New York Renovator

Since we’re renovating, I’m paying much more attention to news and government actions about home ownership and renovating.

And it’s getting scary out there.

There are a slew of new proposals and laws, none of them good. Actually, they are all very strange and control-freaky. I guess this is what happens when government already controls our cars, our driving, our banking, our health care, our energy use, etc etc. They want to control what we eat and how we live. Things are going tooooo far. Look at some of these news stories.

New Lead Paint Law Effective April 22, 2010
Congress has deemed that any renovation work done by contractors on houses built before 1978 are to be done by a certified contractor. This does not apply to Do-It-Yourselfers. But not everyone is a DIY’er, and this law could jack up the renovation budget into the tens of thousands. I once applied for a Rural Development Loan for $7000, and they told me that before I could get that loan, I had to have certified groups come in the home and test for lead and asbestos, and have it removed. The cost: over $30,000. I would pay for it. And that was JUST for a $7,000 loan to fix my chimney!!!! (P.S. Just because a home was built before 1978 does not mean it has lead paint/asbestos. But you can bet your bottom dollar that this won’t matter to the form-and-fee-claimers).

Is Your Home Improvement Project Legal?
In the city of Utica, NY, a small city in Central NY near to where I live, it is illegal for any homeowner to do ANY repairs on their home themselves. They must hire a professional, certified contractor. You can’t even change a toilet. So instead of repealing the law, the Utica city government came up with an additional, “try and fix it” law (no surprises there): get every homeowner to pay for a special repair course and get a temporary license. Now, I wish there was actually a program like this for homeowners who WANT something like this– but to force all homeowners to take this course and get a certificate so they can add an electrical outlet or replace their toilet is insane. One commenter on the news story made a great point:

By the time all is said and done you won’t even be able to live in your own home without have a special license. This is getting ridiculous and all it’s about is making more money for the government. Now you can’t even fix up your own home.

New Wood Boiler Regulations by Department of Environmental Conservation
The government wants to force everyone to upgrade their wood-fueled boiler heaters to new and approved heaters. The DEC says that this will cause less pollution. What the?! If they were so concerned about pollution, they’d look for bigger fish to fry than to hunt down poor, rural farmers who burn wood as their only source of heat! These folks cannot afford shiny new $20,000 boilers. Give me a break.

And there are a handful more such new laws and proposals, but I don’t remember them all. And to top it all off, the property taxes are SKY HIGH in New York and New England. I pay almost $30 per $1,000 assessed valuation on my home, and my rickety old home is assessed at 100%.

They are making it nearly impossible to live peacably and in liberty in one’s own home. They want to regulate EVERYTHING when it comes down to it. NY even has some silly ideas about banning certain fats, taxing sodas, and banning salt! It’s getting crazy out there…..

Unbelievable.

ORISKANY, N.Y. (WKTV) – There’s a disease that’s hitting tomato plants across the northeast and it may have found its way to your own garden here in Central New York.

Officials out in Oriskany from the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Oneida County say the big box retail stores in our area : Walmart, K-Mart, Home Depot and Lowes all had the same supplier of tomato plants, a company from the south. That company had plants tainted with the disease called “late blight,” a fast spreading disease that will kill your plant and any plants near it.

Will someone please tell me why ALL the major Big Box stores get their tomato plants from the SAME SUPPLIER for the entire Northeast?! Stupid! Sheesh, now even our plant suppliers are consolidated! Ugh!!

My tomatoes had vicious blight last year– I am sure they had the blight before I bought them, because as soon as I got them into the ground, they turned brown and died. (I’d bought them from WalMart. I’ll never do that again. I think WalMart is getting too big for its britches, selling everything under the sun. Next thing you know, they’ll be doing piano lessons). So this year, I got the tomatoes from Lowes. I don’t know why I even buy the plants- tomatoes grow so easily from seed. I’d composted some tomatoes in my large compost pile a year or two ago, and added the compost to my garden. I guess the seeds didn’t compost, because that year I had dozens of little tomato plants growing in the garden beds everywhere. From now on, I’m just going to grow from seed.

If you have bought tomato plants from these stores, Miller says “really keep an eye on them and look for any kind of pale greening, wet soaked areas on the leaf tips and especially if they have started to turn brown and dispose of them as we have talked about.” Miller says the proper method is to put the diseased plant in a dark colored plastic bag, put that plastic bag in another dark plastic bag and leave that in the sun in order to kill the spores. Once that is done, you are ok to put that with your other yard waster to be taken away.

If you want more information, check out the Cornell Cooperative Extension site.

Short answer: YES.

Long answer: Depends on what state you live, and depends on the outcome of new bills coming through the U.S. Congress, as they seem to making up new and stupid ones every day….

From what I have ascertained so far, it is illegal to collect rainwater in the following states:

• Utah
• Washington State
• New Mexico
• Colorado– although I JUST saw a news story published this week that says this has changed. BUT it appears that city dwellers who rely on municipal water cannot collect rainwater.

I also heard that in 1998 the UN past a resolution that all water on the planet is to be commercial, to be bought or sold like, you know, an XBox or something. GRRR. Now I have not confirmed this, but if anyone has any input, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll check it out. Also, there was a “water war” in Bolivia after the country privatized their water resources, and then a company from the U.S. (Bechtel) won a contract for the resources. Immediately, the company had the collection of rainwater outlawed because they wanted a complete monopoly on the resource. People colecting rainwater cut in to their profits.

Now, some of the water laws, especially for the western states, go way back– back to when the area was owned by Spain. Water is a precious resource over there. BUT, this law is being stretched. The laws state that you can’t divert streams or suck lakes dry for your own use. Sure, I understand that– evil people were crooks and stole the water resources. Bad. OK. But some states are suddenly interpreting this to mean that people can’t collect rain in rain barrels?! That’s dumb. The government does NOT own the rain. It’s ridiculous for the government to PRESUME to be able to CONTROL the rain and it’s diversions, as well. If those old water laws are now being interpreted so as to place more restrictions and heavier burdens on citizens, and line the pockets of Big Business and their Government Buddies, that’s tyranny. That’s all there is to it.

You know, we Americans ARE the government. We abide by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Dare I say that we do not have to obey de facto laws and we have the right to redress the government for grievances. These things are really going waaaay too far in this country.

“Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of like, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.” Victor Lebow, 20th century economist, about the American consumerist capitalism created in the 1950s.

Hat tip to Strawbale House for directing me to a terrific video called The Story of Stuff. This video is a MUST SEE! When I went to the site and saw that it was 20 minutes, my heart sank a little. But it is very much worth it, and the video is so well done that 20 minutes seemed like 5 minutes! Really, this is a must-see. In the video, Annie Leonard shows how our consumerist economy is wrecking countries, families, communities, and individuals. She makes the clear case about corporate butt-kissing by our government. It’s a very impressive story, and an eye-opener. And she also explains the conspiracy behind our goods– why we have to buy a new vacuum cleaner every 6-8 months, why we have to buy new shoes and new computers and new cell phones: planned obsolesence. And we cannot sustain such rampant consumerism for a long period of time.

This video details exactly what has been on my mind– and what I have been blogging about for a year now: that the materialistic consumerism is a direct agenda by government and business linked together; is unsustainable; and is fatal for the “serfs” (that’s us). This system is creating a serfdom where consumers, while thinking they have “liberty,” are actually slaves to a system that is eliminating their worth in the system when the resources have expired. We MUST return to community-based, sustainable living and local economies.

Really– give your children and grandchildren the gift of watching this video. I found a few teaser trailers to give you a taste of what the video is about.

I saw an interesting news article at CNN, Is Your Job Recession-Proof? Here in Upstate New York, most people can (and have) answered that question with a resounding “no.” We’ve seen not only a massive exodus of people leave the state, but a massive exodus of jobs. New York State is perhaps the most hostile for business, or we’re a close second to California. Excessively high taxation, high and stringent regulation, penalties for non-union and non-corporation businesses, and an extremely high cost of living are the main causes. It’s been building to a climax for nearly 30 years now, and the poor frog in the pan is almost cooked through.

However, there are some temporarily recession-proof jobs in the state. But they are all all government jobs. And government jobs are paid for by taxpayers in the private sector. When you have a decreasing population, a remaining population with fewer jobs and lower wages, and a high cost of living, the schism between cushy government jobs and the working people is overwhelming and totally unsustainable.

So it is with this knowledge that I read the CNN article. Their list of recession-proof jobs is as follows:

1. Education –we’ll need more teachers, says CNN; we’ll get only more administrators, says Mrs. Mecomber. Education jobs are 100% funded by taxpayers.

2. Energy sector –oil, gas, and geothermal industry, and more engineers. Taxpayers pay for research and some corporations get government support/bail-outs.

3. Environmental sector –engineers and scientists for research into “green” technology. Again, research is heavily funded by taxpayers.

4. Health Care –nurses, technicians, etc. Health care is already bankrolled by the states; should it go national, expect a collapse of the economy, not a boost. Like P.J. O’Rourke said, “f you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.”

5. Security –border patrols, police, Homeland “Security” jobs, etc. These are 100% taxpayer-funded jobs.

Now, there are a lot of jobs in the private sector that belong in that list. But by and large, education, environment, health care, and security are mainstays of governmental jobs. I do not see how on earth that jobs can continue to grow in the government, with wages and perks going higher and higher, while the taxpayers are suffering job losses and extremely high cost of living. Taxes are continually going up, and taxpayers are going under. You’d think that there would be a clarion call for government to shrink in size, and build a new policy toward encouraging small business. Nope. Everything is going to China or India, except government jobs. Oh wait– some government jobs are going there, too, because fewer and fewer taxpayers are able to support the great big behemoth that is U.S. government and all its bureaucracies (not to mention all the perks, pork and taxpayer-funded cruises).

I don’t see how this kind of economy can sustain itself in a capitalist economic system. Of course, I don’t think many in government want a capitalist system anymore. Doesn’t this type of economy they are pushing on us look a lot like fascism?

Thanks to Attempts at Sustainable Living for the CNN news story.

Chief Justice John Marshall once said, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

I was at the gym a week or two ago and saw the most appalling “infomercial” I have ever seen in my life. (No, it wasn’t for maternity clothes or acne treatments!) It was John Beck’s “Free & Clear Real Estate System.” I’m not going to complain about what bunk the “system” is and how it’s a rip-off– I’m going to bellow at the top of my lungs the absolute tyrannical immorality of the governmental system that John Beck is using. I am still so angry about something like this!

Here’s what happens: a homeowner gets into financial trouble, for whatever reason. The homeowner cannot pay his property taxes. The homeowner may be keeping up with his mortgage payments, but not the property tax payments. In such a case, the government (usually the city or county) can confiscate the ENTIRE property and auction it off for tax default. Any capital the homeowner has gained from paying years and years of mortgage and tax payments disappears. The homeowner is evicted from the home and the government sells it. Usually, the property sells for a very low price, because all the government wants is the back taxes that are due.

This is absolutely unconscionable. I am outraged– apoplectic- that this can happen! What happened to property rights in this country? In all essence, there are NO property rights. If you do not pay your taxes, the government can take your hard-earned property and turn around and sell it to a speculator. (That’s where John Beck’s “system” comes in– he snaps up those properties and resells them at market value.)

The infomercial feeds on the greedy “small-business” American speculator. But no one stops to ask– Is this justice in America? And what old lady or impoverished family is being evicted, so that I can buy my new house real cheap? And a lot of times, it’s the government or banks that snap up the foreclosed property. It happens right here in Utica, NY. The government forecloses, owns the property, and sells it for a hefty profit. Criminal!

This tyrannical confiscation of property is not American. It is socialist/fascist. Let’s not pretend here– it’s the government that really owns all the property. If you don’t pay the “rent” in the form of their high property taxes, then you are thrown out into the streets (or jailed or fined, or both) and you lose EVERYTHING you have built on up to then. What kind of system is this? This is more akin to serfdom- slavery– where the lord is the government and we are the tenant farmer serfs. And the government works hand in hand with the banks and credit card companies to do this. And what’s worse is that the property tax is after the income tax and the sales tax, and all the billions of little taxes on top of that! There are so many taxes in this country that we lost the concept of what it means to be free. We are slaves to the taxation departments, the government, and the banks. What a hateful system.

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson.

I know I’m not the only one to notice the outrageous food costs these days. I was listening to a guest host on the Rush Limbaugh Show who stated that the food crisis and energy crisis are government-induced. I believe it. The real question is WHY. I try to avoid news headlines because they are too sensationalist (meant to manipulate) and sometimes just too darn scary when I have enough to worry about around here. I made the mistake of checking headlines today and nearly blew a gasket when I saw this: Feds To Collect DNA From Every Person They Arrest. Um… there is something called the Fourth Amendment in this country that prohibits them from doing this. I hope we Americans bite back.

But about food costs. It is more on my mind because it is gardening time. I want to be planting things that will last through the winter. In particular, potatoes. Some folks are saying potatoes will be the new commodity, because they grow so well, they are plenteous, and they keep well. Plus, no stupid politician has any plans to use it to make fuel or bullets or money out of it. Yet.

How about you? What are you doing about food costs? Are you cutting back on your eating? Are you planning for a larger garden? And do you think things will get better any time soon?

I don’t think things will get better. But we can do well if we adapt. I’ve talked a lot about the excessive lifestyles that we live. It is too excessive now. We can become more self-sufficient, by growing our own food, getting smaller vehicles where possible, by getting rid of gadgets, and living more frugally all around. Leave a comment or two. I;d like to know what you think.