This tidbit just a couple days ago from an investment adviser I follow, Richard Russell, who’s been writing a very popular newsletter for upwards of fifty years:

“Do your friends a favor. Tell them to ‘batten down the hatches’ because there’s a HARD RAIN coming. Tell them to get out of debt and sell anything they can sell (and don’t need) in order to get liquid. Tell them that Richard Russell says that by the end of this year they won’t recognize the country. They’ll retort, ‘How the dickens does Russell know — who told him?’ Tell them the stock market told him.”

When I read this, I was reminded of something Michael Ruppert said Sunday evening following the screening of his documentary, “Collapse” (based on his book, Confronting Collapse). In answer to a question from the audience about how people should handle credit card and bank debt (this was a special screening sponsored by Chelsea Green, publisher of the Ruppert book, which also published my book), Ruppert offered this intriguing suggestion, and I paraphrase: If it’s a relatively small amount, pay it off now, and get rid of it. If it’s a big debt, try to hold off paying too much since there’s a good chance the financial institution that holds it will fail in the rapidly approaching crash, and you won’t have to deal with it…and it could all be approaching by this summer.

And then I was thinking today when I read that the Wisconsin governor vetoed the raw milk bill after initially saying he was inclined to sign it, that Wisconsin dairy farmers should follow the same line of reasoning as Richard Russell and Michael Ruppert: try your best to stay in business and continue doing what you’re doing, especially if you’re selling raw milk on the black market. Ignore the governor and the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection.

The same goes for those in the raw milk business in Massachusetts. If you run a buying club, keep doing it. If you own a dairy producing raw milk, keep supplying the buying clubs. Ignore the cease-and-desist orders and the absurdities of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. I’m not saying this just because the MDAR has admitted to its collaborators at DPH that there is no legal validity to the orders.

I’m also not saying what I’m saying because these public officials are totally corrupt in trying to protect moneyed interests–both MA Ag Commissioner Scott Soares and WI Gov. Jim Doyle admitted upfront they’re trying to protect the dairy industry. They didn’t say why they want to protect an industry that abuses animals and produces a disgusting product, but I will (and Wayne Craig alluded to it in his comment on my previous post). The dairy industry is worth an estimated $140 billion annually, according to a Wisconsin study, so every 1% they lose to the raw dairies is worth $1.4 billion. Men have been known to kill for much less than that, so what’s a little grease to public officials to protect those kind of revenues? These guys are like dictators in two-bit banana republics who grab all the loot they can before they’re forced by rampaging mobs into exile.

No, there are two much more important reasons to ignore the creeps.

First off, Wisconsin and Massachusetts are going to rapidly lose the ability to employ leeches like Soares, Auerbach, and Rod Nilsestuen. Look around. State workers in California and elsewhere are already on “furlough” one day a week. Police and teachers are being laid off. And this is during relatively good times. The ag and public health agencies (among others) will be lucky to even have employees by the time the financial storm gets through with this country. (And while you’re at it, you might want to get rid of any state municipal bonds you might own.)

In fact, some of those DATCP and MDAR goons may be coming around wanting to buy food from raw dairies, or asking a buying club for a job. Then the buying clubs and raw dairies will have an interesting decision to make: do they sell milk to their previous tormenters? That’s a tough one.

Maybe you’ll want to hire them to work for their food, to load your truck, run some errands. Maybe not. They probably couldn’t handle real work.

And if the tough times that look like they’re rapidly approaching don’t get here that quickly, I’d still suggest ignoring the creeps. That has to do with my second reason: civil disobedience. There’s no more reason we should be denied healthy food and forced to consume undesirable (and likely dangerous) food than there was for Rosa Parks to be denied a seat in the front of the bus, and have to sit in the hot and undesirable back of the bus. It’s a violation of basic human rights, pure and simple.

As long as I’m discussing rights, just one other thing you might get a chuckle out of. A couple blog readers sent me a link to an interview of John Auerbach, the public health commissioner, published on the Massachusetts web site, he of the “You have no food rights” school. In the interview, he was asked, “What quote do you live by?” Auerbach’s answer:“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”(Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963) That man deserves the cynic-of-the-year award from someone.

No, there’s no reason to obey such laws. Ignore the creeps. Their edifice is rapidly crumbling. And besides, interesting financial times are rapidly approaching if you’re selling raw milk and other healthy foods into the desperate local food markets that will be proliferating.