The pubic comment sessions for the proposed mandatory recycling plan are coming up soon. Since anyone who works a 9-5 ob will need to take off work to attend, I thought I'd put up the schedule. Interested persons may attend the plan development meetings for the establishment of the proposed organized recycling collection service. These meetings will be held in the City Commission room at City Hall located at 6 East 6th Street on the following dates: • Wednesday, July 11th, 3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. • Thursday, July 26th, 1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. • Friday, August 24th, 10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

For more information: http://www.lawrenceks.org/wrr/Curbside_Recycling

Recently on this forum, there have been a few letters from older folks fussing about certain euphemisms for happy bedtime fun time.While I do understand that standards for appropriate public discourse have evolved over the years, I think that every generation has felt that subsequent generations use too many bad words. Typically folks who like to think of themselves as conservatives, or followers of one specific deity, are the people most likely to be feel themselves offended. These are the same sorts of folks who don't like porn, and perhaps are cheering Santorum's latest salvo in his one-man war on human sexuality. This in spite of the fact that conservative states consume porn at higher rates than other states.

"Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama."

Yet some of these same delicate sensibilities have no compunction in using a common slang term for several gentleman engaging in a round of mutual pleasure as a descriptive term for persons with a different political or religious perspective. What's worse, these same easily offended chaps then feel it necessary to cry foul when their use of vulgar language is removed from this virtual public forum. They are immediately irate, crying bias against "their kind."

Many of these high-strung U.S. conservative, traditionalist chaps consider themselves Christian. This is unfortunate, since their reputed Lord was quite specific about his dislike of hypocrisy: "So, for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: 'This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16680-porn-in-the-usa-conservatives-are-biggest-consumers.html http://www.keyway.ca/htm2001/20010620.htm

The Bible says nothing about birth control. It says nothing, nada, zip, zero about birth control. So perhaps all the folks slinging bovine excrement about how a woman being in charge of her own fertility is evil ought to just go sit in the corner and read their Bibles. The Bible, however, has many admonishments in favor of abortion. From the website Evilbible.com:
"Abortion: Hosea 9:11-16 Hosea prays for God’s intervention. “Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the murderer. Give them, 0 Lord: what wilt thou give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. . .Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit: yea though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb.”

Clearly Hosea desires that the people of Ephraim can no longer have children. God of course obeys by making all their unborn children miscarry. Is not terminating a pregnancy unnaturally “abortion”?

Numbers 5:11-21 The description of a bizarre, brutal and abusive ritual to be performed on a wife SUSPECTED of adultery. This is considered to be an induced abortion to rid a woman of another man’s child.

Numbers 31:17 (Moses) “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every women that hath known man by lying with him.” In other words: women that might be pregnant, which clearly is abortion for the fetus.

Hosea 13:16 God promises to dash to pieces the infants of Samaria and the “their women with child shall be ripped up”. Once again this god kills the unborn, including their pregnant mothers.

2 Kings 15:16 God allows the pregnant women of Tappuah (aka Tiphsah) to be “ripped open”.

Why Occupy? Well, here are ten good reasons. "So, without further ado, here's Bernie's tax-avoiders list. In this case, one of his staffers informed me, "refund" means "negative federal income tax liability." If you have any quibbles with his facts, let us know in the comments.

1) ExxonMobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings. [Note: Our post last April reported that ExxonMobil was owed $46 million by the IRS.]

2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.

3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.

6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.

7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.

8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.

9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.

10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent."

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/03/bernie-sanders-top-10-tax-avoiders

A march was held in Lawrence on Saturday. South Park was occupied last night. Negotiations are ongoing with Parks & Rec to allow further camping. Protesters were evicted last night in Berlin, Minneapolis and Chicago. London's Occupy movement enters its second day, with permission to continue occupying the space at St.Paul's Cathedral: "The canon chancellor of St Paul's, Reverend Giles Fraser, said he was happy for people to "exercise their right to protest peacefully" outside the cathedral.

Dr Fraser added: "This morning early there was a line of police who were kindly trying to protect the cathedral but I thought that was unnecessary, so we brought them down and there's been no damage to the cathedral and it's been a very peaceful protest as far as I've seen."

Police had initially said it would be "illegal and disrespectful" to camp in front of the cathedral, but they later announced they would not be moving anyone on from the site. Sources: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15324901 http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/10/occupy-berlin-evicted-police-111016.php http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/10/16/occupy-mn-tents-removed/ http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-occupy-chicago-protesters-relocate-to-grant-park-20111015,0,3664663.story

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS ! ! ! ! !

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18-year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971 . . . before computer, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land . . . all because of public pressure.

CONGRESSIONAL REFORM ACT OF 2011

1. Term Limits 12 years max, some possible options are below. A. Two Six-year Senate terms B. Six Two-year House terms C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms

2. No Tenure / No Pension Members of Congress receive a salary while in office, that salary ends when they leave office.

3. Congress members (past, present & future) are to participate in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with all Americans.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plans, just as all Americans do.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Members of Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present members of Congress are void effective 1/1/12.

The American people did not make the contract members of Congress enjoy; Congress made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.