Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

Wednesday

This linkfest is for the 18th of July, 2007.

If you have something interesting you'd like to share, feel free to link it here and leave a trackback.

Just remember the trackback policy.

For the best exposure, go to the blogger's oasis and use the linkfest chooser to choose the posts you'd like to hook up with.

Wednesday Hero - Cpl. Clinton Warrick

Cpl. Clinton Warrick (Soldier On The Left)
Medic with the 2nd Platoon, 300th Military Police Company

Even after having been thrown several meters, knocked unconscious, set aflame and buried under rubble all as a result of a suicide-vehicle-borne IED, a Fort Riley medic braved small-arms fire to save the lives of fellow Soldiers and Iraqi policemen last year.

Cpl. Clinton Warrick received the Army's third highest award for valor during a June 18, 2007 ceremony at Riverside Park for his actions during a Sept. 18, 2006, insurgent attack at the Al Huryia Iraqi Police Station.

Maj. Gen. Carter Ham (soldier on the right), commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division and Fort Riley, present Cpl. Warrick the Silver Star and other awards before his family and friends, and his former 300th MP Co. platoon leader, company commander and first sergeant.

"This is one of Fort Riley's great Soldiers - one of our real, no-kidding heroes," Maj. Gen. Ham said at the ceremony. "It is right and proper that we come here to present you this award for valor. It is heroes like this who make our Army the best in the world and our nation so strong."

You can read the rest of Cpl. Warrick's story here.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero. We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. To find out more about Wednesday Hero, you can go here.

Blogs For Borders Video Blogburst 071707

It was a crazy, busy, amazing weekend in the Chicago area. This week's Blogburst is chock full of video from...

Conference on Immigration -- Lake County Several hundred patriots turned out to listen to and mingle with the likes of Ted Hayes, Monica Ramos & Joe Loya, Rick Biesada, Rosanna Pulido, and William Gheen. Not to mention Chris Burgard, whose movie, Border was screened at the conference (my review is here).

Shopping in Waukegan The anti-law enforcement crowd has been boycotting Waukegan businesses that don't display an orange "no 287(g)" sign in the window, so a bunch of us, led by ALIPAC's William Gheen, went shopping in businesses that DO support local authorities assisting ICE with deporting illegal alien criminals.

Victory in Waukegan! Several hundred patriots and about 1500 from the pro-illegal/open borders side assembled outside Waukegan's town hall as the council met for a final vote on 287(g). There were cops stationed everywhere for several blocks around the building. Snipers on the roof. Mounted police. Police with dogs. Police in riot gear. Everyone was well protected as the council voted (again) to pursue 287(g).

This has been the Blogs For Borders Video Blogburst. The Blogs For Borders Blogroll is dedicated to American sovereignty, border security and a sane immigration policy. If you'd like to join find out how right here.

Technorati Tags: illegal immigration, blogs for borders, Waukegan, Illinois, Law Enforcement, Police, Riot Gear, Open Borders

More fees for government - in the name of the environment

That's what this is really about. From the Seattle Times:

All single-family homes in Seattle must sign up for table-scrap recycling in 2009, the City Council decided Monday.

While residents will have to pay for the service, the city will not check whether they are actually dumping food in the new separate bin.

Reducing food trash was a piece of a larger plan the council unanimously approved Monday to reduce the amount of garbage sent to the landfill.

"We can reduce the waste stream," said Councilmember Richard Conlin, chair of the utilities committee. "We can treat waste as a resource and continue to recirculate it as we reclaim, recycle it or turn it into compost."

Starting in April 2009, all single-family homes will be required to subscribe to food-waste recycling, a program that is now optional through the yard-waste collection program. A variety of containers will be available for different rates. Prices have not been set.

Recycling food waste will be voluntary for apartments, as well as for businesses, which produce twice as much food waste as residents.

...

In another effort to reduce landfill waste, the council wants to raise self-haul rates at the transfer station in 2008, and eventually eliminate the do-it-yourself trips to the transfer stations.

The council declined to ban Styrofoam and plastic garbage bags. For now, SPU will study a ban and plastic-bag tax and report back to the council by the end of this year.

It isn't about reducing the waste stream as Seattle City Councilmember Richard Conlin contends. If it were then the city would actually check whether people were complying.

While residents will have to pay for the service, the city will not check whether they are actually dumping food in the new separate bin.

If this were truly about reducing the amount of food waste that goes into landfills then it would not be voluntary for the organizations that produce twice as much food waste as private residents.

Recycling food waste will be voluntary for apartments, as well as for businesses, which produce twice as much food waste as residents.

It's about fees, cleverly disguised as environmental concern. It's the nanny state run amok, forcing single-family home owners to pay additional fees to support apartment dwellers. Single-family home owners that produce less than a third of the supposed "problem". More socialist redistributionist oppression disguised as environmentalism is not what's needed.

Reducing landfill waste is the stated goal, and there may be some small reduction as a result of all of this, but the city council's true motives are transparent. It's all about more money. Raising self-hauling rates at the transfer station is an effort to reduce the amount of self-hauling. Which means more curbside trash, with extra fees for the extra cans. It's all about money.

Eliminating self-haul trips to the transfer station also means that more trash will sit rotting at the curbside in case of sanitation worker strikes. The same amount of garbage will be created, perhaps even more as the population rises. Landfills will still get filled with garbage.

The only real benefit here is to the city, which gets more revenue. They're even planning to tax plastic bags... I guess more trees will have to die to supply the paper for the replacements. Once upon a time, using plastic bags was thought to be friendlier to the environment than paper for just that reason.

This measure is sure to be popular in Seattle though. After all, it's cloaked in the aura of environmentalism. It's "good for you" to recycle.

I'm waiting for the cloud of flies feeding off of all of those recycled table scraps.

Cross posted at NW Bloggers.