More folks have recently left the country than came here...

Why more and more Americans are living their lives outside the US…in search of freedom

More and more, therefore, freedom-seeking individuals are beginning to seek their freedom abroad. They are renouncing the citizenship they once held so dear, uprooting their lives to sow the seeds of their own liberty in far off lands.

Getting a foreign citizenship (and passport) is essential prior to expatriation; this is totally legal in the USA and you do not have to forfeit your US citizenship as a consequence. However, very few will be able to get a foreign passport so easily. The hard way is to live in a new host country for a long period of time and apply for citizenship.

A better way is if your parents or grandparents were foreign born, to check out whether this could entitle you to a grant of citizenship. Germany for one, grants automatic citizenship to children of German nationals born abroad (until recently this only applied to German fathers, not mothers); this is the best way possible since your foreign citizenship is not something you have to apply for - you already have it and perhaps are just not aware of it. Ireland grants citizenship to grandchildren of Irish nationals regardless of where born, but genealogical proof is required. Expect these rights and programs to become more limited or even to vanish over the coming years, so your readers should investigate the opportunities as soon as possible and avail themselves quickly; there is no downside to having a foreign passport 'at the ready', and it makes international travel much easier even if you do not expatriate.

The act of expatriation is disarmingly simple and quick, but best handled by an attorney in a foreign country who specialized in this. You have to be living overseas to do this, and you have to have a foreign passport otherwise you would become stateless, and as a result the embassy people won't let you renounce your US

citizenship.

Everybody has their own personal reasons for expatriating, but here are some of the benefits:

1) Freedom from the global US tax net. Taxing you no matter where you breathe on this earth is wanton American exceptionalism. What other nations don’t dare do to their citizens, the US government doesn’t think twice about. Once you renounce, it’s your choice either to live the rest of your life free of any tax net, or to pick a place you want to be year-round and opt into the tax system (assuming it’s not a tax-free jurisdiction). If you do, you’ll at least know you have the freedom to walk away from it by simply moving elsewhere.

Taxes in the US are already high, and rates are set to increase across the board. To gain some perspective, it’s clarifying to calculate the number of months per year you work for the government. How many months did it take to pay all the federal, state, and local income taxes, capital gains taxes, FICA taxes, property taxes, and AMT – plus the raft of permitting, licensing and accounting costs you incur over the course of a year? Add corporate taxes if you’re a business owner. And don’t forget the new 3.8% health care surcharge tax on all investment income, including dividends. Be honest and add it all up. You’ll then have a decent idea of how much it costs you in time and money to be a US citizen every year. That cost will rise dramatically going forward.

Here’s the take-away: The biggest guaranteed return on your capital that you’ll ever have is investing your money free of taxes. Do some long-run compounding calculations with and without taxes to see what I mean. I’ll wager John Templeton did.

2) Freedom from the death tax. Its political label is the “estate tax,” but the fact is the tax is based solely on your demise. I used to think the death tax only applied to gains on assets that had not been taxed already. How naïve I was! It grabs half of all your assets, regardless of the fact that you’ve paid taxes on them.

If you have over a few million dollars net worth, your heirs will be writing a heart-stopping check to the IRS. They also may be forced to liquidate your assets to raise cash. This has happened to countless small businesses and family farms. And if you’re a young, talented entrepreneur who goes on to earn substantial wealth over the course of your life, the death tax has you in its crosshairs too.

The death tax is 45% now and is scheduled to jump to 55% in 2011. Either way, the amount is staggering. Expatriation lifts the death tax burden from your children and other heirs.

3) Freedom from the US government’s War on Solvency. Washington’s crazed debt addiction is uncontrollable and endemic. US politicians have strapped an inconceivably large debt burden on the backs of their subjects. It pays to spend some time on www.usdebtclock.org. The multi-trillion dollar debt avalanche roars on, headed straight towards economic hell. After “Debt Per Taxpayer” and “Liability Per Citizen,” check out “US Unfunded Liabilities” to see a number that’s suited to astronomical calculations – not economics.

Don’t be tricked into thinking this is a partisan issue. It’s sobering to review the debt records of both Democratic and Republican administrations…to behold what politicians do when given trillions of dollars of other people’s money. They spend it all – and then borrow trillions more! Of course, the burden of servicing that debt is on you, not them. Their six-figure salaries are guaranteed, along with their uber-perks and fully funded pension plans.

While often described as “the richest nation in the world,” the reality is that the US is the most indebted nation, by a country mile. No other government comes close to matching the debt burden that has been dumped onto every taxpayer. The US government is rampantly incurring debt in your name, and you have no way to stop it or slow it down. Standing in free speech zones with protest signs didn’t work when it came to war and crony bailouts, and it won’t work for the debt burden either.

The one truly meaningful act you can take as an individual is to opt out. Unload the government’s debt burden off your back. Don’t let yourself or your family be a casualty of the government’s War on Solvency.

4) Freedom from being treated like a “toxic citizen.” When traveling abroad, being a US passport holder used to be a positive thing. Now it’s an albatross. The New York Times article I cited earlier explains it plainly: Americans abroad are being treated like “toxic citizens.” They’re cut off from banking and other business and investing opportunities solely because of their US citizenship.

Typical currency controls don’t permit you to take money out of a country. The US doesn’t have that (yet). Instead, and this is quite clever, the government enacts laws and regulations that function as indirect currency controls. There are so many Patriot Act and other costly impositions forced on foreign banks that handle US customers that they’re simply refusing to put up with the harassment. Here’s the upshot: Your money isn’t fenced in; it’s fenced out.

If you seek firsthand evidence, visit a major banking center outside the US and try to open a bank account. Odds are you’ll be turned away when the bank finds out you’re a US citizen. Reports abound of US citizens’ long-held accounts at foreign banks being summarily terminated. The US government has made its subjects, along with their money, persona non grata.

I’ve read that some foreign banks are now setting up, in essence, holding pens designed to handle US citizens who want to bank offshore. But, really, what’s the point? You’re burdened with having to file extra IRS paperwork, along with FBAR forms to the Treasury Department. And even if you don’t file all the extra papers (not a smart move), new laws force foreign banks who accept US customers to report on you anyway. They are pressured to sign “information reporting agreements” to have US citizens as customers. Google “FATCA” and “qualified intermediary agreements” if you want details.

Now for the most extreme instance of liability. Being a US passport holder can mean life or death in the context of a terrorist attack. The US government’s never-ending War on Terror makes the world more dangerous for Americans. After so many years of bombing and military occupation in the Middle East, how can the hundreds of thousands of civilians who’ve been maimed and killed by the US government NOT be the source of enduring resentment and blowback? Needless to say, the US passport is on the short list of ones you least want to have if somebody sticks a gun in your face and says, “Passport.” Unfortunately, this has happened on more than one occasion, and it would be unreasonable to assume it won’t happen in the future.

5) Freedom from the paperwork prison. Millions of Americans are plagued every year by days, sometimes weeks, of preparing tax documents and paying thousands of dollars to accountants to decipher the IRS tax code. There are, literally, hundreds of different IRS forms. The tornado of rules and regulations in the tax code fills roughly 70,000 pages. And then you have to save boxes and boxes of papers for years in fear of someday being audited and not being able to produce the demanded documents. If you’re unfamiliar with audits, here’s how they work: You’re guilty of whatever the IRS claims, unless you prove yourself innocent. If that sounds preposterous, I encourage you to ask a tax lawyer. “Innocent until proven guilty” does not apply. Freedom from spending days of tedium on mind-numbing paperwork and thousands on accounting fees has been an absolute joy.

The second five:

1) Freedom to invest without tax distortions that encourage capital misallocation. The US tax system encourages misallocation of your investment capital. It obscures the act of buying and selling securities based on a rational assessment of their value. For instance, you end up not selling a security you otherwise would simply because you don’t want to trigger taxes yet. Or you hold on longer than you might otherwise to get long-term capital gains treatment. Or you sell securities you normally would keep – for “tax loss harvesting.”

Moreover, you’re incented to give an artificial value premium to municipal bonds simply because they aren’t taxed, despite their negative real return after inflation. And your assessment of real estate’s value is warped too, by mortgage interest deductions and capital gains exemptions. The phrase “letting the tax tail wag the dog” encapsulates these distortions. Expatriation instantly liberates you from them.

2) Freedom from being crushed by the fiat currency landslide. If you pay attention to the world’s major currencies, you’ll notice they fluctuate, often dramatically, against each other. In a year’s time, the price of an item can increase or decrease 20%, 30% – sometimes more – solely based on which currency you use to pay for it. The same item!

Regardless of the reason for the volatile swings in the value of currencies, there it is. Reality. So what’s the risk for you? For one thing, you can have all your money in one currency, earn a positive investment return on paper (that you’re taxed on), but actually lose purchasing power. Think about it this way. The US imports goods from all over the world. When the US dollar drops in value, it takes more of them to buy those goods. That makes you functionally poorer, no matter what your account statement says. It’s that simple.

Every time the dollar drops, you get the short end of the stick. The value of your savings erodes. Your money is like ice cubes. The longer you wait to use them, the more they melt. According to the government’s official “inflation calculator,” the dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power since 1913.

 See for yourself here.

When you’re out of the global US tax net, you can freely diversify the currencies you own to protect your purchasing power from being diluted. If you do this as a US citizen and the dollar drops, you’re taxed on the paper gains from those other currencies. In other words, you’re taxed for simply preserving your purchasing power. And if you choose the monetary metal, gold, as a fiat currency hedge, you’re taxed even more heavily. No matter what you do to try and preserve the purchasing power of your dollars, one way or another you’re slowly being bled. That ends on the day you expatriate.

3) Freedom from the accountability for how the US government spends your money. I sleep much better knowing I no longer fund the military-industrial-banking complex. Anybody can get mugged, but every US taxpayer is a constant patsy for the political establishment. The rip-offs are so unthinkably big and endemic, there’s nothing an individual can do to stop them.

If you step back and take an honest look, you’ll see that the unfortunate state of affairs in America has resulted from the reign of both political parties. Don’t fall for the divide-and-conquer strategy that politicians use to corral people into “red” and “blue” sports teams. Donkeys and elephants are sold as team mascots pretending to be in mortal conflict. In reality both parties work together to advance their agendas in lockstep…logrolling…and when necessary, one side “takes the hit” whenever the illusion of accountability is needed. The system depends on the delusion that people can “vote the bums out.”

Meanwhile, every government failure becomes the pretext for more government growth. If you don’t get distracted by the spectacle, it’s impossible not to notice the pattern: Every political solution to any problem involves more regulation of your life and more taking of your money.

What are the consequences of this vicious cycle of growth through failure? Most Americans are familiar with the oft-chanted phrase, “We’re #1!” Humor me for a minute and try this exercise. Mentally separate yourself from the government you’re paying trillions of dollars to fund. Then, consider that the US is: #1 in government debt and deficits; #1 in unfunded liabilities, most importantly Medicare and Social Security; #1 in building and maintaining the biggest WMD stockpile in the world; #1 in weapon sales to foreign governments; #1 in bombs dropped and missiles fired on other nations; #1 in causing civilian casualties and property destruction; #1 in “defense” spending; #1 in lawyers per capita, with over 1.1 million total; #1 in law suits filed; #1 in political lobbyists, special interest groups and campaign donations; #1 in taxpayer bailouts of the politically connected “too big to fail” corporations; #1 in people imprisoned – “The United States has 4% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s incarcerated population,” according to Wikipedia.

I’ve avoided citing sources for these claims (save the last one) because I’m hoping you’ll be moved to verify them for yourself. The process is eye-opening. If you fall for the political fallacy that “the government is the people,” you end up with the faulty conclusion that America must be overrun by war-crazed, lawsuit-happy, debt-addicted criminals. How could anybody buy this after even a moment of clear thought? There’s certainly no resemblance to the American people I know. These problems stem from the military-industrial-banking complex, the dark heart of the US political machine. Why continue being the stooge that supplies the money to run it?

Looking at the world with fresh, open eyes isn’t easy. One of the great benefits of liberating yourself from the grip of the US political system is that the world becomes your oyster. You’re free to embrace places that welcome individuals who seek to live peaceful and prosperous lives.

4) Freedom to radically increase your charitable giving. Individual liberty sparks our charitable instincts. If you care deeply about philanthropy, expatriation frees up vastly more of your capital to give away. Also, your philanthropic impulses are no longer distorted by the IRS. You can give to any charitable cause worldwide without being penalized if it’s not anointed as a tax-deductible entity.

The human impulse to help another in need is older than any government. Your j

udgment about how to contribute your capital to best help others will forever be superior to that of bureaucrats. Expatriation opens up new possibilities for you to reach out and help others in need.

5) Freedom from the risk of getting trapped. Politicians don’t like it when the people who pay their salaries, fund their pensions, and fuel their jets close their wallets and walk away. As the number of renunciations continues to rise, it inevitably will turn into a political hot-button. The media will set the stage for politicians to denounce renunciation, paving the way to make exercising the right more difficult and costly. Wealthy people who renounce will be called greedy and unpatriotic. “Turning their backs on their fellow Americans” will be the sound bite wielded by politicians to conjure up the demand to “do something.” When that happens, I expect the exit tax to become dramatically worse. Instead of taxing unrealized gains at their regular rates, it may function more like the death tax. Add up everything you own – then cough up half. Otherwise sit down and shut up.

The other timing consideration is that getting a second passport is becoming more difficult, more lengthy and more costly. You need a second passport to expatriate, and countries are increasing the number of years it takes to gain citizenship. There are only two countries left in the world that have an economic citizenship program, which is by far the fastest way to get a second passport. If these two programs are pressured to fold, escaping the US political combine will take most people five or more years, instead of less than one. You can bet on this: No matter what happens, it won’t get any easier.

I have been reading your publication for a while now and generally agree with your conclusions about the financial condition of our country. This is my home. It is where my job, family, and friends are here to support me. Someday I will have grandchildren. I don't want to give up on, or leave our country. After the health care bill passed I decided to see what I could do to help get us back to freedom and fiscal responsibility. I have always been a libertarian at heart, but not politically active. I have no interest in telling anyone what to do. I live my quiet life until government gets too involved in mine. I don't have any horror stories, but I see a storm on the horizon for everyone.

 Additional Resources

http://sovereignman.com/Network%20Infiltration.pdf

http://www.sovereignman.com/expat/how-to-avoid-living-in-a-police-state/

http://www.escapeartist.com/

…Get your free copy of the Poor Man’s Guide to Eco-Friendly Low-Tech, Low-Cost Ways to Save Money on Your Energy Costs…it’s FREE! See end of article.

More Ways to Cut Your Summer Utility Costs

Excerpted from US News & World Report

 Geoff Godwin, division vice president of Emerson, the country's largest provider of heating and cooling systems, says cleaning air conditioning filters every month and getting your system checked by a professional once a year will ensure that it's functioning as efficiently and inexpensively as possible. "A lot of people don't do that--they ignore the AC system until something goes wrong," he says, then they end up buying an entirely new unit instead of making minor fixes.

If you need a new air conditioner, an energy efficient one might be eligible for a tax credit (check at http://www.energystar.gov/). When you're shopping around, look for a unit with a seasonal energy efficiency ratio of 16 to 21, the highest level of efficiency. Another option is a geothermal heating and cooling system, which utilizes pipes running from the more stable, ambient temperatures found five feet underground year-round into your home, where they pump heat in or out, depending on the season.

Throughout the house: "Make sure your house is leak-free," says Alliance to Save Energy spokeswoman Ronnie Kweller, or else "nice, cold, expensive air is going out the cracks." You might want to consider assigning this task to a professional. Through the Energy Star online directory, you can find a local auditor who will use diagnostic equipment to test your home for areas where air conditioning might escape. Your auditor will probably do what's known as a blower door test, which lowers the air pressure in your home and reveals leaks. He or she may also take a photo of your house with a thermographic camera, with the red areas of the photo indicating where better insulation and sealing are needed.

    Don't want to shell out money for an energy auditor, you can perform a casual energy audit yourself. Efficiency experts recommend feeling around baseboards, windows, doors, light switches, and electrical sockets for air leaks. Air can escape or enter anywhere that two different building materials meet.  Walk around your house with incense to see if the smoke blows in when you pass windows.  Old, wooden windows are especially prone to this kind of leakage.

Using a programmable thermostat so that the temperature automatically rises when no one is home during the day can yield annual savings of about 30 percent, with much of the savings in the summer, since air conditioning runs with electricity. While some 25 million households own programmable thermostats, only half of those people take advantage of them.

Replacing older light bulbs with compact fluorescents not only reduces your electricity bill, it can help save energy on air conditioning since fluorescents generate less heat; each bulb can save about $50 over the course of its lifetime.

In the living room: There's nothing wrong with hosting movie nights this summer, but make sure you shut your entertainment center down when the evening's over. Simply turning off a television set doesn't put a stop to so-called "vampire power"--the power that devices consume even when they're not in use. That's why you should either unplug your electronics or use a Smart Strip, which cuts power when it's not needed. I installed one in my computer room and it’s already saved some cash.

Baking a cake or casserole in the summer will force your air conditioner to go into overdrive. Plus, eating hot food will only make you want to turn the thermostat down. But you don't have to survive on cold pasta salads and gazpacho this summer. Instead of using your oven, consider an outdoor grill or toaster oven for small amounts of food.

If you're up for a challenge, try baking cookies on your car--yes, your car. Nicole Weston of Baking Bites developed a method of baking chocolate cookies with the heat that collects inside cars on steamy days. She suggests parking in the sun, using a thermometer to help monitor the temperature, and protecting your dashboard by putting a barrier between it and the baking sheet. (It should be at least 95 degrees outside and the baking process takes around two and a half hours.)

Outside: A way to reduce cooling costs in the longer run is to plant trees or shrubs so that your house is more shaded, especially on the sunnier side. For a quicker fix, draw the blinds or shades when you're not home.

   For a whole more ways to save money while being eco friendly, sign up for the Poor Man Bulletin and get our full report automatically in your in-box – AVERAGE savings=s$175 a month.

Brucebulletin-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

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 How to Survive the Coming Food Shortage

http://tinyurl.com/PMFoodShortage

Gettin' Fishy. Five species of freshwater fish for the rural American.

From Grit magazine, by Caleb D. Regan

Back when I was a boy, you didn’t go spend an afternoon at the farm pond and come home empty-handed, talking about the crappie you’d caught. Catch and release was not an option when the crappie switch got flipped to On. Had “empty-handed” happened, there would have been a looming sense of disappointment starting, no doubt, with my mother.
Crappie fillets were a delicacy in our household, elevated almost to the same height as apple pie. Any time my brothers and I were fishing and one of us landed a crappie, he’d put it on the stringer and fish the rest of the day, hoping that switch I mentioned earlier would come on and we’d get fishy. If we didn’t fill the stringer with a skillet-full of fish, of course, we’d let the lone crappie back into the pond, but the intention was never to let it go. Heck, crappie were the main reason for always carrying along a stringer in the first place. It was the best-tasting fish we’d catch and clean.

Later in life, while painting houses during college summers, I was introduced to walleye. I’ll never forget an older gentleman on the crew, Brian, who’d bring walleye he’d caught over the weekend to eat for lunch, even during July heat waves. Everyone thought he was crazy, bringing fish and not even keeping it in a cooler; room-temperature fish during the heat of summer.

I gave him grief all the time for this, until one day, in a weary-minded haze, I agreed to try some. It was a wonderfully thick, white fillet, not fishy at all and admittedly better than any crappie I’d ever had – which especially impressed me, given the circumstances in which the walleye was being served.

Now, every year as winter begins to turn to spring and the deer meat supply in the freezer seems unending – which I’m perpetually thankful to consume – I eagerly anticipate that first early, cold-water stringer-full of fish that I’ll clean and eat.
There’s no better way to eat healthy and local than to head on down to a favorite fishing hole, bait a line and catch some tasty freshwater fish that you can’t find at the
local market.

You’ll be well served to secure these five species for your dinner table.

Walleye
The walleye is probably the most sought-after fish in the north-central United States. Minnesota is renowned for its walleye fishing. Nowadays, walleye have been introduced in states farther south, and it’s largely due to the tastiness of the fillets.
The walleye is named for its pearlescent eye, caused by a reflective layer of pigment that helps it see and feed at night or in murky water. The fish is olive to dark gray in appearance, with gold-flecked sides. Average length is about 15 inches. By the time these fish get to that size – the length at which your local regulations will allow you to keep them – walleye are primarily feeding on smaller species of fish.

You can find them in lakes, reservoirs, slow-moving rivers and some ponds. In lakes, the spawn usually occurs in April and May. The best time to fish for wal-leye is about a month after the spawn. Like some other species, they are coming off winter and don’t feed all that much during the spawn, so the time period following, late April through May and early June, is typically when the most walleye are caught, says Tom Mosher, fisheries research coordinator with Kansas
Department of Wildlife and Parks.

Check your state regulations to see when walleye season is, and get out on the water. They do most of their feeding in the morning and right at sunset, so that’s when you want to have a line out.

Crappie
My personal favorite is the crappie – not because I think it’s the best tasting, rather because it simply harkens back to my family farm pond, and they are fighters, which makes for fun fishing. The crappie is a member of the sunfish family and comes in two types, white crappie and black crappie; both are popular game fish. Black and white crappies are tough to tell apart. Both are flat-bodied, white and black speckled, and have the same behavioral patterns.

As the name suggests, the black crappie is darker than the white crappie, and the abundance of both species varies by region. In the northern United States, when you catch a crappie, it’s more likely to be a black crappie than a white, whereas in Kansas the opposite is true.

The spawn usually takes place in May or June when water temperatures reach 66 to 68 degrees. As the temperature begins to rise in the spring, crappie move to the shallows to mate, and that’s a good time to have a few bend your pole. Their diets are diverse, eating smaller fish as well as zooplankton, insects and crustaceans. Feeding occurs mainly at dawn and dusk. I’ve always had the best luck fishing with minnows, but Mom makes a case for worms as well. Crappie jigs are another option.

Bass
There are numerous species of bass, most notably the largemouth and smallmouth. To tell these two species apart, look at the closed mouth. If it extends back beyond the back of the eye, the fish is a largemouth. If the mouth only extends back to the middle of the eye, you are looking at a smallmouth.
Probably best known as a sport fish, these fish also provide tasty fillets, especially in cooler temperatures during the early fishing season. The largemouth bass is one of the more scrappy species of freshwater fish. Jolting strikes, airborne leaps and good stamina make for a fun fight on your hands when you’ve got one on the end of your line.
Bass are more oblong, closer to a walleye than a crappie. I’d compare the shape to that of a football, and their color is gray, olive-green and silver, for the most part.
Bass are not a picky creature when it comes to diet. They’ll eat underwater insects, smaller species of fish, frogs, snakes, mice and sometimes even ducklings. They like to hang around in weed lines, shade of trees and other cover.

Catfish
Though catfish is one of the freshwater fish you probably can find at the market, I’ve always found those I catch and fillet to be more rewarding and better tasting.

Catfish are so named because of the barbells resembling a cat’s whiskers that extend from the sides of the head on most catfish. Two common species are the channel and the larger flathead. To tell a channel cat from a flathead, look at the lower jaw and tail. The flathead has a slightly protruding lower jaw, like an underbite, and its tail is square, while the tail of a channel cat is forked.

All catfish and bullheads have a sharp spine on the front of the dorsal fin and two pectoral fins. These spines are what “sting” careless people, not the barbells. When alarmed, the fish raises and locks the spike fins in an extended position. The pain comes when a person accidentally pokes himself on the spine, not from any poison that’s released. Learn where those spines are, and you’ll have no problem handling a catfish. I hold them by cupping my hand under their belly, with my index and middle finger underneath the head. Put your thumb and pinky behind the pectoral fins and barbells.

These fish are bottom feeders and will eat insects, fish and many invertebrates. They feed at night, so it can make for some entertaining lawn-chair fishing. Grab a pole and line that will support the weight of a catfish, even one as big as 20 pounds, attach anything from a chunk of hotdog to chicken livers, weight it with a couple split-shot sinkers, toss it out and leave it on the bottom. Keep your eye on your pole, because when it starts dancing, the real fun begins.

Bluegill
A member of the sunfish family, the bluegill is another species generally regarded as excellent eating. They are rather small – occasionally exceeding a pound, but an 8-inch bluegill is considered decent, max would be about 16 inches. Catch enough of them to fill up the skillet, and you won’t be disappointed.

Found from Quebec to northern Mexico, bluegill are nearly ubiquitous. One no

table marking is the blue or black “ear,” which is actually an extension of the gill cover. On the gill rakers (tooth-like structures on the inner edge of the gill arches), bluegill have a bright blue edging.

The bluegill spawn usually occurs in nests in the shallows beginning in late May and June. During this time, the color of the male body becomes fairly bold as they guard the nest. They show intense yellows, blues and oranges. The lower half of the body, especially toward the front, contains a yellow-orange hue.

One interesting aspect of bluegill biology is that some males assume the appearance of a female during the spawn – so the nest-guarding males aren’t as aggressive – then sneak into the nests in the shallows and spawn.
Bluegill will eat tiny fish, but for the most part feed on plants, invertebrates and zooplankton. They are notorious for their nibbling, so if your bobber is dancing a little and you repeatedly have your worm stolen off the hook, chances are it’s a pesky bluegill.

Fish heritage
Fishing is both practical and recreational. I’ve eaten many a delicious meal after giving thanks for these beautiful fish and had some of my best days on the water without catching a single thing.
Knowing and constantly learning about what is going on below the surface of the farm pond or local lake is fascinating, and it will help you have more encounters than before with your fish of choice.

There’s no such thing as a crummy day with crappie.

Excerpted from Grit, Celebrating Rural America Since 1882. To read more articles from Grit, please visit www.Grit.com or call 866-624-9388 to subscribe. Copyright 2009 by Ogden Publications Inc.

How to Organize a Community Seed Swap

Host a seed swap in your area to connect gardeners and help everyone learn more about gardening in your region.

From Mother Earth News, By Tabitha Alterman

HOW SEED SWAPS WORK

The traditional model of a seed swap is an informal local get-together, usually in early spring, where gardening neighbors all bring extra seeds saved from previous seasons — along with any surplus seedlings they won’t be able to use that year — and trade these valuable goods among themselves. Who had the juiciest tomatoes last year? You’ll want a few seeds from those plants. You started too many broccoli seedlings in your backyard greenhouse? Why not spread the love around?

The most valuable aspect of attending a seed swap may actually be the chance to glean local wisdom about what works — or doesn’t work — in your shared gardening microclimate. Christine Sheppard, an organic farmer in Hawai'i, says she has learned a great deal about her microclimate through local seed swaps. "It put us in touch with a whole fund of knowledge about what plants grow well in our varied microclimates here in Hawai'i, most of which are not like anything on the mainland. Which tomatoes stood up to fruit fly, which root vegetables would grow in our very gritty broken lava soil, what to do with the local traditional staple of taro apart from making poi, which greens grow in our humid hot climate. It was "eat local" at its best, and a whole lot of fun too!"

READY, SET, GO! ORGANIZE YOUR OWN SEED SWAP

So now, how about some step-by-step instructions for organizing a seed swap of your own? If you already know other gardeners in your area, you’re well on your way to setting up a fun event that will get everyone in your neighborhood started down the path to Master Gardener!

1. Choose a time and place. Depending on how many people you think may attend, it might be coziest to host the seed/plant swap in someone’s home or garden. (Reserve tables, chairs and tents, too, if necessary.) Or, if you expect to draw a larger crowd, look for free spaces you can reserve, such as a public library meeting room or a church basement.

2. Publicize your seed swap. A good place to start is by notifying local gardening groups and botanic gardens, and you can also reach interested people through classified ads, grocery cooperative newsletters, community bulletin boards and chamber of commerce calendars. Mother Earth News magazine can help you publicize your seed swap. They will gladly e-mail their subscribers in your area to notify them of your community seed swap. Visit www.MotherEarthNews.com/Seed-Swaps.aspx to sign up for this free service.

3. Invite speakers. Contact your local gardening groups to find experts who know how to save different kinds of seeds, and can get folks fired up about why to save and share seeds. Extension agents also can give great tips on gardening in your specific region. Another excellent discussion topic would be about how to start seeds and transplant new seedlings.

4. Request seed donations from local gardeners or seed companies in advance, to bolster the offerings that people will bring.

5. Print off some handy articles about seed-starting, seed-saving and other gardening techniques to distribute at your seed swap. MotherEarthNews.com provides tons of free resources for gardeners, including how-to articles, seed company directories, gardening event listings and more.

6. Label everything clearly. Bring plenty of little dishes, or baggies and markers, to help gardeners divvy up and identify everything. Ask seed and plant donors to write down everything they know about their seed that might be helpful to donees. For example: “Green Zebra Tomato: open-pollinated, heirloom, saved from last season, has grown well in my garden for years, heavy producer, medium-size fruit, indeterminate growth habit, about 70 to 80 days to maturity, good slicer, amazing tart flavor, attractive green and yellow stripes.” It may help to give your donors notecards that they can fill out, with all these variables.

7. Host a contest to make the event more fun! Prizes could go to the gardener with the widest variety of seeds, the attendee who traveled the farthest, the youngest or oldest gardener, etc. And Mother Earth News can help you with a contest, too: The gardener who brings the widest variety of heirloom tomato seeds will win one of their highly recommended ergonomic garden trowels! (Visit www.MotherEarthNews.com/Seed-Swaps.aspx to participate.)

8. When it’s all over, let us know how it went. So you organized a smashing success of a seed swap, right? E-mail your feedback to OrganicGardening@motherearthnews.com for us to post online for other organizers to share.

Excerpted from Mother Earth News magazine, the Original Guide to Living Wisely. Read the full story at www.MotherEarthNews.com or call 800-234-3368 to subscribe. Copyright 2009 by Ogden Publication

NOTE:  Stuck with a small area for gardening?  Learn about gardening in a 5X20 space and get free spreadsheets to track your garden harvests at:

www.rosalindcreasy.com

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Emigrate to Canada & Beyond, and Leave U.S. Taxes Behind

 by Robert E. Bauman J.D. 

More years ago than I care to recall, I graduated from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. (and GU Law too).

One of my SFS classmates from Canada told a memorable story about how his grandfather was constantly troubled about the possibility that “the Yanks were coming.” This elder Canadian, steeped in colonial history, was convinced that someday those ornery Americans would storm north across the border and invade again.

Well, in truth, a small number of Americans have headed north across that 5,525-mile long United States-Canadian border, famously styled as “the longest undefended border in the world.”

The objective of this migration is not to conquer, but to become Canadian citizens—and thereby reduce the American migrant’s U.S. taxes to zero.

Canada is not an offshore tax haven. Commonwealth and provincial taxes are relatively high. Except in specific programs designed to entice new immigrants to come to Canada (more on that below), there are few tax breaks for foreigners. However, little-known Canadian trust and tax laws, when properly employed, offer Americans a legal way to forever end the obligation to pay U.S. taxes—by becoming Canadians.

Expatriation

This unusual tax freedom is accomplished by a process known as “expatriation” in which a U.S. person voluntarily ends U.S. citizenship. That may seem extreme, but it can be done legally and consistent with U.S. and Canadian law—with the right expert professional legal and tax advisors.

American tax laws require “U.S. persons”—citizens or resident aliens—to pay income taxes on earnings from any source anywhere in the world no matter where they live. Unlike most other countries with “territorial” tax systems, a U.S. person can’t escape taxes by moving offshore.

By contrast, most other countries tax only the people who actually live within their borders. Canada for example, does impose taxes on the worldwide income of residents. But if a Canadian moves out of Canada and establishes a new residence in another country, the legal duty to pay Canadian taxes ends with few exceptions. This feature of Canadian tax law is an important part of our tax-saving expatriation plan.

Tax-Free New Residents

However tough taxes may be for the average Canadian, wealthy immigrants can take advantage of tax-free loopholes available only to them. Here are some of the options for high net worth immigrants who come to Canada:

1) A qualified immigrant accepted for eventual Canadian citizenship is eligible for a complete personal income tax moratorium for the first five calendar years of residence in Canada. They pay no taxes if the source of their income is a previously existing offshore, non-Canadian trust, (known as an “immigrant trust”) or an offshore corporation.

Because the high establishment and administrative costs of such a trust, it generally is best suited for immigrants who have at least $1 million or more in assets that can be placed in the offshore immigrant trust.

2) After living five years tax-free in Canada as a new citizen, the new Canadian can move his or her residence (and tax domicile) to another country, preferably a tax haven, and afterwards pay taxes only on income earned or paid from within Canada. They pay no taxes on their worldwide income. (There is a Canadian “departure” tax to be paid after filing a notice of intent to live abroad. There is no way of determining the exact rate of this tax since various types of property are taxed at differing rates.)

3) Canadian citizens and resident aliens employed by certain “international financial centers” are forgiven 50 percent of all income taxes.

4) Canada has abolished all national death (estate) taxes (but the provinces do have such taxes).

Investors Welcome

Canadian law favors a specific class of preferred immigrants including investors, entrepreneurs, the self-employed and those who will add to the “cultural and artistic life” of the nation. With minor variations in each of the provinces, investor immigrants generally must have a net worth in excess of C$500,000 (US$443,000) and be willing to invest at least C$250,000 (US$222,000) in a Canadian business for a minimum three- to five-year period. Purchase of a residence usually does not qualify as an investment, although it may if you work from home.

American Tax Burden

While most foreigners can relocate to a tax haven as a legal way to avoid home country income taxes, U.S. persons cannot. The only way a U.S. person can escape taxes is to end U.S. citizenship and residency—but only after acquiring a new citizenship from another country, another important step in the expatriation process. (No one wants to be the man or woman without a country!)

Let me assure doubters that, yes, this is legal. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld Americans’ right to acquire another citizenship, to end their U.S. citizenship and to expatriate.

Likely Candidates

Q: Which Americans should consider expatriation?

A: Those concerned with high taxes. Without good estate planning, U.S. death taxes can take up to 55 percent of your assets from your heirs when you pass away—and that final tax insult comes after a working lifetime of paying up to 40 percent of your earnings in federal income taxes every year. Add in state and local income and sales taxes and you stand to lose in taxes well over half your earnings during your lifetime—and your heirs lose another half of what’s left at death.

The potential emigrant from America eventually must surrender U.S. citizenship in order to end U.S. tax obligations. But be aware of the new (2008) U.S. “exit tax” now in effect. If you qualify as what the law calls a “covered person” the exit tax may outweigh any benefit to be gained by immigration to Canada.

A Potential Savings of Millions of Dollars

There you have it. It may seem a difficult road to travel, but becoming a Canadian citizen investor can save a U.S. citizen millions of dollars that would otherwise go directly to the Internal Revenue Service.

Yes, these savings are predicated on major changes—including surrender of your U.S. citizenship. You must move yourself, your family and your business to Canada and possibly to another country later on. Despite these drawbacks, the true bottom line measured in dollar savings can be enormous.

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WHY PEOPLE FAIL

In order to succeed, you must first "lose" your mediocrity.

by: J.F. (Jim) Straw

There has been much written, and said, about why and how people succeed. The contention being that, in order to succeed, you must learn, and then apply, the principles and techniques used by others who have gained success.

But, knowing the principles and techniques used by others who have gained success doesn't qualify a person to succeed. If it did, all of those who have read and studied the various, and many, books, booklets, plans, and programs on the subject of SUCCESS would, by virtue of their knowledge thereof, be successful.

Statistically, 98% of the people in this country never reach a level of anything more than sustained mediocrity; only 2% ever really achieve success. - WHY?

The answer is simple. - They have never "qualified" for success, because they refuse to "pay their dues."

These people (the 98%) are so wrapped-up in "protecting" and "maintaining" the level of mediocrity they have achieved that they will not risk one iota of what they have.

It's like the young boy who, at long last, got his first pair of really fine shoes.

Now, these shoes were exceptionally fine. So fine, in fact, that the boy spent many hours wiping and shining them - while keeping them safe from scuffs, neatly wrapped in paper, in their box under his bed.

A number of opportunities presented themselves for the boy to wear the shoes, but he chose to safe-guard them and wore his older shoes instead. After all, if he wore them, he would run the risk of scuffing them or dulling their glittering shine.

When the day finally arrived, when the occasion was most important, the boy learned, to his disappointment, that his feet had grown and the shoes no longer fit him. (I gave that pair of shoes to a more needy neighbor - and, from that day forward, I have never again been afraid to lose anything.)

Unfortunately, most people are like that boy. - They read all of the books, booklets, plans, and programs about the principles and techniques used by others to gain success. As the boy did with the shoes, they let the opportunities to use what they have learned pass them by - or, they make a half-hearted start, but never continue past their first small and futile attempts.

Why do they hold back? - Because they fear losing what little they have. They "protect" their meager and mediocre position so well that they never lose it.

At retirement age, those people look back with pride at the fact that they have ventured little and lost nothing. But, not unlike the boy and his shoes, they learn, to their disappointment, that that which they protected so well will not sustain them after their retirement and they are forced to seek aid and assistance from their government, family and friends.

Those people have never "qualified" for anything better, because they have never "paid their dues."

If you haven't, yet, gained success, look around you. What are you protecting? If you lost it all tomorrow, would you really lose anything of great value?

People fail, not because they cannot succeed, but because they are unwilling to risk what they have. They "protect" their mediocrity until it is all they have left.

The struggle to achieve success is not unlike any great battle in any war. ­ The victorious army is always the one that gives-up the position it has won in order to advance against a better, more advantageous position. Only the losing army stands and defends a mediocre position.

A young Lieutenant once asked a wise General, "Why should we try so hard to reach a position at the top of the hill? As we charge up the hill, our enemies will surely take the positions behind us, and we will lose what we have gained; even if we take the hill."

The General, a very wise man, replied, "Yes - but, it is much easier to charge down-hill. When we have taken the higher position, we will charge back down the hill and recover all that we have lost. Then, we will charge down the other side of the hill."

The people who make up the 2% that achieve success are forever charging up the hill - losing all behind them - and then charging back down the hill, on both sides, to regain anything they may have lost and achieve even more success.

Not unlike the losing army, most people will never succeed, because it would mean that they would have to give-up the mediocre position they have protected for so long.

In order to succeed, you must first "lose" your mediocrity. - Success doesn't happen any other way.

To lose your mediocrity and learn to succeed, check out our "Power Tools for Entrepreneurs."