Are Content Providers Free to DePlatform?

In the last few years, we have heard many stories of alternative viewpoints -- including Libertarian ones -- being "deplatformed" and "unpublished".

Some Libertarians are excusing this behavior by claiming those content providers are private property, and they can decide for themselves what they provide a platform for.

I fully understand the argument.  However...

That position is, at best, naive, and at worst, willfully ignorant.

It has become abundantly clear: Content providers are not really private companies any longer.

1) They get a huge government subsidy in the form of "artificial personhood".

2) All of the major platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are subscribers to the "services" of a spook-run "non-government organization" called the "Atlantic Council". 

3) Most of the spooks "advising" the oligarchs as to who to deplatform and what to censor are Obama-era players.

4) Dragging Zuck before congress wasn't meant to elicit information. It was a horse's head in the beds of the content oligarchs.

5) All of the content providers claim to be platforms and thus not liable for their content -- in public. However, in court, they claim the opposite.  Content carriers need to decide if they are publishers or platforms, and duck the hell out of gaming the system.


6) There have been multiple instances of spookish government bureaucrats visiting the C suites of all of the tech titans. Of course the records of what these spooks say to the execs is not made public, but here's a guess: "My, Mr Chairman, that's a beautiful twelve year old daughter you have there. It would be a shame if someone from our office visited her tonight."

7) The takedown of Backpage.com and the bankrupting of its principals in order to prevent them from hiring sufficient legal counsel was another horse's head.

No. The oligarchic providers have been captured by Leviathan. They are now functioning as management arms of the police state.  Almost all of the internet content providers are now deeply compromised.No corporation should be regulating political speech; and certainly no corporation -- which gets the government subsidy of artificial personhood -- should attempt to meddle in American elections in this manner.

It isn't the Russians who are interfering in our elections.

It's tech oligarchs, the mainstream media, and the military-industrial-spook complex.

The fix for this is to reduce government employment at all levels by 99% across-the-board, and shut down government agencies -- including the national-security-spy-state complex.

Hopefully the few thousand remaining government bureaucrats will be able to concentrate on activities that actually protect the individual rights of Americans. rather than violating them.

The elimination of corporate personhood and requiring businesses to bear the full cost and responsibility for their own actions that violate individual rights is also required.

Vote Libertarian.

Additional reading:

1.  Your taxpayer dollars are funding the Atlantic Council -- the organization "advising" Facebook on which viewpoints to censor.

2.  Facebook submits various content to an Atlantic Council lab that "detects" unacceptable opinions.





3.  More to come!

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, November, 2019.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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Libertarians: Decriminalize Sex Work

Larimer County Cops?

In Larimer County, CO, this year, over 300 men have been arrested for attempting to have voluntary sex.  Here's what the cops and their media parrots said about one week's haul: "An operation to help reduce the demand for human trafficking in Larimer County led to the arrest of eight men who are accused of patronizing prostitutes."

But yet there's no "war on men" going on.

So the cops [and parrots] equate having voluntary, contractual sex to "human trafficking".

Ummm..  No.  Sorry, Charlie, but prostitution is not trafficking.

Public schools and caging human beings by police might resemble human trafficking, but prostitution does not.

Besides, no actual humans were trafficked, much less prostituted -- all of the "prostitutes" were cops hiding behind a computer.

The grand total of confirmed "sex trafficking" cases in Colorado -- you know, where someone *was* forced into sex by someone else -- for 2017 was: 14.  And they were rightfully prosecuted.

In 2017, nationwide, there were 467 confirmed cases of sex trafficking, of which 14 were minors.  There is *no* "epidemic" of human trafficking.  If anything, there are fewer human beings trafficked now than there ever have been (at least in the United States).

Well, except cops tend to have an increasing problem with screwing teenaged girls (and boys), and passing them around to their buddies.  Which *is* trafficking.

And put it in perspective: In 2017, there WERE 393,980 reported serious domestic violence cases, and over 1,237,960 reported violent rapes and sexual assaults.

So perhaps we ought to "end the demand for marriage"?

All the stats are available from the FBI pages - and links can be found on Libertarian Norma Jean Almodovar's website (2017 stats are the latest until October of this year when the 2018 stats are available).

The Libertarian Party believes you own yourself.  If you choose to marry a millionaire because you like the bank account, or if you pay $75 for a handy (like police victim Robert Kraft), you're having voluntary sex.  Voluntary sex is not trafficking, and no form of voluntary sex should be prohibited.

The Libertarian Party's platform position on sex work spells it out:

2.10 Sex Work - The Libertarian Party supports the decriminalization of prostitution. We assert the right of consenting adults to provide sexual services to clients for compensation, and the right of clients to purchase sexual services from consenting sex workers.

The Libertarian Party Radical Caucus platform describes the Libertarian position on sexual rights even more thoroughly:

1.9 Sexual Rights - Consenting individuals have the right to private choice in sexual activity.  We support the repeal of all laws and policies which are intended to condemn, affirm, encourage, or deny sexual lifestyles or any attitudes about such lifestyles. Further, we oppose any government attempts to dictate, prohibit, control, or encourage any private lifestyle, living arrangement, or contractual relationship.  Who or how many somebody loves is none of the government's business.  We support separation of marriage and state. Government marriage license regimes were introduced as tools of control like any other license, and therefore we call for their immediate abolition. No free individual should be expected to obtain a "permission slip" from the state in order to marry.  We support the repeal of all laws prohibiting or regulating sex work including prostitution, whether practiced by individuals or in the form of businesses such as those operating brothels, massage parlors, or other facilities.

End the wars on men, women, and sex workers of both genders.  Repeal the prohibition on sex work.  Stop meddling in the private and voluntary affairs of free individuals.

Vote Libertarian.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, October, 2019.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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Blue Wave?

What "Blue wave"?

I am no Trumpkin, but the Left needs to up its game.

Obama lost SIXTY-THREE House seats and SIX Senate seats in his first midterms in 2010.

Clinton lost FIFTY-FOUR House seats and NINE Senate seats in his first midterm in 1994.

And THEY had an adoring press.

[Bush actually bucked the long trend and gained 2 Senate seats and 8 House seats in 2002.]

Trump has been under unrelenting, vicious attacks by most of the press, yet he is going to GAIN at least 2 seats in the Senate and will lose only between thirty and forty seats in the House.

Y'all are in trouble. Because the 2020 elections just started today, and what you thought was going to be a rout, really wasn't.

In addition, you squandered your opportunity to work with Republicans to get a more balanced Supreme Court by your underhanded treatment of the Kavanaugh nomination.  Your handling of that nomination assured that you will be run over if there are any more vacancies -- two more may well be in the cards within the next year.

Playing the "If you aren't a leftist, you're a creepy racist woman-hating redneck ignorant nazi gun nut homophobic bigot" card is probably too yesterday to work anymore.

What might work better for the left is working on actually solving problems.

Like, repealing the Prohibitions on drugs, gambling, and prostitution that drag the poor and minorities into the justice system disproportionately, ending all the wars, and working towards accountability and transparency for government workers -- including the police, who inflict such a horrendous toll on minorities through policing for profit and revenue farming in general.

And fixing those absolutely corrupt, murderous, bankrupt, and broken Left-led major cities all over the United States.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, October, 2018.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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Bootlickers Want YOU Out of Your Car

Eric Peters, a car enthusiast in Virginia, wrote on Sept 7, 2018, about something that's been gnawing at me too:

The average cost for insurance for a new teen driver is now north of $250 per month.

How is he supposed to get a car – or afford gas – when he is obliged to pony up $250 each month to the insurance mafia? ... How is a teenage kid working a minimum wage/part-time gig supposed to deal with it?

Faced with this extortion – and that’s exactly the right word; there’s no choice about paying the $250 per month, if the kid wants to drive legally – many simply opt out. A record-high percentage of 16-25-year-olds haven’t even got a driver’s license and forget the car. They stay home instead, game and text. When they need to get somewhere, they ride share or Uber or something that doesn’t require them to spend a minimum of 20-25 hours working at minimum wage (currently $10.50 er hour) gig hauling pizzas or some such just to tithe the mafia.... More and more of them just don’t care about cars – or driving.

Mission accomplished.

One way to get people out of cars – an agenda that has existed since at least the early ’70s in furtive “urban planning” circles but which has become aggressively obvious in recent years – is to make sure they never get into them. And the easiest way to do that is to make driving prohibitively and unavoidably expensive for new drivers especially. If they never learn to drive, they’ll never miss not driving.

I agree with Eric Peters that the dramatic increases in the cost of insuring new drivers is INTENTIONAL on the part of bureaucrats. It is government policy that allows insurance companies to do this. Just one of those policies is mandatory insurance -- which is nothing more than a massive subsidy to rent-seeking insurance companies.

It's many times more expensive to repair accident-damaged cars now than it was at the peak of Car Culture USA. That is again a direct result of federal policy: Cars must be built to federal standards, rather than customer standards. So what might have been a fender, hood, and grille replacement in 1968, now requires dozens of large and small parts, each one engineered to comply with federal crash standards, air bag systems (required by the feds), and crumple-zone standards -- and each one predictably pricey as a result.

Not long ago, there was an article in a car magazine where a GM engineer was reviewing past GM greats -- like the 1966 Chevrolet Malibu.  He said his department had actually studied the idea: that with the identical manufacturing, engineering, and features as one had in 1966, the same identical car would cost a buyer around $15,000 in today's dollars.

He also said that with modern regulation, all of the changes to every part of the car to comply with current regulations, you'd end up with a car that was almost unrecognizable, twice the weight, about the same power, and roughly three times the cost -- and either impossible to repair or horrendously expensive to repair.

The Murderous Left wants people out of cars. The single greatest liberator of all time -- the personal automobile -- is anathema to bootlickers who want to know who you are, where you are, what you're doing, who you're with, and what you have in your possession. AT ALL TIMES.

Bootlickers are control freaks who want the unwashed masses shuttled around in cattle cars that they can centrally shut down for whatever reason, and grab who or whatever they want.

They don't give a rat's ass about the environment, or deaths and injuries from accidents. All they are really after is CONTROL. And one way to get there is to make mobility-at-will all but impossible.

The Libertarian answer is to:

1) Abolish mandatory insurance requirements, like all other regulations

2) Abolish all government-issued identification regimes.

3) Eliminate all government-owned or operated transportation systems, and allow private ownership to mitigate the harm done by poor drivers.

4) Abolish government-operated police, and allow road owners to provide the kind of traffic control that suits them and their paying customers.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, September, 2018.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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How About A Real Compromise on Guns?

Yes, we can have a conversation about gun violence.

But not one based on lies.

And definitely not one where the only outcome you will accept is the gun confiscation you really want but which you refuse to admit.

There is NO "compromise" on banning guns. Modern gun control hysteria seeks ONE thing and one thing only: complete confiscation. Registration is not confiscation, true enough. It is, however, the beginning of a database of gun owners, so the next administration has a list of homes to break into when confiscation does come.

You know this.

You know it from history, both in the US and abroad.

Don't pretend you don't know it, because when you start a conversation with that kind of basic dishonesty, everyone can see right through it.

You're just going to have to be up-front and admit it: Your goal is to use gun registration as a preliminary step to CONFISCATION.

You are also aware that a "compromise" is where the sides all give up something.

But that's not what you're after, is it?

You want gun owners to give up their property and leave their homes vulnerable to every thug that comes along -- all while you give them NOTHING in return.

That's not a compromise.

How about this for a compromise:

Gun owner registration. Add a code to state driver's licenses indicating that person is qualified to be a gun owner. You can even keep your silly training requirements. The state already knows who 95% of gun owners are, anyway, through the forms people fill out during gun purchases.

If that person then commits a crime, then the code-enabled driver's license must be turned in and a new one issued without it, until that person has earned all of his rights back.

In exchange: 1) The code serves as a concealed permit (no additional permit required). 2) full and absolute recognition of carry permits in all 50 states plus any territories with a zip code ("full faith and credit"); and 3) the abolition of all federal agencies and laws regulating guns, including full-auto and sawed-off firearms.

Now there is a compromise. You get something, and we get something.

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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, for the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus.  May, 2018.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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Bottom-Shelf Sustenance

[Editor's Note: This article was written in 2010 by Chad Quella, who retains all rights to it.]

With a cartful of our staple groceries at the usual family trip to the Mechanicsville Kroger, we got into the shortest checkout line and waited.  But after a while of staying in one spot and not advancing in line, I began to pay attention to what was going on ahead of me.

It appeared that there was a new trainee on the register with a more seasoned employee beside her, but what had caused the delay was a non-standard transaction that required some hands-on training.  She would get plenty of experience with that type of transaction by the time her customer finished checking out.

Lined-up on the conveyor belt were five separate clusters of items, each topped with a receipt-like strip of paper.  It immediately struck me as poor decision-making that this customer in front of me had selected several gallons of milk, but also several pints of milk.  The milk in a pint bottle of course is more expensive than the milk in a gallon bottle, and anyway I couldn’t imagine what might be going on in this woman’s home that would require that much milk, or even allow it to all get drank before it spoils.  But hey, it isn’t my milk.

There were a few other things too, I recall a package of individually-wrapped cheese food slices, and a tub of cottage cheese.  Big dairy fan, I chuckled to myself.  But there was one last cluster of items, different from the rest in that it didn’t have a slip of paper on top, and rather than dairy, it was a package of seafood salad, a styrofoam tray containing a pair of deviled crabs, and a bag of fresh lobster from the seafood counter.

As I stood and waited and watched, these clusters of food slowly made their way down the conveyor belt being rung up in separate transactions, I realized that the little slips of paper were not coupons or shopping lists, they were being used as payment!

For the first time, I took a look at who was making these purchases.  A couple, probably in their mid-30’s, both quite overweight, sporting sweat pants and t-shirts.  No kids were to be seen.  I began to put together that the paper slips must be some kind of government-issued vouchers, and the pints of milk and other small items were probably rounding out the value of each voucher.  I was informed later that this is the form that WIC benefits are paid in, and the fact that it was the first of the month made this the likely case.

I watched, incredulous, as the gallons upon gallons of milk went back into the cart, and the lobster, crabs and seafood salad were rung up.  The lady produced a card for payment of these items.  I couldn’t see what kind of card it was, but the standard “debit or

credit” question went unasked.  The dairy-laden couple went on their way, allowing the Kroger bagger to take their load out for them, and leaving us to bag our own items.

Now maybe I’ve led a sheltered life, but I don’t recall ever having seen such a thing before.  I went home and googled “WIC lobster” on a whim.  Turns out I’m not alone!  A quick search turned up these results:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/new-jersey/333767-middle-class-food-stamps-9.html

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/grand-rapids-mi/TA3IUSIOJUJT93DGV/p2

Almost right on cue, local media added a little more insight – just not in the way they intended.  First, a story in the 8/10/10 issue of Style Weekly highlighted a Whitcomb Court mother of six, and her monthly early-morning dash to the nearest supermarket to exchange her government-provided purchasing power for food.  The story was meant to call attention to the “food deserts” that exist where, coincidentally, the few food stores that remain do almost all of their business at the beginning of the month, and almost exclusively in government benefits.

Then, our local TV news monster ran a similar story into the ground on their channels 12, 35, and 65 afternoon, evening, and night broadcasts on 9/1/10.  It was meant to highlight another Whitcomb Court resident who was fit to be tied because a government computer system snafu had delayed the automatic deposit of money-for-nothing into her account.

The TV story even went so far as to bemoan the plight of a sink full of dirty dishes – dirty because the woman couldn’t afford to buy soap.  But after she called an automated service for the umpteenth time that day and discovered that she had received her handout, the last shot in the story showed her at last standing over the sink scrubbing a frying pan. 

What the article and TV news report really did for me was provide some perspective on the welfare state and the establishment and political attitudes that produce it.  In neither case did the journalist inquire about how these poor, downtrodden mothers ended up single, living their pathetic existences in government-funded housing, clinging to government-provided money to go to some horrible store and use it to buy bottom-shelf sustenance for themselves and their children.

All they focused on was the fact that they were waiting for that check, and couldn’t wait to spend it when it came.

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Chad Quella lives with his family near Richmond, Virginia.

Gaza

Something that annoys me about Libertarians is that there are so many who think they know what is going on in the Middle East, but they've never been there.

Plus, they seem to have blinders on about half of the discussion about the region.

Yes, AIPAC and other such propaganda organs hold a disproportionate share of eyeballs in the policy-making community.

But the policy-making community is notoriously prostitutional in nature, and so the flood of petrodollars from the Arab governments into the American political marketplace ensures the Arab point of view likewise gets an outsized share of attention.

I find it very distasteful to find Libertarians jumping on the anti-Israel bandwagon. There is nothing about Israel that isn't true about a hundred other US allies.

My main concern with Libertarians singling out Israel for our ire and derision is that doing so makes us sound like Nazis who only find fault with Jews.  Yes, there are so-called libertarians who *are* prejudiced against Jews, just as there are libertarians who are bigoted towards women, men, blacks, caucasians, and so on.

A pox on all their houses.

Bigots -- Nazi or otherwise -- should not be allowed to hijack the movement or the Party.

The only real "Libertarian position about Israel" is that we regard them no differently than any other government: We call for disengagement from all foreign conflicts and abolishing all foreign aid, regardless of the recipient.

A recent discussion reminded me of the lack of investigation libertarians are sometimes guilty of.  Specifically, a friend related a claim from WikiLeaks

"... The State of Israel is conspiring to keep their economy at the lowest level of subsistence possible..."

I found this statement to be ridiculous -- regardless of the alleged source being a US Embassy cable.  The Embassy is part of the US government -- and the US government is invompetent at everything it does.
 

The Israelis are no more capable of "keeping" the Gazan economy "on the brink of collapse" than the US government is capable of controlling the flow of guns, drugs, people, counterfeit products, or anything else across the Rio Grande.

Israel was for decades the largest buyer of goods made (or grown) in Gaza. The decline in exports from Gaza and the resultant economic repercussions were primarily a result of the Israeli regulatory boycott on goods which was instituted in response to repeated murders and rocket attacks. I suspect Americans wouldn't want to buy anything from Canada either if it was throwing bombs across the border every day.

There is NO prohibition on Gazan goods going to other countries from Gaza. Slowdowns of trucks (and ships) to accommodate searches for weapons and bomb precursors (as well as to calculate taxes), yes, but prohibitions, no.   As if the USA doesn't have exactly that same policy.  Ever heard of "US Customs"?  Same freaking thing.  Well, except there are a lot more things the US government prohibits from crossing the border (such as foreign medications, etc).

Despite the so-called economic "blockade" nee bureaucracy at the border, Gazans manage to smuggle $3 billion in goods into Gaza every year, and almost that much in exports -- all outside of the normal regulatory trade markets.

Formal trade -- in other words, good NOT smuggled, mainly between Israel and Gaza -- amounts to about $6 billion per year, or about twice the informal sector.  Indeed, formal business between Israel and Gaza & the West Bank together amounted to about $20 billion in 2013.

I suspect the KFC imports from Egypt are no more difficult than it would be doing the same thing across the border from Tijuana into California.  Or even across the border from Windsor ON to Detroit MI.

Americans -- and Libertarians -- need to worry about our own house.

EnviroLibertarian

In the lamestream media today was a lapdog-type article about an alleged "former skeptic" named Richard Muller.

This seems to be another in a long line of breathless media front-page hyping of the warmist agenda; especially as the articles printed in most outlets didn't report on any contrarian views.

By the way, Muller is not a 'skeptic'. Having a couple of questions about the 'facts' his fellow alarmists have put forth does not make an alarmist a skeptic. He has been an alarmist for a long time, and in fact has received a not insubstantial amount lot of money from the government and alarmist NGO's.

I think the science is wholly unsettled and it will have to be studied for a long time at length with real science and accurate data, rather than politicized claims based on corrupted data with less-than-reliable measurements and falsified reporting. Climate will probably need to be studied for a good century or two -- before humans will have acquired sufficient data to be able to accurately predict climate changes due to anthro activity.

There is also the question of what to do about it if science really does eventually prove beyond a reasonable doubt that human activity causes climate change. In essence, "so now what do we do?"

Doing some simple math might help put it all in perspective.

That said, solar power is in my future and I practice recycling to a greater extent than most "greens" I know.

I think practicing enviro "harm reduction" should be done by individuals at the individual level -- rather than at the collective level:

- Have fewer children (of course, the responsible already do; the irresponsible are still having huge families and don't care what they do to the planet as a result)

- Stop buying new Toyotas and Buicks, and bike, walk, or ride the bus. "recycle" an older car by fixing it up and using it until the seats fall through the floor.

- If government is going to force people to reduce their emissions, it is government that should lead the way.

- Grow your own no-till garden, without pesticides or chemical fertilizers.

- Stop using chemicals and pesticides on your lawn. [Our neighbors -- who include a number of Democrats and at least two families who are Green Party supporters -- use them and many have perfect monculture lawns as a result. We don't. I am slowly expanding our tree, bush, and flower plantings to cover more of our yard, so I can stop mowing it. I regard mowing lawns as a very strange habit that we Americans have gotten into due to cheap oil.]

Some of this I do because I find the idea of [essentially] giving my money to 8th century racist, sexist, violently intolerant religious bigots in the Middle East utterly repugnant.

But some of it I do because I really see no point in stripping the planet to the point where it can no longer support the population we have. I recycle because I consider burying perfectly good raw materials in landfills to be a complete waste.

Label me a skeptic of global warming if you wish. But before you throw stones, you'd better clean up that glass house of yours.

• If you DRIVE to an environmental rally, YOU are the problem.

• If you don't recycle, YOU are the problem. Yes, even if your county or city does not offer pick-up recycling, YOU can still recycle -- even counties that don't offer curbside recycling still have recycling units at their landfill; so get yourself a bunch of large garbage bags to store recycling in until it makes sense to take them to the dropoff yourself. Heck, You don't need curbside pickup -- most Targets and Wal-Marts now have a bunch of recycling bins in the front of the store, so you can just combine recycling with shopping. Some of the recycling centers even pay you for your trash!

• If you have a new or new-ish car, even if it's a Prius, YOU are the problem. Buy one of the millions of small cars from the 80's and 90's still out there, and use it until it drops dead beyond all repair.

In the meantime, I remain a skeptic.

Assassin Kills 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, Five Others

Here we go again.

So a lone nutcase shoots several individuals in Arizona, and the media -- within minutes of the shooting -- begin parroting the "it's all the fault of the Tea Party, gun nuts, Libertarians, conservatives..." line. Yadda, yadda, yadda... Haven't we heard this story before?

It's no wonder the lamestream media is losing eyeballs in droves. Increasing numbers of Americans are aware of the fraud and manipulation the government and its media lapdog engages in, which is why most people now get their news from the Internet. Of course, that can't be allowed to continue: predictably, it is the left (and the government) that wants the Internet regulated.

Think about it. The left's mantra for years has been that thousands of terrorists killing thousands of innocents in the name of Islam has nothing to do with Islam. Yet one loon -- who we know nothing about -- attempts to kill a Democrat Congresswoman, and somehow we're supposed to immediately agree the blame lies with adherents of the Tea Party?

Politically-motivated shooting rampages like this needn't happen at all. Were government small and irrelevant enough that no one really cared about politicians and other government bureaucrats, those politicians and bureaucrats would be very safe. In essence, power-hungry fat-government wannabes creat a self-fulfilling AND self sustaining prophecy: create a crisis that provokes unrest, knowing full well that some statistically insignificant remnant will regard that crisis as the "last straw" and go nuts. Then, use the results of whatever mayhem the statistically insignificant extremist has managed to do, to further your government-fattening, victim disarming, Constitution-busting, power-grabbing childish agenda.

Six people were killed. But it was interesting to note that as of 6:00 p.m. Saturday evening, January 8, 2011, out of 1,800 Google News search results for news of the shootings, almost none of the news stories mentioned the name of the little girl who was killed, much less said anything about her ended-too-soon, innocent life. Nor have the names of four of the other five citizens killed. The only dead victim named in the stories was another government employee -- a federal judge.

The victims the media forgot are:

-Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, Giffords' director of community outreach

-Dorwin Stoddard, 76, a pastor at Mountain Ave. Church of Christ.

-Christina Greene, 9, a student at Mesa Verde Elementary

-Dorthy Murray, 76

-Phyllis Scheck, 79

To the left, life is only important if that life is that of the nobles of government.

To hell with us Mundanes.

Litigious Americans Eyeball Toyota Loot

You know, there is only one endemic flaw to modern automotive brakes: you have to push the brake pedal down for them to work. But I digress.

Have you noticed that the reports of out-of-control Toyotas have mostly stopped? Perhaps the main reason is that the highest profile cases are all well-known now as simply pure unmitigated lies. The public has now become inured to the fact that most of these "Sudden Unintended Acceleration" stories are blown fabrications bloviated into existence by the lamestream media, rich lawyers, greedy would-be plaintiffs, "victims" who want to be absolved of their responsibility for pushing on the wrong pedal, and government bureaucrats aiming to increase their regulatory penetration of the automotive industry and to make the waters more hospitable for Government Motors (GM).

Cases in point:

- Lawsuit-lotto hopeful James Sikes of California, who went on the televised 25-mile joy ride

- Gloria Rosel, the house keeper who drove the Prius into a wall in New York

- Myrna Marseille swore she was standing on the brake pedal of her 2009 Toyota Camry when it crashed into the Sheboygan Falls YMCA on March 29

All of the above were found to be 'driver error' (although Sikes' was in reality just a hoax).

Since then, reports have tailed off and almost stopped. Was it magic that stopped the daily out-of-control Toyotas, or was it the fact that government police have -- mostly -- finally admitted the real cause (driver error) of these crashes? Did it have anything to do with the corrollary that, as a result, potential 'victims' hoping to get off scot free with a chance at a lawsuit lotto win began to understand the party was over? My guess is it wasn't magic.

Hmmmm... it is annoying to see it took government cops almost a year longer than it took skeptics to figure out the truth.

A stuck pedal does not drive you into the wall while the "victim" was 'pushing the brake pedal to the floor'. Neither does a stuck floor mat. A foot stuck on the long skinny pedal does though.

I have owned many powerful and fast cars in my lifetime, but not a single one of them can accelerate when the brakes are firmly applied. Owners of older muscle cars can attest to this: pressing on the brakes to lock up the front wheels while flooring the accelerator is a 'powerbrake'. It's how we hot rodders raise clouds of rubber-and-asphalt smoke when showing off (doing "burnouts").

The brakes on a Prius are *better* than those on those old muscle cars, and their little motors are lucky to put out about a third of the power.

Brakes against the motor? Don't make me laugh. The brakes will win every time.

And yes, it works when the cars is already at speed, also. If your accelerator really is stuck, you are in danger only until you realize it is -- a realization that should set in within three or so seconds with a *good* driver. It is a truly rare event that a stuck pedal -- like a really stuck pedal, not someone mashing the wrong pedal -- causes a crash that otherwise would not have happened. These crashes usually happen within 3 seconds of the pedal getting stuck, before a driver recognizes the problem.

The brakes will haul down that same muscle car from 80 with the gas pedal floored with little trouble.

Sudden Unintended Acceleration is a hoax now as much as it was with the Audi twenty years ago. The government agencies that are "investigating" these accidents aren't helping anyone and in fact are impeding the market's ability to "cure" itself. Abolish the NHTSA, abolish all the other federal regulatory bodies that meddle in the automotive business, move liability torts into private arbitration and mediation services, and let the market work as it should.

Sudden, Unintended Acceleration: Remember, if you heard it from the lamestream media, it's probably false.

2011-02-18 UPDATE: Another good article I discovered recently on this topic is the one by John Cook over at Gawker.com.

2013-12-06 UPDATE:  As of December 6, 2013, Toyota has settled a lawsuit with one of the hundreds of plaintiffs that filed suits in response to the scam that began in 2009; and it is looking to settle several hundred more very soon.  So people are getting rich from this media-driven scam.

Here are a few articles that support the idea that "sudden unintended acceleration" is a scam and a hoax.

The Problem is the Driver, not the Pedal:

Outside the world of trial lawyers, Democratic congressmen, and their ilk, anyone who's looked at the problem knows that the vast majority of cases of sudden unintended acceleration are the fault of the driver applying the gas pedal when s/he thinks s/he's pressing the brakes. Efforts to prove otherwise have proven to be frauds or failures. Remember the rigged 60 Minutes hatchet job on Audi back in 1989? There was no sudden unintended acceleration problem. But there was pure unadulterated journalistic fraud for which 60 Minutes brought in a trial lawyer's expert witness to provide technical assistance. "The NHTSA's official view, detailed in a 454-page 1989 report, is that the vast majority of sudden acceleration incidents in which no vehicle malfunction is present are caused by drivers mistaking the gas pedal for the brake." (WSJ)

The news media, the trial lawyers, and the [sic] Congressional allies peddle the electronic gremlin story by focusing on Toyota. But there are reports of sudden unintended acceleration about virtually every model of virtually every manufacturer. What do all those cars have in common? Drivers.

Indeed.  In addition, one of Professor Stephen Bainbridge's commenters, "Bosco", on the above article touched on one of my pet peeves: the disappearance of manual transmissions and clutches:

With a manual transmission and a clutch pedal, there is an instant solution to "runaway acceleration", just depress the clutch pedal and instantly disengage the drivetrain.

And Bob Dobalena boiled the solution down to its essence:   

If you are pressing down as hard as you can on the brake and your car continues to accelerate out of control, then take you foot off the brake and put it on the pedal immediately to the left of the brake. 

In another article, "Unintended Acceleration and Other Embedded Software Bugs", Michael Barr reviewed an NHTSA study of Toyota "black boxes":

After reviewing driver and other witness statements and examining said black box data, NHTSA concluded that 39 of these 52 events were explainable as “pedal misapplications.” That’s a very nice way of saying that whenever the driver reported “stepping on the brake” he or she had pressed the accelerator pedal by mistake. Figure 5 of a supplemental report describing these facts portrays an increasing likelihood of such incidents with driver age vs. the bell curve of Camry ownership by age.

And if you are a car person, you will appreciate the hilarious comments following this Jalopnik article, "The Mechanics of ABC News' Unintended Toyota Acceleration Hoax".

-------------------------------

The real problem here is that without even going to court, Toyota has already lost the case.  Even if every case goes to trial and Toyota wins every one, it has already lost.  Winning the cases will still cost Toyota billions of dollars -- billions of dollars that will go to the trial lawyer industry -- both those representing Toyota and those representing the plaintiffs.

These racketeering lawyers -- and yes, some of Toyota's lawyers will be among them -- will then take their fresh billions and wine and dine their lawyer cohorts in state and federal legislatures to get them to write more laws with which they can loot more and more companies.

Eliminate the "lawyer tax" on manufacturing and product/service delivery, and prices on all goods and services would fall by a third or more.

FREELIBERTYPAC.COM RELEASE: Virginia Budget Chicanery

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NEWS FROM FREELIBERTYPAC.COM
THE "LIBERTARIAN WING" OF THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY
World Wide Web: http://www.FreeLibertyPAC.com
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For release: February 5, 2010
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For additional information:
Marc Montoni, Founder, FreeLibertyPAC.com
Phone: (804) 592-6066
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Despite the myths government officials distribute, reports of "budget crises" are mostly hogwash. The problem is not revenue; many government bodies are collecting revenues that are only one or two percentage points off their peak, and some are collecting more this year than last -- the economy be damned.

The problem is that governments spend cash like drunken sailors. When was the last year a government budget -- in real dollars -- was smaller than the previous year?

Governments viciously suck up every spare penny they can find. Just from 2000 to 2009, Virginia's state spending has increased by 28% over the rate of inflation and population growth. From 1982 to 2007, Virginia government spending has increased at an average of about 7 per cent annually. How many wage earners have seen the same sort of increases?

Every time a federal, state, or local government declares some sort of "budget crisis", a quick fact check reveals "crisis" revenues are usually about the same as the revenue collected two or three years prior. So the question must be asked -- were government employees -- now the best-paid people in the job market -- begging on street corners those previous years?

Hardly.

Citizens and taxpayers are the ones being hit hard by economic conditions, not governments. Governments normally do their level best to increase the hardship, rather than relieve it -- their greed and avariciousness only increases during economic downturns. In their desire to steal ever more wealth from the private sector, governments raise tax rates to extract more wealth at gunpoint (try not paying and see who shows up).

Here are some budget ideas that would actually wrench Virginia's economy into rapid and sustainable growth: 1) Abolish the state income tax. 2) Initiate a hiring freeze at the state level; and initiate layoffs of employees whose functions do not directly protect the rights of individuals (we don't need the state government running ports or courier services, for example). 3) Repeal most regulations and taxes on starting businesses, such as the outdated and entrepreneurship-crushing BPOL tax. 4) Abolish zoning laws that crush the formation of garage businesses.

There are many more similar reforms that could be made. Unfortunately, however, governments never willingly give up money or power -- so we're destined to continue on the slow march to economic oblivion.

Sources:

JLARC Spending Synopsis: http://jlarc.state.va.us/inbrf/Inb392.htm

JLARC Spending increases from 1982: http://jlarc.state.va.us/fau/Data/Expend_Func.xls


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Marc Montoni is a network technician and a frequent columnist on the issue of individual liberty, Drug Prohibition, gun laws, and land-use regulation. He currently serves as the Secretary of the Libertarian Party of Virginia and publishes a commentary blog at FreeVirginia.blogspot.com.

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