Countdown: Top 10 Bug-Out Basecamp Essentials

Published: Fri, 08/16/13

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Obama Spends Twice as much Time at Leisure as on Policy Briefings!

This may be a good thing, as the Washington Times tells readers. The Bushes spent time off at their homes; not the Obama throng. Instead the profligate Obama team,and hangers on, wrack up multi-million dollar tabs with taxpayer dollars. I for one never voted for this. Did you?

President Obama leaves for Martha’s Vineyard on Saturday for still another vacation. The Government Accountability Institute calculates that Mr. Obama spends twice as much time at leisure than on policy briefings. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, considering the policies. Nevertheless, we’re paying a lot for a debt to pleasure.

Nobody begrudges a president a little time off, but we’re paying $2 million for a comfortable holiday on Cape Cod, the Massachusetts summer retreat of the wealthy elites. As in medieval times, when the court attended the sovereign wherever he traveled, the White House entourage always tags along, another source of public expense. The nearest hotel charges up to $345 per night. Motel 6 digs won’t do for this president’s royal staff.

Mr. Obama, who constantly warns of the widening gap between rich and poor, is staying in the $7 million mansion of a rich Chicago campaign contributor. “Social tensions will rise,” the president warned last month, “as various groups fight to hold on to what they have, or start blaming somebody else for why their position isn’t improving.” It’s clear what side of the wealth gap he prefers to live on.

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Allen West: “Ya’ll just make me sick.”

Here the Washington Times reports that Allen West is calling out a host of people who agitated during the George Zimmerman trial, but have largely ignored the recent beating of a young white boy by three black teens in Florida. According to the Washington Times

The boy suffered a broken arm and two black eyes. And the three 15-year-olds, identified in Sunshine State News as Joshua Reddin, Julian McKnight and Lloyd Khemradj, fled but were later caught by police and charged with aggravated battery. Joshua also reportedly faces unarmed robbery charges, Sunshine State News said.

Now Mr. West wants to know why Stevie Wonder — who announced a boycott on concerts in Florida to support shooting victim Trayvon Martin and repeal of “stand your ground” gun laws — isn’t speaking out against the three assailants, demanding justice for the white victim. And he wants to know where Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sharpton are — given especially Mr. Jackson’s slam of Florida as an “apartheid state” for the acquittal of George Zimmerman, Sunshine State News reported.

“Three 15-year-old black teens beat up a 13-year-old white kid because he told school officials they tried to sell him drugs,” Mr. West said, earlier this week, Sunshine State News reported. “Do you hear anything from Sharpton, Jackson, NAACP. Stevie Wonder, Jay-Z, liberal media or Hollywood? Cat got your tongues, or is it that pathetic hypocrisy revealing itself once again? Ya’ll just make me sick.”

The East Hampton Star reports that, in the face of new Obamacare regulations, companies are reducing the number of hours their employees work to make them part-time, and therefore not subject to the new law’s mandates.

Part-time is the new normal for most of the 100 or so employees at the Waldbaum’s supermarket on Newtown Lane in East Hampton.

Back in April, after rumors had been swirling for weeks, workers went to pick up their schedules only to discover that their hours had been cut, with most of the full-time workers suddenly seeing reductions of 20 hours a week or more. Management apparently made the change without any formal announcement.

In the months since, many workers have been scrambling to find second and third jobs in order to make ends meet.

“It really hurts. You do the best job that you can and it’s not appreciated,” said a woman who has worked in the store’s bakery, where she decorates cakes, for the past seven years. She declined the use of her name for fear of losing her job. “They’re making the big bucks on the top, with million-dollar bonuses, and you’re just a number,” she said.

The phenomenon is hardly unique to Waldbaum’s. All around the country, an increasing number of businesses are relying on part-time workers in place of full-timers, some taking advantage of the high unemployment rate, with workers willing to take any job they can get, and others citing the Affordable Care Act, the comprehensive health reform that President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010.

Come January, businesses with 50 or more employees working more than 30 hours a week will be required to provide affordable health insurance or face steep fines. Before the law takes effect, many businesses that rely on low-wage workers are reported to be switching to a part-time workforce as a means of cutting costs.

The sequester has wrought wonders in reducing the budget deficit.And unlike the hand wringing from neocon hawks, it poses zero risk for the defense of America.Click to my accompanying posts on the Cato Institute’s Chris Preble for the real story on defense. Chris is America’s foremost scholar on “Realistic Foreign Policy.” His book, The Power Problem is a landmark, and must reading for any serious foreign policy analyst, student or historian. Here Stephen Moore lays out the miracle of the sequester and points to entitlements as the next area to attack.

Consider the numbers: According to the Congressional Budget Office, annual outlays peaked at $3.598 trillion in fiscal 2011. After President Obama’s first two years in office, many in Washington expected that number to hit $4 trillion by 2014. Instead, spending fell to $3.537 trillion in fiscal 2012, and is on pace to fall below $3.45 trillion by the end of this fiscal year (Sept. 30). The $150 billion budget decline of 4% is the first time federal expenditures have fallen for two consecutive years since the end of the Korean War.

This reversal from the spending binge in 2009 and 2010 began with the debt-ceiling agreement between Mr. Obama and House Speaker John Boehner in 2011. The agreement set $2 trillion in tight caps on spending over a decade and created this year’s budget sequester, which will save more than $50 billion in fiscal 2013.

As long as Republicans don’t foolishly undo this amazing progress by agreeing to Mr. Obama’s demands for a “balanced approach” to the 2014 budget in exchange for calling off the sequester, additional expenditure cuts will continue automatically. Those cuts are built into the current budget law.

In other words, Mr. Obama has inadvertently chained himself to fiscal restraints that could flatten federal spending for the rest of his presidency. If the country sees any normal acceleration of economic growth (from the anemic 1.4% growth rate so far this year), the deficit is on a path to drop steadily at least through 2015. Already the deficit has fallen from its Mount Everest peak of 10.2% of gross domestic product in 2009, to about 4% this year. That’s a bullish six percentage points less of the GDP of new federal debt each year.

And on entitlement programs:

But the fiscal story isn’t all rosy. The major entitlements remain on autopilot and are roaring toward insolvency. Thanks in large part to Mr. Obama’s aversion to practical fixes, the Congressional Budget Office calculates that through July of this year Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid spending are up $73 billion from just last year. This doesn’t include ObamaCare, which is scheduled to add $1 trillion of new costs over the next decade.

So the fiscal progress reported here is no excuse for complacency. But it does call into question the wisdom of a government-shutdown confrontation over the budget this fall or a debt-default showdown that runs the risk of suspending the spending caps and sequester and revitalizing an increasingly irrelevant president.

Here NPR lays out the math for readers on the 2014 senatorial elections. It looks like the GOP will make some progress in taking back the upper chamber.

There are 20 Democratic and 15 Republican seats in play, and, at this point, the seats in danger of flipping are almost all Democratic.

A growing consensus is that the four most winnable-for-Republicans races include, for the moment, South Dakota, Montana, and West Virginia, where Democratic senators are retiring; and Arkansas, where Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor is the party’s most vulnerable.

No Republican-held seat appears to be flippable yet, with the exception of New Jersey, which will likely revert to Democratic control in an October 2013 special election. A Republican appointee has briefly held the New Jersey seat left vacant by the death in June of Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg.

Say you’re a city dweller planning for the apocalypse. Obviously your 30^th floor apartment is not an ideal location for living out the end of the world. It’s hard lugging water up 30 flights of darkened stairs while fighting off marauders on every flight. But it’s even harder when all the water in town is dominated by gangs of thugs who have taken the opportunity to exploit the chaos by becoming king-pins of life giving essentials like water and gasoline.

Anyone looking for the evidence of these types of behaviors should look at what happened after Hurricane Sandy along the coasts of New York and New Jersey. Thugs roamed the hallways of the Far Rockaways, and shortages and fear gripped the Jersey shore. So, needless to say, getting out of town is a great idea.

You need a bug-out base camp. This can come in handy as a vacation home or hunting cabin during the times before and after any potentially world ending events occur. But the real motivation for buying a parcel of land up a mountain road away from civilization is having a fall back spot to which you can retreat when the city is entering a chaotic phase.

But no self-respecting amateur survivalist wants to be caught without the creature comforts, so you must pack your base camp with awesome tech and gear that will allow you to ride out the end of the world in relative comfort. This countdown is a list of essential items you should invest in for your own bug-out base camp.

Number 10 on my Bug-Out Basecamp Essentials countdown is the item you’ll need first as you flee the city, a rugged pack to fill with your precious possessions, food, water and supplies for the trip. The pack I’ve chosen for you is the Eberlestock G4 Operator Pack. The pack holds 4,700 cubic inches of cargo, including a rifle or shotgun in a specialized scabbard. The Eberlestock G4 Operator is made for military scout/sniper use, but will be great for any civilian looking for the best pack they can get for survival.

“No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” — Judge Gideon J. Tucker

In general, the federal government is at its level best when the Capitol building is emptied of legislators. The bills they have passed into law over the last 20 years seem to have done little to grease the wheels of economic growth, instead it appears that while the legislature is in session, doubt and uncertainty cast a pall over the markets. The Wall Street Journal‘s Stephen Moore reports:

The presumption in Washington is that when Congress passes fewer laws it’s a bad thing. This is a view traditionally held by those who want more edicts, more regulations, and more spending. But is an active Congress necessarily good for the economy?

“Washington is less of a threat now to business, and that’s a good thing,” says Wall Street economist David Malpass. This is the predominant view from Wall Street and business groups: the less Washington does now, the better. That’s especially true after four years of the U.S. economy getting whacked repeatedly with a litany of anti-growth laws and red tape that reduced profits and added to business uncertainty. ObamaCare and this year’s giant tax increase are Exhibits A and B.

The Congressional Effect investment fund has found that “over the long term,”—i.e., the last 50 years—the stock market does worse when Congress is in session. This year has been a major exception given the big bull market run of recent months, but maybe that’s because, well, Congress didn’t do anything.

No question here, the best answer is repeal. As an adviser to small business owners and investors, I can tell you that Obamacare is bad economics and a job killer, never mind a tangled implementation disaster. This is even before the fact that Americans will be stuck with an ill-considered health system monster. Once all this is said, the question becomes how to attack. Here, National Review there are many options for attacking Obamacare.

Not surprisingly, the GOP appears somewhat divided on strategy. Republican Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Marco Rubio are leading an effort to oppose any resolution to fund the government in fiscal year 2014 that includes funding to implement Obamacare. “If the administration will not enforce the law as written, then the American people should not be forced to fund it,” they wrote in a letter to Senate majority leader Harry Reid, in reference to President Obama’s decision to unilaterally delay implementation of the law’s coverage mandate for employers with more than 50 employees. So far, 13 GOP senators have signed on, along with a number of conservative groups, such as FreedomWorks and Jim DeMint’s Heritage Foundation, which plans to embark on a “Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour” later this month.

The movement has its fair share of Republican critics. Senator Tom Coburn hascalled it “dishonest,” and “a good way for Republicans to lose the House.” Senator Richard Burr said it was “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.” GOP strategist Karl Rove has urged Republicans to “resist a game of chicken with the president” over Obamacare and the continuing resolution to fund the government, which is set to expire at the end of September. House majority leader Eric Cantor recently threw cold water on the proposed strategy, telling National Review Online that while “repealing Obamacare remains the goal,” defunding the law is off the table because it is unlikely to win 60 votes in the Senate.

A conservative coalition led by Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist has proposed an alternative position, urging congressional leaders to demand “at minimum” a one-year delay of all 2014 Obamacare provisions as part of any budget deal. The two plans are not necessarily incompatible, Norquist argues. “Defunding the whole thing is a fine proposal, and they should have that vote, but more likely what we can get is a delay for one year,” he tells me.

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Getting Paid for Bad Advice

An investment advisor is required by law to act as a fiduciary for a client. But don’t tell that to the brokerage industry. As the law stands, brokers are only required to follow a less stringent suitability rule. There’s a battle going on in Washington to require stock brokers to act as fiduciary’s only for retirement accounts. The lobbyists for brokers are having a fit because they don’t want to follow the tougher fiduciary rules. It’s not difficult to see who’s paying who as Jason Zweig of The Wall Street Journal reports here:

“The DOL is clearly moving forward on a track that’s inconsistent with where the policy should end up,” Judd Gregg, the former Republican U.S. Senator from New Hampshire who serves as chief executive of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Wall Street’s main trade group, told me. “It’s a dangerously large expansion that will chill all kinds of activity.”

Mr. Gregg says it “would be a disaster, a nightmare,” if the DOL sets a separate fiduciary standard for IRAs.

“We don’t think the DOL is moving forward in a way that’s going to be constructive at all; it’s going to be destructive,” adds Mr. Gregg. “The folks with small accounts are going to lose the ability to get advice, and their costs will go up.”

The heart of the matter: Fiduciaries should avoid conflicts, but brokers are generally required only to disclose them.

“Having a completely conflict-free relationship doesn’t work in practice” across most of the brokerage industry, says John Taft, head of RBC Wealth Management in the U.S., which manages $250 billion.

For example, when your broker’s firm underwrites an initial public offering of stock, he and the firm earn far more by selling some of those shares to you than selling you something else. When your broker buys you a bond out of his firm’s inventory of your broker’s firm, rather than on the open market, the firm also tends to make more money.

Industry groups have argued that if brokers can’t have any conflicts, like earning higher fees on some investments than on others, then they no longer will be able to afford handling small accounts.

“The [brokerage] industry is saying, in effect, ‘If you don’t allow us to continue to give conflicted advice, we won’t be able to give any,’” Assistant Secretary of Labor Phyllis Borzi, who oversees retirement benefits, told me.

Your city is in chaos. Yesterday you made the decision to leave the packed environs of the metropolis and to bug-out to your basecamp retreat in the country. In our Basecamp Essential #10, you packed up your Eberlestock G4 Operator Pack with food and supplies to get you to your basecamp. Now you’re headed out of town. On the way you want to make contact with your family members. Your mother in the suburbs and your son at college are already clued in to your evacuation plan, but with cell service overloaded in the city, you haven’t been able to get through. What to do? You need a better form of communication that will be more resilient to localized disasters.

Number 9 on our countdown of Bug-Out Basecamp Essentials is the Iridium 9575 Extreme. The Iridium is a satellite phone, with pole-to-pole (as in North Pole to South Pole) coverage that you can trust. Iridium has real time GPS tracking and can even be used as a Wi-Fi hotspot. That could come in handy if you have installed some webcams at your basecamp to make sure no one has gotten there before you. Best of all, the Iridium is the first military grade 810F compliant phone. That means durability; dust proof, water resistant, and shock resistant. At least one of these Iridium phones should be part of every family’s disaster preparedness plan.

From The American Conservative: With “Crossfire” about to return—albeit without founding father Pat Buchanan—CNN recently put online these highlights from a 1982 discussion between Buchanan and his old boss Richard Nixon, who talks about the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, LBJ, and being Eisenhower’s VP.

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Can you believe this?

Can you believe this? During Obama’s stay in office 88% of ALL jobs created have been part-time jobs. Here, in Repealing Obamacare: Not a Waste of Time the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner reports on a scary new Gallup poll. The shocking numbers show that 41 percent of small business have already held off on plans to hire new employees, and 38% have pulled back on plans to expand their businesses in other ways.

At the same time, outside a handful of states with exceptionally dysfunctional insurance markets, Obamacare will likely drive up the cost of whatever insurance employers do provide, making it more expensive to compensate even current workers.

And none of this even begins to take into account the impact of the roughly $1.2 trillion in new taxes and fees that Obamacare imposes over the next ten years.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, when employers are reluctant to hire new workers or when they shift to part-time workers (who are not subject to that mandate). According to a Gallup poll, 41 percent of small businesses have already held off on plans to hire new employees, and 38 percent have pulled back on plans to expand their businesses in other ways. Worse, 19 percent indicate that they have already laid off workers, and a similar number say they have cut back their hours.

And we have seen a dramatic increase in part-time workers. Since President Obama took office in January 2009, the country has added 1.9 million part-time jobs but just a net total of 270,000 full-time jobs. That means that 88 percent of all jobs added during President Obama’s time in office have been part-time.

A 28^th Amendment to pass a balanced budget amendment would likely pass as 70% of Americans want such an amendment. Here R. Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane give you all the details. You find out that since 1975, 32 states have already petitioned for its adoption, leaving only two more states needed to pass a 28^th amendment. President Obama has run federal debt up to 100% of GDP! The clock is ticking.

But tighter ropes may be needed. Perhaps a 28th Amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced budget. While this idea may appear radical, it is favored by about 70 percent of Americans.
The amendment may be forced on Congress, given that 32 states have petitioned for its adoption since 1975, two states shy of the constitutional trigger.

In 1982, 1995 and 2011, some version of balanced-budget legislation passed one but not both chambers of Congress. Those early amendment drafts had many critics, both Democratic and Republican, and many of their criticisms were valid. Successive versions became more of a small-government litmus test than a solution. Let’s fix that.

If our goal is to “balance” instead of just “starve” the federal beast, the amendment will trust voters to choose the amount of government it wants so long as the sticker price is honest, and there will be as many Democratic senators on board as Republicans. Here are three practical modifications that Congress should consider in a new balanced budget amendment.

Chile beats the United States hands down when it comes to retirement account savings. The Cato institute’s Chris Edwards shows what Chile is doing, and lays out the gory details of America’s entitlement time bomb.

Harvard University’s Martin Feldstein estimates that every dollar of increased payroll taxes causes about 50 cents of added deadweight losses. So let’s say that Congress raised the payroll tax by two percentage points to help “fix” Social Security’s finances. That hike would not just hit workers with an extra $120 billion in annual taxes, it would also cause $60 billion of damage to the economy from labor market distortions.

The good news is that there is a way to reform Social Security that would both fix its finances and reduce the economic damage. That is to convert Social Security to a system of personal retirement accounts, as more than two dozen nations have done since Chile pioneered such reforms three decades ago. The reforms have shown that privatized retirement systems can benefit workers, retirees, and the overall economy.

Chile’s personal retirement accounts are funded by contributions of 10 percent of wages. Because workers own these funds, it greatly reduces the labor market damage — or deadweight losses — caused by the system. Chilean workers can look at their paystubs and see that their earnings are going into a secure account that will benefit them. That acts as an encouragement to work. By contrast, in our system Social Security taxes go into a government black hole, which simply frustrates workers and reduces work effort.

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Where Gold is in Demand

Consumers in China are craving more of the yellow metal.

BEIJING—China’s increasing appetite for bling is giving some spark to the moribund gold market.

Gold prices are up 4% in the past week, hitting a three-week high of $1,334.70 an ounce on Monday. A big factor behind the rise is a surge in demand for physical gold in China, some investors and analysts say.

Demand in China, where consumers account for roughly a quarter of global gold demand, hit a record 385.5 metric tons in the second quarter, according data released Monday by the state-backed China Gold Association. That is double the figure from a year earlier, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the data.

In yesterday’s Basecamp Essentials countdown #9, I told you to buy the Iridium 9575 Extreme satellite phone. In our hypothetical bug-out situation, you have just picked up your mother from the suburbs and your son from college and now you’re heading to your boondocks retreat at maximum speed.

Once you reach your bug-out property you need a vehicle that can get you in and out of basecamp without fail. Your city-slicker Prius isn’t going to make it from the head of the wood road to your basecamp, so you’ll need alternate transportation. I suggest the BMS Sand Sniper 1000, a four cylinder, two seat dune-buggy that will easily get you from point A to point B.

The Sand Sniper has a durable all steel frame, disc brakes on all wheels, a four speed transmission, lots of suspension for rough terrain, and plenty of lights so you can find your way through the foliage on nighttime trips. If you get stuck, the Sand Sniper comes with an electric winch to pull you out.

Some people might be asking “Why not buy a truck?” The answer is, if you’re retreating to a bug-out basecamp, do you really want to be where anyone with a truck can come drive right up? No, your basecamp should be so secluded you need some form of ATV to get into it. You don’t want the neighbors stopping by to help themselves to your food and water.

Over four decades ago, I met Cato Institute Chairman Bob Levy. Bob and I were both associated with a New York-based institutional research and trading firm. In recent years, Bob became chairman of the Cato Institute. Since then Debbie and I have become closely involved with Cato thanks to Bob and also to our friend and Cato co-founder Ed Crane.

Bob Levy was co-counsel in the landmark Supreme Court case, District of Columbia vs. Heller. In Cato’s most recent Quarterly Message on Liberty, Bob has provided a fact-filled, compelling argument for the Second Amendment. In my multi-part mini series, I want to share a few of Bob’s comments with you. The Supreme Court declared in both Heller and McDonald that the right to bear arms is considered a fundamental right.

Bob writes, “There were 13,000 people murdered with a weapon in 2011. Of those, 1,700 were killed with knives; 500 were killed with hammers, bats and clubs; and 728 by someone’s bare hands. How many of those were killed with rifles—not just assault rifles, but rifles of all types? Three hundred and twenty-three.”

Here Mr. Levy lays out all the numbers required to send state governors and legislatures up another path rather than regulating the sale of so-called assault rifles, magazines and ammunition. Such debate, never mind action, is nothing but shameful political posturing, unfortunately fueled by the recent travesties. This is an open and shut case for anyone with a lick of common sense.

Read Part I here.

I recently took these photos in the Faneuil Hall section of downtown Boston.

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”

- Samuel Adams

One of your biggest investment risks in retirement is not knowing what retirement will look like. What I have found in working with retirees is that their initial idea of what retirement will look like is far different than how it turns out to be, for better or worse. That’s why it’s smart to give yourself financial options and that’s one of the many drawbacks of annuities. In addition to their high fees and high pressure sales pitch it’s the locked in forever nature of annuities that can be most harmful to your family’s well-being.

A former Government adviser said many people would have to live until they are 90 before their annuity becomes good value, and that the policies were so dangerous they should carry a risk warning.

Ros Altmann, a pensions expert, said thousands of annuity holders had no idea their husband or wife may not get their money if they die because their policy may not cover a spouse or partner. And she urged regulators to “wake up” and address the “current market failures.”

She said: “Far from being a low risk purchase, buying an annuity could be the biggest gamble you ever take in your life. An annuity purchase is a long-term investment decision, which risks losing much or all of your money, yet people are given no risk warnings about the dangers of buying.

“If you die soon after you buy a standard, single-life annuity, your pension fund will go to the insurance company, not your loved one.”

She added: “Buying an annuity is considered the ‘safe’ thing to do when reaching retirement. This is misguided. The ‘safety’ only refers to the fact that the amount of income will be set for the rest of your life. But the capital itself is at risk.”

Fast food eateries, as well as the big box supermarkets, are purveyors of food often not fit for human consumption. Words like all natural and free range offer you little protection. As a general rule, avoid packaged foods and any foods that do not carry a full listing of ingredients. The number one killer, after trans fats, is high fructose corn syrup. Also high on my avoidance list are canola, safflower, corn and cottonseed oil. Commercially produced bread is almost always a loser and to be avoided, as are nearly all commercially prepared salad dressings. There’s an easy rule to follow: don’t consume any packaged food that lists more than three ingredients. For an idea of how the prepared foods industry hides all this from you, check out this article about Papa John’s.

If you have not fully prepared, you are putting your family at considerable risk. Here NPR explains the deadly risk of a cyber-attack on the nation’s electrical grid.

The concern that computer hackers could shut down the electric grid stems from technological changes in the power industry. Much of the equipment used in the grid, from the generators to the transformers, is now operated by computers. By disrupting computer network operations, hackers could shut down a key part of the grid.

They would still need access to the computers, but this obstacle could be overcome because many of those computers are now connected to the Internet.

“Now we can remotely manage devices via the Internet,” notes Mark Weatherford, until recently a top cyberspecialist at the Department of Homeland Security. “So instead of putting someone in a truck and having them drive a hundred miles to a substation in the middle of the mountains somewhere, you remotely manage that.”

Weatherford, now consulting on cyber issues at the Chertoff Group, says power companies saw that managing grid operations via the Internet brought efficiencies and cut costs, so they jumped at the chance. Perhaps a bit recklessly.

“To no one’s fault at the time — we didn’t realize it — [we] didn’t think about the security and the insecurity [of Internet connections],” Weatherford said. When a computer is connected to the Internet, a skilled hacker can often find a way to break into it.

This is the new disaster scenario for power companies. Security experts in the industry are aware of the challenge and moving quickly to meet it, but the threats to their networks may be evolving even faster.

At this point in my hypothetical bug-out scenario, you’ve fled the city, retrieved your family members from wherever they were, and finally, using the BMS Sand Sniper 1000 I told you about yesterday have reached the basecamp. Now it’s time to get your basecamp up and running.

Number seven on my countdown of basecamp essentials is the Generac GP15000E, an American made generator with great power (Two of the GP series Generac portable generators are produced in Wisconsin, those are the GP15000 and GP17500). The 15000E is rated for 15,000 output watts, with a maximum of 22,500 output watts. It’s got enough power to fire up an electric stove and air conditioners. You can spend your days in relative comfort at your bug-out basecamp with the Generac GP15000E running in the background. One thing I especially like about the GP15000E is that it comes standard with a frame and wheel kit. Not all generators do and it’s extremely helpful to have so you’re throwing your back out moving the generator around in a disaster situation. These are great backups for your home too.

The Geenrac GP15000E is something everyone should have on hand whether at your basecamp, or your home, or both for a disaster situation. It’ll keep your boiler or furnace running in the winter so you don’t freeze, and it’s keep you’re AC running in the summer so rolling blackouts won’t leave you sweating through your clothes. Most importantly it’ll keep your bug-out basecamp powered with all the juice necessary to survive in relative comfort.

My suggestion for the GP15000E, which is natural gas powered in its standard configuration, is to convert it propane. You can carry lots of propane cans up to your basecamp in your Sand Sniper. Also, propane doesn’t spoil like gasoline will. That way you can store it for longer without cycling through it.

Matt Nolff of PNG Technologies explains the conversion in a series of YouTube videos, the first of which is below.

You can see Nolff’s channel with the other videos by clicking here.

According to Justin Wilson at Business 2 Community, Apple is rumored to be preparing two new iPhones, a 5S, that’s the traditional followup to the current 5, and a 5C that will be made of plastic and sell at a lower price. The strategy is to compete with Samsung phones in emerging markets.

According to the tech rumor mill, September 10th will see the launch of two new iPhones – the 5S and the 5C. New iPhones for certain people are an exciting event (anyone for queuing outside the Apple store for 5 days?), but this launch is particularly significant as the 5C is going to be a budget version of the iPhone, which is a significant change to Apple’s strategy.

Firstly, what about the 5S – well, it will be similar to a 5, but with a faster processor, an improved camera (apparently 12 megapixel) and fingerprint recognition which I think it is quite a cool feature, although it didn’t catch on with laptops. ButI think the 5C is the more interesting proposition.

The iPhone is a very popular device, but Apple has been losing market share to Android devices particularly Samsung devices. The 5C is designed to try to take some share away from Samsung by positioning their phone at a cheaper price point.

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Five-Year Average Annual Returns

As you chart your investment course it’s crucial that you position yourself to be able to live to fight another day. With the Fed’s zero percent interest rate policy it’s easy to forget the importance of bonds in your portfolio. And with the end of 2013 in sight, mutual fund companies are licking their chops for the day when they can run out their 5-year average annual returns sans 2008. But let’s not forget that in 2008 the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq cratered by a respective 32%, 37%, and 40% while Vanguard’s GNMA gained 7.2%. Mutual fund Legg Mason Value Trust lost 58% in 2008. The five-year average annual returns will make that a distant memory. But 2008 is impossible to ignore for those who were invested in the fund.

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America’s National Security Is at Risk!

You need to know what is going on and what you can do about it. Here is the place to start. Read with care Cato Institute’s “Rand Paul Is No Isolationist.” Among the details you will find that The American Enterprise Institute’s new war-making project, The American Internationalism Project, is home base for a powerful new neocon wave. Former Senators Jon Kyl and Joseph Lieberman are the co-cheerleaders of the project. Do not buy into a word of what the war hawks are promoting. All you have to know is the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were disasters where America’s security played no part. Use simple “outcome analysis” and common sense and you will stay on the right track. And if you have not ordered copies of Cato’s Chris Preble’s The Power Problem, do so immediately. You can also read my mini series on the The Power Problem here.

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Why work?

In Connecticut, along with most other states ,you can beat the system and lift not a finger thanks to the lax laws of the folks we all voted for in Congress and the guy in the White House! Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner writes that In Connecticut, a mother with two children participating in seven major welfare programs could receive a package of benefits worth $38,761. Mr. Tanner continues by informing readers that the free lunch package is bigger yet in Massachusetts, the District of Columbia (what a surprise) and sunny Hawaii! What a great country. Americans can do something about this nationwide “Beat The System Racket” at the polls in 2014.

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The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth #8

Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., has created one of the most vital books on the health of your family you will ever find, The 150 Healthiest Food on Earth . The lavishly illustrated, 358-page weighty tome gives you more vital information on foods that can keep your family healthy than any other publication I have ever come across. And I am always on the look out. I have given the book to family members and often advise it for others. I have now selected a “Great 10” list of food choices to share with you. My goal here is pass on ideas that perhaps you did not previously know about.

Turmeric: I take turmeric every day. Johnny writes, “If ever there were a contest for a spice that deserved a whole book written about it, turmeric would be the clear winner…. Turmeric is part of the healing system of India, China and the Polynesian islands.” There, it is well known that Turmeric has an ability to lower inflammation. A compound found in turmeric—curcumin—was found in one study to be as effective as the anti-inflammatory medication phenylbutazone. As Jonny tells readers, “There are at least thirty published studies indicating that curcumin has an antitumor effect (either reducing the number or size of tumors or the percentage of animals that developed them). Curcumin is known to have powerful antioxidant properties and is frequently used to lower elevated liver enzymes.”

After firing up the Generac GP15000E I recommended in #7 on this countdown, your basecamp is fully operational. Now it’s time to start taking an inventory of the essentials you have stored at the camp. Your top priority should be water. Without water a human will die in three to five days, so having an ample supply stocked up at your basecamp is a necessity.

There are an infinite number of water storage devices; they can be as rudimentary as a bucket, or as advanced as underground storage tanks that feed plumbing with gravity piping. What I’m recommending for you today is something in the middle. For your water storage needs I recommend the My Food Storage gallon water storage boxes. These boxes are collapsible, so they don’t take up a ton of space when empty, but the cardboard outer shell prevents the inner metalized mylar bladder from being torn. The bladder is BPA free and has an easy pour and fill spout. With water treatment drops the box will keep water drinkable for up to four years, and you’ll live for another 3-5 days.