Hillary Wants You to Drive 55… Again

By
eric
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Donald Trump doesn’t want to Drive 55 – but Hillary does.Hillary

Well, she wants us to drive 55.

The Dear Leader’s armored limo, of course, is not subject to any speed limits. They are for the Little People (that’s us) only.

And if Hillary becomes Dear Leader, we may be driving 55 again.

Here she goes: “The 55 mile speed limit really does lower gas usage. And wherever it can be required, and the people will accept it, we ought to do it.” She uttered this ten years ago almost to the day – May 24th, 2006 – at the National Press Club in Washington, DC (see here.)

You have glimpsed the Heart of Darkness.

But – to paraphrase Tonto’s quip to the Lone Ranger – What do you mean we, white man? Er… woman. Sort of.

She really means her telling us how fast we’ll be allowed to drive.

Which is not very.

To “save gas.”speed limit sign

Except, of course, that we’ll be fined for “speeding” and our perfectly reasonable driving characterized  as “unsafe” rather than merely fuel-inefficient. Our driving records will be marred with demerit points and these will be used to justify sticking it to us again (so much for double jeopardy) via jacked-up car insurance premiums.

This is how it was for some 20 years, from 1974 to 1995 – when the maximum legal speed in the United States was 55 MPH.

Those who lived through this evil epoch will recall the misery – and the idiocy. Imagine what it was like to drive 20 MPH below the current routine average lawful speed on most highways. Twenty miles per hour below the speed that had been lawful prior to the passage of this fuel economy fatwa (that was enforced as a “safety” issue).

Not only was it miserable (per Sammy Hagar, what used to take two hours now takes all day) and stupid and – yes – wasteful (of time at least and also of gas, bear with me for a moment) it was also corrupting beyond calculation. While there always has been a certain degree of “revenue collection” inherent in speed enforcement, the Double Nickel was about little else.speed trap 1

Motorists were dunned for operating at speeds that had been lawful previously – on highways specifically designed for higher speeds decades prior (back in the ‘50s). Cops charged with enforcing the new fatwa knew perfectly well it was absurd – but this did not prevent them from enforcing it. We knew it was a farce, but that did not help our mood much when we got pulled over for “speeding” and had to play patty-cake with the cop.

If cops are (rightly) despised today as little more than roving tax collectors, the passage of the National Maximum Speed Limit (as Drive 55 was officially known) was arguably the source waters of that contempt. Millions of dollars in outright legal rape was countenanced.

And even though the NMSL was finally repealed in the mid-‘90s (the one solid done by Republicans in my lifetime) no refunds were issued… and the canker persists.asshole

While highway speed limits have mostly returned to their circa 1970 maximums (how about taking into account that it’s 2016 – and today’s cars are probably capable of safe operation at speeds higher than those allowed circa 1970?) the farce is still in force on most secondary roads.

Absurdly low speed limits – evidence of their absurdity being that almost everyone exceeds them routinely, cops included, which tell us either the limits are absurd or most people – including cops – are reckless maniacs; which you do you suppose it is? – continue to be the rule rather than exception. And are enforced with the same cynical viciousness.

That is the legacy of the NMSL.

Oh, and about this “saving gas” business… .

In the first place, didn’t we buy the damn gas? Isn’t it ours to use as we please once we paid for it? Few things strike me as more obnoxious than being told how to use the fuel I paid for by a sour-faced termagant like Hillary. She has every right to use the fuel she purchased as she sees fit – and you and I have exactly the same right.Hillary 3

What’s next? Will we be told how much of a Snicker’s bar we’re allowed to eat at one time?

In the second place, unreasonable speed limits (and enforcement thereof) waste fuel by interfering with the smooth flow of traffic. Cars bunch up and suddenly everyone has to hit the brakes because up ahead, there’s a cop in a cut-out. Then everyone has to accelerate again, which – wait for it – wastes gas.

The Drive 55 crowd will crow back that if only everyone would obey the speed limit, this problem would not exist. But people tend not to obey absurd laws – whether Drive 55 or Prohibition or decrees forbidding consensual acts between adults. Such laws only serve to criminalize the general population and then terrorize them for their “crimes.” It creates a low-grade Soviet out of what was once a reasonably free country.

Also, modern cars are not optimized for 55.

Many now come with seven, eight and nine-speed transmissions – with multiple overdrive gears. A 55 MPH maximum would render the top several gears of modern transmissions useless; the engine would lug (and a lugging engine wastes fuel) if the transmission shifted up past fourth or fifth.Hillary 2

Modern cars – anything built since the ’90s – are designed for efficient high-speed operation and deliver better mileage at 80 than most cars of 1970 did at 30.

This is not an exaggeration.

Of course, it does not matter to a creature such as Hillary, who sees herself as Our Parent, to scold and direct and – if we are disobedient – to punish.

Feed her fish heads.          

There are many reasons to dread a Hillary Dear Leadership – from a certain cementing of government-insurance mafia tributum (and micromanagement of every aspect of our lives) via Obamacare’s not being repealed to the high probability of a Clinton-packed Supreme Court issuing a fatwa that the people do not, in fact, have a right to possess arms.

We know where Hillary stands on all these things.

Now you know where she stands on “speeding.”

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Related posts:
  1. Hillary Says Gun Control Opponents Are “Terrorists”
  2. Speed Limits Back to Where They Were in 1970!
  3. Speed Averages
  4. Affronting Huitzilopochtli
  5. 85 MPH: Almost a Speed Limit

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99 COMMENTS

  1. More bad news. The Clinton death toll so far this summer is now at 5 in 6 weeks.
    with Victor Thorne being one of the latest.

  2. Great News!! I just got a letter that State Farm can now use my Fusion’s SYNC system to rat me out in exchange for a discount on my insurance.

    I know this will eventually morph from a discount today, for accommodating them, to a premium increase in a year or two, for telling them “No thank you”. But, “No thank you!”

    • Hi Arylioa,

      I see this coming, too. And, worse… I suspect they will effectively outlaw older cars without OBD/telematic capability by charging usurious insurance… which of course one must buy in order to be allowed to use the car.

    • I have the state farm Sync thing. Here’s how it works:
      About two months before your policy renews they send you an email to run a vehicle health report. You can choose to run it and get the discount or choose not to and leave the program. When run SF fetches the odometer from Ford. That’s it. Even the agreement you sign is says that’s the information they are taking. Since the car I use it on is well under the 7K/yr threshold for state farm’s lowest mileage category I save a few bucks.
      The entire program is like me telling them my car’s odometer reading every 6 months. It’s not some telematics thing like Flo sells. (although statefarm does have another branch of the program which uses that)

  3. What some here have alluded to is the fatigue factor out here in the west when driving 55 across our rural areas. We ran a service group across several states and the close calls were driving and falling asleep by the mechanics. I don’t care how the stats were manipulated year to year…..the greatest harm to life and property @ 55 was fatigue. Some outfits carried bob wire, fencing pliers and stretchers to fix ranchers fences along rural 2 lanes. The states got to fix fence along the four lanes on their own dime with all the revenuers saturation levels….soapweed

    • In a world where ‘we’ were not unnecessarily fighting many of the major oil producers, “energy independence” would be a non-issue. In fact, if you still believe in a limited supply of oil, it makes sense to use the supply of others now and keep ‘ours’ in reserve for a later date.

      • PtB, if it simply boiled down to keeping resources it would simplify things to some extent. The majors could now be buying all the oil they want from Iran for less than what we can produce it in-country. But that’s just one side of the equation. Getting it here and off-loading fast enough is not possible plus the fact it would put huge numbers of people out of work…..and that affects the number of people who could afford it not to mention he overall economy.

        I think I can speak for a few states at least and millions of people when I say “Thangs is tuff right now in Tx. and Ok. as well as other large petroleum producing states”. In the first quarter of 2015 Texas alone lost 25,000 non-ag jobs which translates into all those who worked in the patch and those who depended on the workers and the patch. Of course that wasn’t the end of it and jobs continued to fall by the way not only last year but this year.

        I knew one guy who was a pusher, the best job there is in a drilling company who got busted down to driller as rigs were stacked. Then he got busted down to a drill hand, then to a part time hand and then to nothing. That was late last year so you can imagine how many other people got laid off before he did.

        The year ended with an unknown quantity of people out of work and not just in Tx. This year, we’ve barely subsisted, doing low paying stuff like building pads and roads for houses and ranches and a bit of pipeline work here and there. The company has over $100K out right now to one pipeline company and that’s chump change compared to last year when it was 5 ties that…..and this is still FRom last year. Hell, phone just rang, I got a job for the first time in 6 weeks. Later.

        • I do hear you, 8. I was in the Dallas area, working for a small co. that made oilfield control valves, etc. in 1981, 82? when the crude price dropped from the embargo high to circa $10/bbl. We went from nearly unlimited OT to straight 40. And no raises for 2 years, IIRC. At least that time no one got laid off, that happened later.

  6. Well, actually 55 is a very sane speed limit!

    Also, the Federal Administration of Counting Words for the Protection of Freely Speaking has advised me that this article has exceeded the number of words by an egregious amount.

    The Twenty-Five-Words or LESS limit is the LAW. You will have to remove 1,034 words, all of the comments or be subject to a fine of not less than $55 per word.

    Stop being a scofflaw and protect EVERYONE’s valuable Freely Speakable Rights!

      • Admit it, Peters! You only write this blog so that Liberals will hate you, that Clovers will envy you and that libertarians will adore you.

        And not just that, you do it to **SHUDDER** — make — KAFF KAFF ahem — “M.O.N.E.Y.” (More Of Nasty Earnings, You-you-YOU!)

  8. I’ve never had a car that got better mpg at a higher speed than it got at a lower one. I suspect some commenters are smoking something, in this respect. As to having multiple unused gears going 55, that is nonsense also. Both my Passat TDI (geared quite high) and my 8-speed Ram 1500 go along just fine in top gear at 55.

    I prefer having no speed limits at all, but that’s not to say I will always be driving fast. Sometimes I like going 55. However if it is difficult for others to pass I will match my speed with the traffic flow.

    • Hi PJ,

      I think I wrote that many modern cars get better mileage at 70 than the cars of the ’70s usually got at 55. Not that cars generally get better mileage at higher speed.

      On your eight speed: The LCD indicator might say “8” (or “7”) at 55 but the transmission is probably not actually in 7th or 8th at that road speed unless you’re coasting. Look into this. I did.

      Even in cars with manual-shift function, the computer often won’t upshift to 7th, 8th and 9th (etc.) even if the LCD indicates you’ve done so.

  9. Interestingly enough, raising the speed limit slowed me down. When the speed limit was 55 mph and a reasonable speed seemed to be 75 mph…I ran Escorts and Passports and about 90 mph as a rule because 70 mph and over were all the max”15 mph above the posted speed limit” as far as tickets went. Now that the speed limit is 70 mph…i set the CC at 78 Mph and haven’t used a radar detector in years….

    • Tonto, you said it for me. Back at 55, I ran 100 almost everywhere, in for a penny, in for a pound. I used Escorts from their inception in 1980 until Passports came out and they were better…..so I used them. Once the 55 was abolished, I didn’t bother with detectors and ran close to 80 everywhere and 85 in those counties with 80 mph PSL. I can make good time at 80 and never need to look twice going through radar. Most trucks I drive are speed limited to 79…wonder why? I just stick them on the governor and go. I haven’t been stopped for speeding since we went back to 70 at which point I drove 75. I know countless people who’ve done the same. It’s not like I wouldn’t like to drive 100 continuously again but it’s not worth it any longer. When I get out past Monahans on I-20 I don’t sweat it too much not being able to run 84 or so in a truck. And in a car, everybody’s running about 85. If the speed limit were raised to 85 or 90, I’d do about 5 over in some vehicles although not the trucks I drive and mostly not in the pickups I drive(heavy 4WD loaded down). My friends who own their own big rigs mostly don’t drive over 72 or 73 depending on the circumstances since higher speeds suck up more fuel…..in anything and everything you drive. For those who say they can get better mileage at 70 than 50 I’d say they need a new calculator. Now a big rig on the other hand will get better mileage with a more powerful engine but that’s not saying out on a level road higher speed will result in higher fuel mileage but quite the opposite.

      • Eightsouthman,

        I can get my best MPG at a steady speed of about 45-55 mph. If I am careful with the accelerator pedal (steady speed, not yo-yo up/down) , I can travel 60-70 mpg without lowering my MPG average (at least not noticeably).

        Highway speeds (60-70mph) at steady speed will get me into the upper 30’s MPG. Short trips around town with stop/go under 40mph will put me in the upper 20’s MPG. My typical combined MPG is about 31-33 MPG (2007 Nissan Sentra 2.0S)

  10. 85 MPH in Texas..NO WAY JOSE…they will go back to ’55’…besides the federal government does not have any authority to set speed limits as per the Constitution…least we all forget….imho

    • Sure, but they withhold federal money from the state until the state sets the lower limit, and since state governments are generally the cheapest kind of whore, they will comply.

      • If we are going to have gunvermin, we need State gunvermin that have the cojones to tell the Feds that they will keep their “citizens'” taxes in the state and not be sending it to DC where a significant portion sticks to assorted fingers, thank you very much.
        Better still to not have them either, but 1 step at a time sometimes.

        • Right. When is the last time a state stood up to the Feds to the extent that it changed Federal policy? Unfortunately, such examples are part of history now.

          • Well, enough of them did ‘say no’ to Real ID that the Feds had to think up a new way to get that through. And of course that was unconstitutional as well.

            • Just recently the Texas Nationalist Movement got the lege to thumb its nose at the Fed. Everybody who can do without the fed knows Tx. has paid the way for 16 other states for decades. The figures are in and Tx. would be rolling in dough without fed money if they paid no money to the fed.

              XOM recently moved their worldwide HQ to Midland, Tx. You can make whatever you want of that but I’d say Tx. is more than ready to secede, esp. since the Texas Gold Depository is up and running in Shiner and they intend to get every ounce of gold the fed holds for Tx. It was all talk till they passed the law for Tx. to have its own depository and are now stocking Texan’s gold. That’s just one of the first steps. Figures have been in for 2 years how much Texas would benefit if it didn’t pay for all those other states and lost all federal money including military installations. This has been building for a long time. Just check out Texas Nationalist Movement online. It’s not like we’ll need to import oil or any other damned thing. Everybody is seeing it’s time to cut bait or STFU.

  11. No! No! I can not do the “55” thing again! Twice in one lifetimes is too much! We’re tax slaves and fodder for sadistic cops, but seriously, if this 55 thing were to happen again, at least in my book, it would be the straw that breaks the camel’s back!

    How history repeats and how people soon forget. They never stop with the “conserving gas” BS! Conserving it for what? If it were truly running out, what would “conserving” it do? Forestall the inevitable by a few years, months or weeks?

    Remember the “Gas Crisis” of the 70’s? Rationing? “Fossil fuel” was “running out”. The oil fields were “running dry”. Meanwhile, 40 years later, the gas is still flowing freely…. It just costs more now.

    How the hell do they get away with such nonsense in the 21st. century? (Oh…of course: Government schools and zionist media dumbing everyone down.)

    • Hi Nunzio,

      It’s even crazier than all that… if you adjust for inflation, gas today is cheaper than it was circa 1975.

    • Where I am 55mph never went away.

      I’ve become convinced that hydrocarbons are a natural part of this solar system. They are just all over it. Oil has been discovered so far down there is no way it was from plant material. Furthermore it has been discovered how to manufacture oil from biological feed stocks. Thus it will never run out so long as industrial mechanisms are still functioning.

      Gasoline has been running cheaper than the good old 35 cents a gallon days for many years now. My last fillup I paid $2.399/gal with all taxes. Looking at coinflation.com a 90% silver US quarter has a silver melt value of $2.9514. This makes gasoline currently $0.203/gal. That’s a hair over 20 cents a gallon.

      Peak oil like CO2 driven climate change are things that have been proven wrong over the last 4 to 5 decades yet persist because they are chanted frequently. Just like all the driving myths that have been repeated since the 1970s. Now some were sort of true for a lot of cars on the road in the 1970s but things have changed. Peak oil and CO2 driven climate change have always been misapplications to suit political purposes.

      Peak oil was valid on the small scale. On the large scale it falls apart. It’s misapplied by those with a political agenda. CO2 concentration increases beyond pre-industrial times trivially increase temperatures from an energy trapping stand point. This is misapplied as a driving factor of climate when real data shows it may be a driven factor at most. Models using it as a driving factor have failed decade after decade. But authority is never going to admit they are wrong nor admit a scam.

      • Peak oil, what a buncha shit. We had peak oil back in 1970 but that was when we used nearly 100 million barrels less. It’s not hard(I did it yesterday but don’t have the websites back right now)to see how much oil was being turned into gasoline every year since 1945 since they began keeping up with it.

        We’re slowly creeping back up to the peak year(2007) but even so, the amount of gasoline refined that was less than 2012 was in 1997. No matter what the truth about the source of petroleum, peak oil is a bullshit term.

        • The term “fossil fuel” was coined in the 1950s when not much was known about the nature of naturally-occurring hydrocarbon products. Environmentalists have used this misconception about naturally occurring oil to their advantage; hence, the now-discredited concept of “peak oil”.
          Oil is abiotic in nature, being produced deep within the earth by yet-unknown processes. Russian oil interests have been drilling deep wells, as much as 30,000 feet deep and coming up with oil deposits–far deeper than that of decayed plant and animal materials.
          It turns that many of our depleted oil wells are “filling back up”; oil is migrating from deep within the earth, upward to many of our present drilling sites.
          There are certain interests that do not want to see oil as a plentiful natural resource–FOLLOW THE MONEY…
          As to vehicles, it’s about CONTROL. The powers that be want us OUT of our vehicles, relegated to high-rise, soviet-style apartments using bicycles, trains or buses for transportation–limiting us to certain areas. Of course, the pristine “wilderness” would be restricted to the “elite” with their “dachas” would be reserved for the “elite” environmentalists and their ilk…
          IF Dodge (now RAM) offered a basic Dakota-size pickup truck–not “club-cab” but standard cab, I would buy one today…It was just the right size for many of us…

          • Just so you’ll know, we drilled 30,000 foot wells back in the 60’s when the new style rigs and all electric came out. That’s not a new thing and to this day it’s still not the depth oil is produced for the most part. Deep wells are gas wells and small amounts of oil for the most part. It’s been that way for the 50 years I’ve been involved anyway.

            Nobody knows where oil comes from. I speak with petroleum engineers frequently and we all wonder the source. Some old fields come back with various methods used and we don’t know for a fact the source of that oil. Abiotic is another theory. There have been super-deep wells drilled in known fields and not much besides heat has been found. In 5,000 feet of ocean, 25 or 30,000 foot wells sometimes produce gobs of oil(and almost always a great deal of high pressure gas). Then again, you’re back to the same depths that produce above sea level. I’ll let everyone know when some company finds out for sure what causes petroleum to be produced and at what depth……just as soon as someone will let me know about it.

  12. Ah yes, I remember those days. The double nickle speed limit totally contradicted what the interstate freeways such as I-75, I-80, I -90 were meant to be used: as a means of getting from one place to another quickly and efficiently.
    Remember cruising along those vast freeways at 55 and seemingly going nowhere, and not very fast either. But then we also had the Watergate hearings to entertain us and listening to “I am not a crook”.
    The 70’s brought on a miasma of indifference and unfortunately the break up of the Beatles, left me with only Hunter S. Thompson for succor.
    Now that fear and loathing is beginning to raise its ugly head again like nasty bile threatening to erupt into the back of my throat.
    Will I be forced to make that trip to Vegas loaded on LSD and cocaine, searching for the heart of the American dream?
    Remember they call it the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
    It’s bad enough that I have to register with the idiots at the FAA in order to fly my model planes but now we are being threatened with yet another ignorant clover with the morals of a jackal, with my apologies to jackals everywhere for associating them with an individual so repulsive and evil as Killary.
    I wonder what the good Doctor Thompson would be saying right now as he viewed this coming presidential election, that everyone likes so much. Too bad he checked out so early. He would have been able to fill volume after volume with the kind of devastatingly accurate description of society and politics in America, as only he could write.
    The real threat is that a Clinton presidency could actually bring about a third world war.
    Remember, she works for the kabalists.

    • johnz, if only I could FIND some good lsd these days, probably the only thing DOT doesn’t check for. I’m reminded of a friend stopped on the interstate at Memphis in the wee hours. He asked the cop “Was I speeding?”. The cop replies “The reason I stopped you was because you were going 12 mph”. oh

  13. I never did bow down to the Double Nickel Shuffle. I drove cars that got far better economy at 70 and 80. The old pushrod Skinner’s Union fed B 18 and B 20 engines in the 544, 122, and 140 series cars (1958 – 1971) did not even have the cam “come on” yet at 55 in top gear. I had several, had worked on and driven a couple dozen more, and they ALL (when properly set “on point” would deliver 40 to 42 mpg crusing at 80 to 85 mph and would do happily for days. When shuffling the Double Nickel none I ever had would beat 28 mpg. Which in its own right was not bad….. but to get fifty percent BETTER fuel economy covering the same distance in fifty five percent of the time was a set of maths hard to ignore. For those wondering, all the Volvos with which I had personal experience had the straight four speed manual, not the overdrive, or automatic. I also had and drove quite a number of other European cars and a few Japanese… MG roadsters, Sprites, Triumph 3 and 4, anything with SU carburetters would behave like this. I had “tuned” (prepped) a coule MG roadsters for myself or customers that would cruise 90 all day long and return something like 35 mpg. At 55 high twenties is all one could expect.

    I heard from somewhere a few years back what was alledgedly behind that change….. it was the hotel and motel lobby. At 55, as against 80, a trip would take at least a couple days longer, thus building a ready market for all those rooms/beds the non-travellers were not demanding. Dirty politics, for certain.

    • I DONT REMEMBER 55 BEING IN PLACE TILL 95.IN THAT TIME FRAME I DROVE COAST TO COAST AND BORDER TO BORDER IN EVERYTHING YOU CAN IMAGINE FROM CADILLACS TO PORCHES TO DATSUN/NISSAN TO OLDS TO BUICKS.AFTER I BELIEVE THE EARLY EIGHTY S AFTER GAS WENT BELOW A DOLLAR A GALLON THEY RAISED THE LIMIT .AND I COULD GET 35MPG WITH EITHER THE PORSCHE OR NISSAN.IN 86 I GOT A NEW DEVILLE CADILLLAC AND REMEMBER GASSING IT IN AUG OF 86 FOR.$.69PG AND GOT 28MPG WITH IT DRIVING 80MPH TO CHICAGO ON I65/I80/I90/AND AS FROT THOSE 70.80 S CARS WERE COMFORTABLE AND RODE LIKE A DREAM AND COULD CRUISE ALL DAY WITH THOSE V8 AT 85/90 AND OUT WEST 100-110 .I KNOW THEY GOT ,ME IN N M AT 113 AND HELD COURT RIGHT DOWN THE ROAD AND 25 DOLLARS GOT ME OFF.. NEVER GET AWAY TODAY LIKE THAT!!!!

      • Hi Richard,

        The 55 MPH limit (NMSL) wasn’t repealed until 1995. There were, however, a few exception for “rural, limited access” highways, which were allowed up to 65 MPH. But these were rare – and it wasn’t until after ’95 that Drive 55 went away… hopefully, for good!

      • Love it, ARYLIOA!

        I always feel better when I pass a Clover and know they saw my “Don’t be a Clover” logo on the back of the fast-receding car that just blew past them….

  15. When the 55 limit passed, I had a 67 Ford LTD with a 4-barrel 390 V-8, and I could get a consistent 17 mpg at a steady 70 mph with that big monster of a car and engine. At 55 mph, the best it would do was 15 mpg. My grandmother who had a Lincoln reported a similar result. Just shows the stupidity of trying to “enforce” fuel savings with speed limits.

  16. If there’s any residual justice left in this country, Hitlary will soon be occupying a prison cell for the rest of her life.

  17. Eric, darn it, this just isn’t right: “Of course, it does not matter to a creature such as Hillary, who sees herself as Our Parent, to scold and direct and – if we are disobedient – to punish.”

    Polly Pot sees herself as our ruler and rightful owner.

    A decent parent IS a benevolent dictator. His children are (supposed to be) his chattel property until they are matured enough to pick their own nuts and berries or preferably hunt their own meat. He has to be able to instruct, train, and if need be punish them to change them from savage animals to nascent human beings. The difference is the decent parent cares about his kids.

    Comparing me to Polly Pot/Hitlery/She-it which must not be named is damned offensive.

    • Speaking of what is not right: Nobody ‘owns’ their children. Parents are guardians of their children, but each child owns him or herself. The phrase ‘consenting adults’ is also problematic. Eric, I am sure that you would make a good parent, so please do not think that what follows is aimed at you. Your use of that phrase merely invited me to express my views about it. What about the rights of children? Most men would probably violently attack a guy who is attacking a wheelchair-bound adult, but would do absolutely nothing to stop a person beating on a child 1/4th his size. The wheelchair-bound person can at least file charges and sue his attacker. What the hell can a child do? He can contact CPS, but then things might become even worse. How would you react to seeing an old person who is acting childish getting spanked by a younger adult? Are not both the old man and the child fully human? If you had to go to the store, but your friend refused to follow; would you spank him or yank on his arm to force him to comply? The child did not volunteer to be born, and he might find tagging behind an adult in a store to be quite boring. The adult should either make other arrangements for the child or make the experience interesting to him or her. Americans only pretend to care about their children. America is a nation filled with hypocrites!

      • Hi Brian,
        I held off on replying, because I did not want to ‘shoot from the hip.’ As Gary North says, you risk injuring an important appendage doing that.
        I hear what you are saying, but I am coming from a different POV. My children were given to me by God. Not to be my property, but to be in my care until capable of being responsible for themselves. Barring a miracle, that will be ’til death do us part’ for my (unofficial) foster daughter, who just turned 30. That means I am also responsible for her son, whom she irresponsibly bore when she was 20.
        While children should be reasoned with, when they are capable of reasoning, there is a time in the life of a young child (2-4 or 5) when they respond best to, shall we say, physical stimulus. I am not advocating abuse. Just 1 or sometimes 2 sharp applications to the seat of learning. As for ‘consenting adults,’ I am responsible to God to determine when that is in the life of a child He has put in my care. The gunvermin are incapable of making that determination, and their rules are ‘one size fits all,’ usually for the lowest common denominator.
        As for the child’s ‘self ownership,’ that does not come into play in my worldview, since I do not even own myself. I am His, also.
        As for a child finding shopping with a parent ‘boring,’ well, a lot of life is boring. At least my grandson does not have to put up w/the boredom of a GIC. If he ever wound up in one of those, he would likely be medicated.

        • If you want a good example of children growing up under government welfare supervision just take a good look on the streets of Detroit, Chicago and L.A. and then take a good look at what’s happening on college campuses now.
          Milo Yiannopolis was shouted down and attacked at DePaul University by these gooferment raised kids.

        • Hello PtB, I trust that you desire a consistent POV based upon biblical teaching. The very first book in the bible states that God gave man free will to accept or to reject Him. His ruling means that God granted self-ownership to everyone! Every since that time man has been trying to over-rule His decision! In 1 Samuel 8, the people rejected Him and chose a man king. God, through Samuel, warned them about the tyranny that their man king (the State) will bring about, but they ignored Him, and He allowed them to have their way. I invite you to look at the location of that book relative to the remainder of the bible, and to consider how very much different the remainder of the bible would have become had those people rejected Statism instead.
          Modern churches have been invaded by Statists who push for total obedience to the American government, but this violates the teachings of Jesus.

  18. Thank you. Very well said. Another annoyance for me is school zones. These made sense back when children walked to school. I live in a high class suburb where most everyone drives their kids to school in their Escalades. Kids not driven ride the bus. I have not seen one single child walking near any of the four schools in my neighborhood. They hardly even let them out for recess anymore unless it’s inside a 10-foot razor wire fence, a la Indiana State Prison. Even in my small neighborhood, parents wait in their cars by the bus stop so the kids aren’t out of their sight for even the few minutes it might take to walk from the corner drop-off to their homes … and this in a housing addition with excellent sidewalks and very low traffic. So there is ZERO chance of me running over a kid to or from or in the vicinity of school. Also, the speed limit has been ratcheting down. It used to be 25 mph standard in my state, now it’s going down to 20 mph in some areas. Stick shift Mustang and 20 mph just doesn’t work.

    • School zones… thenewspaper.com just had a story that the real danger to kids is the school bus and even those are rare.

      Near me they have a 20mph school zone on an arterial road for a HS. A high school.

      I do 20mph in school zones in my MT Mustangs. You know who tailgates me? The parents of the children.

      • Here in Oz we have those dammmmmm 40kph flashing bright signs in HIGH SCHOOL zones for fuck sake. If those fucking kids haven’t been able to cross the road without kiddie guards, how the hell are they going to navigate the roads of life? Which are far more harsh.

    • It’s really absurd where I live: The school buses let every kid off right in front of their own house. Perish the thought you get behind a bus -it stops literally every 50 feet! Is it any wonder that today 35 year olds are living in mommy’s basement and playing video games, when as Ritalin-filled 13 year-old monsters they were never even made to walk a few blocks?!

  19. I’m not sure about the Donald on this one either. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw Rosie Odumbell. The NMSL was perhaps the worst law to be enacted by congress during the 20th century except for maybe the Income tax and the fed. For me, it was the worst. The 55 mph speed limit did not save gas. According to figures that used to be published by the Energy Information Administration, fleet fuel mileage varied between 11.9 and 12.5 mpg between 1969 and 1977. The speed limit was enacted in 1974. There was no difference between pre and post fleet gas mileage (which was simply miles driven divided by gallons used nationally).

    I will let them have the fact that fatalities dropped from 55,000 to 46,000 from 1973 to 1974. We were also in a period of sharply reduced discretionary driving and a SEVERE recession. The recession lasted from late 1973 (precipitated by the shortage to the end of 1975. Driving was down. People don’t drive during bad economies. The same thing happened in 1982, 1991-92, 2001-2 and 2008-13. Economic activity correlates with fatality rate increases or decreases. Speed limits do not. Beginning in 2014, driving has been rising at 3-4% per year. Traffic increases first in high conflict areas as the economy recovers. That increases accidents and fatalities, the reason for the sharper increase in fatalities than miles driven.

    55 mph will happen again. Over my dead body.

    The bigger danger to motoring is the self driving car and the cloveritic mindset of a large minority of drivers. The automobile is in a peril due to to our own apathy. The lack of infrastructure “investment” has caused major backups to occur at all hours on todays highways. We have added maybe 10% more lane miles since 1970, but have more than tripled miles driven. That’s why people are sick of driving. Continuous urban and suburban sprawl make force people to use GPS to see around the concrete parking lots half empty but filled with the same fast food, casual dining, outlet malls and corporate owned gas stations mile after mile after mile. Driving has become a chore.

    A lot of people want to speed by it all, and that includes me. I’m going to do my part to make sure that 55 mph (or 65 or 70) stays buried in a landfill.

    • I was going to add that the Safety Nazis never explained why fatalities increased to 51,000 in the 1977-81 time period.

    • Hi Henry,

      Today, I intend to hit 160 (at least) on my bike… just to say FU to Hillary and all the other Clooooooovers out there!

    • They counted fatalities differently in 1973 than in 1974. Changed the method of what counted and what didn’t. Had to do with people who died later and how much later as I recall. Anyway the method changed to produce a predictably lower number for 1974. Data before 1974 is not comparable to data 1974 and later. Two different methods.

  20. I drove across the US a couple of times (I-10 and I-40) during the double-nickel era.

    San Antonio to El Paso was memorable for how absurdly BORING it was (aside from the million-watt illegal Mexican radio to listen to), and it took up an entire day by itself. Google says the distance is 552 miles, which would have been 10 hours back then. Today, only 7 hours 40 minutes because the speed limit is 80 mph.

    And I could keep going, since I’m still mentally alert (not snoozing along at 55) which means I could make it most of the way across New Mexico, stopping in Lordsburg.

    Interesting and irrelevant data point – Amtrak is reporting 14 hours to go that same distance.

    • “million-watt illegal Mexican radio”
      Why is it illegal? What harm has it done? Watch out for Cloveritis!

      • I called it illegal because it was (and still is, if they’re still around, now 30 years later).

        Frequencies are given out based on the expected range of their transmitter’s power – think of them like the circular irrigation fields you see from airplanes. So these guys were stomping on other station’s signals far away. What about those other station’s rights to reach their listeners?

        • I just want to know on what basis the gunvermin has any rights to regulate the airwaves.
          If they are ‘stomping’ on another signal that predated theirs, then that’s aggressing against a homesteaded ‘property.’ Otherwise, fish heads.

          • It simply broadcasts from an unregulated market, Mexico. Nothing illegal in Mexico and not illegal in the US since it isn’t a US station. It probably serves a good purpose in Mexico where stations are difficult to come by in many places. I haven’t noticed them spraying a signal all over several others, taking up a huge amount of bandwith or anything. US stations attempt to stay away from the same frequencies where it can be heard. But saying that, it can be heard to Ok. at times.

            • Yeah, well when I was a teenager, KAAY in Little Rock could be heard all the way to Chicago at night. And vice versa for WLS.

              • KOMA in OKC was the station of choice here for a long time. There were times we could get WLS….skip conditions.

                • We get the “new” KOMA news/talk and a news station out of Denver pretty clear at night. For music our only AM option is KTNN 660 – the voice of the Navajo Nation!

                  Since our local “options” (AKA “The voice of no choice”) pretty much suck on biblical levels, we are all quite fond of overpowered Juarez stations!

      • PtB, drive from EP to SA and you won’t need to ask that question. I can listen to that station but not for long. Mexican stations bombard you with high speed, loud commercials or whenever music isn’t being played. I-10 is best done with Sirius or something you brought with you.

    • The 80 MPH limit on that road is actually higher than my preferred speed — since I didn’t have a functioning cruise control when I drove it recently, I found when my attention wandered to the conversation with my GF that I kept reverting to about 75 MPH, because the extra 5 MPH made me a bit more tense than I cared for.

      A few people on that road zipped by at around 100 MPH. =D

      • Which is as it should be- if there is a speed limit at all it should be set 10% above the natural speed at which most non-coerced drivers are traveling. I’m told that is fe(de)ral law though I don’t have a cite handy. Perhaps the NMUTCD?

        • Most state vehicle codes incorporate the MUTCD, which in turn incorporates ITE standards. The 85th percentile method is in there somewhere. That is the speed limit should be the speed at which 85% of the drivers are below then rounded _up_ to the nearest 5mph increment.

      • Now my question of why slow 4 wheelers bunch up in both lanes and hold up big rigs trying to get some speed for those long, steep climbs is answered. That big rig coming up on you fast is doing so, not because it can maintain that speed all the way up that 3 mile steep grade but because it can’t and so you give ‘er hell and try to not being doing 40 breaking over the top…..after all those slow 4 wheelers have passed you and then you have to pass them again….to which they’ll all of a sudden realize they wanted to go 80 in the first place…….no…..85…..if that’s what that big rig is willing to do to get around them. It’s the sorta thing that makes trucking a big hassle.

    • When radio was new tech, it was unregulated in the USA too. There were thousands of radio stations, most that only transmitted a few miles if that (on the flip side, some where so powerful you could tune in NATIONWIDE, yes really!). Anyone with the knowledge and money (it didn’t cost more then what a computer and website cost today). So all kinds of radio stations existed for a short while, run by businesses, colleges, churches, civic & radio clubs and individuals. Kind of like what the internet was like in the early years. I imagine it was pretty interesting to be a radio listener back in the day.

      The only remaining part that survived regulation are those little college and university radio stations (mostly originally set up by students I am guessing). That is why colleges have radio stations but rarely have over the air TV stations, as TV was regulated from the beginning (and was and is expensive tech).

      • Actually there were plenty of college TV stations, but they got coopted by PBS when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created.

        If you really want to think about what might have been, consider the short wave bands. They were originally though of as useless and given to the amateurs (hams). Once the amateurs figured out that they were far better than the AM broadcast bands for long distance communication, NBC and CBS lobbied hard to get a law passed that would bar anyone from “broadcasting” to the continental US over short wave bands. You see, they (along with AT&T) had a huge investment in national distribution networks and didn’t like the idea of someone in Chicago setting up a single transmitter that could cover the entire population.

        It’s a shame that radio came along during the progressive era. Really wondering how they got away with calling heavy regulation and centralized planning “progress.” It certainly hampered progress in technology.

        • I grew up listening to shortwave from all over the world. Lots of great music, radio shows and some propaganda. I sometimes listened to people simply communicating with one another.

  21. Even if lower speeds did actually save gas, so what? Only Algore still believes in AGW. The rest have switched to calling it ‘Climate Change,’ w/o acknowledging that that’s what climates do – change.
    We need to get rid of the EPA, along with the NSA, TSA, IRS and (what used to be known as) ATF.
    Oh, the heck w/it. Let’s just get rid of the whole Fedgov. The States can cause enough trouble on their own.

    • It more than that — if you aren’t enjoying the drive, the extra time on the road is diminishing the quality of your life — it’s basically wasting your life. But politicians like Hillary don’t care that you would rather have an extra several hours of non-driving time even if it costs you a few dollars more in fuel — because they don’t value your time or life nearly as much as you do.

      • “they don’t value your time or life nearly as much as you do”
        Actually they don’t value it at all except in my role as a taxpayer.

      • Of course ‘she’ also wants to shut down the coal industry, just like O-Bomb-Ya does. She did try to back pedal when she was in WV, but Bernie won that primary for some reason.

    • Let’s also make a few notes here. Because as the Anarchists used to say, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!”
      – CAIR is rewriting the history books in the US education system.
      + Liberty doesn’t matter. The Founders don’t matter. But the role of Islam in
      creating the West is paramount!
      – Government is Allah. (That might be telling, Mammon, Allah, etc, all the same.)
      – Climate Change is the BIGGEST threat to humanity!
      + “Climate Change” is ONLY caused by HUMANS, and humans are evil, and
      should be eliminated – EXCEPT for the Sacred Rulers, and some select
      Workers.

      My approach of pro-active self-defense isn’t really improper. People want to wait until they see the gun in someone’s hand….
      I’m telling you, it’s the “bar sinister” – the LEFT HAND, used for sneak attacks in the age of blades…
      We’re being “shot” all the time, but because people don’t SEE the gun and HEAR the shot – it’s not happening….
      This mentality would allow “immunizations” with strychnine. Because we can’t PROVE strychnine is toxic, because the chemistry books were rewritten two generations back…

      BIG picture. Not snapshots.
      instead of Acts in a play, look at the whole play….

      We’re in the final act, and our shared mythology is being used against us – by people knowingly complicit. I can’t imagine it’s an X-files “protect people from aliens” thing. I can only conceive of fear being used to control the populace to make a subset of humanity wealthy – who are, in fact, running from their own fears, mind… Not secret “good guys” protecting us from aliens / our own stupidity… Rather, people who KNOW better, MUST know better – who instead succumb to or choose their personal greed and issues over logical thought, and then run from there.
      Selling us out? Just part of the game. If the “little people” were capable (read: ruthless and evil), then they wouldn’t be “little people.”

      I believe that’s the reality.
      And TPTB are merely writing the history books and educating the children to ensure their play is unnoticed…

  22. The cry of “safety” for the double nickle is based on what we have to guess is coincidence. In 1974 how fatalities were counted change. Data before 1974 and data 1974 and later cannot be compared. But the control freak crowd compares them as well. The fuel crisis (Nixon’s price and wage controls) resulted in a lot less night driving. And lastly 55mph itself is just some fuel economy comprise with regards to a big heavy V8 sedan with a 2 or 3 speed automatic and a carb on bias ply tires. It is simply irrelevant today. But control freaks want to control and that’s why I say the automated car future will be a hellish thing crawling at low speeds not nose to tail at 120mph as many people think it will be.

    • “control freaks want to control ” Yep, Climate Control is not about the climate, it’s about control. Watermelons!

  23. “wherever it can be required, and the people will accept it, we ought to do it”
    Well that sounds like she’s leaving us an out – we just don’t accept it. But where do we register our rejection? And what % of rejection would be required to nullify it?

  24. It’s for the children….

    Or

    SSSAAAAASFFFFFFEEETTTTYYYYY

    To quote the honorable Professor:” I don’t want to live on this planet anymore”

    • To which one should reply to the honorable professor (is there such a beast today):
      “We don’t want your fucking ass on this planet anymore. May you burn in a pyroclastic lava flow.”

      • Acknowledging my ignorance, who is ‘the honorable professor’? Google insisted on searching for ‘honorable profession,’ or ‘honorary professor.’

        • Google “Futurama.” It’s what the Professor says when confronted with some absolute stupidity…

          While Futurama is a little leftist now and then, it’s overall pretty good at making the points about both sides being intractable and incorrigibly partisan. You’d think it was a Yankees/Red Sox thing, say, but no – people handle EVERYTHING through the same rigid, tiny lens.
          E.G., the “Trans” bathroom BS.
          The Presidential decree has made perversion legal, while making it difficult for Trans* to just use the restroom in peace. It’s also affected genetic women, with one being arrested in a McDonald’s because she couldn’t “prove” that she was a woman (no driver’s license, and she was a teen, but the story didn’t indicate if she had one at home.)

          WTF problem was this supposed to fix? Why the F is it anyone else’s business? Are we going to submit to DNA scans to use the toilet…?

          (Let’s not really discuss, it’ll get us off-topic. I was thrown out of one of their groups for suggesting there was no need for a law, and that a little understanding might help, since it IS actually a medically-provable condition, using MRIs. I only mean to provide some context, as someone on the inside, echoing the professor… “I don’t want to live on this planet any more.”)

          The stupid, it burns. MYOB + “GFY, clover!” – two thoughts the “normal” mind cannot fathom.

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