Crash scene photo by Walter Geiger.
Woman walks away from spectacular crash
A female driver walked away from a spectacular crash on Hwy. 36 East Friday afternoon.
Wow.
This sure goes to show the good and the bad about automobiles. SUV's are generally very unstable for rollovers. It takes a very light touch or correction in direction, or over they go. On the other hand, vehicles overall are much safer when they do get in collisions.
Without mandated safety standards, it is unlikely anyone would have survived that.
You clearly don't know what you're talking about here. When you talk about people taking responsibility for themselves - do you expect us to install our own air bags, seat belts and anti-lock brakes? Do you realize how much the auto industry FOUGHT adding seat belts to all cars, claiming they could not afford it?
Sir, we NEED safety standards in cars. As a firefighter/EMT, I can tell you that I'd much rather be involved in a modern car than one made 20 years ago. Those standards that you seem to enjoy railing against save many lives.
Now, if you talk about responsibility in terms of driving habits, I agree with you. But those mandated safety features also save people who are not at fault. As for people who's actions cause wrecks, I'd prefer that they also live, despite their mistakes. Maybe they will learn. If this person did anything wrong, maybe her driving will improve.
Sometimes when I read your rants, I think you are an anarchist. To me, THAT is irrational.
I'd be happy to talk to you about vehicle safety sometime. Meanwhile, if you're ever in a wreck, I hope those mandated safety features help you out.
Charlie Muise
But who is Kenneth?
By the way, thank you for your service as a FireFighter/EMT. I know it is not an easy job and you and your colleagues are not paid what you are worth.
Kenneth is the rambling person who commented first on this story. I believe that Joan was replying to Kenneth's comment as well. It makes absolutely no sense.
That first post was so bizarre, I totally ignored it.
Sorry, Joan.
Thanks for steering me straight, Joe.
Post #1- really, is there any way to translate it? Do we want it translated?
If the government had not gotten involved in safety, air quality, and economy, we would probably still have single braking systems, no air bags, terrible pollution, and poor fuel economy.
Anyone who knows how vehicles work, and how corporations work, would understand the trouble we would be in without outside regulation and long term goals.
I'm delighted our government got involved in vehicle standards. In the long run, it has saved countless lives and reduced the overall cost of owning and maintaining a vehicle.
We can buy much better and safer vehicles, vehicles that last a whole lot longer, largely because of regulations.
The government largely forced the technology that made all this happen.
Tom
It is still follow me, takes two to silence barking dogs.
As Yeu Kno Hu mentions in a previous post, the real problem is the driver - not the manufacturer. You know very well Tom, that it's much easier for government to go after a manufacturer than to convince people to take responsibility for their own actions. Mandated safety standards is really a reflection of the failure of society to take care of itself. Instead, we force manufacturers at government gunpoint to spend millions of dollars on safety devices that largely protect:
Tailgaters
Excessive speeders
Reckless drivers
Drivers who run through stop signs and red lights
And to some extent you're correct. The victims of these arrogant slobs are to some degree protected by today's safety devices.
But people should be given the choice. If they want to spend extra on safety, purchase from a car manufacturer that offers it. The federal government has no right to force this on manufacturers.
No. No it wouldn't even then.
That's how corporations work - through government.
Let's parse this statement further. 200 years of technological innovation occurred in the United States without intervention by the US government. When the socialist/communists really assumed control over the US government in the early 1900's, the government really began to take control over US businesses culminating in what we see today. The President you support, Mr. Obama, has used taxpayer monies to meddle in all sorts of businesses, from solar, to financial companies on Wall Street, to auto makers. You see, the government continues to assume a greater role in American business as each year goes by. But please don't worry. When Mr. Obama is replaced by Mr. Romney, you can be comforted that he will also slap businesses with more regulations, taxes, mandates, and other liberty robbing attacks on the constitution! Be of good cheer! The Republicrats and the Demuplicans are working hard to make the US a truly Permission Based Society. Enough to make even Stalin smile!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJrXViFfMGk
Funny, those "astute" car manufacturers didn't add any of those safety features when they had the chance to do so.
I don't think I've ever read anything by you, here or in the print edition, in which you didn't rale against some rule or other. Please tell us - are you actually an anarchist? Or are there some rules with which you actually agree?
Personally, I like the government. We have safe borders, safe food, safe water, relatively clean air, good roads, free trade within the nation. My father's career was given a jump start by his time in the air force. My brother's career is about to start in 2 weeks when his basic ends. No nation has been most stable over the last 200+ years.
Are there problems? Sure. Greed, corruption, and stupidity exist in any group of people (as the recent "loss" of $3 billion by a "respected" corporation demonstrate. But overall, I've been screwed less by gov't than by big businesses in my lifetime.
Charlie Muise
There are 10 planks in the Communist Manifesto.
Quite a few have already been implemented in the formerly free US.
To save space, here are just two. The others have also been implemented.
5. "Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly." Federal Reserve Act signed in 1913 creates a central bank in the US which leads to today's fiat based currency, the rampant inflation we see today. I believe Mr. Obama is deliberately spending the nation into bankruptcy.
2. "A heavy progressive or graduated income tax." Implemented in 1936. Forcibly takes money from those who have it and then permits thugs in government to buy votes with it.
Just two of the 10 communist planks initiated in the federal government.
Want more Charlie?
You like the government
I've been in technical fields and manufacturing all my life. I'm not guessing or embellishing anything, nor am I parroting some extremist over-the-top view.
If you actually researched things, you would find nearly all corporations or companies traditionally fall far short on research spending. They invest, if they are working correctly for profit, only to satisfy consumer demands or expectations. They never go beyond the minimum. A good design has the very minimum of investment or overkill, just satisfying the consumer. Peak sales and peak profits are never at peak technology, usually peak technology is the most risky and lowest net profit area.
Technology is accelerated very gradually by consumer demand.
The great majority of rapid cutting-edge advances are caused by government, either through research investment or by forced regulation.
While there are countless examples, one specific example was our communications technology. The largest advances came from military applications.
Prior to WWII, we had no RADAR and no stable frequency control of radios. There was very little use of VHF and higher. That all changed, as did nuclear physics, because our government invested in research.
Bell Labs, when it was a government regulated monopoly, developed initial semiconductor advances (among other things). That stopped with deregulation. (We even lost Motorola semiconductor research, after the 1980's revolution to service and poor trade deals.)
NASA developed many thousands of significant advances. That's coming to a halt now, thanks to 1980's thinking.
Even GPS systems were developed, and the satellites launched, by our government.
If we think things are bad now with jobs and decline of our country, and the decline of how smart our children are, watch what will happen when the Tea Party wackos, and similar anti-government everything, influence our investments.
In the meantime, communist China, thanks to smart long-term planning by their rulers, will continue to suck us dry as they extract cash and jobs from the world.
Statistics and trends are everywhere, but Murdoch and the Koch brothers, and the other top echelon of the 1%, have mind control of a significant group of lower class people.
Our government needs changed, but not by turning control over to those who are already ruining us. We need to get big money out of our news and elections, so we can do some long term planning. Otherwise, the Chinese will win.
As for your assertion that Obama is "deliberately" spending us into bankruptcy" that is absurd. I've never seen anything about him that would even hint at anything but love for our nation.
I note that you did not answer my question about your anarchist leanings.
Charlie Muise
I didn't answer your question because it's absurd. People like you toss out questions like yours simply to divert from the original point. To suggest that I am an anarchist is like saying "Nah Nah - you call people communists - well you're an anarchist - nah nah"
Why not grow up?
Let's talk about your other absurd statement:"you're saying is that every president from 1936 through the present is a communist. Because none of them fought hard for a flat rate income tax (which, by the way, I would support)."
Heads-up Charlie- the USA did fine without a federal income tax which I do not support. The fleecing of workers by a powerful socialist-fascist-communist-corporatist central government was never the intention of the Founding Fathers. You support by one means or another, the forced extortion by gunpoint if necessary, money from each American citizen by the largest organized crime group in the nation - the US federal government.
As for the long line of presidents who were "communists" - I firmly believe that the majority of presidents are responsible for presiding over the gradual dismantling of our once free nation and have helped bring us to the police state we now live in.
Of course, the thugs in Congress and the Senate have initiated the series of bills, regulations, and the creation of unconstitutional agencies we now are burdened under. Then the president signs them.
Many of the advances you brag about actually came out of Nazi Germany. Their motivation, much like the motivation of the US Military Industrial complex, was world domination. They simply took money from the citizens as is done today, and poured it into military research.
Private business must ask someone to spend money. Government simply TAKES IT. Understand Tom?
When you take money forcibly from several hundred million people, and then spend it on all the wonderful military toys you can dream of - that's not how you define "success" of government. It used to be called tyranny. It's also called fascism.
I am not a pacifist but anyone with eyes can see this Memorial Day is a day of sadness because American government sent millions of Americans to their deaths fighting wars to line the pockets of large corporations and banksters. But before you blame the large corporations and banksters - everyone should ask "where is the government that is supposed to be protecting our constitutional rights"?
It is busy sucking the public dry.
Putting America on a permanent war footing allows huge amounts of public money to be redirected towards government research spending on military hardware which by the way really benefits the corporations that also do the research and reap the huge profits from manufacturing war hardware.
If you were honest about this, you would recognize and say that the government takes huge amounts of capital out of circulation, then hands it over to select politically favored large corporations to spend on concentrated projects.
So I disagree with your belief that government is the driver of technological innovation. The only time it is, is when that government needs more hardware to put its serfs under more tyranny.
Drones Tom. What we need are more sophisticated Drones.
Every time the government passes a law, tax, regulation, or fee, it has a visible and invisible effect. Of course the visible effect allows the Congressthug or Senate slug to strut around and point to their latest assault on the Constitution. And supporters of new restrictions generally are socialists, fascists, enviromentalists, corporatists, and communists. You'll find few true liberty minded people working to pass new laws, regulations, taxes, and fees.
The opiate of the dependent masses is a law, Executive Order, or new unconstitutional government agency that makes them “safer” and more “secure”.
The invisible effect is gradual reduction in economic and social liberty. The US federal government has over 80,000 pages of regulations. Conflicts in regulations from one agency to another makes it increasingly difficult to conduct business in the US. Costs from government regulations are passed on to the consumers making products more expensive. Key government moles with an agenda work behind the scenes to drive up the cost of commodities and then issue Press Releases bashing the hands that feed them fees and taxes.
While neither government or business has clean hands, the US government is far more dangerous because it is given special privileges today that permit it to coerce its citizens to make purchases it may not want to make. It artificially raises the cost of items like gasoline because it demands more fuel efficiency whether you want it or not. It takes away private property rights in the name of environmentalism. It creates a climate of fear and war footing to promote support of global wars. Our military is in 135 or more countries across the globe. There are what – 194 total?
There are an increasing number of people in the US who want the comforting big arms of a powerful central government to keep them "safe" and "secure". These same people seem to forget that they are handing over the Bill of Rights in exchange for a dubious government benefit. These people love the infrastructure of a powerful government that does whatever it pleases.
Any time there's a vehicle wreck - let's use that graphic image to force another regulation on car makers. Like a mass tax, every auto purchaser will pay for it whether they need it or not. That's the template for today's modern permission society.
I'm spending Memorial Day in mourning over the loss of lives fighting for freedom in the US and the growing senselessness of their mission when you consider we're not much different today than the countries we fought against.
A time is coming soon when I can be jailed for saying this. And few US citizens will say a word because they'll believe I had it coming to me. That's why the government schools don't teach about the constitution and America's Founding Fathers.
The Chinese Communist government which by the way killed millions of its own citizens for the “Revolution” owes much of its success to a number of factors. One is the large cheap labor pool which some reports indicate is slave labor. In addition, they also like the US have a fiat currency that the government can manipulate at will, artificially altering the cost of goods. It is a heavily government controlled business climate which up until recently kept its citizens in abject poverty. Communism as an economic system is a failure.
But in China, the people's dictatorship can do anything it wants. Like a chameleon changing its color, China Inc. can suddenly act capitalist, working in concert with American moles who task themselves with throwing monkey wrenches into the once successful American system. It's all about taking America out. Not that China is go good at extracting cash and jobs from the world.
Another point: America is no longer as desirable as it once was for owning and operating a business. Pathetic but true: it's now easier to operate a business in a communist dictatorship than it is in America. American businesses are certainly greedy. That's part of the mind-set of achievement. Achievers tend to want more. But the American business climate is not so much greedy as it is “Globalist”. Just like different US states competing to attract businesses, countries are competing to attract US companies. And because the US government is actually an antagonist to business, it encourages businesses to look elsewhere.
China simply cut loads of “Red” (ha-ha) tape to encourage business growth both organically from within and from international businesses. I understand it's very easy to business today with the Chinese. America is increasingly hostile to business.
I guess you could say the Chinese government traded their horrible business climate for the former American power house of jobs creation that existed 100 years ago.
"General: US Could Act Militarily
In Response to Syrian 'Atrocities'"
Here we go again!