There is very little that the federal government does that could be described as good – in the leave-us-alone sense – but every now and then there’s a small deviation from the pattern. One such nugget of corn in the turd pile is the effort led by Wisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden in the House and Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy (in the Senate) to eliminate mandatory helmet laws.
The initial focus is on Washington, DC – the federal seat – where is it illegal for motorcycle riders to ride sans a helmet. The end goal is to use the power of the federal government to get ride of mandatory helmet laws in every state that currently has them, which is a majority of them. This is really good news – if you are someone who thinks the government (whether state or federal or local) has as much right to say people have to wear helmets as it does ordering people to wear “masks.”
The underlying busybody-ism is as un-American as dog-eating. Americans – the kind that once made up America – didn’t mind other people’s business. Americans used to think if someone else wanted to ride a motorcycle – with or without a helmet – it was the business of the person who wanted to ride the motorcycle, not theirs. Maybe they thought (to themselves) that it was foolish and they wouldn’t do it, but they were smart enough to understand that if they stuck their nose in that dude’s business then maybe that dude (and other dudes, not to mention dudettes) would be emboldened to shove their noses in their business.
Lots of Americans were too god-damned stupid to understand this and that is why we no longer live in America, except in name only. We now live in an America in which your business is everyone else’s business and thus, the government’s business – because it requires government force to impose busybody-ness on other people’s business.
It is like a crab pot now. No wonder everyone’s irritable.
The whole thing’s also absurdly arbitrary.
If people who ride motorcycles ought to be forced to wear helmets – and punished if they don’t – then why should they be allowed to ride motorcycles at all, since they are inherently less “safe” than being inside the steel-and-air-bag-equipped cocoon of a modern car? Helmet or not, even a relatively minor wreck on a bike is much more likely to result in serious injury to the rider. Ergo, it ought to be illegal to ride a motorcycle at all – on the same basis that busybodies rely on to argue for helmet laws.
The only reason why motorcycle riding is still allowed is because it preceded buysbody-ism enforced by the government. If motorcycles were a new invention, riding them would never be allowed at all. Just as what Trump calls “Tiny Cars” are not allowed at all. The latter are deemed “unsafe” (and on that account, are illegal to sell or drive) because they are very small and very light and so not acceptably crashworthy, in the eyes of the government. Well, the typical bike weighs around 400-500 pounds and offers zero crash protection. But the government says you’re allowed to ride one – provided you wear a helmet. This is imposed solely to spoil the ride. With a helmet on, you can’t feel the wind in your face and you can’t easily talk with your girlfriend, either. It renders the ride a novocaine’d experience, muffled and muted.
That’s why they do it.
They say, of course, it’s because “safety.” Bullshit. Just stop it. If it were about “safety” then – at the least – riders would be required to wear armored leathers, gloves and boots. There are no such requirements. You can legally ride a bike wearing shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops. So long as you have the got-damned helmet on. If you wreck, your face will look nice in the casket – or the wheelchair.
So just stop it already. Helmet laws are fundamentally about punishing motorcycle riders. It is a thing pushed by people who do not like motorcycles and the freedom they represent. Speaking of such people.
A busybody named Eric Teoh, who is the head of the insurance mafia’s propaganda arm – the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s statistical services – says forcing motorcycle riders to wear helmets is “one of the most effective, common-sense rules of the road for improving motorcycle safety.”
Don’t you just love how these busybodies talk about “rules of the road” – as if we were kindergartners and they our scolding schoolmarms. Look at this little worm – and roll it around in your head that he has the power – via the government – to punish you for not doing what he says.
How about “societal costs”? Well, how about them? Getting killed on a bike “costs society” less than getting crippled for life on one, doesn’t it? Besides which, this “costs society” crap assumes two things. One, that there will actually be costs. I’ve been riding for decades and have cost “society” not a god-damned cent. The same is true for most riders. Two, the only way I or other riders can “cost” other people anything is if the government forces other people to pay the costs. How about we agree to stop doing that? Maybe we agree to pay our own costs? It’s a wild concept, I realize – Americans having been marinated in socialism for at least 100 years now, which means no one now living can recall a time when America wasn’t socialized.
These “societal costs” are also grotesquely arbitrary. Almost no one argues that fatties ought to be punished by the state for eating too much, even though fatties “cost society” far more than the relative handful of motorcycle riders who wreck and get hurt and use the government to get others to pay for their costs. There are a lot more fatties than riders, too. So let’s pass some Fatty Laws that empower cops to issue tickets to every fatty they see eating (or buying) something that contributes to fatness.
I’m for leaving the fatties – and everyone else – alone who isn’t harming me or anyone else by whatever it is they’re doing or not doing. Leave other people alone. MYOB. This is the gist of the Ride Freedom Act proposed by Van Orden and Sheehy.
It’s a gleaming piece of corn in an otherwise unappetizing pile of shit.
. . .
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The tell in all this is how bat-shit crazy it makes the MSM. Almost without exception they want to criminalize anyone who even THINKS what Luigi did was OK. On Friday, during a long lonely drive, I had the misfortune of hearing the raging shit golem Marc levin going on about it. Could almost visualize him frothing at the mouth, spitting uncontrollable as he shouted. Couldn’t bring myself to turn the channel for about ten minutes as it was like listening to someone lighting themselves on fire. He went on about how it’s ‘never, never, never, ever’ OK to kill one of the high value, low quality characters that run this sick society.
Never, ever, really? I can think of a bunch of reasons. For anyone with cancer whose treatment is denied, check. For anyone with a loved one who died from taking the experimental safe and effective clot shot, check. For anyone who’s family member died from an illegal alien as a direct result of some swampy politico opening the gate and welcoming them in, check. Anyone poisoned by toxic shock of a next door data center, enabled by some CEO with a hundred lifetimes of money and a few council people that allowed the building for a measly 40 pieces of silver, check. All of them are eligible. And loudmouth shit stains like Levin should be added to the list, because, reasons. Hard to imagine anyone being able to listen to this jewish supremest for three straight hours.
Sadly, nothing will change in this country, for the better, until the bad actors among the theatre kids are held accountable. Government refuses to do the job, therefore it is the natural right of the aggrieved party to take action and render the scales back in balance.
‘Sighing themselves on fire,’ heavy sigh.
Should be, ‘lighting themselves on fire.’
I need to rediscover the value of good coffee.
Someone should call a little car a motorcycle and sell it in the US. Same principle, no airbags, etc…
And even similar engine size.
I don’t ride electric bikes, and don’t want to, but I can see their advantages. Other than some basic common courtesies like not riding fast on side walks, or where people on foot might be, I think these riders should be left alone. Yet, I already see local politicos making noises about rules for these riders. Unfortunately I think that it is part of human nature to try to control others.
Damn well said Mr. Peters!
Thanks, Michael!
I am so weary of these for-our-safety busybodies. The worst part is they’re like ants attacking an elephant. Stomp one and there are thousands more to deal with. They’re worse than ants, actually. Most of these busybodies hide behind the skirts of the state, which they get to do the dirty work. I see a guy like that IIHS weasel and wish we lived at a time when dueling was still the proper form for men to settle their differences.
Long motorcycle trips in the summer, no way. WA to SD for Sturgis, once we stopped for lunch in Post Falls, ID the helmets got stowed for the duration of the trip. Do-rag for muh hair, good to go. Nothing worse than even a half helmet on days of 10 hour riding in 95 plus temps. No shade in big sky country! Personal choice advocate here.
A cop once berated me for not wearing a helmet “You’ve never had to scrape someone’s brains off the road and then go tell his mom and dad what happened.” That can’t be fun, obviously.
Freedom is lethal for some.
But, “if we were kindergartners and they our scolding schoolmarms,” we’d be living in a gynocratic and totalitarian nanny state, which overall is immeasurably worse and will destroy far more lives. And that’s where we’re headed.
AI tells me Illinois, Iowa, and New Hampshire do not have any motorcycle helmet laws.
You can read the text of Rep. Van Orden’s bill H.R. 10067 here — it’s short and sweet, as bills go:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/10067/text
This is so, because Clowngress exercises ultimate jurisdiction over the District of Corruption. Nominally sovereign states would be a whole different can of worms, though, if the act were to be extended to them.
Typically fedgov mandates like this one — although it’s a ‘thou shalt not’ mandate — are enforced by the threat of withholding federal highway funding. This is a great evil, which gave us, inter alia, a uniform 21-year-old drinking age, uniform maximum 0.08 BAC threshold for drunk driving, and the hated Real ID.
Abolishing helmet laws is a noble goal. But as in the long-ago example of abolishing some states’ Jim Crow laws with the fedgov sledgehammer of the Civil Rights Act, such reforms would have been far more palatable if implemented by sovereign states, rather than dictated by a micromanaging Clowngress which has no such authority under a ‘delegated powers’ reading of the now-defunct clownstitution. 🙁
Good points, Jim H.
I do think that the Supremes could have done away with “Jim Crow” via the First Amendment. Since it protects the right to “peaceably assemble” those laws violated that Right.
Simple as that. But noooooooo, they had to go and MANDATE association and assembly. Which, it should be obvious, that if we can assemble, we also have the counter Right to NOT assemble.
Excellent point. This is perfect example of how SCROTUS has never been about protecting rights or defending the Constitution, it has always been a tool of the oligarchs and the political class to enforce control. The 21 drinking age case is a perfect example. Citizens United was the death blow.
How US support for Israel is not a clear cut violation of the Establishment Clause I cannot understand.
The U.S. has the highest drinking age on the planet where alkeehall is legal. I’m lookin’ at you MBS…
These guys are actually reflecting the real intent of at least some of the founders. The federal government should be enacting laws to reinforce the bill of rights. I wonder why they chose now and that issue to do it. Maybe its time..Now put a bill together that eliminates most FMVSS, emissions and fuel economy regs..
Here’s the thing, no level of government under the US constitution has any business MANDATING anything. There is no “let”, no “allow”, no such authority allowed government under the first amendment.
When the country accepted mandated tax returns, was the beginning of it. After that, there is no end because there is no principle to defend. We’re not getting out of this trap by asking or being nice, and it’s going to be “gnaw off the limb to escape” painful.
Hi Ernie,
One thing many people don’t seem to think about is who benefits from government MANDATING something. Instead, they think that if the government MANDATES something, it’s for “The Greater Good”, “Saaaaaaaaaaafety”, or “Protecting Public Health”. With these mandates in most states for people who drive an automobile to have insurance, the insurance companies benefit from forced customers. Same with health insurance companies after the passage of Obamacare. Big Pharma even benefited from government imposing not just mandates for the COVID vaxxes, but ALL other vaccines that states have MANDATED over the past several decades for children to go to “Public school”, particularly after passage of a law 40 years ago saying people can’t sue vaccine manufacturers for harms caused by their products.
Speaking of fatties, I’m stunned that there is an entire industry of “new and improved” drugs to “help” you lose weight. It’s simple engineering, lard ass. If you eat less than you burn, you lose weight. If you eat more than you burn you gain weight. The most effective weight loss exercise is pushing back from the table.
It’s actually not that simple. The “food” being sold to Americans has become so toxic that it caused such bodily disruption that there are obese people that really don’t eat that much. Plus many of the obese are outright misshapen which does not occur merely from overeating or laziness.
I agree with you about these Ozempic type drugs being pushed but this is a “solution” to a problem they created. It’s a lot more complicated than the tired old scolding about “personal responsibility” that the fake “right” so loves.
I wouldn’t mind the Ozempic thing if we could be certain that it does not create 10 more problems than it solves. I agree with your statement about fat people. The chemically altered food and the addictive nature of some of the addititves is a factor in skyrocketing obesity numbers since the early 1980s.
Love the comments about the fake right. Personal repsonsiblity only applies to the little people. The protected classes and the elite don’t have to show that trait
I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again, as there are people who want to bring back the utter nonsense we saw during COVID. The imposition of COVID vaxx mandates just a few years ago by the Biden regime and many state governments, along with many hospitals and large corporations, were also framed as “Saaaaaaaaaaafety”, despite those jabs being experimental. Remember the uber wealthy elite and corporate media bleating “Nobody is safe until everyone is safe!”?
The FDA also engaged in shady stuff during COVID, as they “Fully approved” a jab from a company called Comirnaty, which wasn’t even available in the U.S., but Tony Fauci, corporate media, and pharma captured “Public Health” bureaucracies nevertheless ran with the narrative that the Pfizer COVID vaxxes were FULLY APPROVED, and governments just couldn’t wait to MANDATE that people take something that was actually still experimental. Will state governments, hospitals, and corporations that mandated the COVID vaxx race to MANDATE that people take this new mRNA flu shot that was recently approved in the upcoming flu season under guise of “Saaaaaaaaaaafety”? Time will tell.
Being “approved” or “unapproved” or “experimental” doesn’t make one bit of difference. The fact of the matter is, EVERYTHING they call a “vaccine” is a contrived invention by jews and NONE of them are beneficial to human health.
Maybe stop making these red herring arguments.
Next you’ll be advocating for women who don’t wear bras.
We should all be advocating for that.
Ahh…with all due respect, you won’t like the results. Just look at the pics from Asheville on their “topless” day every year. It’s a bunch of fat lesbians that should be in burkas…not floppin’ around in the open. You ain’t gettn’ no perky ones.
Ewwww …
Left Cleveland long ago, they did. Now permanent residents of Saginaw.
Well, if the FedGov gets involved, there will be a brand new “agency” created, which will publish “standards”, for example “Maximum Allowable Saggage” (MAS) before requiring un sósten, “for safety.”
Imagine the volume of applications likely to be received for a federal Mammary Enforcement Officer (MEO). Would these “officers” have the right to “stop and frisk?” Inquiring minds want to know.
LOL not topless, braless. Big difference. And “perkiness” is more determined by diet and genetics rather than bra use.
Youre right about that.
Eh, the least we could do would be to put out Freedom Trash Cans for the beleaguered ladies.
New York City, circa 1971:
https://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/bra.jpg
Probably the same forces that brought about the Torches of Freedom campaign.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom
The same forces no doubt did the same re: Iran just this past January: “A video of a woman relighting her cigarette with a flaming picture of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was filmed in Canada, not Iran, as has been claimed online.
“The woman, wearing a white coat and standing in a snowy setting, sets fire to an A4 picture of Khamenei in the video and uses it to re-spark the cigarette already in her mouth.
“It was widely shared online, with captions such as: “A young woman in Iran is seen burning a photo of Ayatollah Khamenei before lighting her cigarette” and “This image from Iran is so powerful”.”
“Iran is witnessing its biggest anti-government demonstrations in years, with one rights group estimating around 2,600 people had been killed in the nationwide unrest.
“The video, however, was filmed outside, opens new tab a branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Ontario, Canada, across the street from the Richmond Hill Public Library, which is visible behind, opens new tab the woman.
“The woman published the video, January 9, having shared a screenshot, the previous day. She showed a screenshot on her Canada-based X, profiles that included a January 7, on the video.
“The woman, who uses the pseudonym Morticia Addams on X, did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.” (links to photos and video in article)
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/woman-who-lit-cigarette-with-burning-khamenei-photo-was-canada-not-iran-2026-01-14/
_______________
It always made me wonder about Atlas Shrugged. AI: “The Strikers’ Mark: Characters in the novel find or share cigarettes stamped with a gold dollar sign as a hidden sign of recognition among productive, independent thinkers who have gone on strike…Real-Life Promotion: Publisher Random House produced specialty cigarette boxes with gold-stamped dollar sign cigarettes to celebrate the novel’s launch. Rand herself also famously wore a gold dollar-sign brooch.”
LitCharts: “Throughout Atlas Shrugged, the dollar sign reappears as a consistent emblem of earned value. Often dismissed in the real world as a symbol of greed, it is reclaimed in the novel as the mark of integrity and voluntary trade. The sign appears first on a cigarette, then over Mulligan’s bank, and again when Galt draws it in the air. In each instance, it signals a place or person where no person lives by force. In Galt’s Gulch, money is gold, prices are real, and every exchange reflects mutual benefit. There is no charity, no coercion, and no guilt. The dollar sign thus becomes a kind of moral signature—each time it appears, it marks the presence of justice and production. Rand’s use of the symbol reframes capitalism not as a system of exploitation, but of respect between equals. When Galt signs the air with it in the final scene, it is not a boast—it is a benediction for the world they will now rebuild, guided by reason and value.
Atlas Shrugged (book quote): “They could not see the world beyond the mountains, there was only a void of darkness and rock, but the darkness was hiding the ruins of a continent: the roofless homes, the rusting tractors, the lightless streets, the abandoned rail. But far in the distance, on the edge of the earth, a small flame was waving in the wind, the defiantly stubborn flame of Wyatt’s Torch, twisting, being torn and regaining its hold, not to be uprooted or extinguished. It seemed to be calling and waiting for the words John Galt was now to pronounce.
“The road is cleared,” said Galt. “We are going back to the world.”
“He raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign of the dollar.”
I miss the ‘70s. “Loose nips, sink ships” or something like that!
I get a kick out of the young bulls that ride crotch rockets wearing a tank top, shorts, surfing shoes, and a $2000 Shoei helmet. It’s on par with the gray hairs wearing the old school leathers and just a cheap brain bucket.
Riding is inherently risky. Yet it is a risk that can be managed. How (or if) its managed is up to each individual. None of my business and not my problem.
As that old ABATE demand from long ago said “Let those who Ride Decide”
The sad thing is that the people who work for GovCo and their affiliates think their jobs are important and needed. In a way not much different than many CEOs appearing on the TV show Undercover Boss who couldn’t do the jobs they expect their lower paid employees to do. You can see that in the attitude of elected officials all around you.
Trump: 9 Months At Sea For USS Lincoln ‘Not Nearly Long Enough’
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-9-months-sea-uss-lincoln-not-nearly-long-enough
Back in the mid-90s I was having a conversation with the County Health Director about a comment he made that if everyone in the county was on Medicaid the Health Department would be rolling in dough.
He told me, “We’ve had socialized medicine since 1966; we just don’t call it that.”
Think about that date. The mid-60s was when a whole buttload of regs came on the scene for “health and safety”. The “It costs society” cudgel has been used to beat down any opposition to these laws, regulations and mandates. To paraphrase Rev. Neimoller, “First they came for the cigarettes…”
Now weaselly little snots like the IIHS functionary get to run the show. Not because THEY get anything out of it but, because they are Altruistic…at your expense.
Here’s an old ditty that nails it…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCFTy4Sx0MQ&list=RDNCFTy4Sx0MQ&start_radio=1
BTW, that headline might never be topped…
Hank Williams, Sr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSeuDDzjIB8
Superb, Adi!
I have embedded this in the article!