Skeptic Project

Militia groups sent this out today:

Bills to call in against are:

S.510 The Food Safety Modernization Act
S.787 The Clean Water Restoration Act
S.3772 The Paycheck Fairness Act

Below are brief descriptions of what each are about.

S.510

"In a nutshell, S510 is effectively NAIS (National Animal Identification System) for everything. It is a tremendous amount of additional enforcement (fines and penalties, license revocations, further license requirements, control over processes and harvest) which are definite issues with the bill as it currently exists. However, not unlike the "Health Care" bill, they will have to pass this to see what it actually does.

"Here's why....In S 510, the FDA is instructed to follow all international agreements. One of the issues with international 'guidelines and standards' is "Good Agricultural Practices". Well those are not necessarily good. Most GAP certifying bodies have checklists about 25 pages long for growers to follow. They all require traceability (i.e., NAIS) they also require auditing, verifying and certifying the processes used to produce a consumable product for human or animal feed. Every step in GAP costs the grower of food money and a good deal of paperwork. What happens if you're better at growing food than filing forms? You will be penalized (i.e., more money). Sec 420 is exceptionally dangerous in my eyes. It subjects all farms that 'produce' milk to risk assessment and management (i.e., insurance).

"The idea that exemptions will be helpful is rose-colored-glasses thinking. Exemptions can easily be taken away or modified without Congressional oversight through the regulatory process. Most farmers aren't watching the Federal Register like hawks.

"The FDA has plenty of authority to protect the anonymous food supply already. But they don't. Instead, they put small entities out of business through Hazard Analasis & Critical Control Points (HACCP), also to be expanded in this bill, and heavier regulations that are not helpful to smaller economies of scale. The FDA inspects less than 1% of imported produce, has performed inspections on less than 25% of processing failties that they are authorized to inspect (in a five year period) and they ALREADY have authority over live food animals on the farm. The USDA authority is over animal disease."

S.787

Will give the federal government jurisdiction over all water, everywhere, as well as jurisdiction over all activity that affects water wherever it may be. This would give to the federal government effective control over every square inch of land in the United States.

Here is a 3:30 video explaining The fight to control our water supply

S.3772

The “Paycheck Fairness Act” would stifle job creation; send existing American jobs overseas, and burden employers with expensive paperwork and frivolous lawsuits

Originally introduced by Hillary Clinton during her time in the Senate, and reintroduced by Sen. Harry Reid, the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 3772) (PFA) would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) in the following ways:

Allows for unlimited compensatory and punitive damages to be granted, even without proof of intent to discriminate. Currently, an employer must be found to have intentionally engaged in discriminatory practices in order for an employee to receive monetary compensation, and even then, the employee is entitled only to back pay. The provision in the PFA is unacceptable and unnecessary, as damages are already available under Title VII for pay discrimination.
Changes the “establishment” requirement. The EPA currently requires that employees whose pay is being compared must work in the same physical place of business. The PFA would amend the word “establishment” to mean workplaces in the same county or political district. It would also invite the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to develop “rules or guidance” to define the term more broadly. This leaves the door open for the EEOC to compare a woman’s job in a rural area to a man’s job in an urban area that has a much higher cost of living, which would drive up the cost of employing the woman in the rural lower cost area. Such increase in employment costs would result in fewer people being employed, and would also result in employers shipping jobs overseas.
Replaces a successful pay discrimination-determining system with a proven failed system. The PFA would invalidate the successful, Supreme Court-endorsed system for determining whether pay discrimination has occurred (known as the Interpretative Standards for Systemic Compensation Discrimination), and would replace it with the highly inaccurate Equal Opportunity Survey, which has found true discriminators to be non-discriminators 93 percent of the time.
Increases the numbers in class-action suits. Under EPA, if an employee wants to participate in a class-action suit against his employer, he must affirmatively decide to participate in the suit. The PFA would automatically include employees in class-action suits, unless they affirmatively opt out. This change would result in booming business for trial attorneys, and huge costs to employers, who may decide to ship jobs overseas to avoid such costs altogether.
In addition to these changes, the PFA would institute a system of “comparable worth” effectively allowing judges, juries and unelected bureaucrats to set employees’ wages, instead of employers. Thus, an employee’s compensation level would be based on some vague notion of his “worth,” instead of on concrete factors like education, experience, time in the labor force, and hours worked per week. The PFA would also cause employers to avoid hiring women in low-paying positions, since the employers may then become targets for burdensome lawsuits. This trend would result in even higher unemployment for low-skilled women, potentially increasing the number of families dependent on government assistance.

President Obama has called the PFA a “common-sense bill.” The truth is, this bill makes no sense during good economic times, and would only add insult to injury now, when unemployment is near double-digits nationwide.

S.510 The Food Safety Modernization Act: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-510

S.787 The Clean Water Restoration Act: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-787

S.3772 The Paycheck Fairness Act: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-3772

S.510 has been debunked on this site already:

http://conspiracyscience.com/forums/topic/food-modernization-and-safety-act#post-18052