This forum is used by 1000's of people from dozens of countries. Please observe the rules, we all want to get along and contribute in a graceful manner.
pt49 wrote:Why don't you guys just move... to Australia or New Zealand?
If you do, you can bring your still, but not your guns.
Today, for Father's Day, I visited the graves of fathers in a national war cemetery. Please honor and remember those who protected Australia and NZ, with guns and at great cost, from invasion during WWII.
I think it is not fair to imply that the members of this forum would participate in gun violence. We know who commits gun violence, just read the newspapers.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow * Between the crosses, row on row, * We are the Dead. Short days ago * We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, * Loved and were loved, and now we lie * In Flanders fields. -- from a WWI poem
S-Cackalacky wrote:
So, why are so many here, as demonstrated in this thread, crawling into a hole ... so many are running scared ... fight the fight .. "fight"? The "fight" .. crawling off somewhere .. stand and fight for you .. I suppose I shouldn't expect to enter into a fight without being able to tolerate a few bruises and a cowardly sucker punch.
Just sayin',
S-C
No one here is crawling into a hole.
We would like to be left in peace to pursue a hobby and to make good booze. We recognize that now is not the time to draw attention to ourselves. Your posts here are not doing any of us any good.
OK, so I'll move on and leave you in peace. I guess, if the sheep flock tightly enough together, the wolves will only eat the ones on the perimeter. Good luck to you all and may God strike me dead if I ever open this thread again.
Just sayin',
S-C
Every new member should read this before doing anything else:
pt49 wrote:Why don't you guys just move... to Australia or New Zealand?
If you do, you can bring your still, but not your guns.
Today, for Father's Day, I visited the graves of fathers in a national war cemetery. Please honor and remember those who protected Australia and NZ, with guns and at great cost, from invasion during WWII.
I think it is not fair to imply that the members of this forum would participate in gun violence. We know who commits gun violence, just read the newspapers.
Little off topic but : Reckon the point might have been that our gun laws are worse than our stilling laws. Most of our nation are very proud of the sacrafice and service of our WWII defence force just as much as we are of those aided, served with them
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.Benjamin Franklin
It makes absolutely no sense that home distilling to make drink is illegal, when they let you do it to make fuel and only charge a $5 permit fee. They obviously are not worried about your safety doing it. Anyone 21 years of age can go walk into a store and buy 96% alcohol for under $20, and that's totally legal. It's legal to make beer and wine, why are they discriminating against spirits? They let anyone that passes a background check buy a gun. How many accidental deaths are there with guns versus home distilling? A good lawyer should have no problem in a debate about it in front of a congressional hearing. It will never be legal until we start the ball rolling. We need facts, figures and data to back up the argument. This is a winnable case.
You're right on though KOH, I'm not even sure it's really about money as much as habit at this point. I can't imagine anything but higher tax revenues has come from legalizing home brew. At least in Portland, we're racking up more and more micro breweries/distilleries. All these new businesses came from somewhere and I'm guessing at least some of the people starting these up started scheming when they were working out of 5gallon homer buckets.
[quote]At least in Portland, we're racking up more and more micro breweries/distilleries. All these new businesses came from somewhere and I'm guessing at least some of the people starting these up started scheming when they were working out of 5gallon homer buckets/quote]
So -
Could Big Alcohol be part of the push? Are they trying to stem the tide and put a lock on competition? Would not be unheard of for a big interest group to try and maintain its market dominance. Tin foil, I know ...
I bet dollars to donuts it's either big boys or distributors. Word must be out about sales from small home stills going thru the roof. If we had a lawyer in the group or find one to represent us pro Bono this seems to be winable. But what it would cost is unknown.
Could Big Alcohol be part of the push? Are they trying to stem the tide and put a lock on competition? Would not be unheard of for a big interest group to try and maintain its market dominance. Tin foil, I know ...
Presumably, the gov't could care less where its tax revenue originates ... as long as it continues to collect (big alcohol, micro-distillery, whatever). The tax on a bottle of brand X is the same as the tax on a bottle of brand Y, so I would have to assume that the TTB, left to its own devices, would be relatively agnostic.
However, political candidates, campaigns, parties ... well, they depend on contributions to establish and maintain power. And it's the politicians that direct gov't activities. Anyone that has done anything with the gov't knows that taking initiative isn't high on the typical gov't employee's list of values. However, taking direction is. Tin foil? Maybe. But it's hard to ignore millions of dollars along with the crystal ball that home brewing/winemaking has provided. It would surprise me if the matter wasn't at least discussed in the board rooms of big alcohol:
Yup, that's what I was suggesting. The tin foil bit was just a foil to cover my backside Government is an aggregate of competing special interests, some bigger and more influential than others. That's why, in a weird way, there is still a glimmer of hope!
Out of the thousands of us on this board I have to guess that some of us are involved labor unions, larger community groups(car clubs,churches, 'social welfare' groups etc). If we were able to draft some goals and potentially model legislation using the existing homebrew laws as a model I think we could serve as a pretty powerful and broad based lobby if we were to accurately access our personal networks. This however does require some personal risk in that we likely would have to talk about our experiences in this hobby to show both credibility and a personal stake in potential legislation. Right now, pretty much every person I have talked to about this(close friends and family only) have expressed pretty strong concerns about the safety of our hobby(poisoning, exploding stills etc). Pretty quickly in those conversations, I'm able to alleviate some or all of their concerns but only when I give some more details about what I've done in distilling. I'm all for don'tselldon'ttell but if we're in anyway serious about building public support for this hobby the loudest guy in "the room" can't be that no talent ass clown Tickle(and the rest of those nincompoops).
I like a good leg o lamb. Perhaps home distilling is getting so big they figure they need to change the law to at least allow it with a few restrictions that make common sense, rather than just keep the status quo which isn't working, looking at the numbers of sales in the last few years.
There's gotta be people within both policy and enforcement wings of our gov't that see criminalization of relatively harmless activities ends up being incredibly expensive for the gov't without much in the way of a return in public safety/confidence or tax dollars.
ThrownOlive wrote:Out of the thousands of us on this board I have to guess that some of us are involved labor unions, larger community groups(car clubs,churches, 'social welfare' groups etc). If we were able to draft some goals and potentially model legislation using the existing homebrew laws as a model I think we could serve as a pretty powerful and broad based lobby if we were to accurately access our personal networks. This however does require some personal risk in that we likely would have to talk about our experiences in this hobby to show both credibility and a personal stake in potential legislation. Right now, pretty much every person I have talked to about this(close friends and family only) have expressed pretty strong concerns about the safety of our hobby(poisoning, exploding stills etc). Pretty quickly in those conversations, I'm able to alleviate some or all of their concerns but only when I give some more details about what I've done in distilling. I'm all for don'tselldon'ttell but if we're in anyway serious about building public support for this hobby the loudest guy in "the room" can't be that no talent ass clown Tickle(and the rest of those nincompoops).
The personal risk part seems to be more than enough to keep anyone on this board from getting involved. It's a shame. There seems to be a strong consensus here that everyone should just keep quiet and maintain the status quo. A vocal minority can get things done, but a silent minority will never be heard.
How is that war on drugs going? There are so many people now wanting decriminalization because it is an utter failure. Sales of spirit went up in NZ after they allowed home making when before it was going down. I hope they are finally getting their heads on straight and rethinking a lot of dumb laws like this.
Just think if people were prescribed pot instead of all the mind altering drugs they put kids and people on we probaby wouldn't have these sensless mass murders and the drug companies wouldn't be so powerful.
Big Pharma and Food Inc. OWN the government. No, Im not going to talk about politics, because we dont have any, we have puppets. We have legislation driven by the best interest of the biggest corporations in the country.
That may have something to do with the 57% voter turnout we saw in 2012. It's lower and lower every four years. I can't blame politicians for taking corporate payouts since the people they're supposed to represent have no interest in being represented. If we were able to leverage the population of this forum to move on the legalization of our hobby, we could bring some fairly powerful weight into the game.
It aint my place but, IMHO, Ranting about politics detracts from legitimate conversations about the hobby...far ranging visions aside, can we keep the focus on the hobby please.
Its King of Hearts fault, he mentioned drug companies, thats government ok Ill stop now.
Here's a thought, theres 18141 HD members. Thats a shitload of people to decend on Washington with boxes full of mason jars and do a sit in. Like the potheads do. Hell it seems to be working for them.
Government is an aggregate of competing special interests, some bigger and more influential than others. That's why, in a weird way, there is still a glimmer of hope!
ok Ill stop now.
