If you take your ballot back to the election personnel, say you messed up and want a new one, they give it to you. This isn't uncommon. If you don't look over it and just stuff it in the machine/box/etc, then you have cast your ballot and your part of the game is over.
If there's going to be a revote, then the whole state -- or perhaps the whole nation -- should be involved. Not just a few people who claim they were shafted.
First, it is true that several voters asked to recast their votes once they had realized that they had voted for the wrong person.
If you take your ballot back to the election personnel, say you messed up and want a new one, they give it to you. This isn't uncommon. If you don't look over it and just stuff it in the machine/box/etc, then you have cast your ballot and your part of the game is over.
So you can't read a ballot. I don't see that it's reasonable for one district to get to vote again (assuming that happens) and not let the whole state, or even the whole nation, vote again.
Also, the paper money was constitutional because it still had the backing of gold
Actually, greenbacks were not backed by gold. The US suffered enormous inflation in that period. The greenbacks were eventually bought back and retired, but when they were printed, they were pure fiat money.
America's always had a tentative relationship with the Gold Standard. The colonies regularly preinted great gobs of cash, and their economies were unstable and suffered from incredible inflation (2500%/year in Rhode Island, for instance). The USA had a gold/silver standard once the constitution was adopted. Lincoln went off of it during the civil war with greenbacks, which were a parallel currency. In 1934, FDR declared it a crime to own gold, and changed (devalued) the value of the dollar from $20.67 per ounce of gold to $35 per ounce of gold. That same year, the Federal Reserve began issuing Federal REserve Notes, which at best were only fractionally backed by gold that you could not ever collect, because it was declared illegal to own gold. The US was still nominally on a gold standard, though. At Bretton Woods (1944), the US promised to redeem foreign-bank dollars in
gold at $35/ounce, forming a system of fixed foreign exchange rates. Essentially, all world currencies were backed by the dollar (actually Federal Reserve Notes), which was backed by gold (fractionally). The Bretton Woods agreement fell apart in the 60s, partly because continued US inflation made gold convertibility unworkable. There wasn't enough gold to cover the inflated number of dollars. The US has had a 90% devaluation of the dollar since 1950. That means that the government (treasury + fed + commercial banks) created that much more money than could be linked to any value -- a dead giveaway that the US has not actually been on a gold standard since the Fed began issuing fiat money in 1933. In 1971, Richard Nixon ended the gold standard altogether. He kept the gold, though.:)
Interstingly, Jack Kemp advocated a return to the Gold Standard in his 1996 VP campaign. I think i would be a good idea. Opponents always say, "but mining gold will inflate the money supply!" without mentioning that (1), mining is actual productive work, and (2) it wouldn't inflate it as much as simply printing more money has.
If you want to play that game - Lincoln screwed the whole thing up - states did have the *right* to refuse Federal rule, but he sent in an army to strip that right away (Northern textile mills needed that cotton you know).
You're actually right. Lincoln did a lot of unconstitutional things -- like suspend the writ of habeas corpus, issue paper money, replacing the re-united states' constitutional, elected legislatures with appointed ones and denying southerns states representation, and, of course, preventing the withdrawal of states from the Union through use of force.
Now, I'm not a supporter of the South, so don't go there. On moral grounds, they should have gotten their asses kicked, and did. On legal grounds, the North had no right to force them to stay in the Union. Lincoln and Nicolas of Russia kept the Union together (he parked his navy off the shore to prevent the French from helping the south).
Lincoln created a new nation -- one where the Union was to be held above the Constitution. I.e., one where the Federal government was "more sovreign" than the states it was supposed to protect.
And your remark about the North needing the cotton was right on, more or less. Lincoln was a white supremacist who liberated the slaves to cripple the South. It was a good thing to do, but done for the wrong reasons. There were more economic motivations in the Civil War than moral or legal ones.
>Or perhaps it's because the Libertarians, unlike the "viable" third parties, want to reduce government power rather than
increase it.
Or maybe it's because the Constitution Party, unlike the "viable" third parties, wants to make America a Christian nation
again exactly as the Founding Fathers prayed to Jesus Christ it would remain. Which is a much more viable conspiracy
theory, if you ask me.
What on earth does the Constitution Party have to do with the Libertarian Party? And my point still stands: they reported on the Natural Law Party, which got fewer votes than the Libertarians.
Actually, what would be better is our original form of government -- a republic with minimal, limited federal government and strong, sovreign state governments. Then the "will" of the Californias and Floridas will not be forced onto the rest of the states from above.
The Electoral College was designed to allow the states to elect their common federal government -- the US was the Union of the sovreign states, you know. Rather than allowing popular vote to outright determine who the new leader was, the College system guarantees a minimum vote for sparse states. In this way it was designed to prevent several populous states from infringing easily on the sovreignty of les populous ones.
Unfortunately, FDR turned our Federal Republic in to a democratic welfare nanny state by packing the supreme court and getting his unconstitutional programs approved, and the Feds have been overstepping their limits ever since.
Yes, CNN has it out for the Libertarians, but so does the rest of the network media. The company formed a few years back by ABC, NBC, and CBS to report polling information to them came right out and admitted that they wouldn't bother reporting ANY Libertarian votes. The media in general claims that they simply don't report on the "non-viable" third party groups -- but hopefully this blatent example of [b]deliberate suppression[/b] makes it clear how biased almost all the media companies are.
I suppose they considered Reform, Green and Natural Law "more viable" than Libertarian, in spite of the Libs getting more votes and running candidates in more areas. Or perhaps it's because the Libertarians, unlike the "viable" third parties, want to reduce government power rather than increase it. The press likes being the Fourth Branch nd doesn't abide by people who would want to lower the power of the government, and therefore make their job of Making Opinion less important.
The problem is, by reducing the power of our democratically elected federal government, we'd be ceding more power to multinational corporations
Er... bullshit. The Federal Government would simply no longer be usurping powers not delegated and therefore left to the states and people. It's in the Constitution. This isn't a
if (!BIGASSFEDGOV) {CORP_POWER++};
situation. There's nothing preventing the state governments from passing legislation, except for their constitutions.
A small and limited federal government is what a republic composed of sovereign states (i.e., the USA) is all about -- it leaves the states with a common defense and currency, and the power closer to the people it effects. There's no legitimate reason for a big, bloated federal government, and no costututional authority for it. It's mainly that people don't want to work to get their state to do the things they think are good and right when they can jsut go the the federal level and impose their will on everyone at one whack.
The Libertarians can in fourth in essentially every state. Yet CNN consistently left them out of the reports. They reported on Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Reform and Natural Law. The Libertarians consistently finished ahead of both Reform and Natural Law, but got no mention from CNN. What the hell is that about? Does Ted Turner have it out for the Libertarians?
I especially like how, at the moment, CNN is estimating Gore and Clinton victories. How nice of them to wait for the polls to close and votes tallied to declare a winner... oh wait... they're the fourth branch of government! No, that doesn't sound right... we only have three branches. Lemme see... civics book... civics book. Ah! Here we go. The three branches are "money, "television," and "bullshit."
It also give me electoral college chuckles that Bush has more than a million more votes and a few extra states than Gore, but is losing.
We've got a rich white guy in his 50s vs. a rich white guy in his 50s, debating about whether we should cut taxes, or whether taxes should be cut; whether there should be a prescription drug benefit as part of Medicare, or whether Medicare should pay for prescription drugs; whether the military should get bigger, or whether the military should be increased in size, etc.
There's lots of choice! Just not according to the news!
Hmmm... using Netscape 4.x of Linux, the ABC informs me that Bush has 73569556% of the vote, Gore has 56601243%, and Buchanan has 43180%. Talk about an exciting race!
Or maybe it's just a formatting and/or math problem...
Whenever he was talking about being hard up he often used to say that he thought the easiest way to make money would be to start a religion."
-- reporter Neison Himmel: quoted in "Bare Faced Messiah"** p.117 from 1986 interview. Himmel shared a room with LRH, briefly, Pasadena, fall 1945.
...
The incident is stamped indelibly in my mind because of one statement that Ron Hubbard made. What led him to say what he did I can't recall--but in so many words Hubbard said:
"I'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is!"
--Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, "Over My Shoulder: Reflections on a Science Fiction
Era", pages 125 and 126
... it seems to still be in dispute whether Hubbars started the CoS on a bet; however, it does seem more clear that he started it for the money.
(I hope that slashdot doesn't munge the links this time)
1985
Infamous Senate anti-music hearings are staged by Senator Al Gore and his cohorts as a favor to his wife Tipper and her openly bigoted fundamentalist friends calling themselves the Parent's Music Resource Center (PMRC). Among the PMRC's demands were the censorship through a labeling system of warning stickers, the "Reassessment of contracts" of artists whose lyrics are, "sexually explicit", "anti-Christian" or mention suicide or homosexuality. "Expert witnesses" called by the Washington Wives blame rock music for gang violence, suicide, murder, devil worship and sexual perversion. Frank Zappa stands virtually alone in opposing the PMRC and sensing their significance. The music industry above and below ground keeps their head in the sand, preferring to sleep through the hearings.
April 15, 1986
Two weeks after Dead Kennedys are publicly targeted by Susan Baker of the PMRC, Biafra's house in San Francisco is raided and torn apart by a squad of Los Angeles and San Francisco police officers. Cops even ransack the cat-box hoping to find - well? ask them. "Frankenchrist" albums and Giger posters are taken from the house and the Alternative Tentacles/Mordam offices.
June, 1986
Biafra and four others are charged in Los Angeles with one count each of "Distribution of Harmful Matter to Minors". They are the first people in American history to face criminal charges over a record; three years before the attack on 2 Live Crew. Biafra and other supporters form No More Censorship Defense Fund to cover the money to fight the charges. Defendants face a possible one year in jail and a $2,000 fine. The law had never been used before. The L.A. City Attorney's office admits to L.A. Weekly reporter Don Bolles that they kept files on several other PMRC-targeted musicians, but chose Biafra because it was, "a cost effective way of sending a message". The prosecuting attorney later says one of his goals was to destroy Alternative Tentacles. Fund-raising and the ensuing media circus delay the completion of the follow-up album to Frankenchrist, the appropriately titled Bedtime for Democracy.
August, 1987
Charges against Biafra and the other defendants are dismissed after a three-week criminal trial in Los Angeles. Even though Frankenchrist was not found to be obscene; Biafra, Dead Kennedys and Alternative Tentacles records are subsequently banned from a multitude of chain stores nationwide. This is exactly the type of de-facto censorship Tipper Gore and the PMRC had in mind. By this time, controversy has vaulted Biafra's spoken word performances from coffeehouses to the college lecture circuit, where he is brought in to "lecture" on censorship. For the first time the media is more interested in Biafra's political views than music-industry shoptalk on his latest music album. His documentation of Tipper Gore and the PMRC's ties to fundamentalist Christian extremists is no longer dismissed as lunatic. He also appears as an FBI agent in the Tim Robbins-John Cusack film, Tape Heads, wearing the same blue pin-stripe suit he wore at the trial.
Infamous Senate anti-music hearings are staged by Senator Al Gore and his cohorts as a favor to his wife Tipper and her calling themselves the Parent's Music Resource Center (PMRC). Among the PMRC's demands were the censorship through a labeling system of warning stickers, the "Reassessment of contracts" of artists whose lyrics are, "sexually explicit", "anti-Christian" or mention suicide or homosexuality. "Expert witnesses" called by the Washington Wives blame rock music for gang violence, suicide, murder, devil worship and sexual perversion. Frank Zappa stands virtually alone in opposing the PMRC and sensing their significance. The music industry above and below ground keeps their head in the sand, preferring to sleep through the hearings.
April 15, 1986
Two weeks after Dead Kennedys are publicly targeted by Susan Baker of the PMRC, Biafra's house in San Francisco is raided and torn apart by a squad of Los Angeles and San Francisco police officers. Cops even ransack the cat-box hoping to find - well? ask them. "Frankenchrist" albums and Giger posters are taken from the house and the Alternative Tentacles/Mordam offices.
June, 1986
Biafra and four others are charged in Los Angeles with one count each of "Distribution of Harmful Matter to Minors". They are the first people in American history to face criminal charges over a record; three years before the attack on 2 Live Crew. Biafra and other supporters form No More Censorship Defense Fund to cover the money to fight the charges. Defendants face a possible one year in jail and a $2,000 fine. The law had never been used before. The L.A. City Attorney's office admits to L.A. Weekly reporter Don Bolles that they kept files on several other PMRC-targeted musicians, but chose Biafra because it was, "a cost effective way of sending a message". The prosecuting attorney later says one of his goals was to destroy Alternative Tentacles. Fund-raising and the ensuing media circus delay the completion of the follow-up album to Frankenchrist, the appropriately titled Bedtime for Democracy.
August, 1987
Charges against Biafra and the other defendants are dismissed after a three-week criminal trial in Los Angeles. Even though Frankenchrist was not found to be obscene; Biafra, Dead Kennedys and Alternative Tentacles records are subsequently banned from a multitude of chain stores nationwide. This is exactly the type of de-facto censorship Tipper Gore and the PMRC had in mind. By this time, controversy has vaulted Biafra's spoken word performances from coffeehouses to the college lecture circuit, where he is brought in to "lecture" on censorship. For the first time the media is more interested in Biafra's political views than music-industry shoptalk on his latest music album. His documentation of Tipper Gore and the PMRC's ties to fundamentalist Christian extremists is no longer dismissed as lunatic. He also appears as an FBI agent in the Tim Robbins-John Cusack film, Tape Heads, wearing the same blue pin-stripe suit he wore at the trial.
Withdraw from NAFTA and the World Trade Organization
End the war on drugs
End Police Brutality
Lower the Voting Age to Five
Education Reform
Other Ideas:
Limit junk mail to one 3 x 5 card per mailing
Ban drug and lie-detector tests of employees and students, and forbid the drugging of schoolchildren against their will.
Give out giant waterproof Yuppie Parasite decals containing a skull and crossed cell-phones to be plastered by
concerned citizens on all sport utility vehicles until they are eradicated from urban and suburban areas.
Convert giant sports stadiums into homeless shelters until the maximum wage imposed on today?s sports stars
funds the necessary low-income housing.
Fight gentrification by allowing those under siege to spray whipped cream on those who flaunt their upwardly
mobile invader status until the interlopers leave town.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.trolltech.com/ pro ducts/qt/embedded/qpe.html
l tech.com/qt/embedded/palmtop/ soon!
Also, floppy-disk and cassiopia demos. And source!
A mirror will be at http://www.flyingbuttmonkeys.com/mirrors/ftp.trol
-M
________________________________________
https://www1508.boca15-verio.com/napdec/purchase_1 .php3
$249 for "pc deck" version
$359 for USB version (with remote and carrying case)
$59 for a car dash or home stereo bay
$69 for wired-remote panel (i.e. trunk-mount the sucker)
... no hard drive though ($139 for 20GB)
Manual is here.
The Neo PC version w/o hard drive is "$309, special offer." Usually about $50 more, I think. They offer a $400 model with a 10GB drive, and a $450 version with 20GB.
________________________________________
If you take your ballot back to the election personnel, say you messed up and want a new one, they give it to you. This isn't uncommon. If you don't look over it and just stuff it in the machine/box/etc, then you have cast your ballot and your part of the game is over.
If there's going to be a revote, then the whole state -- or perhaps the whole nation -- should be involved. Not just a few people who claim they were shafted.
________________________________________
First, it is true that several voters asked to recast their votes once they had realized that they had voted for the wrong person.
If you take your ballot back to the election personnel, say you messed up and want a new one, they give it to you. This isn't uncommon. If you don't look over it and just stuff it in the machine/box/etc, then you have cast your ballot and your part of the game is over.
________________________________________
can you imagine how many legitamate Buchanon voters are going to jump ship and place their vote for Bush?
;)
Isn't it funny how everybody who couldn't read voted for Buchanan?
________________________________________
Moderation Totals:Flamebait=1, Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Overrated=1, Total=4.
________________________________________
No showstoppers, evil monkeys, or, I'm betting, a kernel. Judging from the LKML, there's still a LOT of bugs in it.
________________________________________
So you can't read a ballot. I don't see that it's reasonable for one district to get to vote again (assuming that happens) and not let the whole state, or even the whole nation, vote again.
________________________________________
Also, the paper money was constitutional because it still had the backing of gold
:)
Actually, greenbacks were not backed by gold. The US suffered enormous inflation in that period. The greenbacks were eventually bought back and retired, but when they were printed, they were pure fiat money.
America's always had a tentative relationship with the Gold Standard. The colonies regularly preinted great gobs of cash, and their economies were unstable and suffered from incredible inflation (2500%/year in Rhode Island, for instance). The USA had a gold/silver standard once the constitution was adopted. Lincoln went off of it during the civil war with greenbacks, which were a parallel currency. In 1934, FDR declared it a crime to own gold, and changed (devalued) the value of the dollar from $20.67 per ounce of gold to $35 per ounce of gold. That same year, the Federal Reserve began issuing Federal REserve Notes, which at best were only fractionally backed by gold that you could not ever collect, because it was declared illegal to own gold. The US was still nominally on a gold standard, though. At Bretton Woods (1944), the US promised to redeem foreign-bank dollars in
gold at $35/ounce, forming a system of fixed foreign exchange rates. Essentially, all world currencies were backed by the dollar (actually Federal Reserve Notes), which was backed by gold (fractionally). The Bretton Woods agreement fell apart in the 60s, partly because continued US inflation made gold convertibility unworkable. There wasn't enough gold to cover the inflated number of dollars. The US has had a 90% devaluation of the dollar since 1950. That means that the government (treasury + fed + commercial banks) created that much more money than could be linked to any value -- a dead giveaway that the US has not actually been on a gold standard since the Fed began issuing fiat money in 1933. In 1971, Richard Nixon ended the gold standard altogether. He kept the gold, though.
Interstingly, Jack Kemp advocated a return to the Gold Standard in his 1996 VP campaign. I think i would be a good idea. Opponents always say, "but mining gold will inflate the money supply!" without mentioning that (1), mining is actual productive work, and (2) it wouldn't inflate it as much as simply printing more money has.
________________________________________
If you want to play that game - Lincoln screwed the whole thing up - states did have the *right* to refuse Federal rule, but he sent in an army to strip that right away (Northern textile mills needed that cotton you know).
You're actually right. Lincoln did a lot of unconstitutional things -- like suspend the writ of habeas corpus, issue paper money, replacing the re-united states' constitutional, elected legislatures with appointed ones and denying southerns states representation, and, of course, preventing the withdrawal of states from the Union through use of force.
Now, I'm not a supporter of the South, so don't go there. On moral grounds, they should have gotten their asses kicked, and did. On legal grounds, the North had no right to force them to stay in the Union. Lincoln and Nicolas of Russia kept the Union together (he parked his navy off the shore to prevent the French from helping the south).
Lincoln created a new nation -- one where the Union was to be held above the Constitution. I.e., one where the Federal government was "more sovreign" than the states it was supposed to protect.
And your remark about the North needing the cotton was right on, more or less. Lincoln was a white supremacist who liberated the slaves to cripple the South. It was a good thing to do, but done for the wrong reasons. There were more economic motivations in the Civil War than moral or legal ones.
________________________________________
>Or perhaps it's because the Libertarians, unlike the "viable" third parties, want to reduce government power rather than
increase it.
Or maybe it's because the Constitution Party, unlike the "viable" third parties, wants to make America a Christian nation
again exactly as the Founding Fathers prayed to Jesus Christ it would remain. Which is a much more viable conspiracy
theory, if you ask me.
What on earth does the Constitution Party have to do with the Libertarian Party? And my point still stands: they reported on the Natural Law Party, which got fewer votes than the Libertarians.
________________________________________
Actually, what would be better is our original form of government -- a republic with minimal, limited federal government and strong, sovreign state governments. Then the "will" of the Californias and Floridas will not be forced onto the rest of the states from above.
The Electoral College was designed to allow the states to elect their common federal government -- the US was the Union of the sovreign states, you know. Rather than allowing popular vote to outright determine who the new leader was, the College system guarantees a minimum vote for sparse states. In this way it was designed to prevent several populous states from infringing easily on the sovreignty of les populous ones.
Unfortunately, FDR turned our Federal Republic in to a democratic welfare nanny state by packing the supreme court and getting his unconstitutional programs approved, and the Feds have been overstepping their limits ever since.
________________________________________
Yes, CNN has it out for the Libertarians, but so does the rest of the network media. The company formed a few years back by ABC, NBC, and CBS to report polling information to them came right out and admitted that they wouldn't bother reporting ANY Libertarian votes. The media in general claims that they simply don't report on the "non-viable" third party groups -- but hopefully this blatent example of [b]deliberate suppression[/b] makes it clear how biased almost all the media companies are.
I suppose they considered Reform, Green and Natural Law "more viable" than Libertarian, in spite of the Libs getting more votes and running candidates in more areas. Or perhaps it's because the Libertarians, unlike the "viable" third parties, want to reduce government power rather than increase it. The press likes being the Fourth Branch nd doesn't abide by people who would want to lower the power of the government, and therefore make their job of Making Opinion less important.
________________________________________
The problem is, by reducing the power of our democratically elected federal government, we'd be ceding more power to multinational corporations
Er... bullshit. The Federal Government would simply no longer be usurping powers not delegated and therefore left to the states and people. It's in the Constitution. This isn't a
if (!BIGASSFEDGOV) {CORP_POWER++};
situation. There's nothing preventing the state governments from passing legislation, except for their constitutions.
A small and limited federal government is what a republic composed of sovereign states (i.e., the USA) is all about -- it leaves the states with a common defense and currency, and the power closer to the people it effects. There's no legitimate reason for a big, bloated federal government, and no costututional authority for it. It's mainly that people don't want to work to get their state to do the things they think are good and right when they can jsut go the the federal level and impose their will on everyone at one whack.
________________________________________
The Libertarians can in fourth in essentially every state. Yet CNN consistently left them out of the reports. They reported on Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Reform and Natural Law. The Libertarians consistently finished ahead of both Reform and Natural Law, but got no mention from CNN. What the hell is that about? Does Ted Turner have it out for the Libertarians?
________________________________________
Does it interact poorly with Helix? It seems to want to install some of the same libraries...
________________________________________
I especially like how, at the moment, CNN is estimating Gore and Clinton victories. How nice of them to wait for the polls to close and votes tallied to declare a winner... oh wait... they're the fourth branch of government! No, that doesn't sound right... we only have three branches. Lemme see... civics book... civics book. Ah! Here we go. The three branches are "money, "television," and "bullshit."
It also give me electoral college chuckles that Bush has more than a million more votes and a few extra states than Gore, but is losing.
________________________________________
Whaddayamean, "no choice??!?!"
;)
We've got a rich white guy in his 50s vs. a rich white guy in his 50s, debating about whether we should cut taxes, or whether taxes should be cut; whether there should be a prescription drug benefit as part of Medicare, or whether Medicare should pay for prescription drugs; whether the military should get bigger, or whether the military should be increased in size, etc.
There's lots of choice! Just not according to the news!
I personally voted libertarian.
________________________________________
Hmmm... using Netscape 4.x of Linux, the ABC informs me that Bush has 73569556% of the vote, Gore has 56601243%, and Buchanan has 43180%. Talk about an exciting race!
Or maybe it's just a formatting and/or math problem...
________________________________________
No, it was Heinlein and Hubbard, according to the Urbal Legends site.
________________________________________
You saved me the trouble of posting that.
:)
Church of Scientology: the only religion ever started on a bet.
-M
________________________________________
From Biafra's Bio:
(I hope that slashdot doesn't munge the links this time)
1985
Infamous Senate anti-music hearings are staged by Senator Al Gore and his cohorts as a favor to his wife Tipper and her openly bigoted fundamentalist friends calling themselves the Parent's Music Resource Center (PMRC). Among the PMRC's demands were the censorship through a labeling system of warning stickers, the "Reassessment of contracts" of artists whose lyrics are, "sexually explicit", "anti-Christian" or mention suicide or homosexuality. "Expert witnesses" called by the Washington Wives blame rock music for gang violence, suicide, murder, devil worship and sexual perversion. Frank Zappa stands virtually alone in opposing the PMRC and sensing their significance. The music industry above and below ground keeps their head in the sand, preferring to sleep through the hearings.
April 15, 1986
Two weeks after Dead Kennedys are publicly targeted by Susan Baker of the PMRC, Biafra's house in San Francisco is raided and torn apart by a squad of Los Angeles and San Francisco police officers. Cops even ransack the cat-box hoping to find - well? ask them. "Frankenchrist" albums and Giger posters are taken from the house and the Alternative Tentacles/Mordam offices.
June, 1986
Biafra and four others are charged in Los Angeles with one count each of "Distribution of Harmful Matter to Minors". They are the first people in American history to face criminal charges over a record; three years before the attack on 2 Live Crew. Biafra and other supporters form No More Censorship Defense Fund to cover the money to fight the charges. Defendants face a possible one year in jail and a $2,000 fine. The law had never been used before. The L.A. City Attorney's office admits to L.A. Weekly reporter Don Bolles that they kept files on several other PMRC-targeted musicians, but chose Biafra because it was, "a cost effective way of sending a message". The prosecuting attorney later says one of his goals was to destroy Alternative Tentacles. Fund-raising and the ensuing media circus delay the completion of the follow-up album to Frankenchrist, the appropriately titled Bedtime for Democracy .
August, 1987
Charges against Biafra and the other defendants are dismissed after a three-week criminal trial in Los Angeles. Even though Frankenchrist was not found to be obscene; Biafra, Dead Kennedys and Alternative Tentacles records are subsequently banned from a multitude of chain stores nationwide. This is exactly the type of de-facto censorship Tipper Gore and the PMRC had in mind. By this time, controversy has vaulted Biafra's spoken word performances from coffeehouses to the college lecture circuit, where he is brought in to "lecture" on censorship. For the first time the media is more interested in Biafra's political views than music-industry shoptalk on his latest music album. His documentation of Tipper Gore and the PMRC's ties to fundamentalist Christian extremists is no longer dismissed as lunatic. He also appears as an FBI agent in the Tim Robbins-John Cusack film, Tape Heads, wearing the same blue pin-stripe suit he wore at the trial.
________________________________________
From Biafra's Bio:
1985
Infamous Senate anti-music hearings are staged by Senator Al Gore and his cohorts as a favor to his wife Tipper and her calling themselves the Parent's Music Resource Center (PMRC). Among the PMRC's demands were the censorship through a labeling system of warning stickers, the "Reassessment of contracts" of artists whose lyrics are, "sexually explicit", "anti-Christian" or mention suicide or homosexuality. "Expert witnesses" called by the Washington Wives blame rock music for gang violence, suicide, murder, devil worship and sexual perversion. Frank Zappa stands virtually alone in opposing the PMRC and sensing their significance. The music industry above and below ground keeps their head in the sand, preferring to sleep through the hearings.
April 15, 1986
Two weeks after Dead Kennedys are publicly targeted by Susan Baker of the PMRC, Biafra's house in San Francisco is raided and torn apart by a squad of Los Angeles and San Francisco police officers. Cops even ransack the cat-box hoping to find - well? ask them. "Frankenchrist" albums and Giger posters are taken from the house and the Alternative Tentacles/Mordam offices.
June, 1986
Biafra and four others are charged in Los Angeles with one count each of "Distribution of Harmful Matter to Minors". They are the first people in American history to face criminal charges over a record; three years before the attack on 2 Live Crew. Biafra and other supporters form No More Censorship Defense Fund to cover the money to fight the charges. Defendants face a possible one year in jail and a $2,000 fine. The law had never been used before. The L.A. City Attorney's office admits to L.A. Weekly reporter Don Bolles that they kept files on several other PMRC-targeted musicians, but chose Biafra because it was, "a cost effective way of sending a message". The prosecuting attorney later says one of his goals was to destroy Alternative Tentacles. Fund-raising and the ensuing media circus delay the completion of the follow-up album to Frankenchrist, the appropriately titled Bedtime for Democracy .
August, 1987
Charges against Biafra and the other defendants are dismissed after a three-week criminal trial in Los Angeles. Even though Frankenchrist was not found to be obscene; Biafra, Dead Kennedys and Alternative Tentacles records are subsequently banned from a multitude of chain stores nationwide. This is exactly the type of de-facto censorship Tipper Gore and the PMRC had in mind. By this time, controversy has vaulted Biafra's spoken word performances from coffeehouses to the college lecture circuit, where he is brought in to "lecture" on censorship. For the first time the media is more interested in Biafra's political views than music-industry shoptalk on his latest music album. His documentation of Tipper Gore and the PMRC's ties to fundamentalist Christian extremists is no longer dismissed as lunatic. He also appears as an FBI agent in the Tim Robbins-John Cusack film, Tape Heads, wearing the same blue pin-stripe suit he wore at the trial.
________________________________________
Main Platform:
- Enact a maximum wage
- Abolish the Military
- Withdraw from NAFTA and the World Trade Organization
- End the war on drugs
- End Police Brutality
- Lower the Voting Age to Five
- Education Reform
Other Ideas:- Limit junk mail to one 3 x 5 card per mailing
- Ban drug and lie-detector tests of employees and students, and forbid the drugging of schoolchildren against their will.
- Give out giant waterproof Yuppie Parasite decals containing a skull and crossed cell-phones to be plastered by
concerned citizens on all sport utility vehicles until they are eradicated from urban and suburban areas.
- Convert giant sports stadiums into homeless shelters until the maximum wage imposed on today?s sports stars
funds the necessary low-income housing.
- Fight gentrification by allowing those under siege to spray whipped cream on those who flaunt their upwardly
mobile invader status until the interlopers leave town.
And, finally:________________________________________
I'm gratified to see a politician refusing on principle to extend government's powers
... especially for Clinton.
________________________________________