored as well.  Tying into this: Obama has knowingly supported terrorists by sending arms and financial assistance to Syrian "rebels," who have been publicly noted as pleading allegiance to Al-Qaeda.  By Constitutional definition, this is Treason.
• The Bush era tax cuts on the wealthy will be allowed to expire
• While Obama at least appears to have put up a fight for this one, the tax cuts for the wealthy were extended under his watch.  What's worse: Due to the 2% increase in the payroll tax, the "bottom 98%" have seen a tax hike under Obama to the tune of about $1,000 per year, and that's for lower income families.
• There will be a foreclosure prevention fund established to aid people who cannot get a bank loan
• While the fund has been created (using money from the Wall Street TARP bailout fund), it has not delivered as promised.  The program was supposed to help 3 to 4 million families keep their homes, but to date, only about 500,000 mortgages have been adjusted.  Even among those "helped," this program has been a failure.
• Our immigration process will be reformed and the illegal immigrant problem will be addressed
• This one has received only token efforts.  Obama has instead opted to push all his political clout towards jamming healthcare nobody wants down everybody's throat.  The efforts that have been seen have been ridiculous at best, with the sacred "Path to Citizenship" placed far above the actual problem of people crossing our borders illegally.  In short: Obama is pushing amnesty for people who have broken our laws.
• Lobbyists will be restricted from serving in government positions
• There are currently 18 different people from Monsanto alone (let alone any other lobbying group or corporation) serving in government positions.  This helps to explain why Obama has passed legislation that prevents legal action against the GMO-Giant, even if they are proven to be committing crimes against humanity.
• The Iraq War (which was based on lies) will be ended within 16 months
• Troops were not fully withdrawn until December 2011, 35 months after Obama was sworn in. 
• I will not take your guns
• Obama has danced in the blood of the innocent Sandy Hook victims more joyously than even Dianne Feinstein.  He has led an outright assault on the Second Amendment, pushing for as much gun control as he can without crossing the dangerous line (wide-scale confiscation) that would wake the sleeping masses.  His most recent push is the signing of the U.N. Small Arms Treaty, which would grant the "legal" precident to disarm the American populace.
• Everybody will have affordable healthcare; your premiums will go down, and you can keep your current provider/doctor if you like them
• Under Obamacare, it is estimated that 30 million Americans (a full 10% of the nation) will still not be covered.  Families are seeing their premiums jump up to 72%.  We are only seeing reductions in premiums in a select few cities such as New York and Los Angeles due to their preexisting health plans.  Across the country, large insurance providers of small businesses and individuals are pulling out of the market because they cannot comply with new mandates, causing millions to lose their existing coverage.  As if this wasn't bad enough, it was decided in early August of 2013 that Congress and members of the White House will have their Obamacare premiums covered by the government, which means We the Taxpayers get to pay for the increased costs to our "leaders" as well as to ourselves.  I still cannot understand how it is legal for our government to fine us an increasing amount of money each year (starting with at least 1% of your income) for not buying something they think we should have.  I can only hope that multitudes of people do not comply with this totalitarian mandate.

Most of these tie into the biggest broken promise of all: Obama's Oath of Office.  He did not vow to eradicate terrorism.  He did not vow to keep us safe.  He did not vow to provide healthcare for all.  He vowed to protect, defend, and preserve one thing: The Constitution of the United States of America.  This is Obama's charge, and he has failed.

I don't know about you, but I'm done blaming Bush for Obama's shortcomings.  It's time to accept that Obama is not the man he promised us he would be.  No amount of elaborate speeches are going to change that fact.  It's time to hold the right President's feet to the fire.  It's time for We the People to create the Hope and Change our dying nation so desperately needs.