HEADLINES: 2026
- Thread starter sear
- Start date
Not all governance is a dictatorship.
A representative democracy is generally not.
Many dictators wear trousers.
That does not mean all that wear trousers are dictators.
Postal Service won’t deliver mail ballots for states that don’t hand over voter lists, under plan for Trump directive
Postal Service won’t deliver mail ballots for states that don’t hand over voter lists, under plan for Trump directive
State election officials could soon face a stark choice: hand over voter lists to the Trump administration or risk losing Postal Service delivery for mail-in ballots.www.yahoo.com
That does not seem legal to me.
Voter lists are private information.
Anyone can hire, create, or authorize someone else to do that which they could have done themselves.
But how can you hire, create, or authorize someone else to do something which you could not legally do yourself?
I do not think you legally can, so I think whenever government does something you could not do yourself, it is an illegal dictatorship.
It's a new millennium.
The United States of America can no longer be protected, our sovereignty preserved, with club-wielding guards disbursed along our borders,
or even infantrymen holding fortified positions ...
That wouldn't protect from international trade scams, cyber-probes, electronic eavesdropping, forgery, many, many etc.
Bruce can't keep a MIRV ICBM in his back yard. How would his targeting protocol account for continental drift, etc.?
There are things as basic as printing $cash private citizens cannot / should not / must not do.
Thus we pay government to do such things for us.
Dictatorship is not all governance, only the category that is absolutely authoritarian, dictated by a single individual.
I disagree about "printing cash" because we essentially do the same whenever we write a check.
But I see your point when it comes to nukes.
It's similar, but it's not the same.
I got useful insight about this reading accounts about cash transactions around the time of the U.S. Civil War.
Such questions as:
- is it counterfeit?
BUT !
- Some historic accounts describe how that wasn't simply a go / no go determinant. For example,
even if counterfeit, was the workmanship high quality, etc.
The denomination was an issue, but also whether it was from the U.S., or the Confederate States of America.
One major difference, one can accept $cash from a stranger fairly safely. But a personal check is risky, without ID verification, etc.
I'm not wild about government.
But I'm no anarchist.
Many things like that,
- airline safety
- food safety
- road building.
Surely there is government over-reach.
But I wouldn't extrapolate the excesses as justification to abandon government entirely.
I have bitter experience with lawless frontiers. Not a panacea !
The principle I go by is to ask, "how can individuals create something with more authority than they themselves have?"
I do not think they can?
With currency, I think BitCoin shows how anyone can do it acually.
With nukes, I think if a private individual wanted to make nukes for something that could not harm people on earth, such as asteroid mining, I think they legally could?
With airline and food safety, I think it is still the commercial companies that implement it.
All the government does is set standards, which I think is something everyone can do, and you only need government for the greater enforcement capability.
Road building I think is just like any improvement made to communal property, which is like people voting for parks, churches being built, food co-ops, or rural shared grain elevators.
But it does get hard to be sure about.
Its not like the original militia weapons anymore.
You cited writing a check in R5 #306. That's similar. BUT !!
The monetary unit a personal check conveys is not "Rigby's". They're $U.S. $Dollars.
The currency is exceedingly deeply woven into the culture.
The reason we have such stupendous products at such unimaginably low prices is division of labor. BUT !!
The only way I know of to have division of labor at this level is to have a universal currency.
BitCoin may be a medium for wealth exchange, but I gather the unit value fluctuates wildly.
Part of what makes the U.S. dollar so powerful is its universality.
Bruce could, Steve could, Dinah might,
but their individual currencies would require exchange rate calculators, and chances are currencies that small would fluctuate, & thus "float".
They could combine forces, stabilize their currency by applying a common standard.
That's basically what the U.S. $Dollar is.
For national security reasons, a good guy could assemble such mining equipment with the best of intent, but would likely need to meet government requirements.
- Insure that he's not only claiming to be a space-miner, but is secretly planning to blow up Washington DC.
- Security measures are in place so that his legitimate enterprise isn't hijacked by bad guys for evil purpose.
In the 18th Century there may not have been so much government regulation. BUT !
In the 18th Century there was far less need of it. They didn't have weapons grade Plutonium back then.
Sen. Mitch McConnell admitted to the hospital
The former Senate majority leader, 84, was previously hospitalized in February.
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Finally!
A Republican finally admitted to something.
Former Majority Leader McConnell [R-KY] looks gaunt, not well.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Brittney Brown has been awarded nearly half a million dollars after settling a free speech lawsuit with the state of Florida -- she had been fired from her job as a state biologist last September over a private social media post about Charlie Kirk in the days following his death. Brown, who had worked for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for more than seven years studying shorebirds and seabirds at Tyndall Air Force Base, was targeted by right-wing provocateurs after she reposted a meme that referenced Kirk's prior comments on gun violence. Within a day, she was fired.
Brown is one of more than 600 workers across the country who were fired, suspended, or otherwise disciplined for posting about Kirk's killing, according to an investigation by Reuters. More than $1.2 million has already been paid out in free speech settlements to workers fired over their posts, with at least 14 additional First Amendment lawsuits from terminated public workers still pending in federal court. Additional cases in state court and from private-sector workers are not included in that count.
The vigilante campaign was driven by far-right influencers like Chaya Raichik's Libs of TikTok, an account that's known for identifying and targeting individuals for online harassment campaigns. It was then endorsed from the highest levels of government: Vice President JD Vance guest-hosted Kirk's podcast from his office at the White House five days after Kirk's killing, where he directed his listeners to join in the vigilantism and "call their employer."
Brown's attorney at the ACLU of Florida, Carrie McNamara, called the case part of a much larger pattern of state retaliation against protected speech: "What happened to Brittney was not an isolated incident. It reflects a broader and deeply troubling pattern of state officials in Florida using the power of government employment to punish speech they dislike and silence voices they find inconvenient."
Like many people targeted in the days following Kirk's killing, Brown's post referenced Kirk's own prior statements on gun violence. In April 2023 -- just days after a shooter killed six people, three nine-year-old children and three adult staff members, at the Covenant School in Nashville -- Kirk was asked at a Salt Lake City event how to respond to people calling for gun control in the wake of the recent shooting. He responded that some level of annual gun deaths was "worth it" to preserve the Second Amendment, calling it "a prudent deal." Coming so soon after yet another school shooting, Kirk's remark was widely condemned as dismissive of the children's deaths, and was repeatedly cited in the years that followed.
On her private Instagram story while on vacation out of state, Brown reposted a satirical message from an account called @awhalefact that read: "the whales are deeply saddened to learn of the shooting of charlie kirk, haha just kidding, they care exactly as much as charlie kirk cared about children being shot in their classrooms, which is to say, not at all."
The post was private -- but Libs of TikTok obtained a screenshot and shared it publicly on September 14, calling for Brown's firing. FWC fired her the next day. The agency issued a statement claiming it had "a zero-tolerance policy towards the promotion of violence and hate" and that Brown's post "made light of" Kirk's killing. Libs of TikTok then posted about Brown's termination within ten minutes -- and before the firing had been made public -- suggesting the account had been informed directly by someone at the agency.
When Brown sued, court discovery revealed that FWC officials had fabricated the basis for her firing. The agency had claimed the post caused "significant operational disruption" and generated hundreds of public complaints. Discovery showed there were about 50. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker imposed sanctions against Brown's former supervisor, FWC Habitat and Species Conservation Director Melissa Tucker, after she falsely swore in a court declaration to the inflated count and then failed to correct the record when discovery exposed the truth. The agency settled shortly afterward. Under the terms, Florida will pay Brown $275,000 -- including $40,000 in back wages and $235,000 in compensatory damages -- plus $210,000 in attorney fees and costs. She has agreed not to seek future employment with FWC.
In her statement on the settlement, Brown said: "All I wanted was my job back. I see no leaders amongst FWC 'leadership,' but that's to be expected when a state agency becomes the governor's personal puppet show. The 'Free State of Florida' only provides First Amendment protections to those in favor with the current administration, while the rest of us are expected to fall in line or risk losing our livelihoods."
"Charlie Kirk and I didn't agree on almost anything," she later observed, "but the irony of this whole situation is the one thing we would have agreed on is my right to speak about anything, even what happened to him."
Brown's case is one of several recent settlements won by workers fired or prosecuted for speech about Kirk. Earlier this month, Perry County, Tennessee agreed to pay $835,000 to Larry Bushart, a 61-year-old retired police officer who was jailed for 37 days over Facebook posts about Kirk's killing -- held on $2 million bail and losing his postretirement job, his wedding anniversary, and the birth of his granddaughter before authorities eventually dropped the felony charge against him.
In January, Austin Peay State University in Tennessee reinstated a tenured professor and paid him a $500,000 settlement after he sued over his firing for resharing a 2023 news headline that quoted Kirk's "worth it" remark. And this week, Ball State University in Indiana agreed to pay $225,000 to Suzanne Swierc, a public health director fired over a private Facebook post about Kirk.
McNamara called Brown's settlement "a hard-won vindication" that sends a message to state officials that they cannot punish speech they dislike. "The First Amendment does not disappear when someone accepts a government job."
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