These pages contain responses to news articles, broadcasts and mailings which I thought just needed a rant. They started life on the New Rants page but have now found their way here.

It was brought to my attention by the news this week that motorcyclists are going to be paying more for their license. This probably wouldn't have been much of a story except that the governor thought it wasn't fair. You've probably all seen him on TV sitting on his motorcycle.

I don't have a motorcycle any more but when I had all three of mine there was no such thing as a motorcycle endorsement. In fact you could drive a motorcycle a year before they'd let you drive a car and neither the passenger nor the driver had to wear a helmet.

The peculiar thing about this is how the bill got signed by the governor so that he could complain about it later. He could have refused to sign it until they removed that provision or didn't he read it first? At least he doesn't have to wear a seatbelt on his motorcycle or while eating lunch on RV-1. Now that’s fair isn’t it.

It would also be interesting to see who tacked that provision on and who will get the money to do the research on brain and spinal injuries. I’m guessing IU but that’s just a guess. Maybe Eli Lilly is working on a new pharmaceutical approach.

I got a card in the mail the other day. Maybe everyone gets one. It was from my representative, Jeff Espich. It’s a news letter that he sends out every once in a while to let the constituents know what he and the legislature are up to. This seemed to be a celebration of what the Republicans had done in the last legislative session. Here is exactly what it says.

It goes on to summarize twelve laws that will take effect on July 1, 2007. Of course I have concerns about the word “progress”, pretty subjective term. One for instance creates something called the Meth Manufacturing Sites Registry. It was under the heading of Crime Crackdown. How is that of any use to the police? Another requires Indiana school corporations to include a study of the Holocaust in their curriculum. Awe, come on! There is a tax break for small businesses, incentives and requirements for local governments to use bio-fuels, an attempt to bring sanity back to our representatives financial compensation, of course my favorite, seatbelt wearing in virtually every vehicle and several more.

My favorite, HEA 1237 which Jeff says he didn’t vote for anyway, is under the heading Protecting Hoosier Families. This was the change in the seatbelt laws which now lets me choose whether to be a criminal or not. For me it would be a personally guilt free criminality since it doesn’t harm anybody else and outside of a few zealots and the police nobody cares. But those Fort Wayne community school students are going to know something about tyrants, aren’t they? Do you suppose they’ll ever see the similarities of Germany’s persecution of Jews and Indiana’s laws to persecute the Goats, like I do? Maybe they will.

As always, if you don’t like the laws these guys make. Show them at the polls and the rest of the time complain, complain, complain. You can find out about how to contact them at http://www.in.gov/mylocal/ .

I passed a local tavern the other day and the sign out front said, “We’re non-smoking Where are the non-smokers?” That’s a good question. If some majority of the people in our community are non-smokers and their goal is to eliminate smoke at places like this so that they will have some place to go, where are they. They should put their money where their mouth is or butt out of other peoples business.

I was watching WANE TV’s news yesterday and there was that Dick guy from Tobacco Free Allen County saying he didn’t want to pay for smokers health problems down the road. Well, he looked a little over weight to me. Should we have to pay for any health problems he may have because he doesn’t exercise and eat right down the road? This is the same “pretzel logic” we hear about seatbelts and guns. How long can it be before any risky behaviors are reduced to a matter of dollars and cents and made illegal? Meanwhile we hear about how these guys are protecting the public health. It all sounds so good to the local media that they can’t seem to get enough of this perversion of “freedom”. But like sheep everywhere they can’t quite seem to tear themselves away from the herd. What ever happened to “55 saves lives”?

For all of you tobacco users that think this Dick guy is an aberration, here’s what he was saying a few months ago, before our “representatives” voted to pass Governor Daniels tax increase on tobacco. It was in a local news article.

We need to show him and his cronies in the capital how the game is supposed to be played. Maybe we could get them to put a tax on “blowhards”. Vote them out.

Pundits were dumbfounded the other day when the bomber terrorists in Britain turned out to be doctors. How could someone who took the Hippocratic oath be a mad bomber? Of course it makes a better story if the experts are taken by surprise. Kind of like the guys who keep telling me the laws of aerodynamics say that bumblebees can’t fly. Somebody ought to tell the bees. Maybe the laws of physics would be more appropriate. Maybe the laws of terrorists would be more appropriate for our doctor bombers.

Over the years I’ve learned not to rely on what people say they are or what they say they believe in and tend to make most judgments by what they do. We’ve all seen people who go to church every Sunday but ignore the “do unto others” thing the rest of the week. We’ve all heard of policemen getting caught in the act themselves. We see politicians continually disappointing their constituents. So why should doctors be any different.

Smokers in our area should know that doctor terrorists are alive and thriving here. As with the foreign doctors in Britain these doctors believe that the end justifies the means and they know best what that “end” is. Any pain smokers are feeling right now has been inflicted mostly by these guys who say, “First, do no harm”.

A short news clip on channel 21’s morning news showed Dr. Crawford making the assertion that people in the Fort Wayne area may be the most change resistant people in the world. I of course had to fire off a “two cents worth” to point out that people in Fort Wayne are not change resistant, just not willing to swallow the snake oil this doctor is peddling.

Once again, I think this was another glimpse into the audacity of this guy who can stand up in front of a camera and tell his constituents to just do something because he said so and he thinks that’s “OK”. The news writers and readers at this station must also think that this follow the leader government is acceptable because they always give this guy the opportunity to rebut everybody else. Dr. Crawford usually gets the last word. It’s up to the Goats to make sure that in this case, he doesn’t. Voters in Fort Wayne must keep up the pressure on their representatives to City Council. Those of you that can vote for Dr. Crawford, please vote him out. This law can be undone as easily as it was done.

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