Backyard gardening and seed saving to be illegal

[ComputerGuy]

Yes this country has gone from a manufacturing based economy to a service based with too many sucking the govt teet.

[610Alpha]

Speaking from a manufacturing side, it costs a lot of money to build something ground up and then ship it to say Brazil. If a company can build half of it there and the other half here then that reduces some of the cost. Don't forget there are huge tariffs on our products when we ship to other countries. Sometimes it is necessary to build the whole thing over seas, where its close to the customer and reduces the amount of lead time for the customer. Also don't forget that our economy isn't growing as rapidly as say India or China so the companies that are here in the US may not be buying up the American made products as fast so we need to move a good portion of the production closer to the higher number of orders. Businesses aren't in business to lose money. I will also say that the unions have had a negative impact on businesses (they extort the union members with their dues and they harbor lazy workers, my father has told me stories of this and he was union for 35 years), some states are friendlier to manufacturing than others based on that states laws about unions. Don't forget that an american company that makes a product overseas and sells it overseas gets to bring home profits to the US and if the Gov't is taking a huge chunk of that the company can't add jobs, they can't invest as much into R & D etc.

**Note: I have worked in manufacturing on the shop floor (steel bender, part stamper, press operator, and shear press operator), I am the son of a UAW Pipefitter for a major auto mfr., 2 grandfathers that worked in manufacturing, and I am currently classified as management for a manufacturing company. That is my vitae, I have been on all sides of this and it is not an easy thing to solve.

There are some manufacturing plants being added, of course they don't make the headlines, here in the US and additional manufacturing capacity is being added to plants. Remember they (the enemies of our free society) want to pit us against one another and one way to do that is to pit the guy that works on the shop floor against the guy that drives a desk.

We do need to see more mfr. jobs here in the US, how do we do that? Have to create an environment to where a business can export a product and not have to raise the price so high that it can't compete with the local product. What causes a company to raise its price, shipping costs, tariffs, taxes on money brought back here. These manufacturing companies in the US are competing against companies that are based in china and india where the labor cost is so low that they can afford to ship and pay tariffs and still beat american companies on price in our own country. They have you fooled into thinking that its a level playing field out there when it isn't.

[Klayton]

Just have one thing to say ZENITH

Now you young whipper snappers may have never heard of Zenith, but it was the LAST American Made television.

What happened you say? Well, my theory which I came up with using hard data, the Japanese companies undersold at a loss, for several years, so that the price of a Zenith (regardless of its better quality glass and tubes-yes they used tubes back then) people took the (as I like to say) the walmart special. No company and I mean NO company can handle NOT selling their goods very long. Add to that the demand of medical expenses, and ever raising salaries courtesy of the unions and Zenith went belly up.

Now, the government DID notice it, but too late. Thus the threat of large tariffs on Japanese automobiles if they try to completely undermine the big 3. See the way I see it, our government is too busy worrying about getting re-elected that they are always making bad decisions.

You see its not what is right for America, its what the majority of voters want. A HUGE flaw in our system, seeing how the number on welfare grows rapidly every year...

[Benn Gleck]

This bill passed in the Senate on 11/30 by a roll call vote. 73 ayes, 25 nays and 2 present/not voting.

With 56 democRATS, 15 Republicans and 2 Independents voting yea and 25 Republicans voting nay.

The bill now goes on to the house to be voted on. Keep in mind that debate may be taking place on a companion bill in the house, rather than on this particular bill.

[610Alpha]

@Klayton - excellent example!! I had forgotten about them, I have a 2nd cousin that used to work at their Springfield, Mo. plant. I started another thread about manufacturing in the general discussion section if anyone wants to discuss this further.

[Triple-sod]

Over here in the U.K, and indeed throughout the E.U, we have similar regulations. The Real Seed Catalogue found a pretty simple way to get around it.....

OUR SEED CLUB

In the EU, there is now a list of 'official' vegetable varieties. Seed that is not on the list cannot be 'sold' to the 'public' (even though it is perfectly legal to grow it!). To keep something on the list costs thousands of pounds each year, so it's only worthwhile to 'keep listed' varieties that sell in bulk to farmers, who have very different needs to home growers - a farmer wants their plants to respond to precise chemical inputs, fruit all at once and be tough to stand up to transport and packaging. You on the other hand, want tender vegetables produced over a long season, even during variable years.
Hundreds of thousands of old heirloom varieties (the results of about eleven thousand years of plant breeding by our ancestors) are being lost forever, due to some rather poorly drafted EU legislation. This seems a little foolish. To us, what is important is that more people get to grow these plants (which otherwise would become extinct). So. . . . (and this is the small print) when you request seed, you are also requesting membership of our seed club: 1p of your order pays for a years membership of The Real Seed Club. We then deal with your seed request as a member - so we are not dealing with the 'public'.

http://www.realseeds.co.uk/terms.html

[HLorfing]

gotta love those Brits.. im drinking one for you at the pub this week mate!

[Monel]

I would like to see how they think they could enforce that! How can they tell where you got the seed?

[jc2k]

As amazing as it seems, the constitutionality of this b.s. was pretty much covered under the Supreme Court case of Wickard v. Filburn - at the time, the fedgov was limiting how much wheat could be grown by any individual farmer in efforts to manipulate the price of wheat. Roscoe Filburn grew more than he was allotted and was ordered to destroy it and pay a fine. The ridiculous part is that he wasn't even selling the wheat - he was growing it to feed his own chickens. The Supremes found that it was, in fact, interstate commerce because if he hadn't grown the wheat for his own use, he would have had to buy it on the open market. This was the initial case that gave the feds jurisdiction over every facet of our lives - if you follow this convoluted line of thought, then EVERYTHING affects interstate commerce. It's cases like this that expose the flaw of our precedent system. This one really burns me up when I think about it.

[Monel]

Since when has the Constitution stopped them? They just make it up as they please.

[Urban Survivalist]

They can have my seed bank when they come take it from my cold dead hand!