The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
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I wouldn't want to ask people to just give me money cause they like my website, but do please take a quick look at Barger's Boutique. You might find yourself a little something-something for 2 or 3 bucks that you just can't resist! Any of the round images you find around MoreThings will get you to an Amazon page to buy my stuff and help ol' Al keep the lights on.
Links
To explicitly state the obvious, these external links go to interesting and provocative websites, but they speak for themselves. I don't necessarily agree with anything they say - especially that no-goodnik Richard Marcus.
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The City-County Council voted Monday to block the construction of any new billboards until Dec. 1, a move backers say will let the city shape a sign strategy that addresses business and neighborhood concerns.
"Indianapolis has a sign-proliferation problem," said Cathy Burton, head of the Marion County Alliance of Neighborhood Associations. A billboard study, she added, will focus on "what makes healthy neighborhoods."
The billboard debate has been one of the thorniest in the council this year. Neighborhood activists have long urged tighter restrictions on billboard placement, but some billboard industry officials argued a moratorium could cost them money and jobs.
Mayor Bart Peterson opened the debate in March with a proposal to block new billboards for a year.
Hmm. We have a "sign-proliferation problem"? What we actually have here is a First Amendment problem- yet nobody seems to look at it that way. Some handful of busybody buttmunches arbitrarily decides that billboards in general offend their fine-tuned little aesthetic sensitivities, so they'll just ban them. Why is this even an acceptable proposal for polite debate?
Why isn't the ICLU raising hell? There's not even a peep of dissent that I've seen locally other than minor crap about costing jobs in the billboard industry. It might be a billboard for Big Macs, or for Planned Parenthood. Hey, just shut up with it. We don't like signs, we'll just ban them.
Note that this insensitivity to free speech issues comes in this city primarily from Democrats. It was Democrat mayor Bart Peterson who pushed the ban.
This shows consistency on his part; the first big initiative he had when he became mayor was a ban on certain arcade video games that he didn't like. It's ok though- he was doing it for the children.
