Posted 4:25 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

Compassionate states-rights conservatives, my ass!

Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted down the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, which would have prohibited the federal government from undermining state medical marijuana laws.

The vote was 163-259. NINETY-TWO PERCENT of the Republican House members voted against. So much for compassion among Republicans, and so much for their supposed states-rights bent. They're nothing more than nasty, big-government control freaks. The Democrats are nannys, but the GOP is fascist.

Congressman David Obey (D-WI) deserves to be quoted here... speaking in support of the amendment:

"If I am terminally ill, it is not anybody's business on this floor how I handle the pain or the illness or the sickness associated with that illness. With all due respect to all of you, butt out. I did not enter this world with the permission of the Justice Department, and I am certainly not going to depart it by seeking their permission or that of any other authority.

The Congress has no business telling people that they cannot manage their illness or their pain any way they need to. I would trust any doctor in the country before I trust some of the daffy ducks in this institution to decide what I am supposed to do if I am terminally ill... When is this Congress going to recognize that individuals in their private lives have a right to manage their problems as they see fit without the permission of the big guy in the White House or the big guy in the Justice Department or any of the Lilliputians on this Congressional floor? Wake up!"

RIGHT ON, CONGRESSMAN OBEY!

Posted 8:39 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Coffee is bad good for you

A new study from the U. of Minnesota shows that drinking six cups of coffee per day can lower your risk of type II diabetes. Those who drank 6 or more cups/day lowered their risk for diabetes by 33%. The lead author of the study said:

"It may be necessary to rethink the idea that drinking coffee does more harm than good"

After decades of warnings about the dangers of coffee, yet another chunk of "common knowledge" is now turned on it's head. I hope we all noticed how many ditsy people, while coffee was considered harmful, developed a variety of negative symptoms in reaction to the bad stuff. You see... once you consider something harmful, if you're "in touch" with your body, you can "feel" that it's bad. It's the psychology of feeling what you believe you should be able to feel.

Oh yes... cigarette smoking will eventually have the same turnaround as coffee. It will take longer, because of all the groups making big money harrassing smokers and fighting "big tobacco". The studies showing beneficial effects of smoking have been around for a long time, but the anti-smoking Nazis created an atmosphere in which truth is deeply buried. In the meantime, we'll be confronted by many people who can "feel" (perhaps real to them) themselves being sickened by tobacco smoke. When they finally become convinced of the benefits, they'll be the same people who can "feel" how it's benefiting their health.

I would be remiss if I didn't toss in the "feelers" of negative effects of chemicals avoided by organic farming. Having grown up on a traditional farm, I can "feel" the negative effects of eating veggies fertilized with cow shit, and I'll take chemicals any day.

Posted 12:03 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

I added a new section to my Photos section, titled
Lest we forget - the Best Buy infamy
It shows photographically what was in the monstrous eminent domain takings, by the city of Richfield, to benefit the Best Buy corporation.

Posted 2:23 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

StarTrib verifies my contention

When, in my previous post, I said that commuters would solve the freeway crowding problem without expansion, I didn't expect verification so soon, and not from the StarTribune. But... here it is, echoing what I said:
People naturally react to the situations they face, and choose from all the alternatives they can come up with. That's one of the reasons that government planning doesn't work well; people will do what they believe is best for them, individually, even if it means ignoring what planners think they should do.

Posted 4:08 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

We sent out an RFP and nobody bid. What's up with that?

Recently, the Minnesota Department of Transportation opened bidding on the big (about a quarter of a $billion) Crosstown/35W construction project, but no contractors submitted bids. Seems MNDOT doesn't have the money to do the job... yet... and wanted the contractor to front the first $90 million to get work underway. Nobody fell for it.

MNDOT expects to get the money from the Feds, but didn't want to wait for it, so they took a flyer and asked for charity, hoping that somebody would be desperate enough for the work that they would cover the first 36% until the Feds come through. I'm pleased that no contractor bit for the big carrot on the string. You don't suppose that indicates a waryness that the Federal money might never show up, or that it might get sidetracked into some "emergency", or whatever, leaving the contractor biting the bullet?

Meanwhile, back here in immigrant city, in the shadow of the Crosstown commons, we now have the spectacle of a whole apartment building next door to mine, sitting empty for months now, waiting for construction to begin. I'm told that the state doesn't need that space for the freeway... they just needed construction working space.

So, a dozen residents of that building, some there for many, many years, have been displaced, for months now, even though MNDOT didn't have the money to begin the massive project this summer. Businesses have sold out and relocated. Who knows how many lives have been disrupted for a project that has been "in the works" for at least a decade. Believing that construction could begin any year now has kept investment away from the area. Locals conjecture that it really may NEVER occur. They also wonder why it was designed so poorly in the first place. Why does a straight high-speed freeway suddenly make a couple of right angle jogs and then straighten out again? I think I can tell you why.

Back when 35W was built, the Minneapolis section paved over miles of low-income, low-clout properties in south Minneapolis, and then ran out of easy targets round about Minnehaha creek (which used to be the 'color line'), where properties were owned by people with more political power. So, they "detoured"... sharing the Crosstown west far enough to find more supplicant takings.

It was a damned poor solution. Even if the very busy Crosstown wasn't involved, the big jog to the west would still have caused backups. People slow down for curves, and when traffic is heavy, curves cause backups. It doesn't really make sense, but it happens anyway. Witness the frequent stop-and-go traffic as 94 crosses the river. The curves are big... no real reason to slow down, but people do anyway. The Crosstown area curves are tighter, and during rush hour (which is currently about 4 hours) traffic on 35W can back up for almost 3 miles north of the Crosstown jog.

Do I have a solution? Sure, but it's too damned simple for government to handle. Leave it the way it is. Yeah, it's a pain, but it won't get much worse than it is now. There's only so much grief people will put up with before they look for alternatives. One of those alternatives is alternate routes, but they've pretty well been tapped out already. The long-range alternative is changing either where you live or where you work and/or changing your shopping habits. That happens all the time anyway, and when traffic conditions get too bad, even more people choose a move to avoid it.

The only reason we have so many people living in suburbs and working downtown (or on the other side of the cities) is because the freeway (at one time) made it practical. That practicality is just about gone. There are too many people doing it for it to work well any longer, and some people are choosing different arrangements. Some are moving closer to their work. Others will look for work closer to where they live. Still others will work at home and avoid it altogether. I've lived in the same area for over 30 years, and my driving has changed in response to traffic. It was certainly one reason I first chose to work at home. Avoiding traffic was so delightful that I used to turn on the TV monitoring the freeways and begin each day delighting in watching the mess I was avoiding.

So... MNDOT... take my advice: Forget the rebuild of the Crosstown Commons, and do the repairs you've been putting off while waiting for the rebuild to become reality. To reverse a well-known truism... Don't build it and they'll go.

Posted 10:34 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Reducing vulnerability

Occasionally a news story comes along and dramatically illustrates what is normally an abstract argument. Such a story, reported by By Marlene Naanes in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel was headlined:

"Hollywood teen shoots intruder after father says on phone,
`Do what you have to do'

I love the headline, because it gives enough information to separate the story from normal news. I suspect to many, the story itself seems most unusual... someone successfully defending against a criminal assault. It is not that unusual, but media often slops such stories onto a back page or doesn't report them at all. The truth is, self-defense with a gun happens approximately every 13 seconds.

The slogan for government police is "protect and serve". Regardless of how you view police, you must admit that they don't do much protecting. They are seldom present when crime is taking place, and even if they happened to be present, they can't do much until a crime has been committed.

There is much to learn from the story about young Javaris Granger, but one of the important facts is that the family was prepared to defend itself. Certainly not expecting such an attack, or the handguns wouldn't have been locked up and unloaded, but prepared... not defenseless.

Javaris' dad and he had practiced as part of that preparation. I've taken several women, including my daughters, to the firing range. For each of them, it was their first time handling a gun, and they were (justifiably) nervous about it. Guns are scary, and they should be. After firing a few rounds, though, each woman relaxed and realized that it was them doing the firing... that the gun did nothing without them.

It doesn't take long with a handgun to learn a lot of new lessons. It's a lot like learning to drive a car for the first time. You feel the power in your hands, and quickly realize that the power can be destructive or good. It seems to be especially dramatic for women, who are often used to feeling physically vulnerable. With a gun in their hands, they suddenly understand that they need not feel as vulnerable... that a gun can be an equalizer. Particularly for a woman, that is an enpowering experience. I watched as "I did it!" became "I can do this" and then "Hey, I can do this well" and then "Can we do this again?", and they took their riddled targets home with them.

If you're one of those far-too-many women who can't even stand the thought of guns, I encourage you to go, with a friend, to a firing range, and give it a try. You'll be surprised, not just about guns and shooting, but about your own feelings. Fear is a terrible thing to live with. Feeling vulnerable is awful. Protecting yourself against what might occur is not only sensible, it's a good feeling.

Posted 9:50 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Politics from the fringe

The latest StarTribune article about the Sue Jeffers/Libertarian Party/Republican Party taffy pull is typical media reporting, with significant inaccuracy and words chosen to deceive readers.

Significant innacuracies:

The article says that Sue Jeffers "has been a leader" of the Libertarians. Not even remotely true, and she still isn't. Sue didn't have any connection with us until several of us involved ourselves in the anti-smoking-ban campaign she was heading.

Another article comment... "the state Libertarian Party, which has been a tiny force in Minnesota politics" is also inaccurate. The phrase "tiny force" is accurate only in terms of election results, but we have been a significant force in many other ways. You may recall the massive "Give It All Back" tax rallies when Ventura was Governor... rallies that pressed the legislature into tax rebates. Those rallies were started by a few Libertarians, who got Republicans and others involved, including Jason Lewis, who, much like Sue Jeffers, sought to "fix" the Republican Party, but was very libertarian in principles. Once successful, the Republicans claimed credit for it. Well... so did the Democrats, as I recall.

As Craig Westover points out in his recent Eminent Domain reform is not just a Republican victory, the pleasing legislation Republicans are taking credit for would not have happened were it not for Libertarians.

There are many other areas in which Libertarians change public opinion over time, to the point where demand builds for legislative action, and once action finally occurs, others take credit. Ending the War on Drugs has been a Libertarian push since the war began. As usual, our viewpoint was "fringe" to begin with until our predictions became so blatantly true that others could not help but agree. Our opposition to the Patriot Act began before most people knew what the Act was. Now there is widespread organized resistance to it. Most Libertarians have opposed the War in Iraq since before the first attack, and watched most of the rest of the nation come around to our point of view.

I could add other similar examples, and much of what we press for has not YET become widespread opinion, but will... and others will take credit for it when that happens. Hugh Downs said "Libertarians have all the good ideas".

Words chosen to deceive

Media folks seem to love to describe Libertarians as "fringe" folks. The implication is that we are "out of the mainstream", "out in left field", kooks, or otherwise strange. It's a "flaming" term that for most people evokes the term "lunatic fringe". Fringe shows up in so many articles that either media journalists are too lame to find other synonyms, for variety sake, or they choose fringe as a deceptive put-down. Take your pick of reasons... either way, it says more about the media than about Libertarians.

Truth is, repeated polls over many years have shown that libertarian positions are held by almost the same number of people as views we call liberal or conservative. In fact, libertarian positions typically rank just after liberal and just before conservative. I suspect that a similar poll taken right now would show a further decrease in conservativism and an increase in libertarianism.

Libertarians have little interest in power politics. Like most of the people who founded our nation, few of us even want to be in public office. Libertarians are much like Mahatma Gandhi, who said:

"If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake."

Nevertheless, and despite constant blockades by the powerful R's and D's, our party is clearly the nation's 3rd largest political party, with more people in office than any other "third party". We have organizations in every state and in many foreign countries, but, our influence is far greater than our size. Go take a look at the website of our Minnesota party and decide for yourself whether we look either "tiny" or "fringe". Rather than take a reporter's word for it, judge for yourself.