throwing monkey wrenches into the machinery

Not consenting to being governed doesn’t mean we should rest on our laurels while the government machine rolls over us. To further the cause of freedom we must tackle one impossible thing at a time. One way to do that is to nominate and vote for people to head up deep state agencies who realize how ludicrous their job is.

What follows are tips on how to do that.

While Trump’s cabinet picks have been a mixed bag so far, some important positions remain open. As a farmer and a health conscious eater, I’m paying close attention to the options for the Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), or as the well known farmer and writer Joel Salatin likes to call it, the USduh. I’m also watching options for the NIH, the CDC and Fauci’s old position at NIAID. As a long time natural builder I’m watching Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). And of course, living in the middle of millions of acres of wilderness means I’m also watching the EPA.

So you don’t have to do so, I’ve been tracking nominees since RFK’s MAHA organization put up a site called Nominees For the People a few weeks back. On this site you could nominate people you deem worthy of running a particular agency. I use the word “could” because nominations were just closed. However, you can still vote for candidates that have been nominated and you can still comment about candidates you favor or don’t favor.

This is a first. Since it appears the powers that shouldn’t be will continue their vain, misguided attempt to govern us for the foreseeable future, this offers us a way to throw some monkey wrenches into the machinery of government. Let’s hope this option becomes a regular thing so we can continue to chip away at the tyrannical behemoth known as government.

I got an email about Nominees for the People the day it went live. I immediately thought of two people I would like to see take over two agencies.

my nomination for the nih, the cdc or niaid

My first thought was how disruptive someone like Dr, Tom Cowan would be to the medical industrial complex. As an outspoken critic of the unproven theory that viruses exist and are causative of disease, if he were to head up an agency within HHS under RFK Jr. - either the NIH, which could include Fauci’s former position as head of the NIAID, or the CDC - the proverbial shit would hit the fan. Why? Because even those within RFK Jr’s inner circle who profess to be on the cutting edge of health issues are, nevertheless, still on-board with the antiquated but very profitable and materialistic idea that viruses determine our health.

If you think RFK’s position as the Secretary of HHS will be akin to a monkey wrench thrown into the works of the medical industrial complex, then appointing Dr. Tom Cowan to head up the CDC, the NIH or even the NIAID would be like throwing a fire truck into the works of HHS. Even his confirmation process in the Senate would be a beautiful thing to watch - because of their ignorance about health, he would leave all of those Senators scratching their heads in utter confusion. If he actually got a position, RFK’s efforts might end up taking a back seat to the profoundly fundamental changes Dr. Cowan would bring about. For the first time we would have someone in a position of power who is less concerned about the profitability of the materialistically focused medical industrial complex and more concerned about everyone’s physical, mental and spiritual health.

So I nominated Dr. Cowan. I hope many of you will vote for him.

For those who don’t know anything about Dr. Cowan, here is my October 2021 interview with him.

To vote for and comment about Dr. Tom Cowan, go here -

https://discourse.nomineesforthepeople.com/c/health/7

Scroll down until you find his name. Then click on it and you’ll be taken to his nomination. The vote box is to the left of his name. To be able to vote and comment, you may be asked to join.

These instructions will apply to all of the following agencies.

my nomination for usda

After thinking about the beautiful turmoil Dr. Cowan would cause within HHS, my second thought was what a glorious upheaval Joel Salatin would cause as Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture. Long time readers will know that I’ve mentioned Joel several times over the last four years. Those of you who have read any of his numerous books will know that I borrow some of his terminology.

(For the record, as of 11/20 it has been exactly four years since I began this stack)

Being the humble person he is, he is instead supporting Congressman Thomas Massie of Tennessee for Secretary of the USDA. Again, long time readers will know that I’ve also written about Massie as being the coauthor of the Prime Act, which would give states the ability to legalize ma and pa, custom, processed meat operations. That would go a long way towards lowering the cost of food and helping local economies. Here is what Joel said in his most recent blog about Massie.

“Because he's a small farmer trying to sell beef to neighbors and butcher his own chickens, Massie has taken a deep interest in agriculture ever since being elected a congressman.  He's used his engineering degree to build a solar-powered automatic chicken shelter mover.  He lives completely off-grid and has permaculture-style gravity-fed water systems.  The guy's a genius, but practical and philosphically libertarian.  I can't imagine a better friend of food freedom and a better partner to RFK Jr.”

To understand what Massie is up against, here is what Joel said about Trumps other leading contenders for the USDA position.

 “But for a flavor of other contenders, here are three.  Zippy Duvall, current president of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), by far and away the largest farm lobby.  He's a factory chicken famer from Georgia, raising 750,000 annually.  In case you think the AFBF represents farmers, it's actually an insurance company masquerading as a farm outfit.  Over my lifetime, no group has been as opposed to my initiatives as AFBF.  They are not the farmers' friends; they are friends of big ag, food processors, and nutritional and environmental destruction.”  

“Next is Aurelia Skipwith Giarometto, a nearly 20-year veteran of Monsanto and currently the Sustainable Agriculture Partnership Manager at that glyphosate-promoting industrial agriculture corporation.  Of course, she would be a natural extension of current Ag Sec. Tom Vilsack, known lovingly as "Mr. Monsanto."  I met with him when Terry McCauliffe ("parents shouldn't tell teachers what to teach their children") was running for Virginia governor (against current governor Glenn Youngkin).  I'll never forget him telling the small group assembled:  "the reason we need farmers is because their children make the best soldiers."  Yes, that was Obama's guy and Biden's guy.  Did someone say something about forever wars?”

 “Next is Ted McKinney, whose career so far has spanned 19 years with Dow AgroSciences and 14 years with Elanco, subsidiary of Big Pharma outfit Eli Lilly Co.  I'm sure he'd be interested in reducing drugs and chemicals in our livestock.  Most people don't know that American livestock uses twice as many drugs, in aggregate, as people.  Yes, he's certainly a friend of nutrition and drug-free animal husbandry.”

 “Okay, that 's just a flavor of the contenders, and except for Massie, all of these would sabotage anything RFK Jr. would try to do over on the health sector.  The truth is you cannot separate farming from food, or food from farming.  So if the Trump team has any modicum of philosophical consistency, it will bring Massie forward rather than these shills for industrial chemical agriculture.”

Someone beat me to nominating Joel Salatin as Secretary of the USDA by a few hours. I hope you vote for either him or Thomas Massie. Because we are only as healthy as the soil from whence our food comes, and because the industrial food complex has done a fine job of destroying the soil of the US, either Salatin or Massie will help turn that around. You can vote for both if you like. It’s possible they could both serve in different positions within the USDA. Two monkey wrench slinging warriors in the USDA would be better than one.

In an earlier blog, Joel said he has been contacted by the Trump team about a position. He didn’t say what that position was. He may not have been told. Given that he is in favor of having Massie head up the USDA, it may be that Joel might get another position. Or, perhaps he was asked if he wanted the USDA and he declined in favor of Massie. Your votes may make the difference.

To vote for Joel or Massie, go here -

https://discourse.nomineesforthepeople.com/c/agriculture/6

the hud can of worms

Because fate had me present at the birth of the natural building movement in 1994, I have strong opinions about housing. I’m not going to go into that here, but if any new readers want to know more about that, here are some earlier posts.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is as misguided, if not more so, then the USDA, HHS or any other agency. As I’ve said many times, because they do more harm than good, we would be better off if none of them existed. Allow folks to settle things in court, as was originally intended.

But if we are to have HUD, what follows is why we need to throw some major wrenches into its works.

Trump has proposed building 10 “freedom cities” on federal, public land. First of all, that land is held as part of the greater commons for everyone who is a citizen of the US. My farm is surrounded by millions of acres of federal land that functions as one of the healthiest, intact native ecosystems in the lower 48. As I write this, that land is full of hunters harvesting deer and javelina to keep their families in meat until next season. That land is not the private play ground of real estate developers like Donald Trump and his ilk. Letting them run rampant over that land would destroy it forever.

Elanor Ostrom won the Noble Prize in economics by pointing out that no one knows what’s best for local bioregions and local economies better than the local folks who have been living there for multiple generations. Trumps “freedom cites” would trash that concept.

Are Trumps “freedom cities” just another version of 15 minute cities?

Why this is such a big problem is because one of the leading contenders for Secretary of HUD is Bill Pulte. Pulte is the grandson of the home building and real estate mogul William J. Pulte. As one of the biggest developers in Arizona, Pulte Homes is responsible for the destruction of tens of thousands of acres of endangered native habitat here. This type of mindless development has no regard for the native landscape. Their modus operandi is to completely bulldoze away all of the native habitat down to bare ground, then cover that up with concrete and ticky-tacky, energy intensive, stick frame housing. Because the idea of vernacular architecture is not on the radar of these developers, all of these tacky-tacky houses look like they came from another planet. They look as out of place as a cat in a dog kennel. Furthermore, because they use toxic materials coming from all over the planet, they have loads of embodied energy and create toxic house syndrome.

It’s the same rape-and-run tactics used by developers across the US to maximize personal profits at the expense of us and the earth that supports all life.

In 2022 Pulte was the largest donor to Trumps pac. For the record, he’s also been an ongoing donor to Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA.

Jack Ryan is also in the running to head up HUD. Ryan is another real estate developer, although he comes at it from a different perspective - building housing for homeless children. He also provides a real estate service that seeks to lower the commission fees for agents to zero. That could lower the cost of homes by 20%. Ryan claims to be running a Christian business. That’s all fine and good. Otherwise, everything else Ryan does is conventional. He uses the same toxic materials imported from all over the world and he gives no consideration to the embodied energy of the materials he uses. Of course that also means he has no concept of using naturally occurring local resources to create vernacular architecture.

I’m sorry, I don’t have a recommendation for HUD. I can only say I’m not impressed by these two options. HUD seems like a lost cause. Making some unfavorable comments on their nominations may help.

To comment and vote on HUD, go here -

https://discourse.nomineesforthepeople.com/c/infrastructure/11

epa

I can’t think of a better monkey wrench to throw into the gears of the Environmental Protection Agency than Dane Wigington.

Over the past 1.5 years I’ve linked to Danes work many times. Much of what I’ve written about geoengineering I’ve learned from him. He’s been courteous and helpful when I sought him out for specific information about geoengineering. His ground breaking documentary about geoengineering, The Dimming, stands as the most informative source of information there is regarding the toxic elements used in geoengineering and the negative impacts it has on us and all life on earth.

I’ve gone through many the numerous list of candidates for this agency so you don’t have to. In my humble opinion, Dane stands head and shoulders above the rest. The fact that he lives a self sufficient, off-grid lifestyle similar to me is just frosting on the cake.

To vote and comment on Dane go here -

https://discourse.nomineesforthepeople.com/c/environmental/5

Enjoy throwing some monkey wrenches into the machinery.

Be free.