Rules to Grow By
I’m a farmer. I care about the environment and depend on it to produce healthy, nutritious crops. Sales of my crops can be easily damaged by food safety scares resulting from someone cutting corners—I understand the need for regulation.
However, as a small businessperson, I don’t see regulations as the solution to every problem. Regulations must be written and administered intelligently, with a sound understanding of the activity they were intended to address. Unfortunately, recent nutrient regulations proposed by Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) are not!
Good regulation results from cooperation and people working together. We have a long history of this in Massachusetts agriculture. Based on this history, and concerns about water quality, Farm Bureau worked with the legislature to give MDAR the ability to regulate fertilizer and manure. Unfortunately, MDAR staff wrote the nutrients regulations without any farmer input. UMass expertise was overlooked, despite the law requiring MDAR to work with the University. The result? Bad regulations that don’t work for farmers or the environment. Farmers are concerned the regulations will jeopardize their livelihoods. Academics say the regulations can actually harm water quality. In short, high-energy fodder for anti-regulation sentiments that are so pervasive in politics today.
In recent public hearings, MDAR got the message to drop the bunker mentality and work collaboratively. Regulation, and government in general, must be a cooperative effort. MDAR’s recent debacle with the nutrient regulations highlights this fact. Hopefully they’ll learn from it.
Old-Fashioned Teacher
Steve Hussey’s guest column “Schools Don’t Need The Web” (April 10, 2014) touched a nerve. Being an engineer who also teaches high school math and science, I found learning occurs using the same methods my grandmother used: homework, training, homework, study, homework; requiring attention and interaction and projects that produce thinking. Pushups and pullups and developing teamwork among students all help assist this.
But when I kept using “old-fashioned” methods, I was told that my contract would not be renewed. We lost many experienced teachers that year.
Boston Marathon Bombing: A Pack of Lies
The terrorists have won. Forgive me for thinking that they’ve all been working hand-in-glove with Western military forces, intelligence agencies and/or security companies since way before 9/11.
I visited Franklin Street in Watertown last year, visited the address of Dave Henneberry’s boat, where alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was eventually apprehended. And, because I pay attention to alternative media and had read many eyewitness accounts of the police lockdown of the neighborhood, I was flabbergasted! I knew instantly that the official story of the Boston bombings was a pack of lies.
Americans, it’s time to erase the lie “In God We Trust” from all our currency and replace it with “In Guards We Trust.” For the selling of fear has so easily and completely won out. We will have won the War on Terror when events like the Boston Marathon can be held without any security presence. But, if history is any guide, it will be a long and painful time before we’re able to dismantle the police state that we have eagerly become. The 1 percent will never relinquish all that power and money easily.
