Rorinthas:

You apparently didn't read the entire bill, because it is just as insidious and horrific as people are claiming. There's the change the liberals can believe in ...

Who wants to argue that the Democrats aren't a bunch of **** fascists now?

Its in the "manufacture" of manufacture, process, distribute...

It would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between individuals) as smuggling into “the United States.” Since under that law, the US is a corporate entity and not a location, “entry of food into the US” covers food produced anywhere within the land mass of this country and “entering into” it by virtue of being produced.

This is honestly nothing new.

You guys do realize that, amongst many other things, pornography is functionally illegal in the US, and is just subject to selective prosecution whenever the moral crusaders get uppity, right?

Senate Bill S510 (FDA Food Safety Modernization Act) Explained:

When I heard about Senate Bill s510 I was completely freaked out. The first thing I heard about it was that it makes it illegal to grow your own food. I immediately got on the phone to call my senator about how OUTRAGED I was and why was he planning on putting my grandma in jail for that cute little patch of cucumbers she grows for her canned pickles! What kind of man likes to put grandmas in JAIL HUH? In fact, I think I will just go down there and tell him what an ******* he is in person!! But then I regained some of my brain cells and remembered that MY senator probably didn’t write the bill and took a journey down the rabbit hole to see what I could find out about this bill.

The first thing I found out was it doesn’t make growing your own food at home and eating it yourself illegal. PHHHEWWWW!! Grandma’s pickles are SAFE!! Then I started actually reading what WAS in the bill.

You will probably think this bill is a good thing. Unless you are one of those tin foil hat wearing weirdos who think you need rights and freedoms. It might even be better than that wonderful piece of extistence we call the Patriot Act (Don’t you LOVE that one?)

A couple pertinent facts on the bill include:

The original bill no longer exists. The new S510 is only one part of an amendment they kept. (Kinda makes you wonder how bad the first one was huh?) It also is only in committee, which means the senate has been asked to consider it. Will they vote on it? Why yes of course, otherwise the senate doesn’t care about the children. Did I mention the bill is sponsored by congressman Dingell?

but here is why you should be mad as hell and just aren’t going to take it anymore:

If you trade or give your food away, or sell it at farmers markets, you are no longer considered growing for personal consumption which puts you in a category as a Community Supported Agriculture supplier, or so you forget what it actually means CSA’s for short. This is a whole world of difference because now your food has to be “traceable” That means if your neighbor little sally walker has a tummy ache, you need to be held accountable for giving her those bacteria laden zucchinis. What it really means is a drive to the freshly built State Agriculture Office, to talk to the ladies who got promoted from the DMV to fill out a stack of paperwork the size of War and Peace, pay a handy little “CSA Liscensing fee” plus all the taxes and stuff of course, agree to surprise inspections, OH, and don’t forget that dollar to the blabbity blabb fund. By the way would you like to register to vote sir?

So in other words you don’t grow it yourself, you probably aren’t going to get to eat it. Which is going to make you a pretty big ball of sad if you get most of your fruits and veggies from farmers markets. Is this going to be the end of organic farming? No probably not directly or in the near future but farmers who can afford to give away 50% of their profits to the government to implement this bill will probably not going to be living in your town. And because of the lack of farmers putting their heirloom seed grown produce out there, we will eventually see a decline in the amount of heirloom seeds available to the public. The worst part though is the bill will directly affect pet and animal feed manufacturers as well, which means higher feed costs for farmers, which means you ain’t makin chicken wings for the backyard barbecue buddy. It’s all hot dogs from here. We will probably still get hamburgers for a while, but eventually hamburgers will be the price of steak, steak will be the price of lobster, lobster will be filled with oil.

So the question now is how much do you love freedom? And vegetables.

PS there is a counter part in the house of representatives to this bill called H.R. 2749 I haven’t checked it out but it may be cause for a part 2 and s510 could cost Americans $825 billion in 2010 alone

Most of that is done at a state and local level and on a case by case basis. That's why we have a legal system instead of automatic penalties for the most part.

It is a federal crime to transport obscene material across state lines. Since we're talking about the Internet, the "across state lines" part is a given. Several court cases have ruled that whether or not material is obscene is defined by the community standards in the place of consumption or sale. So for a pornographer to get busted all that needs to happen is for one person in a very religious rural Kansas town to subscribe to his content.

In fact, under the obscenity statutes, the vast majority of all Internet content is illegal. If it's considered obscene *anywhere* in the US, then it's not legal to put it on the Internet.

People need to stop getting worked up over laws like this. Selective enforcement is and has always been the norm and there are probably fifty laws you break every day that the government can legally arrest you on. "Rule of law" means jack ****. If enough of the populace thinks you should be in prison, the government will find a reason to put you there.

People need to stop getting worked up over laws like this. Selective enforcement is and has always been the norm and there are probably fifty laws you break every day that the government can legally arrest you on.

I thought you supported taking money from rich people when "enough of the populace" thinks they don't deserve it?

I'm not sure what your point is, taxing the rich isn't even unconstitutional, if 51% of the populace decides the "rich" aren't allowed to have any money then it will be taken from them.

I'm not sure what your point is, taxing the rich isn't even unconstitutional, if 51% of the populace decides the "rich" aren't allowed to have any money then it will be taken from them.

More like 75% of active voters. (You'd need a constitutional ammendment.)

So it's ok to take people's money with arbitrary taxes but not ok to restrict their vegetable transactions?