Category Archives: Uncategorized

What is TPP and How Will it Harm our Environment and our Constitutional Rights

Posted on November 15, 2013 | Leave a comment

What is TPP – Transpacific Free Trade Agreement; Remember how great NAFTA was for our citizen and our environment?

Trade officials from eleven Pacific Rim nations

Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile,

Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam are in intensive, closed door negotiations to sign a Trans

Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 2013. Every Pacific Rim nation from China to Russia to Japan could eventually be included. There are draft texts for many of this pact’s 29 chapters, most of which have nothing to do with trade, but rather impose limits on domestic food safety, health, environmental, and other policies. The governments won’t release the texts to the public. But about 600 U.S. corporate “trade advisors” have full access. America’s worst job offshoring corporations, global banks, agribusiness, and pharmaceutical giants want this deal

to be another corporate power tool like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Consumer, labor, environmental, and other public interest advocates want a transparent process and a “Fair Deal or No Deal.”

A major goal of U.S. multinational corporations for the TPP is to impose on more countries a set of extreme foreign investor privileges and rights and their private enforcement through the notorious “investor state” system.

This system allows foreign corporations to challenge before international tribunals national environmental, land use, health and other laws and regulations that apply to domestic and foreign firms alike. Outrageously, this regime elevates individual corporations and investors to equal standing with each TPP signatory country’s government and above all of us citizens. This regime empowers corporations to skirt national courts and sue our governments before tribunals of private sector lawyers operating under UN and World Bank rules to demand taxpayer compensation for domestic regulatory policies that investors believe diminish their “expected future profits.”

Many of these regulatory policies are designed for environmental protection. For example, in 2012, the U.S.

Lone Pine company launched a $250 million NAFTA investor

state case against a Canadian ban on fracking.

Read more about TPP: http://www.exposethetpp.org/

Get involved and contact your representative: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

Normally we do not get political but this affects every American. Remember we are Americans first, Green, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, etc. Second!!!

Thanks

Simplyifying a Big Move

Posted on October 20, 2013 | Leave a comment

Packing tips

Good packing is crucial for a stress-free move. It’s always better to use small moving boxes for heavier household items.and large moving boxes for lightweight items like linen and pillows.

Pack similar items together so that a delicate crystal vase is not in the same box with a toaster, for example.

Label a box “blue bedroom,” not “Max’s bedroom,” so the movers know where it goes. Use small boxes to be kind to your back. Buy stretch wrap to contain unwieldy furnishings like sofa beds and use unprinted packing paper. Make sure cartons are firmly packed, and provide plenty of cushioning such as bubble wrap to absorb shock.

Keep sentimental items and valuables with you during the move. That includes jewelry, medications, home videos, photo albums, laptop computers and new-home documents.

Prohibited items on professional movers’ lists include hazardous materials like aerosol cans, pesticides, paints, pool chemicals, fire extinguishers, firearms and propane tanks, and perishables such as frozen foods, plants and produce. If you want to move a piano, call a piano mover.

Some busy professionals hire designers like Donna Hall of Savvy Interior Design Inc. in Hinsdale to inventory their belongings, suggest what to toss or donate, direct the movers and arrange furnishings in the new home. The result is a thought-out design instead of a pile of boxes awaiting direction.

Read entire article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/realestate/apartments/ct-mre-1013-moving-tips-20131011,0,3194965.story

Disclaimer: for information and entertainment purposes only

Alert – Bathroom Wipes are Messing up Pipes

Posted on October 5, 2013 | Leave a comment

Increasingly popular bathroom wipes – pre-moistened towelettes that are often advertised as flushable – are being blamed for creating clogs and backups in sewer systems around the nation.

Wastewater authorities say wipes may go down the toilet, but even many labeled flushable aren’t breaking down as they course through the sewer system. That’s costing some municipalities millions of dollars to dispatch crews to unclog pipes and pumps and to replace and upgrade machinery.

Did you have your main scoped in your building inspection before purchasing your home? Have you ever had your pipes scoped? Drains getting slower? You might want to consider putting this into your home’s maintenance plan.

The problem got so bad in this western New York community this summer that sewer officials set up traps – basket strainers in sections of pipe leading to an oft-clogged pump – to figure out which households the wipes were coming from. They mailed letters and then pleaded in person for residents to stop flushing them.

“We could walk right up, knock on the door and say, `Listen, this problem is coming right from your house,'” said Tom Walsh, senior project coordinator at South & Center Chautauqua Lake Sewer Districts, which was dispatching crews at least once a week to clear a grinder pump that would seize up trying to shred the fibrous wipes.