Update, 07/01/09: Thanks to HW, who became final new subscribing contributor to sign on during this drive! HW’s $5/month commitment brings our total recurring revenues to $412.50 against our goal of $2000 (I’ve been accidentally misreporting our numbers $5 to the low side for several days, and just caught it on the wrap-up).

This drive is now OVER, which means you’ll stop seeing daily updates, etc. Thanks to everyone who supports the freedom movement’s daily newspaper!

Here’s what comes next:

- Because we didn’t reach our goal of $2000 per month in recurring revenues, we’ll continue to run lower-impact monthly fundraisers in an attempt to make up the difference between what’s coming in and what we’re trying to bring in. Our July goal is $1587. You can see our progress (and click through to help) at rationalreview.chipin.com.

- We’ll also be focusing on how increasing advertising revenues. This may mean that you see more ads, or that those ads are more prominently placed. Once we get those ad revenues up to $100 per month, we’ll start reducing our fundraising goals by the previous month’s ad revenues.

Thanks again to all of you who continue to support RRND/FND! - TLK

—–

Dear readers,

As promised, I’ve tried to keep RRND/FND’s fundraising activities “low visibility, low pressure” for the last few months. I was even hoping to push this particular fundraiser farther down the road, but recent events have forced my hand. If my smooth sales pitch has already sold you, click here to skip the dirty details and go directly to the part where you send us money.

The dirty details

Since late 2004, Rational Review News Digest has “re-branded” itself as Freedom News Daily for a separate audience, on behalf of the International Society for Individual Liberty. We intend to continue doing so.

Since some time in 2005, ISIL has paid us — to the tune of $1,000 a month — to produce FND. Due to its own financial requirements and fundraising imperatives, ISIL has had to at least temporarily cease that support.

Repeat after me three times: This is not a divorce. It’s not even a breakup. We remain on good terms with ISIL. We intend to continue serving up daily helpings of Freedom News Daily to ISIL’s web, email and Facebook readers.

But, as you can see, this puts a big dent in our already very understated revenue model. Here’s how it breaks down:

Our current revenue model calls for us to bring in $2,000 a month. Before transaction fees, web hosting, etc., that would come to $720 per month in pay for our one full-time staffer (me), $360 per month for our three part-time editors (R. Lee Wrights, Mary Lou Seymour and Steve Trinward), and $200 per month for our tech support guy (Brad Spangler). As you can see, we’re not in this to get rich. But, as I’ve mentioned before, we have to eat.

Of course, we generally don’t bring in $2,000 a month. Until lately, we brought in $1,000 a month from ISIL, $237.50 per month (as of right now) in recurring payments from our beloved “subscribing donors,” an average of, oh, $25 per month in advertising commissions, and whatever else people send in “one-time” or “occasional” payments that aren’t tied to our “subscribing donor” system (another amount that fluctuates). On average, call it $1300-1500 per month — total.

That amount just went down to $300-500 per month with the ISIL developments. Time to get it back up, and moreover on a reliable basis. That means increasing our number of “subscribing contributors” … those of you who are willing to commit to sending $2.50, $5.00, $10, or $20 every month.

Goal: Get our “subscribing contributor” number from $237.50 per month to $2,000 per month by the end of June.

Does that sound hard? It shouldn’t. Our total readership via email, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter comes to nearly 7,100 readers. That’s excluding web edition readers. RRND’s web statistics say we exceed 2,000 unique visitors per day; I don’t have stats for ISIL’s web edition of FND.

I could make a good case for there being 10,000 daily consumers of this newsletter. Even excluding all duplicates, I think it’s a fair bet that we’re talking about more than 5,000 daily readers. If only 705 of you were to sign up at our $2.50 per month level, we’d be there.

So, I’m going to drag out the dreaded “thermometer” graphic and start hectoring you on a daily basis to get us there. Sound familiar? Let’s not have another one of those six-month ordeals.

The sweetener is this: If we can make this goal and stay within shouting distance of it (e.g. we don’t drop down below, say, $1,800 per month in “subscribing contributor” revenues), we’ll be content to do a short (probably one week long) “push it up a little” fundraiser once a year instead of coming back at you again and again with short-term goals that end up taking months to meet.

[Note: I’ve moved the thermometer graphic “up top”]

And here’s where you click to make things happen:

The Buck Starts Here Club ($1/month, billed quarterly)
RRND Daily Reader ($2.50/month)	RRND Subscriber ($5.00/month)
RRND Supporter ($10/month)	RRND Patron ($20/month)

I’ll be back with daily updates and neat little factoids (”our lowest subscribing donor level costs less than a large iced white chocolate mocha latte at Starbucks^TM” and such) … when you get tired of seeing them, you know where to click.

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review

Over time, we’ve tried to make it easy to contribute to RRND/FND in an automatic/recurring way, with optional levels ranging from $2.50 per month to $20 per month.

There’s a reason for the lowest level being $2.50 instead of, say, $1.00: PayPal charges transaction fees of 30 cents plus a small percentage of the total. From a $1.00 payment, less than 70 cents would actually reach RRND.

However, I’ve always wanted to offer a $1.00 per month level.

PayPal’s subscription function got more flexible awhile back — or maybe it’s always been that way and I just missed it until recently — and by George, I think I’ve got it.

Welcome, Ladies and Gents, to the miracle science of quarterly billing! Our new level of recurring support — The Buck Starts Here Club — lets you support RRND/FND to the tune of one dollar per month without transaction fees eating up more than 30% of that dollar before it ever reaches us.

The long and short of it is $3, billed every three months. I’ve already added this level to our standard “subscribing contributor options” menu, but here it is a la carte for your convenience.

This level of support is recommended for those who:

- Value RRND/FND at one dollar a month; and/or

- Can only afford one dollar a month; and/or

- Can’t, or prefer not to, fork over $12 in one swell foop.

Thanks, of course, to all of you who financially support the freedom movement’s daily newspaper at any level or frequency. We’ll continue to look into new and more convenient options to encourage that support.

Yours in liberty, Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”

–William Butler Yeats

I’m an anarchist. I’m supposed to be opposed to authority; but really, the commitment only requires me to oppose the State, because it is coercive.

What of the authority of words then? It’s been pointed out to me that unlike the French I owe no allegiance to a government bureau that decides “Le Car” is a bastardization of their language, or forbids the naming of children unless the name appears on an officially sanctioned list.

I opened this comment with a quotation from Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” but I just as easily could have begun with a quote from Lewis Carroll: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

And we are behind the looking glass, my friends. When no common agreement can be reached on what a word means, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world — and I don’t mean anarchism, which is a self-organizing system seeking a natural order. I mean the inability to communicate through language because words have no fixed meaning thus there is no longer the possibility of reasoned discussion, only of spin and propaganda.

(more…)

Maher points his weapon — in this case a movie camera instead of an M-16 — in the general direction he thinks the enemy is then fires wildly. The problem is that as a documentarian Bill Maher ignores both weapons safety procedures and military rules of engagement. Bill Maher fails to correctly identify his targets before he puts his finger on the trigger and fires. So while he can be scored for some direct hits, he both creates a lot of collateral damage and leaves half the real enemy unscathed.

(more…)

And because we grew up in a time that seemed to be trying to straddle the line between the puritanical fifties and the upheaval of the seventies, it isn’t hard to pinpoint exact moments in time with amazing clarity (given the fact that these days I’m doing good to remember where I put my glasses). (more…)

That the core concept of statism is inherently unjust is not in question. Nor is the notion that the voting is unlikely to produce an acceptable level of reform. To this extent, anarchists generally agree.

What separates anti-political libertarians from principled partyarchs is the advocacy of a vulgar form of unilateral disarmament.^* This form of pacifism is more in line with the LeFevrian stripe than in the simpler sense, in that the anarchist is more concerned with becoming part of the problem than with straightforward avoidance. But it still walks and talks like pacifism. This willful disassociation from tactics used by statists is as doomed to catch fire as was Quakerism. (more…)

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

According to many Constitutional scholars, this amendment was intended to highlight the fact that while the original 13 States were one independent nation, this new nation was comprised of 13 independent and sovereign entities, capable of creating legislation pertinent to their particular areas that were not expressly delegated to Congress by the other articles contained in the Bill of Rights.

(This of course is leaving aside the argument that the War Between the States did away with the sovereignty of the states by asserting that the South had no right to leave the Union — there are opinions aplenty concerning this issue.)

That was then — and in the generations since, state governments have historically ignored the 10th amendment in order to feed at the federal trough. Entire political dynasties and multi-generational careers have been made on the basis of how many federal dollars could be funneled to the states’ coffers from dear old Uncle Sam.

(more…)

My old friend Samuel Edward Konkin III would rise from his grave to haunt me if I were to deliver a State of the Movement address so this address is guaranteed to be state-free. But movements presumably move in one direction or another so my very personal report on This Movement of Ours is My Movement of the Movement Address.

(more…)

Why am I always in the minority when it comes to public opinion? You’d think the law of averages would occasionally work in my favor and I’d check the local news website’s latest poll or comment section and find this:

“CUTE KITTENS — fer ‘em or agin ‘em?”

Oh, easy. *clicks fer ‘em*

But oh, hell no.

The local newspaper and television has been abuzz with articles concerning the tobacco tax hike and the possible benefits to society as a whole. By far the vast majority of comments run along these lines:

“Ewww, smokers are totally gross so it’s totally kewl to tax the crap out of them so they quit and don’t bother me. OMG! I’m so texting all my BFFs on Twitter right now and they so agree with me. Totally.”

“Harrumph! Smokers cost me and the boys down at the country club bazillions of dollars in health care taxes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the 19th Hole to enjoy a bourbon and branchwater. Cheers. Harrumph!”

Do you see what I did there? I personally don’t own a cell phone or drink … so I have zero problem with demonizing people who do! It’s so easy a caveman can do it!

“But won’t someone think of the CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!”

Okay, let’s think of the children. (more…)

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t help us promote Rational Review’s tweets anyway! Feel free to let your friends know that they can get the latest news and commentary via Twitter by following user rationalreview.

Usually, that is — this week the mechanism we’ve been using to “automatically” port our stories to Twitter hasn’t been especially reliable. I’m looking into other ways of getting the stuff from point A to point B, and may switch to manually doing so if necessary.

Regards,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review

Moral Hazard a risk that somebody will behave immorally because insurance, the law, or some other agency protects them against loss that the immoral behavior might otherwise cause. http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/moral+hazard.html

Because I’m blessed with an unusually high level of disdain for bureaucracy and government in general, it’s extremely rare for me to experience jaw-dropping shock when confronted with the empire’s mouthpieces and their paid pontifications, which are excreted with dreadful regularity in the mainstream media. Then I came across this:

Sheila Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said the agency has set aside $22 billion to cover any projected losses over the next year, leaving $19 billion. The deposit insurance fund now stands at its lowest level in nearly a quarter-century and is raising the assessment on banks and thrifts to give it more money in reserve. “Overall, we’re fine. But it is important for people to understand, we’re backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. The money will always be there. We can’t run out of money,” Bair said.

“The money will always be there? We can’t run out of money?” Surely this is mere hyperbole, right? I mean, even the government can’t sincerely believe that money is some sort of infinite resource, right?

Perhaps not. (more…)

This week, we’re shooting for a thousand followers — and we’re giving away five prizes, worth more than $100 altogether, from LPStuff.Com!

Details:

- The contest period starts at noon (Central Time) today, Sunday, March 8th. It ends at noon (Central Time) on Tuesday, March 10th Wednesday, March 11th.

- To enter the contest, sign up at Twitter.Com (if you haven’t already!), follow user rationalreview on Twitter (if you don’t already!) and tweet the following during the contest period (please do NOT include the quote marks!): “@rationalreview More than $100 in LPStuff.Com prizes this week’s Rational Review contest. Follow the freedom movement’s daily newspaper!”

- At the end of the contest period, we’ll randomly select five entrants to receive prizes from our sponsor, LPStuff.Com. Since the prizes are different from each other this time (see below), the first winner drawn will get first choice of prize, then the second winner can choose from what’s left,, and so on.

Winner or not, I hope you’ll visit LPStuff.Com and purchase your favorites from their fine selection of Libertarian Party-logoed merchandise, campaign supplies, etc. I’ll personally attest to the quality of their wares, as will anyone, I suspect, who visited the LPStuff.Com booth at last year’s LP national convention in Denver.

Prizes:

1 pair “Longing to be Free” boxers ($14.95) prize won by bsodmyself

1 Libertarian Defined t-shirt ($19.95) prize won by dgaking

1 magnetic backed Enough is Enough bumper sticker ($6.45) prize won by eve6andahalf

1 Winged Libertarian Hoodie ($39.95) prize won by rmbarlow

1 Libertarian Lapel Pin ($19.95) prize won by sweepstaking

Yours in liberty, Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review

So when I have to explain to my daughter, who phone-banked in the November 2008 election against California’s Proposition 8 by which the California electorate voted to amend their Constitution restricting marriage to heterosexual couples, why I’m opposed to California courts overturning the vote she lost, it requires an explanation of my grounding principles and my firmly grasping sharp ideological nettles.

Let there be no mistake. I favor absolute equality in law for adult individuals who prize the liberty to have intimate relations with, fall in love with, and make life commitments to other individuals of their own gender. I favor laws enabling institutions to grant equity to same-sex couples in matters of habitation, inheritance, taxation, hospital visitation and fiduciary decision-making. If there are to be civil rights laws forbidding discrimination in employment, housing, and use of common facilities, and laws forbidding hate crimes, on the basis of race, color, religion, or ethnic origin, then I see no reason why gender preference is worth neither less nor more than these other collective categories for receiving grants of legal protection.

But none of that means I’m going to favor up-ending constitutional principles to favor a specific group’s pleadings, nor do I think a struggle for civil rights entitles one to thuggery, nor am I willing to embrace hypocrisy, the destruction of language, rewriting history, and lies just because some people have justifiable grievances.

Let’s start with the lies contained in the use of two common terms: “homosexual” and “gay.”

(more…)

Update, 01/12/09 – This fundraiser is OVER, thanks to all of you who contributed over the weekend. It’s a long list, which I’ll start by thanking two of our subscribing contributors, ACN and CL, whose payments totaling $10 arrived over the weekend. Thanks also to supporters JC, SC, TB, BW, TH, RD, DD, RH, RB, DR, CD and SL contributed a total of of $590! TH and JR contributed through ISIL — one of the contributions was $50, the other was an undisclosed amount. Thanks to them!

So, our known total over the weekend (drum roll, please) …$650. That brings our running total to $5382.87, busting the meter and ending this long, long fundraiser.

There will be future fundraisers of course, but we’re working on different ways of doing them. Part of that may be higher frequency, but lower goal and less “in the body of the newsletter” stuff. Obviously we’d prefer to make receiving and reading RRND/FND as enjoyable as possible for all of our readers, and we know you don’t like this constant money pitch stuff any more than we do. Thanks again to all of you who have supported and continue to support our efforts … now we’re going to get back to work on ratcheting up the quality of those efforts.

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review

As an independent filmmaker whose own new feature, Lady Magdalene’s, was made on about the same budget IMDb Pro shows Fireproof was made for –about $500K — I have closely been following the theatrical box-office success of Fireproof with gratitude.

Getting an ultra-low-budget film into theatrical distribution is a journey through Hell and Purgatory that Dante Alighieri could have written about.

To emerge into the theatrical-release paradise of wide release, an opening weekend ranking of #4 among movies costing 100 times as much to produce, and achieving tickets sales in the amount of $13,055,530 domestically in its first 12 days of release, is spectacular to the
point one must suspect a miracle.

As the hymn goes, “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.” My own faith tells me that for God to allow this movie into theatrical release and achieve the box-office success it has, He must have deep plans … because never have I seen a worse movie in my life.

(more…)

The congressional representatives — both conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats — who yesterday stood up to the water-boardings given to them by President Bush, Treachery Secretary Paulson, Federal Reverse Chairman Bernanke, and the McCain-Obama Presidential Ticket — voted against the Bail Out of OPEC. Why else would the price of oil have plummeted when the bail-out went south? The failure of the bail-out showed us who was really going to get bailed out.

The House made a good first step yesterday. But they need a second step.

Now the representatives who voted in good faith with the American people should vote to reject their foul bought-and-paid-for party leadership and caucus together into a new political party.

This idea needs to get out before the Jewish holidays are over and the House reconvenes.

Let’s show them a path back to the Republic. Spread the word virally and quickly.

—–
J. Neil Schulman, author of the 1979 novel Alongside Night, which predicted this crisis

The Saddleback Church presidential forum cast Barack Obama as Ellie Arroway and John McCain as David Drumlin.

(more…)

In my first eligibility to cast a ballot in a presidential election — in 1972 — I could not bring myself to vote either to re-elect Republican Richard Nixon or replace him with Democrat George McGovern. I cast a write-in vote for the 19th century libertarian, Lysander Spooner, for president.

In 1976 I was one of the activists in the “Vote for Nobody!” campaign, and did not vote either for Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter.

In 1980 and 1984 — even though I liked him better than any other major-party candidate for president since I’d become eligible to vote — I refrained from voting for Ronald Reagan. I remained a non-voter on the Jack Parr principle that “voting only encourages them.”

In 1988 without even a major-party candidate on the ballot as appealing to me as Reagan, I again refrained from voting.

By 1992 I’d argued myself into becoming a voter again, on the principle that if I believed in self-defense with a gun, I could believe in self-defense with a proxy gun — the ballot. But unable to vote for either George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton, I voted for Ross Perot.

(more…)

This is a strategy to reach the small number of opinion setters in each urbanized area. I call this group the “political village.” They are the civic activists and members of business groups who are watching the issues, developing opinions and sometimes trying to shape policy. It is much more affordable to reach and educate this relatively small number of people than a whole population of voting adults. I estimate 10,000 people fit this description in the Houston area where I live, and people are entering and leaving the village continuously.

(more…)

(more…)