Muda69

Government Keeps Trying To Censor This Brewery. The Owner Isn't Having It. https://reason.com/2021/10/06/free-speech-flying-dog-brewery-government-censorship-first-amendment/

lol. Would also apply to Big Pharma.

Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-want-to As I have written before, this problem — whereby the government coerces private actors to censor for them — is not one that Yarvin was the first to recognize. The U.S. Supreme Court has held, since at least 1963, that the First Amendment's "free speech” clause is violated when state officials issue enough threats and other forms of pressure that essentially leave the private actor with no real choice but to censor in accordance with the demands of state officials. Whether we are legally at the point where that constitutional line has been crossed by the increasingly blunt bullying tactics of Democratic lawmakers and executive branch officials is a question likely to be resolved in the courts. But whatever else is true, this pressure is very real and stark and reveals that the real goal of Democrats is not to weaken Facebook but to capture its vast power for their own nefarious ends. There is another issue raised by this week's events that requires ample caution as well. The canonized Facebook whistleblower and her journalist supporters are claiming that what Facebook fears most is repeal or reform of Section 230, the legislative provision that provides immunity to social media companies for defamatory or other harmful material published by their users. That section means that if a Facebook user or YouTube host publishes legally actionable content, the social media companies themselves cannot be held liable. There may be ways to reform Section 230 that can reduce the incentive to impose censorship, such as denying that valuable protection to any platform that censors, instead making it available only to those who truly allow an unmoderated platform to thrive. But such a proposal has little support in Washington. What is far more likely is that Section 230 will be "modified” to impose greater content moderation obligations on all social media companies. Far from threatening Facebook and Google, such a legal change could be the greatest gift one can give them, which is why their executives are often seen calling on Congress to regulate the social media industry. Any legal scheme that requires every post and comment to be moderated would demand enormous resources — gigantic teams of paid experts and consultants to assess "misinformation” and "hate speech” and veritable armies of employees to carry out their decrees. Only the established giants such as Facebook and Google would be able to comply with such a regimen, while other competitors — including large but still-smaller ones such as Twitter — would drown in those requirements. And still-smaller challengers to the hegemony of Facebook and Google, such as Substack and Rumble, could never survive. In other words, any attempt by Congress to impose greater content moderation obligations — which is exactly what they are threatening — would destroy whatever possibility remains for competitors to arise and would, in particular, destroy any platforms seeking to protect free discourse. That would be the consequence by design, which is why one should be very wary of any attempt to pretend that Facebook and Google fear such legislative adjustments. There are real dangers posed by allowing companies such as Facebook and Google to amass the power they have now consolidated. But very little of the activism and anger from the media and Washington toward these companies is designed to fracture or limit that power. It is designed, instead, to transfer that power to other authorities who can then wield it for their own interests. The only thing more alarming than Facebook and Google controlling and policing our political discourse is allowing elites from one of the political parties in Washington and their corporate media outlets to assume the role of overseer, as they are absolutely committed to doing. Far from being some noble whistleblower, Frances Haugen is just their latest tool to exploit for their scheme to use the power of social media giants to control political discourse in accordance with their own views and interests. .....

Parents Should Control Education http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/october/04/parents-should-control-education/

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/criminalizing-federalizing-dissent-justice-department-school-boards/ I watched the local ABC report, and it is entirely possible that some of these white parents behaved badly without excuse. But it completely ignores the foul-mouthed provocations of the black Democratic official. You’d get the idea from the ABC report that the problem was entirely one caused by hotheaded white people. There is no indication that a black Democratic party official stood and screamed curses at the white parents. Hey, they might even be “domestic terrorists”! Joe Biden’s Justice Department is on the case. Violence — real or threatened — in school board meetings is unacceptable. But here’s the thing: why federalize this? Why isn’t local law enforcement capable of handling these cases? Why involve the Justice Department? One wonders if the Left is not trying to deploy the same strategy the FBI used against the KKK during the Civil Rights era against parents today who dissent from CRT and/or gender ideology taught to their kids, and vaccine policies. How many parents will be willing to show up at all at school board meetings to object if they fear that in so doing, they will become ensnared with the FBI? Perhaps this is the point. You bet that is the point. Keep the dissenters away so the "new normal" can be established and maintained.

https://www.wlfi.com/content/news/West-Lafayette-to-not-recognize-Columbus-Day-575460001.html

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/mcconnell-goads-biden-over-debt-ceiling-says-raise-reconciliation President Biden on Monday ignored McConnell's plea - saying in Monday remarks that he can't guarantee that the US won't breach the debt ceiling, and that it's 'up to McConnell' at this point. Biden pleaded with McConnell and the GOP leadership to give it a rest and just pass the bill, doing everything in his power to try and tag the GOP with responsibility for the holdup. But the message that markets heard, loud and clear, was Biden confirming that, as of Monday, there's no guarantee that the debt ceiling will be raised in time to prevent a breach or even a default. Hammering again on the GOP's alleged obstructionism, Biden insisted that they "need to stop playing Russian roulette with the American economy" and hold a vote on the Senate bill as quickly as possible this week. He also warned that these debt-ceiling standoffs hurt ordinary Americans. In the Q&A, Biden was asked about the McConnell letter, which he said he saw just before walking out to speak. He said he plans to meet with McConnell on the matter: "I plan on talking to Mitch about it, he and I have been down this road before...and I hope we can have some honest conversation about what he's proposing." When asked by one reporter if Biden would agree to reconciliation if talks with McConnell go south, he stood firm and insisted that he couldn't commit to using it, even if it were the only option. Put another way: the game of political chicken between Dems and the GOP continues. Democrats have been unwilling to pursue reconciliation to raise the debt ceiling - a staggering position to take three years after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) chided Republicans for refusing to use reconciliation to avoid a government shutdown. Yet now that the shoe is on the other foot, Democrats are taking reconciliation off the table. It's because if the Dems do that they'll take 100% of the blame when the economy tanks. They would rather share the blame with the GOP. All uniparty politics. Pitiful. Vote the ALL out.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/attack-of-left-wing-campus-mobs/ They chased a US Senator into a bathroom and kept harassing her. This is the kind of thing that amounts to an in-kind contribution to Republican candidates for Congress. Every one of these piss-ant Stalinists should be expelled from Arizona State. You watch, though: they won’t be. There aren’t many university presidents in this country who have the guts to stand up to a left-wing mob. Maybe ASU’s president Michael Crow is different. E-mail him and urge him POLITELY to hold these thuggish student activists accountable for the harassment of a US Senator: Certainly the president of MIT, Rafael Reif, is no profile in courage. University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot was invited to give the annual Carlson Lecture at MIT — but then the university disinvited him under pressure from left-wing activists. Prof. Robert George at Princeton broke the news this afternoon on Twitter: Here is a link to the Newsweek piece co-authored by Prof. Abbot, and cited by Prof. George above. Excerpts: Read it all. Believing this, and saying it out loud, is considered so offensive that MIT disinvited Prof. Abbot from speaking there. Folks, MIT is not East Wahoo A&M. If this is the kind of standard that reigns at one of America’s most elite colleges, we are in severe trouble. This is soft totalitarianism — and it won’t stay soft long if our institutions keep yielding to these monsters. From the MIT website, information about how you can reach out to university president Rafael Reif and urge him to reinstate Prof. Abbot, and apologize. DO NOT BE ABUSIVE WHEN YOU WRITE! That is counterproductive at best. UPDATE: Back in January, The Federalist reported on Prof. Abbot being under assault in the university itself for dissenting from the DEI policy. Excerpt: Wow. It's clear that in most universities it's what you are that is important, not who you are. Very, very sad. I'm counseling young people in my social circles to really consider trade/vocational schools instead of traditional universities where the woke have taken over.

I was camping this past weekend and only read about this abomination yesterday evening. What I find interesting regarding the events of Friday Oct. 1, 2021 at Rushville High School and the events of Friday Oct. 17, 2008 at Clinton Prairie High School (96-0, never forget) is the attitude of many on this forum. There appears to be real condemnation regarding Lawrenceburg High School and it's coaches actions/decisions in the game against Rushville, with seeming concern regarding the physical safety of the Lions players in this contest. While back in 2008 the overwhelming responses were "So? Clinton Prairie sucks. Get better or get used to it." My, how the times having changed. Are the GID cognoscenti going soft?

Joe Biden's Misguided Attack on Tax Havens https://reason.com/2021/10/01/joe-bidens-misguided-attack-on-tax-havens/

Government is where many who can't cut it in private industry end up.

Public Health Or Power Play?: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/public-health-or-power-play/

It has been espoused on this forum that it's almost sacrilege for a 2A school and a 5A school to play each other.

Yeah, the Danville starters can probably leave after the first quarter so they can start watching film and prepping for Western Boone next week. They should rename it the Hoosier Flatlands Conference to juxtapose with the Hoosier Hills Conference.

Joe Manchin Is Forcing Congress To Think About the Deficit. Good. https://reason.com/2021/09/30/joe-manchin-is-forcing-congress-to-think-about-the-deficit-good/ In truth, no one is sure how much money the federal government will be able to borrow before a crisis hits—piling up debt is like walking down an infinite hallway with an invisible pit, as Noah Smith has described it. But higher levels of debt are associated with lower economic growth even in places that haven't suffered major meltdowns. The surely catastrophic consequences of America going through a major debt crisis demands that even a small risk of one must be taken seriously. And there is no arguing with the fact that we are now in uncharted territory. "America is a great nation but great nations throughout history have been weakened by careless spending and bad policies," Manchin said Wednesday. "Now, more than ever, we must work together to avoid these fatal mistakes." Republicans and Democrats have mostly abandoned any interest in fiscal responsibility. But Manchin has decided, for whatever reason, that deficits actually do matter. And, right now, he's got the power to make the rest of Congress listen.

Vaccine Mandates Coming for K-12 Students https://reason.com/2021/09/29/vaccine-mandates-coming-for-k-12-students/

No thanks. It is an hour and 45 minute drive between Brazil and Frankfort, 2 hours and 5 minutes from West Terre Haute to Frankfort. Frankfort's best bet is either petitioning to join the Hoosier Heartland or groveling before the lords of the Hoosier Conference for a place at the table.

Jonathan Taylor happened.

Hail! Hail! Maconaquah! Hail to the Red and the Blue! Hail! Hail! to MHS, to our Braves we will always be true. Fight! Fight for victory, whether odds be great or small Honor, Love, and Praise we give to our Maconaquah!

I bet most other HH parents and fans are glad you are not the AD. Are there any circumstances whatsoever where you believe a high school should voluntarily leave an athletic conference for another?

Ok, you only need to look at the giant growth of your southern Hamilton county neighbors to find your answer. Do you really think a current day Rangline conference containing the like of Sheridan and Westfield is a good idea? Of course not. Schools leave for the "greener pastures" of improved competitiveness, reduced travel time, etc. Would you have any issues with the Hamilton Heights of today being in the same athletic conference with today's Westfield, Zionsville, Avon, and Hamilton Southeastern?

I think you'll answer your own question by looking at the conference history of your own loved Hamilton Heights Huskies. They were a charter member of the Mid-Capitla/Rangeline Conference, were they not? Why did that conference eventually fall apart and left it's members seeing greener pastures? The same with the Huskies relatively short stint in the Mid-Indiana Conference.

Yellen Is Wrong. The US Government Doesn't Always Pay its Debts. https://mises.org/wire/yellen-wrong-us-government-doesnt-always-pay-its-debts So how did the US government deal with this? Chamberlain notes “Roosevelt decided to default on the whole of the domestically-held debt by refusing to redeem in gold to Americans.” Moreover, with the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, Congress devalued the dollar from $20.67 per ounce to $35 per ounce—a reduction of 40 percent. Or, put another way, the amount of gold represented by a dollar was reduced to 59 percent of its former amount. The US offered to pay its creditors in paper dollars, but only in new, devalued dollars.1 This constituted default on these Liberty Bonds, since, as the Supreme Court noted in Perry v. United States, Congress had “regulated the value of money so as to invalidate the obligations which the Government had theretofore issued in the exercise of the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States.” This was clearly not a case of the US making good on its debt obligations, and to claim this is not default requires the sort of hairsplitting that only the most credulous Beltway insider could embrace. Indeed, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in their book This Time Is Different list this episode as a “default (by abrogation of the gold clause in 1933)” and as “de facto default.”2 The Short Default of 1979 A second, less egregious case of default occurred in 1979. As Jason Zweig noted in 2011: Apparently, the United States sometimes does not pay its debts. While the 1979 default was relatively small, the 1934 default affected millions of Americans who had bought Liberty Bonds mistakenly thinking the government would make good on its promises. They were very wrong. So, it is simply untrue that the US “has never defaulted. Not once,” as Yellen claims. But this claim remains a useful tactic in sowing fear about “unprecedented” acts that would bring the entire US economy crashing down. Default through Devaluation But outright repudiation of contracts is only one way of defaulting on one’s obligations. Another is to deliberately devalue a nation’s currency—i.e., inflate it—so as to devalue the amount of debt a government owns in real terms. And Zweig writes investors view this as a real form of avoiding one’s debt obligations: This strategy, Zweig concludes, “stiffs bond investors with negative returns after inflation.” Zweig categorizes this as something separate from default, but Reinhart and Rogoff clearly consider it a form of de facto default. They write: “The combination of heightened financial repression with rises in inflation was an especially popular form of default from the 1960s to the early 1980s” (emphasis added).3 (In the United States, a key event in this respect occurred in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window. This was an explicit repudiation of the US’s obligation to repay dollars in gold to foreign states, and it also greatly enabled the US government in terms of financial repression and monetary inflation.) Since the Great Recession, financial repression is popular again. This method of de facto default has enabled the federal government to take on massive amounts of new debt at rock-bottom interest rates. In real terms, the US government—or any government using this tactic—pays back its debts in devalued currency, essentially enabling the government to make good on the full extent of its debts. The cost to the public manifests in asset price inflation, goods price inflation, and a “hunt for yield” driven by a famine of income on safe assets. Americans of more modest means are those who suffer the most, and the result has been a widening gap of inequality in wealth. It may very well be that a default could lead to significant economic and financial disruptions. But let's stop pretending that a default is unprecedented or that the United States always pays its bills. It's true that the US's current debt machine, enabled through financial repression, is a form of slow-motion default. But that doesn't make the US government any less of a deadbeat. Yep, the U.S. government has been effectively bankrupt for decades.

Democrats Are Denying Basic Economics https://reason.com/2021/09/29/democrats-are-denying-basic-economics/ The Democratic party is the party of unhinged fantasies.