Enough Already!

[sheepdog 10]

Once again, the bumbling bureaucracy that is our government has struck with what must be one of it's finest pieces of horse hockey regulations it has come up with yet. Our department of labor has decided it has the need to regulate the beds of goat herders! Farmers must now provide clean and "comfortable" beds to its foreign goat herders. (I guess it's ok if your goat herder is an American for you to allow a dirty uncomfortable mattress)

No really, I am not making this garbage up! You can read about it here.
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

While you are on the page linked above, check out some of the other regulations it covers there too. And under the Obama administration, there have been 75 new major regulations put into effect that are costing the American owned small business over $38 BILLION to implement. And people wonder why there are no jobs in this country? Please keep in mind, these are not "laws" that congress and the people get the opportunity to make comments on or vote on. These are regulatory laws put in place by the dozens of mini bureaucracies we have, like the USDA, ATF, Department of Labor, EPA, and the list goes on and on.

But back to our goat herders. In tough economic times, we have congressmen threatening to cut off the social security to our nations elderly, but yet it seems that they plan to inspect the beds of goat herders to determine that they are comfortable. I wonder just how they will determine comfortable? What tax payer funded training will they get for being bed inspectors? Maybe some courses in entomology so they can determine the exact species of lice infesting the bed? Think they will spend the night in the goat herders bed? How about all that travel the tax payers are going to have to fund getting those bed inspectors out there in the range land to find the beds. Of course, they are going to need new expensive, 4 wheel drive vehicles to reach the sheep camps.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting bloody sick and tired of the government sticking it's nose into every single little nook and cranny it can. This week Fox News is doing a special segment about government regulations, it's very eye opening. Worth watching for sure. It may come as a big surprise to some of you that haven't had to deal with all the problems there are when you are trying to run a business. There is just no way American companies can compete with business in other countries that can do what ever they want to do, to the environment, or to it's employees. And while nobody wants to see children made into slaves, and some regulations may be needed, what our government has done has gone WAY over the top and is making it impossible to run any kind of business in this country.

I often wonder where people who piss and moan about farm subsidities get THEIR food and clothing.
Do you realize how many other entities recieve aid from the governement? From big oil companies, to utility companys, railroads, and just about ever other business in the country. Not to mentions big bucks to green energy companys who take the money and then go belly up. Farm subsidities help the American farmer stay on a more level playing field with foreign imports and help assure they get a fair market value for their products. Actually, if the government would butt out, the farmers might actually be better off if they would just keep wall street jokers from controling farm prices. And the farmers are getting help because they are actually producing our food and clothing and working, unlike the many many welfare rats who are sitting on their fat rear ends doing absolutly nothing to benefit the world.

Am I against agency enforsement of laws protecting workers? Well, yes, in this particular case I would be. Here's a novel thought, if the sheepherder had a problem with the farmer who hired him, he has two things he can do. First, complain to the boss and ask for better, or, if that doesn't work, find another farmer to work for. Both require someone to stand up for themselves and not rely on the government to protect them. Why on earth should we the tax payers shell out probably $150,000 of tax payer money to a goat herder who is going to make a few thousand bucks? This is just like the FAILED bail out program. The $150,000 is just a guess on my part. I figure the salary of the government inspector, the cost of his vehicle, the office staff to back him up and the various expenses of maintaining the office support, it's probably actually a lot higher than that.

What part of my asumptions do you believe to be untrue? Do you not need enforcement to back up laws that are made? For what other reason does the government make up regulations other than to increase the powers of the agency making up the regulations? I mean really, did you think they made up regulations to help the common man?

I don't hate. I'm perfectly fine with what our government is SUPPOSED to be. My problem is that it has gone way above and beyond what our forefathers invisioned. So I and many others need to not only complain, but do so far more then I do now, and complain loudly, until someone listens. What's that saying about how evil goes on when good men do nothing? (I forget exactly how it goes.) Nothing is going to change if we do nothing. So pardon me if I complain to high heaven. Let's not allow the small minded, power hungry, corrupt fools in Washington destroy our way of life and liberty.

Ok, this is really starting to suck. How can I ever gain any hosting credits if anwii's posts keep getting deleted? It's so slow here these days, there's virtually no one to have a conversation with and besides all that, I rather enjoy argueing with anwii.

[Indego_Media 1]

Ok, this is really starting to suck. How can I ever gain any hosting credits if anwii's posts keep getting deleted? It's so slow here these days, there's virtually no one to have a conversation with and besides all that, I rather enjoy argueing with anwii.

Hey SheepDog, i think we all enjoy a qood stouch with Anwii from time to time. i do agree though if they keep deleting his posts then we will have very little to actually chat about....

Hey hope you and you puppies are doing well

cheers

Jase

[sheepdog 10]

Pups and all her are doing well, thanks for asking. I saw your comment about your new litter, tried to respond but got an error saying action failed. We had a litter of Standard Schnauzers last night. Only 5 and they were huge. But I'd rather have 5 big stroung pups as a litter of 9 scrawny ones, they always seem to just do better.

 

Yes, I'm going to miss anwiii around here.

 

Welcome satsuke1!

I'm hoping since you posted on this thread that your not a goat herder whom I may of ticked off.

I like goat herders, really I do.

 

We do have a special section for newbies to make introductions, but it's fine with me if you want to do it here. Tell us a little about yourself and what your interestes are. Hope you find your time here to be beneficial and educational.

[k_nitin_r 8]

Oh, don't worry. I can be argumentative if someone wants me to be, in a not-so-offensive way, if you know what I mean.But, yes, with the posts getting deleted, I see your posts in this thread without the threads that you replied to and so it does not really seem right.BTW, the United States has a specific visa type for seasonal workers, including farm workers. I sometimes wonder who would need those visas considering that folks in Canada can come over and work. Perhaps its for the people from Mexico? I wonder how farms would hire from overseas, considering that they don't have any way to reach out to folks from across the border. I would hazard a guess that perhaps they would know somebody who knows somebody who has family or a friend in need of a job or perhaps there is some kind of agency that handles recruitment to provide labor to help out on the farm. When foreign workers are involved, I wonder how labor issues are handled. Do they have labor unions or do they have their respective countries' embassies or consulates to represent them in the event of a dispute involving a large number of workers from the same nation.BTW, in the defense of the government, I would have to add that the government is in need of money and they need some way to generate cash. Taking away more cash from the wealthy is unfair because they worked hard for their money so should enjoy their privilege. Taxing the poor would be unreasonable because they lack the means to pay. If you tax the people who hire help, they're the folks who probably have the money. Besides, taxing businesses does not sound as 'evil' as taxing individuals and so it sounds like the right thing to do.I am not really sure the government would need to get new SUVs to get inspectors to reach the farms for inspection. They could probably get used automobiles that were bought out in the cash for clunkers deals and have catalytic converters and have the engines tuned to get the vehicles to run cleaner. I'm not really sure if a decade old vehicle would be suitable to run in the country side but that would depend on the condition of the vehicle. Some old vehicles are really well maintained and you can barely tell that the vehicle is a decade old. On the other hand, others would have rusting bodies from uncleaned mud deposits, paint fading from the vehicle being parked in the hot sun, and perhaps underbody rusting from the vehicle not being pressure-washed often enough or from not having rust treatment performed on the vehicle.When the government intervenes in business operations, business owners do get irked because it does take away resources in the forum of expenses that could otherwise be put to use in the business or be given back to the owners of the business as dividends, but what does one person harm does another person good because the goat or sheep herders would get a better bed to sleep on. Perhaps the regulation comes from a lack of inexpensive healthcare for non-citizens? I would imagine that citizens get better healthcare facilities or cheaper healthcare services when compared to immigrant non-citizens or non-immigrant workers.The economy has been tough since 2008, but if the government sees that things have improved enough, it can start trying to pull itself together to avoid defaulting on its debt. When a nation defaults on its debt, that raises greater concerns for the economy than a particular industry losing out because of taxes.My other argument for the regulation being applied only for foreign nationals being employed is that the government would like to promote farms to hire locally, even if the labor is more expensive, just as the government has done within the technology industry and within managerial positions. Their reasoning is that if there are skills or labor available locally, why should organizations hire cheaper when there are citizens who are unemployed? The taxes or immigration procedures or legalities of hiring non-immigrant foreign workers help discourage organizatios from hiring foreign workers and this creates an advantage for local workers. It helps the economy as a whole at the end of the day rather than a particular industry.

[sheepdog 10]

am not really sure the government would need to get new SUVs to get inspectors to reach the farms for inspection. They could probably get used automobiles that were bought out in the cash for clunkers deals

They could and they should, but trust me, they won't. The recently passed new dog breeder regulations in Missouri allowed for the hiring of several new inpectors, for which they purchased brand new Dodge Ram trucks, probably $40,000 rigs. To do so, they increased the ceiling on the licence I must pay for from $500 top, to $2,5000!!!

Passing the costs on to business may seem reasonable, unless of course, it happens to be your business!

 

I really don't know how the shepherds find the farmers, I doubt it is anything so complicated as labor unions. I suspect that it is threw word of mouth, or the seasonal labors find a job and then come back each year as they are needed to the same farm. I do agree that is seems foolish to hire immigrants when the unemployment rate in this country is so high, but what do you do when unemployed American workers only want high paying jobs in nice air conditioned offices sitting on their backsides typing away at a computer or answering the telephone? Your not going to get them to live out in the middle of no where and have to be outside all day in the heat or cold.

 

As far as the cash for clunkers, that program required that all the cars turned in were sent to the crusher and turned into scrap metal. None of those cars were allowed to be resold. This of course, has caused more problems for those of us who depend on purchasing used car parts at salvage yards instead of high priced new parts. Some used parts are now in serious short supply.

Edited November 8, 2011 by sheepdog (see edit history)

[k_nitin_r 8]

If the government did have to buy new SUVs to get the new inspectors to their work sites, getting Dodge Ram trucks is overkill. The Suzuki Jimmy is one of the cheapest off-road capable vehicles out there and can seat four people comfortably. Sure, driving a Dodge Ram does look a whole lot cooler, but that's just a load of burden on the planet - fuel consumption, lugging around the weight of so much metal only to carry one person, and the huge price tag which does not seem to deter the government from getting some of those to get work done in the country side. Okay, so perhaps the Suzuki Jimmy is stretching it too far, there is the Suzuki Vitara that does not look like the government is doing some serious cost-cutting yet it does not cost a whole lot for the government to acquire a fleet of those SUVs. Shepherd bed inspectors do not need to tow any cattle along or carry cattle in the back of the truck so the need for a large vehicle to carry just one person is like building a nuclear reactor to power an electric toothbrush.There are people out there who dream of getting jobs in an office, but surely there must be people out there who just want to earn a living. The problem farmers face in India is that the government hires labor to construct roads and they pay good wages as well so labor became much more expensive for farmers so food prices went up and so did everything else. However, for the government it does not matter because their objective was to demonstrate commitment to their election promise of providing employment and when the hired hands make good money in highway construction projects, why would they settle for less to work on farms? Besides, the farm workers can wait till the crops are ready to be harvested and then they go on strike when no alternate arrangements can be made. The farmers are then forced to shell out extra cash to meet the demands of the workers on the farm to avoid crop spoilage. Now, this is how we would expect it to work but farmers are cutting back production because of a shortage of workers who will accept a reasonable pay, considering the price of the finished crop, so with less production comes higher prices and dissatisfied farm owners. The good that did come out of it all is that farmers get free electricity with the current government. However, there's a catch - the free electricity is of a lower voltage than previous provided and a lot of the farm equipment, especially the water pumps, do not really manage with that electricity. Also, electricity is available for fewer hours in the day, perhaps about two hours in a day, so people have to wake up early in the morning and head out to the fields or they do not get electricity to run their water pumps.Hiring immigrant workers create a scenario that is exactly the reverse. With the huge in-flow of foreign farm workers, the average wages drop and farm workers will be offered less than they currently are getting paid. With decreasing pay comes a lower standard of living and thus a tendency to seek out other jobs, perhaps a job flipping burgers or manning the isles of a supermarket. Then comes a shortage of labor, reducing production, increase in imports, increasing prices of food, inflation, and pretty much everything associated with an unstable economy, as if we have not had enough of those already. When a major shift occurs, it typically results in an economic disturbance that is harder to control than to prevent any change in the first place, hence the need to regulate the hiring of foreign farm workers.BTW, about the cash for clunkers deal, some vehicles did make it out to exports and end up in third world nations for cheap, at least initially. The usage of vehicle parts is something that the government did not think of because there's so much that can be re-used. Perhaps the chassis can be used to build hybrid vehicles, if the vehicle has not suffered from any major accident or rusting. An engine overhaul/rebuild should reduce pollution significantly if the problem is with excessive exhaust emissions. However, one can also argue that the use of parts from the clunkers would mean that somebody would use the catalytic converters and engines too and that would get polluting vehicles back on the roads again, except with different vehicle bodies. Perhaps what the government could do is mandate a pollution check, like the governments do in most parts of the world when issuing a pollution-check certificate (as they do in India, because the vehicles are registered for fifteen years) or renewing the vehicle registration (which happens every year in the UAE).

[sheepdog 10]

so the need for a large vehicle to carry just one person is like building a nuclear reactor to power an electric toothbrush.

Oh, I love that one! Have to remember that! It reminds me of one of my other favorites, Do you know what an Elephant is? It's a mouse built to government specifications!

You can't imagine the number of times I have questioned the sanity of humans. What good are nice roads if you starve to death and can't travel them? Why are farmers always on the bottom of the pecking order, when in fact, if it was not for farmers, the world's population would starve to death? Farmers have always suffered because of the greed and stupidity of others. Crops have a limited shelf life, they have to be processed when the time is right and that time is often a very short window of opportunity. Bad enough they have to deal with natural disasters like droughts, late freezes, and the like, but then can't get their crops in when they do have a good year. Really make you wonder doesn't it?

[moongumery 0]

You definitely need to watch King of the Hill and Dale character - he also freaked out about gov's conspiracies.

[sheepdog 10]

Isn't King of the Hill one of those cartoon type shows, like the Simpsons? If it is, I just passed it by, haven't really watched cartoons since I grew up. I can't really remember it, I don't watch all that much Tv, and usually the Sci Fi Channel is all I watch. But this really isn't conspiracy theory. This is a stone cold fact that the Department of Labor is trying to get laws changed that will prevent children from working on their families farm. And hey, your not being paranoid if somebody really is watching you!

[k_nitin_r 8]

Thinking of an elephant as a mouse built to government specifications is hard to imagine in developing nations. In fact, the citizens of India would boldly claim that a mouse is an elephant built by the government after most of the budget was spent on filling the pockets of the politicians and the mouse was the result of whatever little remained. Corruption in the United States is downplayed to a great extent when compared to corruption in most of the developing world. Sure, you can pay somebody to look the other way wherever you are, be it Paris, London, Lebanon, Perth, Nepal, or deep within the jungles of the Amazon, but you do not hear much about it internationally like you hear about it in the developing world.In India, farming is encouraged by the government and they do setup a lot of programs to get more people into a trade that is slowly becoming less attractive for the youth of today. To encourage people to take up farming, the government imposes absolutely no income tax on agricultural income. However, income that is obtained indirectly from agriculture, such as through the sale of cattle and the 'excessive' refining of agricultural product is taxed, but you do not really find a lot of people aware of the extent of taxable income as they do not hire tax consultants and the government does not bother going after dairy farmers and poultry farms to collect on the non-payment of income taxes. Farmers themselves get free electricity for their farms, as I mentioned in an earlier post, but the timings for the electricity supply have gone from bad to worse as a result of the free electricity program - right now, the electricity is supplied by the government for about two hours from midnight and within the two hours, you would still find powercuts. Farmers who have planted crops run diesel generators on their farms to power the water pumps to continue to harvest their crops instead of seeing their investment on seeds, labour, and farming equipment go to waste (a lot of it is spent on labour with farming being more of a labour intensive operation in India).Kids these days do not want to follow their parents' footsteps and run farms and would much rather sell the farm land and move to the city working for a software development firm because of the current payscale for software development jobs, which are the result of outsourced contracts from different parts of the world.

[sheepdog 10]

I find this information about farming in India very fasinating. No wonder the growth in that country is so big! At least they are smart enough to realize where their food comes from. While they may be getting tons of high tech jobs, or at least answering telephones, they haven't forgotten they have to have food to buy with all that money they are making. With the benifits in place for farming, I suspect that there will always be people who can't handle the life style in the big cities and will be more than happy to stay down on the farm as long as they can make a decent living. I feel much that way myself. Young people may all do a stint in the big city, but when they get a little older (and dare I say wiser?) they may had back to the farm in droves.

[k_nitin_r 8]

sheepdog,The problem with farming in India is that the workers have got construction jobs that pay better than farming jobs so farmers have either got to match the pay rate of construction jobs, which is hard to do, or switch to a different business. Some large-scale farmers are able to bear the higher salary expenses but other people have simply sold their farms and decided farming isn't for them any more.Having said that, I still see farms with crops on both sides of the highway that I drive past every month so when folks say that they've stopped farming or that farming is not profitable, it does not seem to be the case at all - the plants and trees are still out there.The folks who grow up in cities cannot really head to the farms - they simply cannot adapt to working in the heat and after being couch potatoes all their lives, they can't take the hard manual labor. The older folk who decided to head back to their roots did manage to take to farming at least on a small scale.

[sheepdog 10]

The fact that farming has never been a high paying job has always been a big part of the problem. I know, I've tried it nearly my whole life. Even when I had other employment, I still had the farm too. With livestock, by the time you buy a little feed for them, and keep them wormed and other things that are absolutly needed, there isn't enough money when you sell off the kids or calves or whatever to pay the cost of what you have put in them. It's kind of a sad state of affairs. Especially when you realize that you have to have farmers or you won't eat. My fears is that the huge corperations will eventually take over, and then they will forse changes, and we will then have to pay at the grocery stores whatever they demand. Not something you really want hanging over your head. When you control the food supply, you control the people.