Who Should have The Right To Vote.

At this moment the national debt is $17,525,568,343,274.68. For those in Rio Linda, that is a little over 17.5 trillion dollars! The debt is growing at a rate of 2.56 billion dollars each and every day. At this point in time, each citizens share of the debt is an astounding $55,097.93. In my soon to be published book America In Decline I spend several chapters dealing with the reasons for our nation's financial woes but, in a nut shell, we are in this financial mess because over the past 60 years or so America has morphed from the republic that our founding fathers envisioned into a pure democracy wherein the majority rules and minority rights, including most importantly property rights, are trampled on daily by the elected officials in Washington DC and, with rare exception, our various state capitals. Pure democracies have always failed throughout history, and always will fail in the future, because most people, by nature, are inherently lazy and if given the chance will opt out of the work force and let someone else do it. More importantly, they will vote for politicians who will implement laws that redistribute the wealth of successful members of society and give it to those who sit on the couch all day swigging beer and watching endless sitcoms on the flat screen TVs that the government has provided for them. Note, I am not referring to the people who, through no fault their own, are disabled or for some other reason cannot work; rather, I am referring to the millions of able bodied men and women who can work but, for a variety of reasons, refuse to do so! In America In Decline I propose several possible solutions to our nation's problems including, as a last resort, revolution. However, we could right our floundering ship of state without firing a single shot, or spilling a drop of blood, if we just made a few simple changes in our voting laws. Rather, as now is the case, encouraging every single citizen to vote and making it possible for many of them to vote multiple times, we should limit voting rights to those who make a contribution to society. In short, if you don't work and pay taxes you should not be allowed to vote. Nothing could be more simple and nothing would be more effective in righting the moral and financial woes our country is facing. In short, if a citizen does not pay federal income taxes he or she should not be allowed to vote in any federal election. Similarly, those that do not pay state and local taxes will not be allowed to vote in state or local elections. In this respect, the payment of sales taxes would not qualify a person to vote. These simple changes in the way Americans elect their politicians would put an end to political corruption; greatly curtail the liberal dependency state; and return our country to the union of independent states envisioned by our founding fathers. By the way, we are a very charitable people, always have been and always will be, so no one who is truly incapable of providing for their own needs will be left to die in the streets for lack of food or shelter, that simply in not the American way!

Worm Tea- The Organic Gardener's Best Friend

By now everyone is familiar with the foliar fertilizer VF11. Foliar forms of liquid fertilizer containing nitrogen and other plant nutrients are sprayed on the plant and the soil around the plant. Worm tea provides many of the beneficial effects of VF11 at a fraction of its cost. In fact, except for the expense of the small amount of electricity used to operate an inexpensive aquarium air pump for a couple of days, there is no cost to homemade worm tea can be made for nothing. Controlled scientific experiments have shown that this miraculous organic foliar fertilizer increases plant growth and crop yields up to 50 percent. Of equal importance, if made correctly, worm tea contains billions, of beneficial microorganisms that cover the plant when the tea is applied as a foliar spray. These microbes prevent, or hinder the growth, of plant pathogens like powdery mildew, aphids, parasitic nematodes and spider mites because potential infection sights on the plant are occupied by the beneficial microorganisms in the tea. As a result, the pathogens cannot attach themselves to the plant. The harmful pathogens also have a difficult time establishing themselves on a plant sprayed with worm tea because the beneficial microbes consume the nutrients the pathogens require to grow and reproduce. Worm tea is easy to make. Basically, you need a three or four handfuls fresh worm castings, an once or two of a nutrient like sulfur free molasses or corn syrup and a way to aerate the brew. Some organic farmers add the juice of a lemon and an once or two of fish emulsion to the mixture. Aeration is a must when making worm tea to avoid the growth of anaerobic bacteria that may be harmful to plants. Aeration can be achieved with one of the inexpensive air aquarium pumps designed to oxygenate fish tanks. These devices, which cost less than $10 at a pet store, even have an air diffuser stone. You also will need a plastic bucket. I use a seven gallon food grade bucket sold at a local home brew supply store; however, the cheap 5 gallon buckets sold at Lowe's or Home Depot will work just as well. Finally, if you do not have a source of non chlorinated water, like rain or pond water, fill a bucket of chlorinated city water and let it sit for a couple of days to allow the chlorine in the water to evaporate. Alternately, add the chlorinated water from the tap to the brewing bucket and aerate it with the aquarium pump for a couple of hours to bubble out the chlorine before adding the worm castings and molasses to the bucket. Once most of the chlorine has been removed from the water, turn on the air pump and let the mixture ferment for 24 hours, 48 hours is better. I use a stick to stir the water in the bucket periodically but this is not necessary. After the brew is finished use a plastic funnel lined with a cloth towel to strain the tea before placing it into a garden pump sprayer. Worm tea will maintain its potency indefinitely if you continue to feed it and keep it aerated with the aquarium air pump. However, once removed from the brew bucket worm tea should be sprayed on the plants without delay since the beneficial organisms in the tea will not survive for more than a few hours if deprived of a continuous supply of oxygen. In this respect, the bottled worm tea sold commercially is of questionable value. Several commercial brands of worm tea have found their way to the market. The manufactures of these concoctions add preservatives such as phosphoric, lactic and citric acids to their worm teas. The acids supposedly put the tea's microbes into a dormant state. When the bottled teas are opened and exposed to oxygen, the microbes are said to recover. I do not know if the manufactures claims with respect to the effectiveness of their bottled worm teas are true or not. However, since worm tea is so easy to make, I question the wisdom of purchasing an expensive bottled tea that may be of questionable value. Why not just make the tea yourself and be done with it? There is no magic formula for applying worm tea to the plants in your garden. However, since the beneficial microorganisms in worm tea also are very sensitive to heat and sunlight, the spray should not be applied in the middle of a hot summer day. To be on the safe side, spray your plants early in the morning or in the evening after the sun has set. I spray every living thing in my organic garden, with the exception of my dog, with the tea at weekly intervals. Try it! I think you will be amazed at the effectiveness of this cheap effective organic fertilizer. For the sake of completeness, I should add that there are anaerobic as well as aerobic worm teas. Some authors even claim that worm teas produced under anaerobic conditions are superior to those created in an oxygen rich environment. Certainly, the microorganisms produced in an oxygen rich environment will differ significantly from those that thrive in an anaerobic environment. I believe that the preponderance of evidence suggests that anaerobic microorganisms may be toxic to plants; thus, I would avoid them.

Controlling Moles and Gophers in the Garden

Moles are insectivores who live on earthworms, slug eggs and other garden pests, rarely do they eat vegetation of any type. They can be identified by their raised tunnels that that disrupt the surface of the garden or lawn. Gophers live deep within the ground and may be identified by the characteristic mounds of dirt they make as they tunnel through the earth. Gophers are vegetarians and are particularly destructive to beds of carrots, turnips and beets. Their unsightly mounds also can ruin the appearance of a lawn. Possibly the best way to prevent an invasion of gophers or moles is to prevent them from entering your garden of lawn in the first place by burying a two foot deep strip if fine mess hardware cloth around the perimeter of the garden or lawn. This method mole and gopher control is labor intensive but fool-proof. With respect to the garden, I believe moles do more good than harm and make no effort to exclude them. If they invade the lawn I use a hose end sprayer filled with 1/4th castor oil, a few drops of dish detergent and water to spray the lawn every three weeks until they leave the area. Gophers are a different matter. These ingenious creatures can ruin a row of carrots overnight. My garden is situated in a large open hillside and the gophers invariably attempt to make their way from the surrounding wooded area to the garden each spring. My goal is to eradicate these destructive creatures before they enter the garden. Gopher control at Chateau Merrill is a two step process, somewhat labor intensive but absolutely fool-proof! The first step, the labor intensive one, is to identify the gopher hole. This is done by digging around a gopher mound or hill until you locate an open gopher tunnel. You are now home free! Simply place a handful of a poison grain, such as Gopher Getter, in the hole and cover the hole with a rock or small segment of waste lumber. This works every time, I guarantee it! Now to simplify your life next year, don't forget step two. New gophers will attempt to enter your garden next year and, if possible, they will use a tunnel made by a previous gopher to do it. To prevent this from happening, after about three weeks remove the rock or segment of lumber used to cover the tunnel in which you placed the poison grain. Purchase a highway flare; light the flare and position it as far down the hole as possible; finally, cover the hole with dirt. Purchase the shortest flares available because they are easier to introduce into the gopher tunnels. Gophers do not like the smell produced by a highway flare and will not enter a tunnel so treated. Over the years I have tried many different ways to rid my garden of gophers and, other than buried wire mesh, this is the only gopher eradication program that works. If, this gopher killing methodology does not appeal to you there are many other methods to rid you garden of gophers, in my experience, all of which are less effective. Bob Tanem, the host of KFSOs Sunday morning talk show, In The Garden, recommends that you pour liquid fish emulsion down the gopher's hole to drive the critters form the garden. I prefer to kill them before they get to the garden but, if one does find its way through my defenses, I will use poison grain to kill it and the fumes from a flare to keep its relatives at bay.

Assisting Polination Of Tomato Plants

Tomatoes are said to be self pollinating because each tomato flower contains both male stamens and female stigmas. The male stamens are tubes containing pollen on their insides. The bottoms of the stamen tubes enclose the female stigma which is the flower's ovary. In nature the wind and the buzzing wings of the honey bee shake the tomato flower and loosen the pollen in the male stamens causing it to fall and fertilize the female stigmas. This is a hit and miss proposition and to assure maximal yields from your tomato vines you will have to assist in the pollination of the tomato's flowers. I use a handheld battery operated toothbrush to facilitate pollination by touching each flowers stem with the vibrating bristles of the brush. Others recommend using the back of your hand to gently shake the blossoms. If your tomatoes are grown on a stake or in a wire cage you can accomplish the same goal by gently shaking the stake or wire cage. To be on the safe side I often use all three techniques on my tomato plants. The tomato blossoms is ready to be pollinated when the petals of the tomato's flowers turn upwards revealing the exposed stamen enclosed stigmas of plant. Assisted pollination is most effective if carried out during the middle of the day. For best results, and to achieve maximal yields from you tomato plants, perform this ritual on a daily basis.

Choosing Flowering Plants For An Organic Garden

There is a simple and fool-proof way to select flowering plants that will enhance the beauty of an organic garden year around. Rather than poring over books with pictures of flowering plants; struggling with unpronounceable Latin names of the plants; and making numerous trips to the nursery to determine if the plants you select are available, let your local nursery do the work for you. Nurseries make money by selling attractive plants; more significantly, to stay in business, they must feature plants that flower at all times of the year, not continuously but seasonably. Thus, if you visit your local nursery periodically throughout the year, in a year or so, you will be able to purchase seasonable plants that will provide color to your garden the entire year unless, of course, you are living in the frozen tundra of Alaska or the Midwest. If that is the case you, unfortunately, you will be stuck with the color white for six or more months of the year, great for making snowmen but not so good for enhancing the beauty of your frozen garden. A significant advantage of this methodology for selecting flowering garden plants results from the fact that nurseries, with few exceptions, only stock plants that will do well in the climate in which you live. Thus, you do not have be too concerned about whether or not the plants you select will thrive in your garden. Not only is nursery shopping a wise way to select plants for the garden it also is a lot of fun. I look forward to my periodic visits to our local nurseries in my never-ending search for new plants that will increase the beauty of my organic garden, I know you will too!

What Does It Mean To Have Faith?

I was raised in a Seventh Day Adventist colony in rural Humboldt County in Northern California. Except for my parents and my Uncle Frank's family, the members of the colony were elderly retired people who had moved to Eel Rock to escape the sins of the large cities and, more importantly, to await the second coming of Christ. Despite the false prophesies of the churches founder, Sister Ellen G. White, these God fearing people believed with every fiber of their frail bodies that the second coming was imminent. All of these true believers have been dead for 50 years or more and, to my knowledge, there still has been no sighting of the savior. Nonetheless, there undoubtedly are many Seventh Day Adventists alive today who cling to the belief that the second coming is at hand, just as they did in the days of my grandfather. As far back as I can remember, I struggled with the concept of faith which, of course, is the basis of all Christian religions. Now, in my 78th, I believe I have the answer. This is a bitter pill to swallow because without faith one must face the fact that at the time of death life ends and there is no tomorrow, here or anywhere else and certainly not in Heaven. So what is the definition of faith? What does it mean to have faith? Faith is the willingness to believe in something that in unbelievable, its really as simple as that. There are many examples of misguided faith in everyday life as well as religious lore. In today's world there are members of religious cults who forgo medical treatment for themselves and their children because they believe, to their dying breath, that their faith alone will be enough to cure them of the cancer that is literally eating them alive as they sit by and do nothing. Millions, if not billions, believe that their prayers will be answered despite clear evident to the contrary. If prayers were answered no none would became seriously ill, let alone die, and everyone undoubtedly would be rich. If only that were the case! The Bible, of course, is rife with examples of misguided faith. In this respect, absent blind faith, could any sane person believe that a man could walk on water; turn water into wine; be born of a virgin; or come back from the dead? Along the same vein, could any rational being believe that holy water has some magical quality or that lighting candles for the dead could possibly be of the slightest significance to the deceased? I think not! I see no harm in having faith except for the fact that to allow one's self to believe in the unbelievable is somewhat irrational and demeaning to the human spirit.

Saving America- Step 1

This is the first of a series of blogs designed to provide solutions to some of the most significant financial and social problems we face in the United States today. The problems are obvious and the suggested solution are, for the most part, simple and could easily be achieved if our political leaders had the will to implement them. In my soon to be published book, America In Decline, I point out the high price Americans are paying for illegal immigration, especially the immigration of low IQ illegal aliens from Mexico. Mexican illegal's are responsible for much of the crime in our large cities in the South and Southwest and the presence of their children in our schools is contributing significantly to the demise of our system of public education. The illegal's, 30 percent of whom are on welfare, also are significant drain of the countries' financial resources. In this respect we are paying a high price for the lettuce we buy at Walmart. Illegal immigration could be stopped in its tracks without building a single foot of new fence and without hireling an additional boarder agent! All that would have to be done to curb illegal immigration is to institute a National Identification Card (NIC) which clearly states that a person is a citizen of the United States and includes a picture of the card holder and their social security number. Without a NIC a person would not be allowed to work and would not be allowed to vote! To ensure the law is obeyed, employers who hire illegal's without an NIC should be fined or imprisoned. The size of the fines would reflect the size of the employers business enterprise. Repeat offenders, without exception, should be sent to prison. Similarly, counterfeiter's of NIC cards would receive equally severe punishment. Persons without a NIC should not be ineligible for any form of welfare including food stamps, housing aids, non emergency medical care and federal educational grants. Without such welfare it is highly likely that the vast majority of the illegal's in the United States would return to the country of their origin, in this case Mexico. Liberals will scream bloody murder while claiming that it would be discriminatory, and a violation of the equal rights amendment, to require blacks, especially those who are poor, illiterate or elderly, to obtain and show an NIC before they can vote. Have no doubt about it, we not talking about discrimination here! Rather, we are talking about the facilitation of voting fraud by the Al Sharpton's, Jessie Jackson's and Louis Farrakhan's of the world, nothing more, nothing less. The claim that a NIC card would impede blacks from voting, is a specious argument at best in twenty-first century America and brings to mind a encounter I witnessed recently at our local Sears department store in Concord California. I was in the checkout line behind an elderly black man who was in the process of purchasing a small item which cost around $15.00. This gentleman wanted to pay with his credit card and the clerk said that he would have to see an identification card before he could complete the transaction. Without the slightest hesitation the customer pulled out his wallet and showed the clerk his driver's license which had his picture on it. This took me somewhat by surprise because it appeared that this elderly person would have been too old to drive. Nonetheless, he had a drivers license with his picture on it, an NIC if you will, and the $15 transaction went off without a hitch. Now I ask you, if a person has to show a pictured identification card to make a $15 credit card purchase at Sears, is it unreasonable to ask him, or her, to do the same before they are allowed to vote or apply for a job? No, the specious arguments made by the liberals against a NIC is simply another of their endless attempts to facilitate illegal immigration and undermine the sanctity of the vote. In summary, the implementation of a NIC solves two of our most significant problems, illegal immigration and voting fraud. Unfortunately, this suggest will not see the light of day anytime soon because the liberals see illegal's as future members of the Democrat party and big business, especially agribusiness, views the illegal's as a cheap form of labor. In the next blog I will discuss ways to decrease the rate of crime in America.