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Hal B. Rager of blivet noticed yesterday that he dropped off of the most read sites yesterday page. Don't worry, Hal, John VanDyk and I will get you back there. Oh, and thanks for the link to End the War on Freedom. [iowa]
Doc Searls Weblog - Let them eat |[|]]|]|]]|[|]: Doc likes the ads that ZeroKnowledge is putting in magazines these days. I do to. Thanks, Doc for recreating one of them for us. Added to my {@Banners} page. [mumble]
Three new articles in The Libertarian series by Vin Suprynowicz:
- Drug Czar aims to infiltrate Hollywood - First it was TV shows,
then magazines, now Barry McCaffrey is paying Hollywood to sneak
anti-drug messages into movies. This story was all over the web
yesterday. Of course Mr. McLiar is just the messanger. The
message came from Congress. 1997 legislation required media outlets to
match every dollar spent by government on anti-drug ads. It is more
cost-efficient for the media to include messages in the program than
to waste valuable ad space on it. So they can get "credit" for slipping
"accurate depictions of drug use issues" into their programs. And we
know who gets to define "accurate", don't we?
Of course not. When Big Brother starts infiltrating our media to bribe the procurers into delivering propaganda messages, it's a one-way street. The general evidently envisions our film and TV industries playing the same role as those familiar Army indoctrination films in which smiling actors in tailored uniforms crack bad jokes and instruct the trainees in everything from the proper method for brushing one's teeth to the importance of avoiding VD-infected prostitutes. Eventually, no programming will be allowed that doesn't in some way "advance the interests of the state," and the notion that our "free press" can or should deliver us a healthy public debate featuring a diversity of viewpoints will evoke nothing but the kind of cynical chuckles once heard in the Soviet Union.
Producers and publishers who sell out our heritage of a free and skeptical press for such paltry payoffs should be exposed. Then, the same Congress which was once wise enough to forbid the Voice of America from broadcasting government propaganda inside America, should similarly put this Drug Czar out of the domestic propaganda business.
Either that, or we can stop struggling to help our kids understand those dusty old, hard-to-read documents by guys like Jefferson and Madison in eighth grade Civics class. Instead, we'll just hand out copies of Orwell's "1984."
- Assemblyman shows us where bad laws come from - concers Dan
Paterson's request of Nevada Assemblyman Lynn Hettrick that "there
ought to be a law" making it harder for newspapers to print
disparaging remarks about people. In this case the disparaging remarks
were a story about Mr. Paterson pleading guilty to a misdemeanor
battery charge.
No, the real problem here is the assumption -- on the part of a good many legislators besides Mr. Hettrick -- that a good way to win points with a constituent is to allow a bad law to be drafted, assuming it will die a safe and quiet death in committee. Rather than saying the harsh words, "I'm sorry for your pain, but such a law would be unconstitutional, so I'm not going to submit it," imagine how much easier it is to coo: "We tried to pass your law, but I just couldn't round up the votes. Message: I still care."
And if, in the end, a few such bills end up slipping through and getting enacted?
- Commissioner would jail car dealers for Sunday sales - Clark
County Commissioner Erin Kenny is propsing a law that would punish
auto dealers for selling cars on Sunday. $1000 or six months in jail
for each sale. And we thought the blue laws were dead. This kind of
thing can't work in America anymore:
Would it be "fair" to an observant Christian mom-and-pop company to allow their competitors to capture market share while their faith requires them to sit idle on the sabbath? Of course not.
Problem is, this starts to get complicated in a country which supposedly bans any state "establishment of religion." Is it "fair" to allow an observant Jewish car dealer to lose sales to his competitors on Saturday -- his sabbath? Guess we'd better ban car sales on Saturday, too. But then what about the observant Moslem dealer? If he opts to close for the month-long holiday of Ramadan, is it "fair" to allow his competitors to continue making daytime sales during that month?
More news later, in sha' allah.