More gvt spawns more government-CPS one example FW:

[Fern5827]

FW;

Subject: We survived WITHOUT safety edicts
From: "JG"
Date: 7/24/2003 1:16 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id: >

Gee, Dr. Williams and I must be on the same wavelength! What a
coincidence that his latest (today's) column addresses some of the
differences between the '50s and '60s (he's somewhat older, so he threw
in the '40s as well) and today.

"The fact that these safety edicts saved some lives and prevented some
injuries doesn't provide justification for them anymore than mandating
that, because some Americans have headaches, aspirin be put in the water
supply."

from http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20030723.shtml

We made it


Walter Williams

July 23, 2003

Whenever someone says that this or that government program is absolutely
necessary, I always wonder, "What did people do and how did they survive
before the program?"


If someone says food stamps are absolutely necessary for poor people's
survival, I wonder how America's millions of poor immigrants made it.
Unless I missed something, mass starvation is not a part of our history.
Was there a stealth food stamp program during the 1700s and 1800s?

Then there's the question: How did we manage to build the world's
greatest cities without the help of the 1965-created U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development? Did cities become worse off or better off
afterward? Or, how did we manage to produce energy to fuel the world's
richest economy before the 1977 creation of the Department of Energy?

Recently, I received an email titled, "We Made It." It had to do with
the federal safety edicts of agencies like the U.S. Product Safety
Commission, established in 1972, and the U.S. Department of
Transportation, established in 1966. Congress created these and other
agencies to "protect the public against unreasonable risks of injuries
and deaths." That's how toys, cribs, child car seats and childproof
medicine bottles came to be regulated. Considering we were a nation for
nearly 200 years before Congress started protecting us against
"unreasonable risks of injuries and deaths," a natural question is how
we managed to survive and grow from a population of 4 million to the 280
million of us today.

According to my email's author, if we listen to Washington, those of us
still around who were children during the '40s, '50s and '60s probably
should be dead. Nonetheless, there are 58 million of us born in 1945 or
earlier who are still kicking. Our parents allowed us to sleep in cribs
beautified with lead-based paint. They drove us around in cars that had
neither seatbelts nor airbags. They permitted us to ride our bicycles
without helmets, just as adults rode motorcycles without helmets. And,
horror of horrors, there were no childproof medicine bottles that, by
the way, are sometimes so difficult to open that some people summon
their children to open them.

The fact that these safety edicts saved some lives and prevented some
injuries doesn't provide justification for them anymore than mandating
that, because some Americans have headaches, aspirin be put in the water
supply.

In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us
from others, but not from ourselves. Before government got into the
business of protecting us from ourselves, we did have a greater measure
of protection from others. Yesteryear's children rode their bikes or
walked to a friend's house, knocked on the door and let themselves in.
Many families didn't lock doors until the last family member was home
for the evening, and they did that in poor neighborhoods like the one I
grew up in.

Yesteryear, when we went off to school, parents might have worried about
our crossing streets safely. Today's parents have a different set of
worries, such as whether their child will be shot, stabbed, robbed,
raped or given drugs in school. During the pre-1960 years,
neighborhoods -- including poor neighborhoods -- were safe enough for
women to walk the streets after dark. In fact, in places like Harlem,
N.Y., hot, humid nights saw children and adults sleeping on fire escapes
and rooftops. Doing the same today might lead to arrest for attempted
suicide.

Speaking of crime, if children did have a scrape with the law, our
parents sided with the police.

Don't you wonder how so many Americans made it without today's
oppressive, caring, nanny government?

[David J. Hughes]

Kane wrote:
> (Fern5827) wrote in message >...
>
>>FW;
>>
>>Subject: We survived WITHOUT safety edicts
>>From: "JG"
>>Date: 7/24/2003 1:16 AM Eastern Daylight Time
>>Message-id: >
>>
>>Gee, Dr. Williams and I must be on the same wavelength! What a
>>coincidence that his latest (today's) column addresses some of the
>>differences between the '50s and '60s (he's somewhat older, so he threw
>>in the '40s as well) and today.
>>
>>"The fact that these safety edicts saved some lives and prevented some
>>injuries doesn't provide justification for them anymore than mandating
>>that, because some Americans have headaches, aspirin be put in the water
>>supply."
>>
>>from http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20030723.shtml
>>
>>We made it
>>
>>
>>Walter Williams
>>
>>July 23, 2003
>>
>>Whenever someone says that this or that government program is absolutely
>>necessary, I always wonder, "What did people do and how did they survive
>>before the program?"
>>
>>
>>If someone says food stamps are absolutely necessary for poor people's
>>survival, I wonder how America's millions of poor immigrants made it.
>>Unless I missed something, mass starvation is not a part of our history.
>>Was there a stealth food stamp program during the 1700s and 1800s?
>
>
> 1863 ... from the timeline at:
>
> http://www.arcanacon.org/2000/timeline.html
>
> "There is starvation in the Confederate States, as the Union shipping
> blockade bites and fewer men are left to till fields. The Union
> destroys the Confederacy's last saltworks as well"
>
> And while it may not be part of OUR history, it certainly is of the
> world in the timespan listed.
>
> So, the answer to how they survived without food stamps is, they
> didn't, in large numbers.

Nonsense. That had nothing to do with the government subsidizing the
purchase of readily available foodstuffs.
That was a case of NO food being available at any price.

>
>
>>Then there's the question: How did we manage to build the world's
>>greatest cities without the help of the 1965-created U.S. Department of
>>Housing and Urban Development?
>
>
> World's greatest cities? Dear Pumpkin, in the 1800's the largest city
> in the world was Canton China.

Which was a pestilential hellhole. The word was "greatest", not
"largest".
Of today's 15 largest cities, the US has #'s 2 and 7 (New York and Los
Angeles), and I wouldn't care to live in any of them. (A few are
interesting to visit.)

>
>
>>Did cities become worse off or better off
>>afterward?
>
>
> Better off. You have to look at the cities in the era before DHUD.
> Ghastly places with pretty facades. Huge blighted areas of severe
> disease and starvation...and the reason it became regulated was to
> protect the nice folks on the other side of the tracks from the pool
> of viruii and bactieria.

Very little starvation or rampant disease in the cities in 1965, when
HUD became a cabinet office.
Not a lot of either (compared to the country as a whole) in 1934, when
the Federal Housing Act was passed.

>
>
>>Or, how did we manage to produce energy to fuel the world's
>>richest economy before the 1977 creation of the Department of Energy?
>
>
> r r r r..Good one. We haven't been independent for fuel for many
> decades before 1977. Just check the history books.

True, but US companies dominated the energy industry from the mid
1800's to the rise of the multinationals in the 1980's.

>
> My own grandmother, in the mid 1930s, was the executive secretary of a
> Standard Oil company called, Standard of MEXICO. Hmmm...this guy is a
> knownothing blowhard, rather like you, Perfoliata.

A wholly owned subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey, which the
Mexican government expropriated (read "stole") in 1938.

>
>
>>Recently, I received an email titled, "We Made It." It had to do with
>>the federal safety edicts of agencies like the U.S. Product Safety
>>Commission, established in 1972, and the U.S. Department of
>>Transportation, established in 1966. Congress created these and other
>>agencies to "protect the public against unreasonable risks of injuries
>>and deaths." That's how toys, cribs, child car seats and childproof
>>medicine bottles came to be regulated. Considering we were a nation for
>>nearly 200 years before Congress started protecting us against
>>"unreasonable risks of injuries and deaths," a natural question is how
>>we managed to survive and grow from a population of 4 million to the 280
>>million of us today.
>
>
> We didn't. There were plenty of deaths related to unregulated
> substances and artifacts. Arsenic was in so many things that it was
> considered a tonic...and would put roses in the checks of ladies that
> were fading just a bit. Killed them in time of course, but they made
> lovely corpses.
>
> Pull out an old formulary. They are full of do it yourself products
> for all kinds of household use based on popular commercial concoctions
> of the day, and they would kill you dead. As recently as my childhood
> it was no trouble at all to obtain, from the grocery store shelf,
> Tetracloride, a deadly toxic gas produced from it could kill in
> minutes. It was called dry cleaning fluid, and is probably still in
> use, but under much heavier restriction and control.
>
>

Carbon tetrachloride, sold in any decent paint store. Essentially no
restrictions or controls.

>>According to my email's author, if we listen to Washington, those of us
>>still around who were children during the '40s, '50s and '60s probably
>>should be dead.
>
>
> I can think of five childhood friends that didn't make it to adulthood
> because of careless adults putting them in danger. My best buddy at 16
> pinned under the tractor that tipped over on him for the second time
> in two years. The last time he got to lay there under it's two tons
> for hours in the heat of the running engine until he died, all alone.

And no regulation currently in place would have saved him. 15 year
olds still drive farm tractors with no supervision.

>
> The boy kicked in the face by a draft horse when adults didn't
> supervise well enough. Ever seen the size of a draft horse hoof...and
> they weigh upwards of a ton some of them.
>

Again, the same could happen today.

>
>>Nonetheless, there are 58 million of us born in 1945 or
>>earlier who are still kicking.
>
>
> And three are rather a lot of us missing today, as I pointed out.
>

True. A lot of them died in Korea and Southeast Asia. Many died from
childhood diseases.

>
>>Our parents allowed us to sleep in cribs
>>beautified with lead-based paint.
>
>
> And brain damage from this has lead to an entire large population of
> mentally and intellectually disabled folks.
>
>
>>They drove us around in cars that had
>>neither seatbelts nor airbags.
>
>
> When I had a single car accident, my pickup slid off the road on ice,
> and down a short cliff, and it was before seatbelts, the only thing
> that saved my 2 year old son from going out the window, or through the
> windsheild when we came to a sudden stop on the nose of the pickup,
> was that I reached over and rolled him onto the floor and pushed him
> into the far corner and held him down with my foot.
>
> I was quite happy when belts came along. And even better, car seats,
> though he hated them and could get out of the best.
>

Seat belts were first used in cars in the 1930's, and were an option
on many cars by 1956. When was your accident?

>
>>They permitted us to ride our bicycles
>>without helmets,
>
>
> Dead or vegetable human beings were the result.
>
>
>>just as adults rode motorcycles without helmets.
>
>
> As above, and each of these very often became a burden to families and
> some to the public as funds run out in families to support them.
> Millions per person over the rest of their restricted lives.

No, not wearing a helmet usually results in a corpse. Wearing a helm
results in a high neck fracture, and a quadriplegic requiring life
support.

>
>
>>And,
>>horror of horrors, there were no childproof medicine bottles that, by
>>the way, are sometimes so difficult to open that some people summon
>>their children to open them.
>
>
> Bull hockey. I tried that for the fun of it. It isn't true. They had
> to go to extraordinary lengths to open them, smashing them with a
> heavy object.

Depends on the design and the age of the child. Most do keep those
under 3 out of the bottles, most 8 year olds can open any bottle
faster than their parents.

>
> I wonder how many children died from adult medications they got into
> much more freely before child proof caps.
>
> Notice that many of the toxic home products now come with such caps?
> My little brother nearly died in hospital because he used and empty
> bleach bottle he put water in for a Teapot.
>
>
>>The fact that these safety edicts saved some lives and prevented some
>>injuries doesn't provide justification for them anymore than mandating
>>that, because some Americans have headaches, aspirin be put in the water
>>supply.
>
>
> Now that's the most blatant violation of logic I've seen in a long
> time. Apples and oranges and a red herring. And a strawman argument as
> well. Congratulations.
>
>
>>In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us
>>from others, but not from ourselves.
>
>
> Excuse me? There is no all inclusive promise in a free society to
> protect us from each other. It's still an individual
> responsibility..and that is the free society aspect. You are talking
> about socialism, not a representative democracy. Just another
> crackpot.
>
>
>>Before government got into the
>>business of protecting us from ourselves, we did have a greater measure
>>of protection from others. Yesteryear's children rode their bikes or
>>walked to a friend's house, knocked on the door and let themselves in.
>
>
> Sixty years ago my parents were teaching me not to talk with
> strangers, to avoid going out alone at night, and to not answer the
> door if a stranger knocked.

None of which has any bearing on the above actions.

The ignorance of this writer is
> phenomenal.

Attacking the author, rather than refuting his arguments.
Worse, being wrong in the attack. "Ignorance" is a totally
inappropriate term when someone is reporting a true situation.

By the way, I'm male, was tough and street wise despite
> the advantage of growing up in the country.
>
> Things weren't really that different back then, just not reported as
> much. We had unwed pregnancies, drug use...hell, I could have bought
> Grass back then if I'd wanted it, and heroin was common in some
> locales. Cocaine had been around for a century even when I was a kid.
> The Chaplin movie where he was in jail had a scene about it...called
> it Nose Powder.
>
>
>>Many families didn't lock doors until the last family member was home
>>for the evening, and they did that in poor neighborhoods like the one I
>>grew up in.
>
>
> I lived out in the country and you damn well did NOT leave your doors
> unlocked. There were bad folks even back then.

Locking doors depended on which part of the country you lived in.
Some never locked the doors, unless leaving the house vacant for an
extended trip.
Some locked the doors at night.
Some kept the doors locked all the time, unlocking them to enter and exit.

>
>
>>Yesteryear, when we went off to school, parents might have worried about
>>our crossing streets safely. Today's parents have a different set of
>>worries, such as whether their child will be shot, stabbed, robbed,
>>raped or given drugs in school.
>
>
> There was child molestation in the city and country. It simply wasn't
> reported, but we kids knew who to avoid. We told each other.

They still do.

>
>
>>During the pre-1960 years,
>>neighborhoods -- including poor neighborhoods -- were safe enough for
>>women to walk the streets after dark.
>
>
> What a raft of ****. Ask an older women what hatpins were really for.
> It's not hard to keep a hat on with other fasteners, but ah, a
> hatpin...now there's a weapon more than one lady traveling alone had
> to threaten to use or did use. And still they were raped. Some
> recognition and societal protections had to be put in place. I hear
> rape has dropped as a result.
>

But it's still an order of magnitude more common today than in 1900.

>
>>In fact, in places like Harlem,
>>N.Y., hot, humid nights saw children and adults sleeping on fire escapes
>>and rooftops. Doing the same today might lead to arrest for attempted
>>suicide.
>
>
> Bull****. People in the city still do it, unmolested and undestrubed
> by the law.
>
>
>>Speaking of crime, if children did have a scrape with the law, our
>>parents sided with the police.
>
>
> Nonsense. It was up for grabs. Just as now. Plenty of people today
> CALL the cops when their kids are out of control...so much for Not
> siding with the cops that you'd like to foist on the ignorant reader.

You are reading more into the statement than is written.
He stated that parents sided with the police.
From somewhere you came up with not siding with the police, a
situation not covered in the original statement.

>
>
>>Don't you wonder how so many Americans made it without today's
>>oppressive, caring, nanny government?
>
>
> They didn't. Hundreds of thousands of black ancestors in American died
> far before their time, worked to death before "Government
> Interferrence" stopped it.

Why did you specify "black'? Far more Italian, Polish, Irish, and
members other groups suffered than did the blacks.

Women had a similar fate facing unlimited
> childbirth in dangerous circumstances...and they died in droves from
> it, or wore out at 40 to 45 looking like old old women. And no doubt
> feeling like it as well.
>
> Government interferrence gave them the vote and, r r r r, they haven't
> looked back. They own their bodies now like never before, because of
> the government.

The Government didn't "give" women the vote, they damn well TOOK it!
As to the social changes in the status of women, the government had
little or nothing to do with it, the simple fact was the government
tried to maintain the status quo, and failed miserably at keeping
women in their "place".

>
> A pile of crap from a Fertilizer hungry Plant.
>
> So is this one of your authoritative "citations" Plant? r r r r
>
> Kane

David Hughes

[Fern5827]

Please correct attributions.

Article is by Walter Williams.

[Kane]

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 05:31:04 -0500, "David J. Hughes"
> wrote:

>
>
>Kane wrote:
>> (Fern5827) wrote in message >...
>>
>>>FW;
>>>
>>>Subject: We survived WITHOUT safety edicts
>>>From: "JG"
>>>Date: 7/24/2003 1:16 AM Eastern Daylight Time
>>>Message-id: >
>>>
>>>Gee, Dr. Williams and I must be on the same wavelength! What a
>>>coincidence that his latest (today's) column addresses some of the
>>>differences between the '50s and '60s (he's somewhat older, so he
threw
>>>in the '40s as well) and today.
>>>
>>>"The fact that these safety edicts saved some lives and prevented
some
>>>injuries doesn't provide justification for them anymore than
mandating
>>>that, because some Americans have headaches, aspirin be put in the
water
>>>supply."
>>>
>>>from http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20030723.shtml
>>>
>>>We made it
>>>
>>>
>>>Walter Williams
>>>
>>>July 23, 2003
>>>
>>>Whenever someone says that this or that government program is
absolutely
>>>necessary, I always wonder, "What did people do and how did they
survive
>>>before the program?"
>>>
>>>
>>>If someone says food stamps are absolutely necessary for poor
people's
>>>survival, I wonder how America's millions of poor immigrants made
it.
>>>Unless I missed something, mass starvation is not a part of our
history.
>>>Was there a stealth food stamp program during the 1700s and 1800s?
>>
>>
>> 1863 ... from the timeline at:
>>
>> http://www.arcanacon.org/2000/timeline.html
>>
>> "There is starvation in the Confederate States, as the Union
shipping
>> blockade bites and fewer men are left to till fields. The Union
>> destroys the Confederacy's last saltworks as well"
>>
>> And while it may not be part of OUR history, it certainly is of the
>> world in the timespan listed.
>>
>> So, the answer to how they survived without food stamps is, they
>> didn't, in large numbers.
>
>Nonsense. That had nothing to do with the government subsidizing the
>purchase of readily available foodstuffs.
>That was a case of NO food being available at any price.

Nonsense yourself. The claim was that there was no starvation so no
need for regulation, an entirely pointless bit of twittery. The
opening premise of that paragraph was something that doesn't merit
comment whatsoever.

"If someone says food stamps are absolutely necessary for poor
people's survival, I wonder how America's millions of poor immigrants
made it."

In other words, "someone" has to say something that is pointless so he
can make a pointless rebuttal. No one says it's "absolutely necessary"
for survival. One can "survive" on treebark. Drivel. As is your
response.

>>
>>
>>>Then there's the question: How did we manage to build the world's
>>>greatest cities without the help of the 1965-created U.S.
Department of
>>>Housing and Urban Development?
>>
>>
>> World's greatest cities? Dear Pumpkin, in the 1800's the largest
city
>> in the world was Canton China.
>
>Which was a pestilential hellhole. The word was "greatest", not
>"largest". Of today's 15 largest cities, the US has #'s 2 and 7 (New
York and Los
>Angeles), and I wouldn't care to live in any of them. (A few are
>interesting to visit.)

That really wasn't the issue, now was it. and HUD isn't about building
"great" cities, now is it?

You are drooling down your chin.

>>
>>
>>>Did cities become worse off or better off
>>>afterward?
>>
>>
>> Better off. You have to look at the cities in the era before DHUD.
>> Ghastly places with pretty facades. Huge blighted areas of severe
>> disease and starvation...and the reason it became regulated was to
>> protect the nice folks on the other side of the tracks from the
pool
>> of viruii and bactieria.
>
>Very little starvation or rampant disease in the cities in 1965, when
>HUD became a cabinet office. Not a lot of either (compared to the
country as a whole) in 1934, when
>the Federal Housing Act was passed.

What does that tell you about the author's premise then?

And when did HUD become about building fabulous cities to wipe out
hunger and disease.

My premise stands. I'm no more defending HUD than the author, but my
reasons are more sound.

>>
>>>Or, how did we manage to produce energy to fuel the world's
>>>richest economy before the 1977 creation of the Department of
Energy?
>>
>>
>> r r r r..Good one. We haven't been independent for fuel for many
>> decades before 1977. Just check the history books.
>
>True, but US companies dominated the energy industry from the mid
>1800's to the rise of the multinationals in the 1980's.

I think you need to talk to the Dutch about that. The Russians as
well. And BP, who now has fueling stations scattered around the US.

US and foreign interests may NOW collude, but the 1800's were an era
of considerable competition.

>>
>> My own grandmother, in the mid 1930s, was the executive secretary
of a
>> Standard Oil company called, Standard of MEXICO. Hmmm...this guy is
a
>> knownothing blowhard, rather like you, Perfoliata.
>
>A wholly owned subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey, which the
>Mexican government expropriated (read "stole") in 1938.

And that is relevant to the author's babbling and the question at
hand, the regulation of various facets of American life how?

>>
>>
>>>Recently, I received an email titled, "We Made It." It had to do
with
>>>the federal safety edicts of agencies like the U.S. Product Safety
>>>Commission, established in 1972, and the U.S. Department of
>>>Transportation, established in 1966. Congress created these and
other
>>>agencies to "protect the public against unreasonable risks of
injuries
>>>and deaths." That's how toys, cribs, child car seats and childproof
>>>medicine bottles came to be regulated. Considering we were a nation
for
>>>nearly 200 years before Congress started protecting us against
>>>"unreasonable risks of injuries and deaths," a natural question is
how
>>>we managed to survive and grow from a population of 4 million to
the 280
>>>million of us today.
>>
>>
>> We didn't. There were plenty of deaths related to unregulated
>> substances and artifacts. Arsenic was in so many things that it was
>> considered a tonic...and would put roses in the checks of ladies
that
>> were fading just a bit. Killed them in time of course, but they
made
>> lovely corpses.
>>
>> Pull out an old formulary. They are full of do it yourself products
>> for all kinds of household use based on popular commercial
concoctions
>> of the day, and they would kill you dead. As recently as my
childhood
>> it was no trouble at all to obtain, from the grocery store shelf,
>> Tetracloride, a deadly toxic gas produced from it could kill in
>> minutes. It was called dry cleaning fluid, and is probably still in
>> use, but under much heavier restriction and control.
>>
>>
>
>Carbon tetrachloride, sold in any decent paint store. Essentially no
>restrictions or controls.

"Essentially"?

Who do you think makes the manufacturer put those warning instructions
on the labels?

My very first job programming was to create a printing control module
that would allow the manufacturing company, a janitorial supply
manufacturer, to make the required EPA updates to the label every
quarter.

>>>According to my email's author, if we listen to Washington, those
of us
>>>still around who were children during the '40s, '50s and '60s
probably
>>>should be dead.
>>
>>
>> I can think of five childhood friends that didn't make it to
adulthood
>> because of careless adults putting them in danger. My best buddy at
16
>> pinned under the tractor that tipped over on him for the second
time
>> in two years. The last time he got to lay there under it's two tons
>> for hours in the heat of the running engine until he died, all
alone.
>
>And no regulation currently in place would have saved him. 15 year
>olds still drive farm tractors with no supervision.

No rollover bars. Want to claim there's been no upgrades since my
friend died, via regulation? And trust me, there ARE now laws about
the age a child can even be on a tractor let alone drive one
unsupervised. Not that I agree, mind you, only the claims of the
auther are bogus nonsense based on little more than a narrow knowitall
bias.

Logical, they are not.

>>
>> The boy kicked in the face by a draft horse when adults didn't
>> supervise well enough. Ever seen the size of a draft horse
hoof...and
>> they weigh upwards of a ton some of them.
>>
>
>Again, the same could happen today.

And the parents might well face a civil and possibly even a criminal
neglect action. There IS regulation today. That's the point.

A claim that regulation has to stop ALL such incidents underlays the
author's theme pretty clearly and it is bogus. And you must made a
mighty leap of logic and fell in **** up to your chin.

We don't recind old laws against bank robbery or murder because it can
still "happen today." Nor should we new ones because they fail to stop
all incidences.

That there are SOME laws in excess and some laws that are poorly
conceived well known, hence you are headed down the path to the
wheatfield for some construction straw on that one. So don't give us
that "the same could happen today."

>>
>>>Nonetheless, there are 58 million of us born in 1945 or
>>>earlier who are still kicking.
>>
>>
>> And three are rather a lot of us missing today, as I pointed out.
>>
>
>True. A lot of them died in Korea and Southeast Asia. Many died
from
>childhood diseases.

Oh, I see. Yet another logical fallacy to misdirect and minimize the
idiocy of the author. Good work. Red Herring Alert.

>>
>>>Our parents allowed us to sleep in cribs
>>>beautified with lead-based paint.
>>
>>
>> And brain damage from this has lead to an entire large population
of
>> mentally and intellectually disabled folks.
>>
>>
>>>They drove us around in cars that had
>>>neither seatbelts nor airbags.
>>
>>
>> When I had a single car accident, my pickup slid off the road on
ice,
>> and down a short cliff, and it was before seatbelts, the only thing
>> that saved my 2 year old son from going out the window, or through
the
>> windsheild when we came to a sudden stop on the nose of the pickup,
>> was that I reached over and rolled him onto the floor and pushed
him
>> into the far corner and held him down with my foot.
>>
>> I was quite happy when belts came along. And even better, car
seats,
>> though he hated them and could get out of the best.
>>
>
>Seat belts were first used in cars in the 1930's, and were an option
>on many cars by 1956. When was your accident?

My rig was a 1960 or so IH and I personally installed the NEW seat
belts right after I learned my lesson. The old one's had worn out and
been cut away.

Even a soft crash, such as we had, could have been fatal to a toddler.
His soft head likely would not have survived a hit on the dashboard.

My accident was in about 71.

Can you say "pointless" rebuttal? Good, you just performed one nicely.
You get a 5 5 4 with an overall 4.2.
>>
>>>They permitted us to ride our bicycles
>>>without helmets,
>>
>>
>> Dead or vegetable human beings were the result.
>>
>>
>>>just as adults rode motorcycles without helmets.
>>
>>
>> As above, and each of these very often became a burden to families
and
>> some to the public as funds run out in families to support them.
>> Millions per person over the rest of their restricted lives.
>
>No, not wearing a helmet usually results in a corpse. Wearing a helm
>results in a high neck fracture, and a quadriplegic requiring life
>support.

Or lots of hide lost but the head still uncracked and no life support
required. I've heard this one before. I'm a former scooter man. Too
old to scoot these days, but I learned my lesson with asphalt
sandpaper many years ago, no helmet and the only damn thing that saved
my knoggin was my saddle bag busting loose where the car hit me, and
getting between my head and the pavement. Wanna see my scars?

>>
>>>And,
>>>horror of horrors, there were no childproof medicine bottles that,
by
>>>the way, are sometimes so difficult to open that some people summon
>>>their children to open them.
>>
>>
>> Bull hockey. I tried that for the fun of it. It isn't true. They
had
>> to go to extraordinary lengths to open them, smashing them with a
>> heavy object.
>
>Depends on the design and the age of the child. Most do keep those
>under 3 out of the bottles, most 8 year olds can open any bottle
>faster than their parents.

Puleeze....more nonsense. 8 year olds are well into the age of reason
and don't usually take meds they aren't supposed to. It's the younger
kids that are meant to be kept out and are. Check your local poison
center. Five and down are the most who show up there or they get calls
on from distraught mommies.

>>
>> I wonder how many children died from adult medications they got
into
>> much more freely before child proof caps.
>>
>> Notice that many of the toxic home products now come with such
caps?
>> My little brother nearly died in hospital because he used and empty
>> bleach bottle he put water in for a Teapot.
>>
>>
>>>The fact that these safety edicts saved some lives and prevented
some
>>>injuries doesn't provide justification for them anymore than
mandating
>>>that, because some Americans have headaches, aspirin be put in the
water
>>>supply.
>>
>>
>> Now that's the most blatant violation of logic I've seen in a long
>> time. Apples and oranges and a red herring. And a strawman argument
as
>> well. Congratulations.
>>
>>
>>>In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting
us
>>>from others, but not from ourselves.
>>
>>
>> Excuse me? There is no all inclusive promise in a free society to
>> protect us from each other. It's still an individual
>> responsibility..and that is the free society aspect. You are
talking
>> about socialism, not a representative democracy. Just another
>> crackpot.
>>
>>
>>>Before government got into the
>>>business of protecting us from ourselves, we did have a greater
measure
>>>of protection from others. Yesteryear's children rode their bikes
or
>>>walked to a friend's house, knocked on the door and let themselves
in.
>>
>>
>> Sixty years ago my parents were teaching me not to talk with
>> strangers, to avoid going out alone at night, and to not answer the
>> door if a stranger knocked.
>
>None of which has any bearing on the above actions.

Well, I guess if it's on YOUR authority I have to accept it, but my
evil twin says you are full of ****...it's directly to the point of
the post, my rebuttal, your rebuttal of mine, and my current response.

> The ignorance of this writer is
>> phenomenal.
>
>Attacking the author, rather than refuting his arguments.

No, pointing to the evidence. Ignorance is lack of knowledge. He shows
considerable lack of same. You do as well, but in your case more poor
logic than him. So you top him in the doofus department.

Congrats.

>Worse, being wrong in the attack. "Ignorance" is a totally
>inappropriate term when someone is reporting a true situation.

Would be if it were so, but the lack of supporting evidence, the lack
of scope...reporting only selected bits of info out of the vast pool
of knowledge in the cited subjects...reflect woeful ignorance, or
plain old knowitall idiocy, or even possibly pathological malice.

YOU get to choose. What's YOUR pleasure in defending this utter piece
of nonsense?

> By the way, I'm male, was tough and street wise despite
>> the advantage of growing up in the country.
>>
>> Things weren't really that different back then, just not reported
as
>> much. We had unwed pregnancies, drug use...hell, I could have
bought
>> Grass back then if I'd wanted it, and heroin was common in some
>> locales. Cocaine had been around for a century even when I was a
kid.
>> The Chaplin movie where he was in jail had a scene about
it...called
>> it Nose Powder.
>>
>>
>>>Many families didn't lock doors until the last family member was
home
>>>for the evening, and they did that in poor neighborhoods like the
one I
>>>grew up in.
>>
>>
>> I lived out in the country and you damn well did NOT leave your
doors
>> unlocked. There were bad folks even back then.
>
>Locking doors depended on which part of the country you lived in.

Ho hum. The claim was one could, because of the time frame, leave
one's door unlocked until the last person was home. We cannot know if
the house was empty at some point in time. And it's patently untrue,
as I pointed out. No mention of part of the country was included by
the author. Did I mention pick and choose selectively from the
information available in the real world?

>Some never locked the doors, unless leaving the house vacant for an
>extended trip.
>Some locked the doors at night.
>Some kept the doors locked all the time, unlocking them to enter and
exit.

The author didn't say "some". But thank you for the clarity. It makes
MY point very concretely. I'm grateful beyond mere words.
>>
>>
>>>Yesteryear, when we went off to school, parents might have worried
about
>>>our crossing streets safely. Today's parents have a different set
of
>>>worries, such as whether their child will be shot, stabbed, robbed,
>>>raped or given drugs in school.
>>
>>
>> There was child molestation in the city and country. It simply
wasn't
>> reported, but we kids knew who to avoid. We told each other.
>
>They still do.

Yes, and how does that support his contention child molestation didn't
exist back in the "good old days"?

You are now obviously jacking off and apparently enjoying the hell out
of yourself. No point, just your frenzied activity even if your
refutation of my post now has shifted to defending My position while
trying to sound like you aren't. Tsk.

>>
>>
>>>During the pre-1960 years,
>>>neighborhoods -- including poor neighborhoods -- were safe enough
for
>>>women to walk the streets after dark.
>>
>>
>> What a raft of ****. Ask an older women what hatpins were really
for.
>> It's not hard to keep a hat on with other fasteners, but ah, a
>> hatpin...now there's a weapon more than one lady traveling alone
had
>> to threaten to use or did use. And still they were raped. Some
>> recognition and societal protections had to be put in place. I hear
>> rape has dropped as a result.
>>
>
>But it's still an order of magnitude more common today than in 1900.

You have the stats somewhere, don't you?

I recall more than a few episodes in US history where not only was
rape a serious problem but rape of children. Do you recall the little
dustup the Indians had with us during the time Europeans first arrived
and the late 1800's, and then continued so nicely by those who kindly
offered to take in the poor little native children and turn them into
White Kids, raping them regularly along the way, with a few beatings
thrown in for good measure.

Are you familiar with the Orphan Trains. The grandmother I mentioned
was an OT kid at 3. If you read the history you'll know that great
numbers of them were sent Out West to virtual slavery (they weren't
caught and returned when they ran as adults), and rape was common. My
grandmother, bless the family that chose her, were kind and loving and
she had a great life overall with them.

See what I mean about ignorance. To claim that rape is a bigger
problem than today is the epitome of ignorance. How many rapists do
you think paid for it back then, compared to now? How many wives were
routinely raped by their husbands and it sanctioned by marriage, a
government supported contract everywhere in this land?

>>
>>>In fact, in places like Harlem,
>>>N.Y., hot, humid nights saw children and adults sleeping on fire
escapes
>>>and rooftops. Doing the same today might lead to arrest for
attempted
>>>suicide.
>>
>>
>> Bull****. People in the city still do it, unmolested and
undestrubed
>> by the law.
>>
>>
>>>Speaking of crime, if children did have a scrape with the law, our
>>>parents sided with the police.
>>
>>
>> Nonsense. It was up for grabs. Just as now. Plenty of people today
>> CALL the cops when their kids are out of control...so much for Not
>> siding with the cops that you'd like to foist on the ignorant
reader.
>
>You are reading more into the statement than is written.
>He stated that parents sided with the police.

And conversely then he would have to mean that parents don't now. The
differences between the Good Old Days and now is his theme, or had you
forgotten?

> From somewhere you came up with not siding with the police, a
>situation not covered in the original statement.

Yes, comparisons while arguing are pretty standard fare in debate. You
seem to be quite happy with using the same mechanisms yourself, or
hadn't you noticed?

>>
>>
>>>Don't you wonder how so many Americans made it without today's
>>>oppressive, caring, nanny government?
>>
>>
>> They didn't. Hundreds of thousands of black ancestors in American
died
>> far before their time, worked to death before "Government
>> Interferrence" stopped it.
>
>Why did you specify "black'? Far more Italian, Polish, Irish, and
>members other groups suffered than did the blacks.

I'm am richly mixed in my ethnic origins, and my extended
family...though you couldn't tell by looking at my very northern
european and or irish looking physignomy. So I've been highly curious
about the history of all races.

You are just going to have to take my word on this. My Irish ancestors
never once were separted by their owner from their spouse and children
never to see them again. Nor can I find a single account of them being
auctioned off, while in chains, nor were they ever met with the level
of hostility blacks were and are still met with.

I do admit to knowing though that the Irish had their own version of
the Jim Crow laws, signs that read, "Irish need not apply", "and on
clubs and some saloons, "Dogs and Irishmen not allowed", but that
hardly equates with the experience of blacks.

Do you know of any slave own bars from those days? Well, the Irish
could and did set up their own bars and businesses when they weren't
allowed in others.

And I recall that despite the terrible economic hardships they
laboured under they could leave any time they got up the nerve to. My
grandmother's father did that when his wife died and he had nowhere to
put the children but an orphanage...no relatives in this country.
We've never found him.

The only way a black person could do that was to run, and take the
risk of being shot, and crippled, and put back in service, for life.
Or just killed out of hand as an example.

But I tell you what. You sounded so sure I'm going to let you tell us
how the Polish and Italian suffered the same or worse hardships than
the Ancestors of todays Black Americans.

Yes, I know you tried the misdirection of saying MORE of them than
blacks suffered, but that's a pointless piece of diversionary prattle.

By the way, while you are relating the suffering that either met or
exceeded being whipped to death on the whim of one's "boss" or having
one's wives and daughters at the beckon of the "boss" to sexual
service him, would you also point out what 'number' has to do with the
subject at hand, as in your statement, "Far more"?

No matter the number it would not reduce the savagery meted out to
black slaves and their freed children later.

>Women had a similar fate facing unlimited
>> childbirth in dangerous circumstances...and they died in droves
from
>> it, or wore out at 40 to 45 looking like old old women. And no
doubt
>> feeling like it as well.
>>
>> Government interferrence gave them the vote and, r r r r, they
haven't
>> looked back. They own their bodies now like never before, because
of
>> the government.
>
>The Government didn't "give" women the vote, they damn well TOOK it!

No they didn't. Read up. Not a one put a gun to the heads of
government officials. It was "taken" with shaming into moral
correctness and it could have been safely refused.

Of course the old boys might have gotten pretty horny at the time. I
hear there was a threat going around that women were going to cut them
off...r r r r

>As to the social changes in the status of women, the government had
>little or nothing to do with it,

Oh, the amendment to the US Constutition that gave them the vote was
just window dressing?

> the simple fact was the government
>tried to maintain the status quo, and failed miserably at keeping
>women in their "place".

Bull****. But the first part of your sentence is incongruent with the
latter. How did it fail? Men in government were the moving force, with
a bit of prodding from Madam, in the new amendment.

You are babbling again.

And you failed to respond to point after point. Notice I left not a
one of yours unanswered?

Or maybe you were just engaging in a friendly chat up and I've
misunderstood.

>>
>> A pile of crap from a Fertilizer hungry Plant.
>>
>> So is this one of your authoritative "citations" Plant? r r r r
>>
>> Kane
>
>David Hughes

Kane the Hewer

[David J. Hughes]

Kane wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 05:31:04 -0500, "David J. Hughes"
> > wrote:
>>Kane wrote:
(Fern5827) wrote in message >...
Snipped headers
>>>>from http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20030723.shtml

>>>>We made it
>>>>Walter Williams
>>>>July 23, 2003
>>>>Whenever someone says that this or that government program is absolutely
necessary, I always wonder, "What did people do and how did they survive
before the program?"
If someone says food stamps are absolutely necessary for poor people's
survival, I wonder how America's millions of poor immigrants made it.
Unless I missed something, mass starvation is not a part of our history.
Was there a stealth food stamp program during the 1700s and 1800s?

>>>1863 ... from the timeline at:

>>>http://www.arcanacon.org/2000/timeline.html

>>>"There is starvation in the Confederate States, as the Union shipping
blockade bites and fewer men are left to till fields. The Union destroys
the Confederacy's last saltworks as well"
>>>
>>>And while it may not be part of OUR history, it certainly is of the
>>>world in the timespan listed.
>>>
>>>So, the answer to how they survived without food stamps is, they
>>>didn't, in large numbers.
>>
>>Nonsense. That had nothing to do with the government subsidizing the
>>purchase of readily available foodstuffs.
>>That was a case of NO food being available at any price.
>
>
> Nonsense yourself. The claim was that there was no starvation so no
> need for regulation, an entirely pointless bit of twittery. The
> opening premise of that paragraph was something that doesn't merit
> comment whatsoever.

No, the claim was there was no food stamps were not necessary for poor
people's survival. The contention was that there was no mass
starvation (implied among the poor) that would have been prevented by
a food stamp program.

Your strawman rebuttal was a limited case of localized starvation as a
result of military action, which starvation would not have been
alleviated by a food stamp program.

> "If someone says food stamps are absolutely necessary for poor
> people's survival, I wonder how America's millions of poor immigrants
> made it."
>
> In other words, "someone" has to say something that is pointless so he
> can make a pointless rebuttal. No one says it's "absolutely necessary"
> for survival. One can "survive" on treebark. Drivel. As is your
> response.

Please demonstrate your contention that no one says it's "absolutely
necessary" for survival.
OOOPS, sorry, I'm asking you to prove a negative.
Instead, ask 100 Democrats what would happen if the food stamp program
was eliminated or reduced. I suspect at least one would contend that
people would die without the program.
I suppose I could go look up Congressional records on debates
concerning the food stamp program, and find examples of legislators
pontificating on the "absolute necessity" of the food stamp program,
but I'm not in the mod to be that bored.

>>>>Then there's the question: How did we manage to build the world's
>>>>greatest cities without the help of the 1965-created U.S. Department ofHousing and Urban Development?
>>>
>>>World's greatest cities? Dear Pumpkin, in the 1800's the largest city in the world was Canton China.
>>
>>Which was a pestilential hellhole. The word was "greatest", not
>>"largest". Of today's 15 largest cities, the US has #'s 2 and 7 (New
York and Los Angeles), and I wouldn't care to live in any of them. (A
few are interesting to visit.)

> That really wasn't the issue, now was it. and HUD isn't about building
> "great" cities, now is it?

Then why did you bring it up?

>
> You are drooling down your chin.

Strawman insult, off topic, no documentation. DO try to do better.
>
>
>>>
>>>>Did cities become worse off or better off
>>>>afterward?
>>>
>>>
>>>Better off. You have to look at the cities in the era before DHUD.
>>>Ghastly places with pretty facades. Huge blighted areas of severe
>>>disease and starvation...and the reason it became regulated was to
>>>protect the nice folks on the other side of the tracks from the
>>> pool of viruii and bactieria.
>>
>>Very little starvation or rampant disease in the cities in 1965, when
>>HUD became a cabinet office. Not a lot of either (compared to the
>> country as a whole) in 1934, when the Federal Housing Act was passed.
>
>
> What does that tell you about the author's premise then?

Premise that the building of cities is independent of the existence of
regulating agencies? The the premise is documentable correct.

>
> And when did HUD become about building fabulous cities to wipe out
> hunger and disease.

You brought up the subject of disease. The original writer did not
link fabulous cities to either disease or hunger.


>
> My premise stands. I'm no more defending HUD than the author, but my
> reasons are more sound.
>
>
>>>>Or, how did we manage to produce energy to fuel the world's
>>>>richest economy before the 1977 creation of the Department of Energy?
>
>>>
>>>r r r r..Good one. We haven't been independent for fuel for many
>>>decades before 1977. Just check the history books.
>>
>>True, but US companies dominated the energy industry from the mid
>>1800's to the rise of the multinationals in the 1980's.
>
>
> I think you need to talk to the Dutch about that. The Russians as
> well. And BP, who now has fueling stations scattered around the US.
>
> US and foreign interests may NOW collude, but the 1800's were an era
> of considerable competition.

I think you need to read more on the history of the energy industry.

>>>My own grandmother, in the mid 1930s, was the executive secretary of a
>>>Standard Oil company called, Standard of MEXICO. Hmmm...this guy is a
>>>knownothing blowhard, rather like you, Perfoliata.
>>
>>A wholly owned subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey, which the
>>Mexican government expropriated (read "stole") in 1938.
>
>
> And that is relevant to the author's babbling and the question at
> hand, the regulation of various facets of American life how?

Not at all, of course. You brought up your grandmother's employment,
apparently as an example of non US energy industry, and I pointed out
that she was working for an American owned subsidiary incorporated in
Mexico.
Try to keep up.

>>>>Recently, I received an email titled, "We Made It." It had to do with
>>>>the federal safety edicts of agencies like the U.S. Product Safety
>>>>Commission, established in 1972, and the U.S. Department of
>>>>Transportation, established in 1966. Congress created these and
>>>>other agencies to "protect the public against unreasonable risks of
>>>>injuries and deaths." That's how toys, cribs, child car seats and childproof
>>>>medicine bottles came to be regulated. Considering we were a nation for
>>>>nearly 200 years before Congress started protecting us against
>>>>"unreasonable risks of injuries and deaths," a natural question is
>>>>how we managed to survive and grow from a population of 4 million to
>>>>the 280 million of us today.


>>>We didn't. There were plenty of deaths related to unregulated
>>>substances and artifacts. Arsenic was in so many things that it was
>>>considered a tonic...and would put roses in the checks of ladies
>>>that were fading just a bit. Killed them in time of course, but they
>>>made lovely corpses.
>>>Pull out an old formulary. They are full of do it yourself products
>>>for all kinds of household use based on popular commercial concoctions
>>>of the day, and they would

More correctly "could".

>>>kill you dead. As recently as my childhood
>>>it was no trouble at all to obtain, from the grocery store shelf,
>>>Tetracloride, a deadly toxic gas produced from it could kill in
>>>minutes. It was called dry cleaning fluid, and is probably still in
>>>use, but under much heavier restriction and control.

>>Carbon tetrachloride, sold in any decent paint store. Essentially no
>>restrictions or controls.

> "Essentially"?

> Who do you think makes the manufacturer put those warning instructions
> on the labels?

> My very first job programming was to create a printing control module
> that would allow the manufacturing company, a janitorial supply
> manufacturer, to make the required EPA updates to the label every
> quarter.

Which is why I wrote "essentially no" rather than simply "no".
The Federal government does not track purchases, require licenses,
restrict due to age or specifically tax the purchase of Carbon
Tetrachloride. It has about the same level of restriction and
control as Non flammable spray paint.

A very poor choice on your part, if you intended it as an example of
how the US Product Safety Commission successfully protects us from
ourselves.

>>>>According to my email's author, if we listen to Washington, those
>>>of us still around who were children during the '40s, '50s and '60s
>>>>probably should be dead.

>>>I can think of five childhood friends that didn't make it to
>>>adulthood Because of careless adults putting them in danger. My best buddy at
>>>16 pinned under the tractor that tipped over on him for the second time
>>>in two years. The last time he got to lay there under it's two tons
>>>for hours in the heat of the running engine until he died, all alone.
>
>>And no regulation currently in place would have saved him. 15 year
>>olds still drive farm tractors with no supervision.
>
>
> No rollover bars. Want to claim there's been no upgrades since my
> friend died, via regulation? And trust me, there ARE now laws about
> the age a child can even be on a tractor let alone drive one
> unsupervised.

Which is why I specified 15, rather than your friends 16 years, 15
being the lower limit for family farm youths driving tractors
unsupervised.
And Federal regulation does not require retrofitting rollover bars on
tractors that did not originally have them.

> Not that I agree, mind you, only the claims of the
> auther are bogus nonsense based on little more than a narrow knowitall
> bias.
>
> Logical, they are not.
>
>>>The boy kicked in the face by a draft horse when adults didn't
>>>supervise well enough. Ever seen the size of a draft horse
>>>hoof...and they weigh upwards of a ton some of them.


>>Again, the same could happen today.
>
> And the parents might well face a civil and possibly even a criminal
> neglect action. There IS regulation today. That's the point.

Given today's legal climate, I'll grant you "might". But not as a
matter of Federal regulation.

>
> A claim that regulation has to stop ALL such incidents underlays the
> author's theme pretty clearly and it is bogus. And you must made a
> mighty leap of logic and fell in **** up to your chin.

The author made no such claim. You failed to understand the basic
premise of the article, that such incidents could have been eliminated
without Federal mandates.
My personal opinion is that regulation may have been needed to
encourage the changes in safety that have occurred. But such
regulation could have been just as successfully implemented at the
state and local level rather than at the Federal level. Holding this
opinion, I find myself tentatively in agreement with the author.

>
> We don't recind old laws against bank robbery or murder because it can
> still "happen today." Nor should we new ones because they fail to stop
> all incidences.
>
> That there are SOME laws in excess and some laws that are poorly
> conceived well known, hence you are headed down the path to the
> wheatfield for some construction straw on that one. So don't give us
> that "the same could happen today."
>
>
>>>>Nonetheless, there are 58 million of us born in 1945 or
>>>>earlier who are still kicking.

>>>And three are rather a lot of us missing today, as I pointed out.

>>True. A lot of them died in Korea and Southeast Asia. Many died
> from childhood diseases.


> Oh, I see. Yet another logical fallacy to misdirect and minimize the
> idiocy of the author. Good work. Red Herring Alert.

It's called "putting things in perspective".
The cutoff date given is 1945.
Of those who are 58 years old or older, how many of their
contemporaries died as a result of:
War
Disease
accident
Suicide
Criminal actions

Now, how many of those might have been prevented by current Federal
regulations? 40% ? 15% ? 1% ? Less?

Of those that might have been prevented, how many could not have been
prevented by other than Federal Regulations?

Given how I framed the question, the answer is, of course, zero.

So the discussion falls to the completely theoretical arena,
concerning the difference between "could" and "would".

>
>>>>Our parents allowed us to sleep in cribs
>>>>beautified with lead-based paint.
>>>
>>>And brain damage from this has lead to an entire large population
>>>of mentally and intellectually disabled folks.
>>>
>>>>They drove us around in cars that had neither seatbelts nor airbags.
>>>
>>>When I had a single car accident, my pickup slid off the road on ice,
>>>and down a short cliff, and it was before seatbelts, the only thing
>>>that saved my 2 year old son from going out the window, or through
>>>the windsheild when we came to a sudden stop on the nose of the pickup,
>>>was that I reached over and rolled him onto the floor and pushed him
>>>into the far corner and held him down with my foot.
>>>I was quite happy when belts came along. And even better, car
>>>seats, though he hated them and could get out of the best.

>>Seat belts were first used in cars in the 1930's, and were an option
>>on many cars by 1956. When was your accident?
>
>
> My rig was a 1960 or so IH and I personally installed the NEW seat
> belts right after I learned my lesson. The old one's had worn out and
> been cut away.
>
> Even a soft crash, such as we had, could have been fatal to a toddler.
> His soft head likely would not have survived a hit on the dashboard.
>
> My accident was in about 71.
>
> Can you say "pointless" rebuttal? Good, you just performed one nicely.
> You get a 5 5 4 with an overall 4.2.

Not pointless at all. You stated "before seat belts", which was
completely incorrect, if the accident occurred in 1971. Moreover, the
Federal government had mandated 3 point restraints in new vehicles in
1968, so you were already ignoring the advice of the government, and,
as self admitted, driving a vehicle in which the safety devices
recommended had been disabled.

No regulation in the world can completely defeat human stupidity.

>
>>>>They permitted us to ride our bicycles without helmets,

>>>Dead or vegetable human beings were the result.

>>>>just as adults rode motorcycles without helmets.

>>>As above, and each of these very often became a burden to families
>>>and some to the public as funds run out in families to support them.
>>>Millions per person over the rest of their restricted lives.
>>
>>No, not wearing a helmet usually results in a corpse. Wearing a helm
>>results in a high neck fracture, and a quadriplegic requiring life
>>support.
>
> Or lots of hide lost but the head still uncracked and no life support
> required. I've heard this one before. I'm a former scooter man. Too
> old to scoot these days, but I learned my lesson with asphalt
> sandpaper many years ago, no helmet and the only damn thing that saved
> my knoggin was my saddle bag busting loose where the car hit me, and
> getting between my head and the pavement. Wanna see my scars?
>

Thanks, but I have my own collection of scars.
I agree that wearing a helmet is a good thing, as it can make a
potentially fatal accident a non issue.
You contended that not wearing helmets led to dead people or vegetable
human beings becoming a burden to families and public funds.
I concurred with the dead people portion, and pointed out that merely
wearing a helmet was insufficient to prevent becoming a burden to
families and public funds.
I perhaps should have phrased my response more clearly.

>
>>>>And, horror of horrors, there were no childproof medicine bottles that,
>>>>by the way, are sometimes so difficult to open that some people summon
>>>>their children to open them.
>>>
>>>
>>>Bull hockey. I tried that for the fun of it. It isn't true. They had
>>>to go to extraordinary lengths to open them, smashing them with a
>>>heavy object.
>>
>>Depends on the design and the age of the child. Most do keep those
>>under 3 out of the bottles, most 8 year olds can open any bottle
>>faster than their parents.
>
>
> Puleeze....more nonsense. 8 year olds are well into the age of reason
> and don't usually take meds they aren't supposed to. It's the younger
> kids that are meant to be kept out and are. Check your local poison
> center. Five and down are the most who show up there or they get calls
> on from distraught mommies.
>

Is a 6 year old a child? Should a "child proof" container actually
keep a child from reaching the contents of the container?

>
>>>I wonder how many children died from adult medications they got
>>> into much more freely before child proof caps.
>>>
>>>Notice that many of the toxic home products now come with such caps?
>>>My little brother nearly died in hospital because he used and empty
>>>bleach bottle he put water in for a Teapot.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>The fact that these safety edicts saved some lives and prevented
>>>>some injuries doesn't provide justification for them anymore than
>>>>mandating that, because some Americans have headaches, aspirin be put in the
>>>> water supply.

>>>Now that's the most blatant violation of logic I've seen in a long
>>>time. Apples and oranges and a red herring. And a strawman argument
>>>as well. Congratulations.

I notice you are not attempting to argue that such prevention does
justify Federal mandates.

>>>>In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting
>>>> us from others, but not from ourselves.
>>>
>>>
>>>Excuse me? There is no all inclusive promise in a free society to
>>>protect us from each other. It's still an individual
>>>responsibility..and that is the free society aspect. You are
>>>talking about socialism, not a representative democracy. Just another
>>>crackpot.
>>>

You are confusing an economic structure, "socialism", with a political
one, "representative democracy", and using both in correctly with
respect to the discussion.

The United States is a "Representative Republic", which economically
balances "capitalism" and "socialism". The author is suggesting
"minimalism" as a desired point in the range between "anarchy" and
"totalitarianism".


>>>
>>>>Before government got into the business of protecting us from ourselves, we did have a greater
>>>>measure of protection from others. Yesteryear's children rode their bikes
>>>>or walked to a friend's house, knocked on the door and let themselves in.

I will disagree with the author here. We did not have a greater
measure of protection from others, we did not perceive the need for
such protection.

>>>Sixty years ago my parents were teaching me not to talk with
>>>strangers, to avoid going out alone at night, and to not answer the
>>>door if a stranger knocked.
>>
>>None of which has any bearing on the above actions.
>
>
> Well, I guess if it's on YOUR authority I have to accept it, but my
> evil twin says you are full of ****...it's directly to the point of
> the post, my rebuttal, your rebuttal of mine, and my current response.
>

The author presented friend, you rebutted stranger. As presented, not
a valid argument.
Had you properly presented the matter, I accept that it could
constitute a contrary case, but you failed to do so.

>
>> The ignorance of this writer is phenomenal.
>>
>>Attacking the author, rather than refuting his arguments.
>
>
> No, pointing to the evidence. Ignorance is lack of knowledge. He shows
> considerable lack of same. You do as well, but in your case more poor
> logic than him. So you top him in the doofus department.
>
> Congrats.
>
>
>>Worse, being wrong in the attack. "Ignorance" is a totally
>>inappropriate term when someone is reporting a true situation.
>
>
> Would be if it were so, but the lack of supporting evidence, the lack
> of scope...reporting only selected bits of info out of the vast pool
> of knowledge in the cited subjects...reflect woeful ignorance, or
> plain old knowitall idiocy, or even possibly pathological malice.
>
> YOU get to choose. What's YOUR pleasure in defending this utter piece
> of nonsense?
>

What makes you think I'm defending it? I just think you are doing an
incredibly poor job of refuting it.

>>> By the way, I'm male, was tough and street wise despite
>>>the advantage of growing up in the country.

>>>Things weren't really that different back then, just not reported
>>>as much. We had unwed pregnancies, drug use...hell, I could have
>>>bought Grass back then if I'd wanted it, and heroin was common in some
>>>locales. Cocaine had been around for a century even when I was a kid.
>>>The Chaplin movie where he was in jail had a scene about it...called
>>>it Nose Powder.

>>>>Many families didn't lock doors until the last family member was home
>>>>for the evening, and they did that in poor neighborhoods like the
>>>> one I grew up in.
>>>
>>>I lived out in the country and you damn well did NOT leave your doors
>>>unlocked. There were bad folks even back then.
>>
>>Locking doors depended on which part of the country you lived in.
>
>
> Ho hum. The claim was one could, because of the time frame, leave
> one's door unlocked until the last person was home. We cannot know if
> the house was empty at some point in time. And it's patently untrue,
> as I pointed out. No mention of part of the country was included by
> the author. Did I mention pick and choose selectively from the
> information available in the real world?

That was not the claim made. The claim was many did not lock the
doors, which is correct.

You made the claim that in your area people did lock the doors.
I will accept your word on this.
Both claims can be correct, neither disallows the other.

>
>
>>Some never locked the doors, unless leaving the house vacant for an
>>extended trip.
>>Some locked the doors at night.
>>Some kept the doors locked all the time, unlocking them to enter and exit.
>
> The author didn't say "some". But thank you for the clarity. It makes
> MY point very concretely. I'm grateful beyond mere words.


The author wrote "many", which statement is inarguably correct. he
did not say "all" or "most".

>>>>Yesteryear, when we went off to school, parents might have worried
>>>>about our crossing streets safely. Today's parents have a different set
>>>>of worries, such as whether their child will be shot, stabbed, robbed,
>>>>raped or given drugs in school.
>>>
>>>
>>>There was child molestation in the city and country. It simply
>>> wasn't reported, but we kids knew who to avoid. We told each other.
>>
>>They still do.
>
> Yes, and how does that support his contention child molestation didn't
> exist back in the "good old days"?
>

He never made that contention, he suggested that the parents of the
time rarely worried about it, a true statement.

> You are now obviously jacking off and apparently enjoying the hell out
> of yourself. No point, just your frenzied activity even if your
> refutation of my post now has shifted to defending My position while
> trying to sound like you aren't. Tsk.

Not supporting you, just a side comment.

>>>>During the pre-1960 years, neighborhoods -- including poor neighborhoods -- were safe enough for
>>>>women to walk the streets after dark.
>>>
>>>What a raft of ****. Ask an older women what hatpins were really for.
>
>>>It's not hard to keep a hat on with other fasteners, but ah, a
>>>hatpin...now there's a weapon more than one lady traveling alone had
>>>to threaten to use or did use. And still they were raped. Some
>>>recognition and societal protections had to be put in place. I hear
>>>rape has dropped as a result.

>>But it's still an order of magnitude more common today than in 1900.

> You have the stats somewhere, don't you?

Sure, not to hard to come up with such. Unfortunately, the statistics
don't mean much, as the reporting and collecting methods have changed
so much in the last 100 years as to make it a case of apples and oranges.

The attitudes of society have also changed a great deal.
In 1900, a violent sexual assault in a respectable woman by a stranger
was front page news, prompting massive police efforts for as long as
it took to hunt down the culprit.
Today, it may be buried back in the local news section.
Likewise, the terminology and definitions have changed.
As you have tangentially pointed out, by the attitudes of the time, it
was not possible for a man to rape his own wife.
The age of consent, setting the upper limit on statutory rape and
child molestation, was as low as 11 in some states.
The definition of consent, a primary component of the definition of
rape, was different.

The modern expectation that you'll end up in bed by the third date
didn't exist, unless you were dating a prostitute.
The modern practice in some subcultures of 19 to 26 year old males
dating 11 to 15 year olds would have gotten the male shot in 1900.
Most intimate contact between males and females was far more
restricted and chaperoned than today, eliminating most of the
opportunities for date rape (When you are sitting on the front porch
with your dates mother bringing you lemonade and cookies, you don't
have the opportunity for much more than a chaste kiss, if that.)

The differences make comparing the two difficult.

Restating my original comment:
The incidence of rape, as defined and reported at the respective
times, is many times greater in 2003 than in 1900.
I suspect that the actual incidence of rape, as defined in the terms
of 2003, is an order of magnitude greater today than in 1900.

> I recall more than a few episodes in US history where not only was
> rape a serious problem but rape of children. Do you recall the little
> dustup the Indians had with us during the time Europeans first arrived
> and the late 1800's, and then continued so nicely by those who kindly
> offered to take in the poor little native children and turn them into
> White Kids, raping them regularly along the way, with a few beatings
> thrown in for good measure.

> Are you familiar with the Orphan Trains. The grandmother I mentioned
> was an OT kid at 3. If you read the history you'll know that great
> numbers of them were sent Out West to virtual slavery (they weren't
> caught and returned when they ran as adults), and rape was common. My
> grandmother, bless the family that chose her, were kind and loving and
> she had a great life overall with them.

> See what I mean about ignorance. To claim that rape is a bigger
> problem than today is the epitome of ignorance. How many rapists do
> you think paid for it back then, compared to now? How many wives were
> routinely raped by their husbands and it sanctioned by marriage, a
> government supported contract everywhere in this land?

You have obviously thought about this a great deal. And such behavior
did occur.
Define, please, with supporting cites, "regularly", "common", and
"routinely", and show that such behavior was the rule rather than the
exception.

As to how many rapists paid for it compared to now and then, well, all
that were caught, of course. Now, it's usually a jail term, then, it
was usually fatal, either by judicial execution or more immediate
vigilante action.

>>>>In fact, in places like Harlem,
>>>>N.Y., hot, humid nights saw children and adults sleeping on fire
>>>>escapes and rooftops. Doing the same today might lead to arrest for
>>>> attempted suicide.

>>>Bull****. People in the city still do it, unmolested and
>>> undestrubed by the law.

>>>>Speaking of crime, if children did have a scrape with the law, our
>>>>parents sided with the police.

>>>Nonsense. It was up for grabs. Just as now. Plenty of people today
>>>CALL the cops when their kids are out of control...so much for Not
>>>siding with the cops that you'd like to foist on the ignorant reader.

>>You are reading more into the statement than is written.
>>He stated that parents sided with the police.

> And conversely then he would have to mean that parents don't now. The
> differences between the Good Old Days and now is his theme, or had you
> forgotten?

Alternately, his simply could have been suggesting that the case of
parent siding with the police was more common then than now, which is
correct.

>>From somewhere you came up with not siding with the police, a
>>situation not covered in the original statement.

> Yes, comparisons while arguing are pretty standard fare in debate. You
> seem to be quite happy with using the same mechanisms yourself, or
> hadn't you noticed?

But you did not phrase it as a comparison. He wrote parents sided
with the police then, you wrote that people today rely on the police,
then claimed that your statement refuted his.

>>>>Don't you wonder how so many Americans made it without today's
>>>>oppressive, caring, nanny government?

>>>They didn't. Hundreds of thousands of black ancestors in American
>>>died far before their time, worked to death before "Government
>>>Interferrence" stopped it.

>>Why did you specify "black'? Far more Italian, Polish, Irish, and
>>members other groups suffered than did the blacks.
>
> I'm am richly mixed in my ethnic origins, and my extended
> family...though you couldn't tell by looking at my very northern
> european and or irish looking physignomy. So I've been highly curious
> about the history of all races.
>
> You are just going to have to take my word on this. My Irish ancestors
> never once were separted by their owner from their spouse and children
> never to see them again. Nor can I find a single account of them being
> auctioned off, while in chains, nor were they ever met with the level
> of hostility blacks were and are still met with.

Your Irish ancestors were fortunate, not all Irish in america were so
fortunate. You might look into "indentured servitude" in the American
colonies, when all the conditions you listed occurred.

> I do admit to knowing though that the Irish had their own version of
> the Jim Crow laws, signs that read, "Irish need not apply", "and on
> clubs and some saloons, "Dogs and Irishmen not allowed", but that
> hardly equates with the experience of blacks.
>
> Do you know of any slave own bars from those days? Well, the Irish
> could and did set up their own bars and businesses when they weren't
> allowed in others.
>
> And I recall that despite the terrible economic hardships they
> laboured under they could leave any time they got up the nerve to. My
> grandmother's father did that when his wife died and he had nowhere to
> put the children but an orphanage...no relatives in this country.
> We've never found him.
> The only way a black person could do that was to run, and take the
> risk of being shot, and crippled, and put back in service, for life.
> Or just killed out of hand as an example.
> But I tell you what. You sounded so sure I'm going to let you tell us
> how the Polish and Italian suffered the same or worse hardships than
> the Ancestors of todays Black Americans.
> Yes, I know you tried the misdirection of saying MORE of them than
> blacks suffered, but that's a pointless piece of diversionary prattle.
> By the way, while you are relating the suffering that either met or
> exceeded being whipped to death on the whim of one's "boss" or having
> one's wives and daughters at the beckon of the "boss" to sexual
> service him, would you also point out what 'number' has to do with the
> subject at hand, as in your statement, "Far more"?

You mentioned hundreds of thousands dying early, I countered with a
group measured in millions. Dying was the subject, not degree of
suffering.
Since you brought them up, being whipped to death or forced to gratify
the bosses sexually was not limited to blacks, either. Read up on the
horrors of New York Sweatshops in the late 1800's.

> No matter the number it would not reduce the savagery meted out to
> black slaves and their freed children later.

Your position on slavery in the US is clear, and I concur.
My question concerned why you specified "black ancestors" dying before
their time, when you could as well have mentioned New York sweatshops,
Appalachian Coal mines, Detroit Foundries, the building of the Erie
canal, textile manufacturing,........

I viewed the specification of "blacks" as limiting and weakening your
argument when you could simply have said:
"Hundreds of thousands of Americans died far before their time, worked
to death before "Government Interference" stopped it."

>>>Women had a similar fate facing unlimited
>>>childbirth in dangerous circumstances...and they died in droves
>>>from it, or wore out at 40 to 45 looking like old old women. And no
>>>doubt feeling like it as well.

>>>Government interferrence gave them the vote and, r r r r, they
>>>haven't looked back. They own their bodies now like never before, because
>>>of the government.

>>The Government didn't "give" women the vote, they damn well TOOK it!

> No they didn't. Read up. Not a one put a gun to the heads of
> government officials. It was "taken" with shaming into moral
> correctness and it could have been safely refused.
> Of course the old boys might have gotten pretty horny at the time. I
> hear there was a threat going around that women were going to cut them
> off...r r r r

Riots, mass arrests, constitutional challenges,.... Read up on the
Women's suffrage movement. There was more than a little degree of
violence.
While the 19th Amendment could have been defeated, "safely" defeated
is debatable.

>>As to the social changes in the status of women, the government had
>>little or nothing to do with it,

> Oh, the amendment to the US Constutition that gave them the vote was
> just window dressing?

Pretty much so. Women were already significant forces in industry,
education, politics, medicine and the economy. The 19th was a case of
bowing to the changes that had already occurred.

>>the simple fact was the government
>>tried to maintain the status quo, and failed miserably at keeping
>>women in their "place".
>
> Bull****. But the first part of your sentence is incongruent with the
> latter. How did it fail? Men in government were the moving force, with
> a bit of prodding from Madam, in the new amendment.
> You are babbling again.

Many states (mostly western) already had universal suffrage, some from
when they first became states. More had active, effective women's
suffrage movements that demonstrated how women could get out and
affect the vote both for and against candidates even without having
the vote themselves.
Those men in government recognized that they were elected due to the
influence of women, and if they wanted to be reelected, they had damn
well better do what the women activists demanded.

> And you failed to respond to point after point. Notice I left not a
> one of yours unanswered?

Some I agreed with, some were simply good use of logic and debate that
prompted no response, some I chose not to respond to.

> Or maybe you were just engaging in a friendly chat up and I've
> misunderstood.

Mostly, just a friendly chat. Note that my first post did not support
or refute the original authors writing. Rather, I was commenting on
the arguments and techniques used.

>>>A pile of crap from a Fertilizer hungry Plant.
>>>So is this one of your authoritative "citations" Plant? r r r r
>>>Kane
>>David Hughes
> Kane the Hewer
David Hughes