Report From Freedonia

Calling out lazy ass Democrats and Progressives

Where the hell are you guys?

Frustrated GOP activists rose up over the last couple of days and shot their own President down on his amnesty surge...aiding in the process up to half of the Democratic voter base that also is against amnesty.

How come grassroots Democratic Party activists can't do the same on the war surge?

You guys control the House and Senate, the public schools, the colleges.  What gives? And, don't whine about big corporations shutting you down.  You know they want cheap labor amnesty just as bad as they want war profits.

Get organized and show up.  What you complain about lacking in the talk radio arena, you make up for on-line. 

Put some top activists in Brad Miller's and Mel Watt's local offices and demand they do the right thing for you. 

Get to work.

No whimpering.

Our Morning with Richard Burr's Office Staff in Winston-Salem

 

WXII shot a fair amount of footage of the 30 plus citizens who showed up to Richard Burr's office this morning at 8:00am.  But, we also took a few 1 minute amateur clips so everyone could get the feel.

Entering the office at 8:45am
After getting news that Burr will "definitely" vote NO

Burr to definitely vote NO - audio clip

The local office staff was definitely in uncharted water as to how to handle things. Senator Burr's highest ranking official back here in the colonies, State Director Dean Meyers, was doing his best to accommodate the irate, but polite, citizenry.

There was a high percentage of Burr campaign workers and GOP precinct captain types in the crowd. Joan Fleming, NC GOP Secretary also showed up.

The Burr staff was definitely put on edge. One staffer was offended to have to walk through a hallway of citizens just to go to the bathroom. She told the crowd they were rude and impolite. Vernon Robinson, who was one of the people to show up, tried to explain to her the finer points of how to address citizens when you are a government worker. She became even more irate and told him she was not going to listen to him. That was just before she flipped him the finger and stormed back in behind the security door to her office. Regardless of one's opinion of Vernon, not a smart thing to do with the Winston Salem Journal reporter standing right there. (Dean Meyers later came out and noted that he was aware of the event and would deal with the matter.)

Dean Meyers was stressed at mornings end, but finally relieved at being able to announce to the crowd still outside the building around 11:30am that Richard Burr did indeed follow through and vote NO on cloture.

It's tough being a Mandarin when the serfs get restless.

All-in-all a great success. My only regret was not to have captured on tape Dean Meyer explaining how he was authorized to make a statement to the public, but not to media (Keith Larson at WBT).

I went around with him on the logic behind this position about 5 or 6 iterations worth. He keep coming back to the defense, "I can make a statement to the public, but I am not authorized to talk to the press." It was hysterical. I keep thinking to myself, "He must be terrified that Keith is going to ask him about his car."

Richard Burr get's second chance this Thursday

This was the scene outside Senator Richard Burr's office Tuesday morning an hour or so before he voted YES to open debate on the latest Senate Amnesty bill.

Greensboro construction contrator Les Creech who took this photo said that while the staff inside did not have deal with any North Carolina citizens face-to-face on Tuesday morning, they did say they had receieved over 100 phone calls before noon in opposition to the Senate Bill now pending.

I tried calling myself but only got a busy signal.

The vote to close debate occurs tomorrow (Thursday).  The whole country knows that if debate is closed with the necessary 60 votes, passage of the Senate Amensty plan with the neccessary 51 votes will immediately follow.

If you really care about blocking the Amnesty bill, why not come out to Senator Burr's Winston Salem office Thurday morning from 8-10am and help us convince the local staff that they need to locate our Senator in Washington so that he can address the legal citizens he represents via a conference call that can surely be arranged.  He owes us an explanation as to how he intends to vote on closing the debate.

Directions:  West of US 52, Take 421 (I-40 Business) Stratford Road Exit north to West First Street

GSO Water Quality Report Takes a Pass on ADA Fluoride Alert for Infants

Compliments of the un-Constitutional Federal Safe Drinking Water Act, the City of Greensboro 2006 Annual Water Quality Report is in your mailbox this week.

Lots of regulatory base covering but no mention of last November's interim advisory from the American Dental Association (ADA) that using fluoridated water in infant formula can cause fluorosis. 

The ADA report, precipitated by the findings in an EPA commissioned report by the National Research Council ⁽¹⁾, emphasizes that fluorsis in not a disease just a cosmetic discoloration⁽²⁾ of an infant's developing adult teeth.

Nonetheless, some state health departments and public water service providers have been at least passing on the ADA advisory to their customers.

For little additional expense, the City of Greensboro missed a good chance to fully inform those using infant formula of the potential issues in using city water treated with fluoride.

Endnotes:

(1) Being government financed research, the National Research Council on fluoridation report ends with the obligatory, more study will be required.  However, as for the potential risks posed by fluoride in drinking water even to adults, I find it rather disturbing that the EPA's own union staff has been demanding they be provided non-fluoridated water at work.  Their position statement begins:

The following documents why our union, formerly National Federation of Federal Employees Local 2050 and since April 1998 Chapter 280 of the National Treasury Employees Union, took the stand it did opposing fluoridation of drinking water supplies. Our union is comprised of and represents the approximately 1500* scientists, lawyers, engineers and other professional employees at EPA Headquarters here in Washington, D.C.

*This is about 1500 more scientists, lawyers, engineers and other professionals that were used in the production of the political docudrama An Inconvenient Truth.

(2)  Less cavities = more cosmetic dentistry.  And of course the question of, "If this is what it can do to your teeth what about your bones?" is left unaddressed.)

Colgate - China's largest toothpaste supplier - claims toxin laced product is "counterfeit."

Toxin laced toothpaste produced in Communist China is pulled off the shelves around the world and two weeks later "counterfeit" toothpaste with the exact same toxin, which just happens to bear the trade name of China's largest toothpaste supplier,  is discovered in the US and Canada.

Coincidence? 

Let's go back to this English version 2003 news story/press release from the house propaganda organ of the Communist Party of China:

Colgate fills production gap in China

Shenzhen-based giant Colgate-Palmolive Co. will expand its production bases in China to cement its position as the largest toothpaste supplier in China.

Colgate entered the China market in 1992 with the then pre-requisite joint-venture.  The 2003 People's Daily story above details how Colgate intended to expand its toothpaste production in China:

The firm's growth blueprint also includes merger and acquisition (M&A) plans with Chinese players to accelerate its expansion in China.

"With the completion of our new production facilities, we are going to seek more opportunities for additional investments in M&A activities in the Chinese market," said [Colgate China VP] Fong, in a recent interview with China Daily...He said Colgate-Palmolive could target companies in northern and western China, where it has no production bases.

The company acquired the Sanxiao Company --- a large domestic oral care products supplier in East China's Jiangsu Province --- in 2000 to turn it into a major production base for middle and low income customers.

While government investigators work with Colgate to come up with a plausible explanation as to how a toxic chemical came to be found in relatively official looking Colgate packaging, albeit with several gross English spelling mistakes, let us offer our own CSI time line of the possible events:

1. Colgate buys or contracts out toothpaste production with an existing Chinese company
2. Colgate market share and profits in China continue to rise.  Colgate and communist party bosses at contract manufacturer both happy.
3. Bustling Chinese contract manufacturer finds it difficult to obtain relatively non-toxic polyethylene glycol (PEG) or propylene glycol (the safe anti-freeze additive in US Colgate toothpaste and Dr. Pepper).  With or without the approval of Colgate's the contract manufacturer starts using the more toxic sister chemical di-ethylene glycol (DEG).  (Alternatively, the gel quality enhancing DEG could have been added or increased in quantity to correct a first pass deficiency in a QC standard.)
4. Fix was good enough to continue shipping out product, but as Chinese citizens started ending up in hospitals, a silent crackdown on the use of DEG in Chinese toothpaste ensues.
5. Worried Colgate rejects back to its supplier(s) all stock of the DEG containing toothpaste in the system. 
6. Chinese contract manufacturer stuck with the Colgate inventory is not happy camper -  decides to package the rejected Colgate product into counterfeit packaging.  Labels production source as South Africa to cover their tracks -- but makes English language mistakes that would never happen in English speaking South Africa. Dumps product into the busy South African re-sellers market.
7. Discount South African re-sellers distribute product around the world, including shipments back into the US.
8. Colgate QA and PR teams fan out to cover a downside of globalization.

Before all these Chinese food contamination stories play out, we may yet discover that General Jack Ripper was spot on about the Commies being after our precious bodily fluids. (Don't be surprised if we learn that the fluoride in Chinese toothpaste is nuclear waste from North Korea.)

In any case, brace yourself for the ultimate distressing news out of the world's most populous country: Soylent Green is People.

War for Dollars and Government Lottery scams

Every now and then I drop by the Godfather's place to provide a little libertarian punditry.

Bush regime includes bloggers as potential threat to National Security

From CNET yesterday:

The latest draft of the Free Flow of Information Act would pose a grave threat to national security and federal criminal investigations by protecting far too large a segment of the population, a U.S. Department of Justice official told Congress.

The definition is just so broad that it really includes anyone who wants to post something to the Web," Rachel Brand, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing here.

William Safire of the NYT supports the bill and the status of bloggers:

"Whether you're a blogger or whether you're The New York Times or CBS or The Wall Street Journal, if what you are doing is aimed at informing the public, then you're a journalist, whether you get paid for it or not," he said.

With the outcome in doubt, I suppose for the moment I should hold off on posting those bootleg photos from Iraq.

Vdare v. Brad and Britt

I made what I thought was a minor humorous side comment on the Brad & Britt feud with Peter Brimelow at Vdare.com and now, by link-association, Report from Freedonia has officially joined the vast right-wing conspiracy.

I don't intend to make a habit out of responding to a post of my post of my post of my post out there on the Internet, but as it was a gentlemanly request from one half of the Brad and Britt show -- and the offending down-line post is so flagrantly stupid -- I will do so in this case.

I go on record here for both myself and my compatriot Roxane Premont in stating that Patrick Cleburne should be, with reasons explicitly stated, publicly disbarred from the Vdare website if Peter Brimelow wants to maintain any credibility for himself.

While railing against Brad Krantz, here is what Cleburne posted on the Vdare blog on May 23rd: 

There clearly is a Krantz pattern of selective repression. As I remarked at the time, and again more recently, meeting political opponents with argument rather than repression is essentially an Anglo-Saxon habit. Many of other origins do not assimilate to it well. 

Man, how could so many of us be blind to these facts? Anglo-Saxons are predisposed to reasoned argument while those of other origins (i.e. Jews in this case) are inclined to chose repression as a first response to resolving a difference of opinion.  Hmm, apparently this guy and this guy must have some Hebrew blood somewhere in their family trees.  (Cleburne seems to be begging the question as to which bloodline is predisposed to the trait of stupidity.)

The likes of Cleburne don't often get this far unless they are on the government payroll working to discredit a cause.  Brimelow needs to step in and clarify if he supports this kind of apparent brainlessness or not. 

PARTial understanding

Disclaimer: I do not now nor have I ever supported the idea of taxpayer subsidized transportation.

I am getting an education on the Piedmont's regional transportation authority known as PART. I will try to stick to the facts as I understand them courtesy of the PART website and PART's gracious chairwoman Sandy Carmany:

1) Our Piedmont regional transportation system PART, thanks to Federal and State tax dollars, is now operating bus service from Greensboro to Boone twice a day - seven days a week.  The taxpayer subsidized fare is "only" $10 each way.  This service, which started last August, remains provisional for the time being. 

2) The average cost of transporting a single passenger on a PART vehicle is approximately $48 one-way.  (The highest published fare is the system appears to be $14 one-way.  The ride-share vehicles may charge more.)

3) Piedmont area taxpayers are providing van service to help deliver employees to Lowes corporate offices in North Wilkesboro.  Like Boone (see item #1 above), Wilkes County is not part of the partnership counties that make up even the self-expanded PART area of responsibility.

4) The van I snapped a picture of at around 4:00pm headed WEST-bound on 421 is still a mystery.  (Westbound at 4:00pm does not appear to be Piedmont workers van-pooling to work at Lowes in North Wilkesboro.)

5) Most people seem to think the waste of $$$ on PART is somehow lowering the carbon footprint caused by people getting to work in the Piedmont area, or they simply don't care one way or the other -- imagining that somehow this is other people's money not their own.

6) A meme exists in PART that causes public service workers there to believe that without government expertise many people could not get themselves to work economically.

7) Like almost all government programs PART has expanded far beyond its original mission of providing public transportation services to citizens of the Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point areas.