Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods: Owner gives company to employees

--It just strikes me that here is a company that isn't looking for a bail out and is based on something actually GOOD for you! I like the fact that he has resisted buy outs and offers for public trading. I intend to buy some of this flour next time I get someplace that carries it....It made me happy to read this!


Dana Tims
Seattle Times
Sun, 21 Feb 2010

Milwaukie, Oregon, - Scores of employees gathered to help Bob Moore celebrate his 81st birthday this week at the company that bears his name, Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods.

Moore, whose mutual love of healthful eating and old-world technologies spawned an internationally distributed line of products, responded with a gift of his own - the whole company. The Employee Stock Ownership Plan that Moore unveiled means that his 209 employees now own the place and its 400 offerings of stone-ground flours, cereals and bread mixes.

"This is Bob taking care of us," said Lori Sobelson, who helps run the business' retail operation. "He expects a lot out of us, but really gives us the world in return."

Moore declined to say how much he thinks the company is worth. In 2004, however, one business publication estimated that year's revenue at more than $24 million. A company news release issued this week stated that Bob's Red Mill has chalked up an annual growth rate of between 20 percent and 30 percent every year since.

"In some ways I had a choice," Moore said of what he could have done with the company he founded with his wife, Charlee, in 1978. "But in my heart, I didn't. These people are far too good at their jobs for me to just sell it."

It's not that the offers aren't there. Hardly a day goes by that Nancy Garner, Moore's executive assistant, doesn't field a call or letter from someone wanting to buy the privately held company or take it public.

"I had four messages waiting when I returned from a recent vacation," she said. "Three of them were buyout offers." Garner said she and other employees are floored by Moore's plan, under which any worker with at least three years tenure is now fully vested.

"We're still learning all of the details," Garner said, "but it's very humbling to be part of a company that cares this much about its employees."

An employee stock-ownership plan, or ESOP, is a retirement plan in which the company contributes its stock to the plan to be held in trust for the benefit of its employees. The stock is never bought or held directly.

Vested employees are sent annual reports detailing their respective stakes in the company. When those employees quit or retire, they receive in cash whatever amount they - and the company, through increased revenues, new sales and controlled costs - are due.

"Eventual payouts could be substantial," said John Wagner, the company's chief financial officer and, along with Moore, one of four partners.

Moore said he began thinking about succession about nine years ago. He'd heard about employee-stock-option programs and got much more serious about the idea three years ago.

That Moore has now pulled off what few other company owners would even dream about comes as no surprise to longtime acquaintances, such as Glenn Dahl, owner of NatureBake bakery in Milwaukie.

"Bob's a force of nature," said Dahl, whose family's Gresham-area bakery was Moore's first wholesale customer in the 1970s. "He's always been that way. He gets an idea and just makes sure it happens, one way or the other."

Moore's own background is in electrical and mechanical engineering, but he fell in love with the mechanics of stone grinding in the 1960s after reading about old stone-grinding flour mills.

At about the same time, Charlee began sharing with him her delvings into the nutritional benefits of eating whole-grain foods. The couple put their passions to work by starting, with their three sons, their first milling operation in Redding, Calif.

In 1978, the couple moved to Portland to retire. Moore's idea at the time, reflecting his long-held sense of spirituality, was to learn the Bible in its original languages. A chance walk past a closed mill site near Oregon City changed everything.

"I call it my emotional epiphany," Moore said. "Whatever excuse I care to give, I was just sucked into it like a vortex."

A 1988 arson destroyed the mill, when Moore was 60. Undeterred, he rebuilt the operation, moved once because of space needs and now occupies a 15-acre production facility and a two-acre headquarters and retail outlet along Oregon 224 in Milwaukie.

Three production shifts, running six days a week, turn out a line of goods distributed throughout North America, Asia and the Middle East.

The company earned an extra splash of international recognition when a team traveled to Scotland and, apparently feeling its oats, won the world's porridge-making championship.

Employees are just now grasping the meaning of Moore's birthday gift.

"It just shows how much faith and trust Bob has in us," said Bo Thomas, the company's maintenance superintendent, who has put his four children through college during his two decades there. "For all of us, it's more than just a job. Obviously, it's the same way for Bob, too."

For Moore, meanwhile, nothing about the new arrangement will change a thing. He plans to do for the foreseeable future what he has done every day for decades.

"I may have given them the company," he said, chuckling, "but the boss part is still mine."

Source: The Oregonian

Friday, February 19, 2010

Truth Farmer with Joan Veon!!!

This Saturday, on Truth Farmer, the radio show for real people, we'll be visiting with Joan Veon! She has attended a myriad of meetings on the establishment and origins of the Global Governance we are seeing come to fullness, and also authored several books on the topic. She is a tremendous educator and has done an amazing amount of work on exposing this machine. Her most recent offering is a dvd titled, "When Central Bankers Rule the World" and it is a tremendous body of work! Very, very helpful for people to understand the machinations and history behind the global financial crises and the aims of the powers that be are in this debacle. You can read Joan's articles and order her books at her website:

http://www.womensgroup.org/.

Please tune in to Truth Farmer this weekend, February 20th at 5pm Central Time and feel free to call in with comments after the first half hour by dialing: 866 986 6397!

Listen online: www.libertynewsradio.com
Via the telephone: 801 769 2170
Or check the affiliates list at Liberty News Radio to see if your local station has the program. If not, call them up and tell them they should!

Thank you and God bless!

Doreen

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Mind Control-We are being manipulated...Surprise!

I tried to deal with the technical snafus on my radio show as best I could, but I failed entirely to be able to wrap up the point I was trying to make about the subtle, consistent, mind control that we are all under almost continually simply by watching the major networks and listening to mainstream and even many 'alternative' news shows. The main objective appears to be to keep people in a state of panic so that they cannot truthfully process the information and decide if there is indeed any action that should be taken or what action should be taken. Even many patriot radio shows strive to keep people in this 'emotional state'. This creates a dependence upon the host for their emotional fix, and makes many people feel like they are 'special' because of the knowledge they now have, creating yet another set of intellectual elitists. This 'elitism' helps to stop actual effective, concerted and righteous address of the problems that exist in reality. In truth, when you are given the eyes to see, it comes with duty...Share it, and share it in love. If you cannot help keep your neighbor free, who isn't necessarily designed to deal with the mental acrobatics necessary to negotiate all the intricacies of sovereignty legal arguments, you cannot keep your own freedom. So while the problems may be complex, the solutions have to workable and use the KISS principle.

Anyway, I want to try to wrap up the attempted radio show now, if for no other reason than to give myself a little bit of a sense of completion.

The fact is that a group of people have been concertedly shaping the publics ability to both digest, and assess the information we are given about current affairs, and this IS mass mind control. The people fostering this control have perpetuated the mantra "perception is reality".

Here's how it works, they use the Hegellian Dialectic. This is "problem, reaction, solution". They create the problem, watch the reaction and then provide the solution. They use seminars and the Delphi technique to bring leaders into line with their solutions.

A lot of times, the problem is completely false. They will create a problem in OUR MINDS. (Think of all the hoopla surrounding global warming recently), and then they will watch the hue and cry from the public and provide the solution via 'policy' for us. Inevitably, those policies are such that they contract our ability to
1) profit from our labor
2) be accountable for ourselves
3) manage our own lives and children

The group pushing this thought control is called the Aspen Institute. Their origins are in "German Intellectualism" and they have been working concertedly behind the scenes with the leaders of business, the legislators, and the judiciary since 1947 to forward their plan of nothing less than 'global collectivism and humanism'. They have been very, very successful and are rather like the Holy Grail insofar as think tanks and the shaping of society via thought (perception)control since their inception. These folks have been instrumental in destroying critical thinking.

Just have a read through their handbook (available on line) titled "US in the World" and how they instruct their advocates to handle questions and opposition regarding initiatives that restrain our national sovereignty:

America must not compromise its sovereignty/flexibility.
Basic Advice: Talk about the benefits of cooperation, for us and everyone; in an interconnected world, it's the key to making progress on shared problems, it's the right thing to do and it works. Emphasize effectiveness, teamwork
.
"...The real question is, how can we accomplish what needs to get done? Independent action is important for solving some problems. But most of today's big global challenges -- like global terrorism and the growing threat of global warming -- simply can't be managed by any one nation, no matter how strong. Many other challenges are best handled by a team of nations, each doing what it does best. The key to making progress on these shared problems is making a shared effort. That's just common sense. Working well with others is part of being effective in an increasingly interconnected world..."
"...America has maintained a position of global strength for the past 50 years not by staying out of international agreements but by helping to shape them.
So we know from experience that in the long run, cooperation gives us greater influence and flexibility of action than going it alone. International agreements help us predict what others are going to do, which enables us to lay out our own policies more intelligently. And each time we demonstrate that we can be a good team player, it's that much easier to bring our partners along the next time. 'My way or the highway' feels good in the short run -- but ultimately it limits our options and may lock us into acting alone when we don't have to..."
"...In an increasingly interconnected world, we succeed or fail together. As a decent and responsible nation, America should be committed to working with others to make our world a better place. When nations work together as a team, everyone benefits..."
"...Sharing innovative solutions and inspiring international teamwork is the American way. When we live up to that tradition, we earn the respect and cooperation of other nations -- and together, we get results..."
"...Everyone benefits from international agreements and laws that make the world a more orderly place. If we want other countries to follow those rules, we have to follow them as well. It's a matter of common sense and common decency -- "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you." Americans understand this; that's why overwhelming majorities favor cooperative approaches over going it alone, even if we have to give up some freedom of action..."

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Easter Bunny Reports "NAIS is Dead!!!!"

©Doreen Hannes

February 8, 2010

As I reported after returning from the NIAA (National Institute for Animal Agriculture) meeting last August, rumors of the death of NAIS have been greatly exaggerated. (Read http://nonais.org/2009/09/05/ding-dong-nais-is-not-dead/) The USDA has finally admitted that they have too much negative publicity surrounding the name NAIS, and that they actually have to do what they tried to do in the first place: get the states to do their bidding on 'animal identification' and 'traceability' according to World Trade Organization standards. So yippee. They are only going to exercise their rule-making authority to control interstate commerce. Well, that's all they had the authority to do at the outset. So we should be giddy with excitement that they are openly proclaiming they will do just that now.

Should we be happier than a pig in a puddle because they openly stated that they will leave animals which never exit the state out of the new plan? They never had the authority to deal with those animals anyway…unless, of course, you take money from the USDA. Otherwise, that authority rests with your state. The USDA will continue to fund the states and work in a 'collaborative' way with states and industry (continuing the Public Private Partnership otherwise known as fascism) to develop the "minimum standards" that must be followed in order to participate in interstate commerce.

So, as many conversations with my compatriots in the fight against NAIS have alluded to, at last the USDA is pulling the commerce clause out and holding it up as their hammer for "minimum standards" that will be required by forthcoming regulations for 'disease traceability'. And why has the USDA taken to calling it 'disease traceability' instead of 'animal identification'? Because they only HAVE authority over the diseases! The FDA has authority over live animals on the farm (http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Testimony/ucm114752.htm), even though the majority of people don't know this, and it is a very useful poker chip in the globalization game. It is called misdirection, and those of us who have been deeply involved in the fight against the NAIS are very aware of this agency's use of misinformation, disinformation, subterfuge and general sneakiness in foisting upon us their WTO driven desire that will create captive supply for export of the entire domestic livestock population.

The only official document available on the "NAIS not NAIS" program is a seven page Q and A available at the new page for "NAIS not NAIS" called Animal Disease Traceability. (http://www.aphis. usda.gov/ publications/ animal_health/ content/printabl e_version/ faq_traceability .pdf). It's only 7 pages, so if you have read the previous 1200 pages of USDA documents on this program, it's a walk in the park.

One of the first questions that one asks when told "NAIS is Dead!", (aside from "what's it's new name?") is "What about all the people who are in the Premises Database with PIN's already?" According to the 7-page document, they stay in that database.

How about animals that are already identified with the "840" tags for NAIS? They also stay in the database. What about the "840" tags themselves? Well, the USDA and States will keep using them.

Are they going to halt further registrations into the NAIS database? Heck no! They'll keep registering properties and will also be using a 'unique location identifier' for this kinder, gentler NAIS that the States will run for us.

Why are they re-using the first two prongs of NAIS? Aside from the unstated fact that they are using them because they have to use them to be compliant with OIE (World Animal Health Organization) guidelines, they say it's because of the tremendous amount of money spent developing NAIS already even though it is un-Constitutional.

How much money? It's government math, so it's likely done by consensus as opposed to literal whole numbers that add up- you know, like 2+2=4. Consensus would make it possible for 2+2 to equal 5. Anyway, figures cited by various officials are anywhere from $120 million to $180 million. Less than 60¢ per person, so almost nothing when compared to the monstrous 107 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities we are currently carrying. Believe me, when I say I am not for government waste at all, but when an agency has spent this much time and money on an unfruitful program, isn't it better to simply fully knock it in the head instead of changing the name and playing "Hide and Go Seek" with the people who have adamantly opposed this program? Why couldn't the USDA do the only truly Constitutional thing with this international-trade driven program and let those who want to deal in international markets do this to themselves through the Export Verification Services department of the USDA? Well, if they did that, not only would they have to actually be fully open and transparent, they would need to let the public in on the big secret that the United States is no longer in charge of its own policies, rather they are obligated to follow the Sanitary PhytoSanitary (SPS) directives of the World Trade Organization agencies, namely Codex Alimentarius, the OIE and the IPPC (International Plant Protection Convention).

And we still have the very real issue of the massive database for premises registration (or the unique location allocator) having no public or verifiable oversight to check whether or not people who have been told they were removed were in fact removed from that database. So if NAIS is dead, why not allow the database to be annihilated? Obviously, they are still following the plan.

What about the states that have passed legislation designed to constrain NAIS from becoming mandatory within their boundaries? How will this new disease traceability program affect them? Well, since this is NOT NAIS and the regulations aren't yet written, the states will have to wait to find out what requirements they MUST MEET in order to participate in interstate commerce. There's your hammer.

So how powerful is the interstate commerce clause? Pretty dang powerful. And if people who dealt in the local food movement fully understood Wickard vs. Filburn, (http://conservapedia.com/Wickard_v._Filburn) they would feel no consolation whatsoever from the USDA's statement that they are not interested in regulating livestock that stay within the state.

In a nutshell, this 1942 Supreme Court case found that since Filburn had accepted money as part of the Agricultural Adjustments Act and then grew wheat to feed his own livestock, that he was not only subject to the regulation of the USDA by accepting that money, but also, since he grew wheat, he hadn't purchased it, and had he not grown it, he would have had to purchase wheat which would have likely come through interstate commerce. Therefore, his planting of wheat affected interstate commerce and solidified the USDA's jurisdiction over his actions.

If you transplant "tomato" for wheat you can see how sinister this ruling truly is. If you grow tomatoes, you won't be buying them, so if you don't buy them, and since the store bought tomatoes likely cross state lines in their movement, you are affecting interstate commerce by growing tomatoes….This is precedent, and it is a very, very dangerous precedent. So taking money or help from the USDA to establish your local farmer's market is going to put you into a relationship that is highly precarious for freedom.

The interstate commerce clause was not designed to hammer states into submission to federal or international agency trade objectives, it was to stop states from unfairly discriminating against each other and to enable us to be a strong union of sovereign states that could actually feed itself and prosper. The only thing to do is to keep fighting with full knowledge and to get the States to exercise their duty to protect the Citizens from an overarching Federal government. We need states to completely free up direct trade between farmers and consumers and we need states to work together to create their own criteria for exchange of goods across state lines.

Do we have to 'stay engaged' in conversations with the USDA on this "New Not NAIS"? Yes, to keep telling them to go sell crazy somewhere else, we're all stocked up here, thank you. They should tend the borders, control and actually inspect the imports, run the disease programs that worked and were not massive consolidations of power in federal hands, and for cryin' out loud INSPECT the packing plants and stop trying to make consumers believe that farmers and ranchers are responsible for sloppy slaughtering!

Also, go ahead and leave a bunch of the milk chocolate rabbits for us. Chocolate is one thing we probably should import, but certainly not at the cost of our freedom and sovereignty.