On the 26th of March, 2013 Obama signed into law HR 933 making it illegal to sue Monsanto.

For Monsanto to seek this kind of protection is a clear indication that they know their products are bad.

What is worse now is that Monsanto won't test their products at all before racing them to market.

Finally, now that Monsanto has this advantage, every other corporation will be seeking the same advantage and suing corporations was pretty much the last check we had on corporations available to the average person.

Obama has obviously quite in bed with Monsanto given that he put a former Monsanto executive in-charge of the FDA. Also the Democrats sided against the labelling of GMOs in food products in California's proposition 37 in the 2012 election. No doubt if the label had been applied consumers would have voted with their dollars like they did with rBST hormones in dairy. When I arrived in California milk from cows treated with rBST was common enough, now its nearly impossible to buy or find. Monsanto, once bitten twice shy, pumped millions of dollars into spruiking against proposition 37. Interestingly Obama promised to have GMO food labelled while on the election trail.

Monsanto produce awful products and they know it because they don't even serve GMO food in their own cafeteria.

What I find despicable is that Obama used the cover of DOMA outrage to sign HR 933. Obama signed the famous NDAA on New Years Eve. Obama could have said something about Monsanto getting this rider on HR 933, but he didn't. 

In a past life I taught data comms to college kids. And one of the things I taught was LAN (local area network) protocols. One of the famous protocols is CSMA/CD known by many names.

Why its outta control is that each actor is totally autonomous. Each entity on the LAN needs to figure out for itself whether it should be sending a message. It listens to the medium (carrier sense) to see if anyone else is talking. If there is silence it starts transmitting (only if it has data to send) at the speed of an electron wave propagating down wire (there are wireless versions amongst others).

This was the solution developed by universities under government funded grants for the original DARPA net that the internet we now have evolved from. Nevertheless, CSMA/CD is alive and well and still working on a LAN near you.

So CSMA/CD is what the government funded, a LAN, likely if you have a wireless network at home, like pretty much everyone in our neighborhood has, you are using CSMA/CD.

However the LAN developed by IBM, token ring, suffered a more tragic fate.

IBM developed their own LAN protocol, (also funded by the government with tax breaks and possibly grants). It was clunky, expensive, inefficient as hell and dictatorial. Basically you need to employ someone trained to manage your token ring, dedicate a computer to the task and it is controlling - basically, each computer is told when, by the master computer, it can talk and it prioritizes who can talk and when.

Unless you are a diehard IBM geek, which pretty much carries no cache, you wouldn't use it and if you did use it today you'd probably be laughed out of town by anyone who knows anything about data comms including those in red states voters. Basically token ring won the Darwin awards for LAN protocols.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

After over a year of knowing libertarians I have pushed to figure out their vision of society - and if you corner some of them they say there should be a small, good accountable government. It is not clear, however, how that government would be different from existing governments.

The principal difference with the society is that it is meant to be kept in check by people with pitchforks. I suspect that's what the founding fathers envisioned for the US, but television distracted the population and people are now more concerned about reality television, than reality.

We know that libertarians distinguish themselves from anarcho-types who hate the state, although they feel they are kindred spirits.

From what I understand, I think the government they envision is essentially a local, small area government. It is unclear what this government's function would be or how it would be funded, because we know they hate tax.

As far as I can gather, the government wouldn't provide any social security, food stamps, welfare... because some libertarians believe this is what community should provide. In other words, its up to our neighbours and loved ones to take care of that, and there doesn't seem like there is any safe-guards in case they can't. It is not clear what happens to people if they leave the community. It is also unclear whether there are any police, jails and a legal system. Although I suspect a legal system would be based on negotiation for dispute resolution.

Education would be privately funded and if you have bright but poor children they would miss out I think, unless you can teach them yourself.

Common property is managed according to Ostrom according to some. I am not sure if this is limited to air, water, forests, natural resources, land or whether it might extend to the economy, a justice system, healthcare or food as well.

We know there are some libertarians who like Amish societies and communes, although it is unclear what happens if one wishes, say, to move from the commune that is New York to San Francisco's commune, especially if you have no connections to remote communes (I always wondered how communes worked on large scale). How exchange rates would be managed between communes or even if there would be money in libertarian world, but I suspect there probably would be.

There would be corporations but there would be no limited liability but I am not sure if there would be a military.

As you can see, these changes to society are not merely cosmetic but require much thought instead of large brush strokes for them to be taken seriously. And although I have strived for over a year to understand the nuances of the libertarian world view it is not easy to wade through blogs that read like legal documents.

This is my good faith attempt to draw a picture of what I understand libertarian world to look like.

Let me state first and foremost I am left. I will never vote right, probably for as long as I live.

In 2008, there was no choice, the Republicans had to go and whoever the Democrats put up was going to win.

In 2012, it was pretty much the same although it seemed that the GOP had no idea they were going to lose. Women's rights had been too much of an issue with me for me to support anyone but the Democrats. But on that note, I live in California so it doesn't matter which election it is, the Democrats will be holding the state.

I believe in the people, and never more so than in 2012 when they resoundingly voted against the insanity that is the GOP. I believe in affordable healthcare for all, good education for all, a safety net for when people lose their jobs, retirement funds, people not losing their homes because of bank greed and because Wall St like gambling.

Obama defended women's rights and I appreciate that. Obama did something towards fixing healthcare - how good the solution is, is possibly debatable. But I say its a start because the healthcare system was dire in the US. I think he did something about college debt and he did a few things to stimulate the economy for average Americans but I haven't heard how successful his plans for people with underwater mortgages worked with banks.

Unfortunately Obama had his hands tied behind his back most of the time by the GOP. The GOP believed Clinton when he said 'Its the economy, stupid'. The GOP believed the people have the attention span of gnats and thought we couldn't see them hamstringing Obama while demanding endless cuts while refusing to raise taxes.

Beyond the reality issues that the GOP are dealing with, they have some serious internal issues. Libertarians are seriously feeling under whelmed about being represented by the GOP. Apparently, Romney's choice of Paul Ryan, his nod towards libertarians, was as insulting as MacCains choice of Palin was for most women in 2008. (In my opinion, I wasn't insulted by Palin despite being totally unwilling to vote for her - true equality will be when all women can express whatever opinion they choose - and respected as any man can express whatever opinion he chooses.)

To cut a long story short, GOP are writing themselves off for the 2016 election too, with serious splits within their own party, and a belligerent disrespect for reality. They gutted the US economy while W was in office with dropping tax rates, oil subsidies and pork barrelling all their cronies, they started 2 wars, one totally illegally, then there was the patriot act and TSA, torture...

So isn't it time we start asking Obama for some of those things he promised us?

I would ask for the wars to stop. He didn't start the wars, I know that. A plan to get out of Afghanistan would be excellent.
An end of drones.
And an end to the war on terror including TSA, NDAA and patriot act.
Throw some of these Wall St dudes in jail. I am so sorry Obama didn't throw Bush and Cheney in prison, as it would have restored the credibility of the US if Obama had done that.
End the war on drugs.
Stop messing with other countries.
Raise taxes.
Protect social security.

Isn't it time we started fixing America?

Corporations are set up to provide products or services to other entities, whether they are governments, people or other corporations of various types.

This is what they do, and this is how they make their money.

There are many corporations and they do a variety of tasks from making our clothes, food, computers, books, television, make television shows, make our cars, furniture, toys, medicine and stuff.

And while we may hate on corporations they have as many different motives as we do. Some want to make cool stuff, some don't want to be uber rich by and large, they want to survive. They are principally a mechanism for making money for the people who fill out the forms.

Yes government set up the legal concept of c-corps, s-corps, LLCs and the like, but its up to the individuals to fill out the paperwork. Which one you choose is usually how you can optimize your tax verses investment. But after that, your business is left to its own devices. It can fail or succeed. It depends on who is running it and why.

If you listen to some people it is the government who sets up the corporations. Yes, in the same way a last will and testament is set up by government but government generally leaves business alone.

Once corporations are set up, they engage in their business and seek to maximize market share. They will endeavor to keep and increase their market share, engineer the market to benefit their corporation and they will do it by whatever means necessary and available to them. They will seek out advantage, whether its by maximizing extra resources, rigging the system, anything to survive. Because it also includes engaging with government to ensure market share and thus survival.

The entity is intelligent enough to do whatever it takes, and in doing so can act like sociopaths.

And for this reason alone is why there will never be a free market.

The only barrier for corporations against a disempowered population, disempowered by television, the ultimate circus is government. Will government pro-actively act against the negative consequences of corporations? Not necessarily. Not until a significant portion of the population demand action will government enact some kind of control on corporations.

Of course the other way to seek out corporate advantage is to lobby for advantages from government, by getting legislation passed that would advantage your corporation.

Yes government may put barriers and legislation in place that make it difficult for your corporation, that usually comes about because people have protested and/or complained to government about it. Unregulated corporations do not behave well. They did not behave well in 2008. Why should removing government suddenly make them behave better?

During the industrial revolution, corporations did not care about how much pollution they produced. Not until government ordered them to clean up after themselves and even now corporations complain about having to clean up after themselves. Yet somehow if we don't have a government, corporations will suddenly start cleaning up after themselves, I do not think so.

Government is the only force powerful enough to stand up to the onslaught of corporations. We as individuals are not strong enough and this is why corporations have invested so much in weakening power of government by engaging in a propaganda war that has lasted for hundreds of years, starting with laissez-faire which ended in the French revolution.

Libertarians have steadfastly been propagating corporate propaganda with statements like 'government is much less efficient than corporations' with no proof and thus created the prison complex. No doubt was behind the Joe McCarthy communist witch-hunts in the 1950s that brought about the military industrial complex. Corporate propaganda also brought down the union movement. The real looser in corporatist propaganda is the average American.

What we find is when corporations are under regulated things like the outrageous costs of healthcare in the US. Where corporations lobbied govt to ensure that govt wouldn't use its bulk purchasing power allowing corporations to further loot the US govt and the US.

Someone I know keeps saying govt needs to end limited liability. I think this will change nothing, only make things worse. We can already sue a corporation and limited liability only comes into effect once the corporation is successfully sued to the point of ruin. If we aren't doing that now, why will is suddenly work if we remove limited liability?

People will always organize. We are tribal and you can see a corporation as a specific kind of tribe. Removing government will only make us more vulnerable to corporations.

I wonder how men would feel if they were treated like pretty air-heads all day long. Lets see how long it'll take for you to have your blood boil reading the following men:

Men are such pretty air-heads, but they really aren't good for anything except looking pretty and I really do enjoy looking at them. I call them 'darling' because I can't really be bothered remembering their names but I know you can't string a serious thought together because you will be too busy worrying about whether your 5 o'clock shadow is showing, and if you're not worrying about your 5 o'clock shadow you should be, whether your shoes work with that shirt, whether your crotch looks too big in those pants and whether your armpits are too whiffy after a hard day of stress in the kitchen because man sweat is really nasty (side look indicating embarrassment). I know that's what you're thinking because all men think about stuff like that all day.

You disagree? Sure, you go make me a sandwich and I'll put on 'days of our lives' while you stamp your manly foot - sometimes that gets me hot and I might need to use you for sex once the show is over.

What you think I am condescending? No, I agree you should have reproductive rights, no really, see I'm a nice girl. I'll treat you with respect because I would like to use you or my girlfriend would like to use you for sex.

So one woman was sexist to you and now you are saying all women are sexist? how dare you! how dare you, because what you said is much much worse than some woman condescending to you. One woman, what do you mean it was the straw that broke the camels back - my god, you have a chip on your shoulder. You must be one of those women hating male-ists. We gave you the right to vote - I know you must be all hormonal - all men get like that once a month.

What are you still complaining? Look I will go off and spend time with my sisters and whine about you uppity men. Look I have just had about enough of you're whining and venom - no I am not pushing back too hard. No I have been more than tolerant with you.

No the problem is all yours. I am not to blame for your temper, yes you do have anger management issues. Yes you do have problems, and no I am not to blame. I give you some of my attention (when I feel like it). I know you're needy, I know the only thing that'll make you happy is my attention.

What do you mean you just want to go do some work? How cute, he wants to try do something clever... perhaps you should have a baby instead.

God damn, he's gone back to his fathers. Now I have to make my own sandwiches. Men, can't live with them, can't live without them.

Back to reality.

I see men say half witted junk all the time and it gets more respect than me saying something original, intelligent and way in advance of anything they can understand.

Women are sought out by men for a few very specific reasons.
1. Men grow up NOT giving affection to each other so they seek out women for companionship and tenderness.
2. Sex
and when 1 & 2 are blended together you may find women doing that which is most valuable, becoming
3. The mother to their children.

And the rules on when a woman can have sex and be a companion to men are prodigious. A woman cannot have sex with a man without a relationship otherwise she's a slut or if she dares ask for money for giving him sex she is a whore.

If there is a marketplace for women wanting sex, I've only ever heard of it as wishful thinking in the entertainment industry.

Nevertheless, women need money to live on too. We need to pay for car insurance, a roof over our heads, clothes, food too.

On 1/11/2013 I wrote about Motherhood where I discuss how vital the role of motherhood is in our society. Yes, accepting the role, choosing to be a mother should be an option available to any woman but not all women are cut out for the role and some women choose not to be mothers.

However time and time again I am told women shouldn't be paid to be mothers, they should do it for 'love' or in other words for free.

They must rely on their husbands to support them while they are unable to work.

While it is up to the woman to decide to reproduce, she is performing a vital service to the community/society/country, she is helping to produce the next generation. And no society is successful unless there is a next generation.

The full time role of motherhood is priceless in terms of keeping the child alive while it is developing, teaching it to talk, protecting it while it is unaware of the dangers around it and turning it into a member of society.

Because women do not charge for providing this service, it is assumed that the service is actually worthless. The work that women do is of no value because the majority of women choose to take on this role. Yet we need the majority of women to take on this role so that there is a next generation.

Because a woman doesn't charge for doing this job people assume it is a job without skill. Sure it doesn't take much work in general to get pregnant although some couples may disagree, but the role of monitoring the child is time consuming and difficult. It can also be boring. I am sure it has many rewards too.

In the US women earn 77c to every $1 men earn. Yet women still need to eat, maintain a car and clothes, haircuts, accessories all cost more money than the men's equivalent.

Despite producing the next generation and providing men with companionship, it seems that men will do everything in their power to keep money out of women's hands despite there being a lot of evidence to suggest that women are better at handling money than men.

If you are alone in a forest with no one else, you have the right to do whatever you want. It is not until someone else comes along do you have to negotiate each others rights, assuming you wish to cooperate with them. As a result, rights come out of our legal system. Or in the case of the founding fathers, they determined individuals rights and said the legal system must work about them.

When you have two or more people together, there has to be some agreement on how the two will organize themselves. Most of these rules are unspoken, such as which language to communicate in and the degree of politeness to use. We may also tacitly agree not to kill or harm each other or steal from each other. Some of these agreements where instilled into each other by our mothers, some are the result of society and some are a result of the nature of the interaction.

In most cases these agreements are irrelevant because they are just two people walking past each other on the street, nevertheless, there is an agreement to let each other pass by the other unhindered unless there is some need to interact.

But when it comes to roads, there are many rules and many of them are technical so that if there is a car accident, blame can be assigned and insurance companies can negotiate payment.

And this is the main thing government sets up for us is a way to negotiate our interactions when things go wrong. Government gives us a legal system to step in to provide a path to justice.

Government evolved as an outgrowth of human organization. It has evolved from one man being in-charge, as in the days when government was the tribal chief or a king, to an organization of checks and balances in place to make sure it keeps working, hopefully optimally, and for the betterment of the society it is governing. It is meant to evolve as society evolves. It is a balancing act between maintaining a status quo and adapting as people have realized flaws in the current system.

Curiously the following quote from Jefferson is often used by anarchists and libertarians to say there should be no government. Strangely these types don't realize that removing government means they will have to govern themselves which was the justification for getting rid of a king at the time of the revolution. The founding fathers set up a government that was supposed to be a negotiation amongst the people's representatives.

For the most part government is invisible and should be so and because it mostly is invisible people only notice it when it is going wrong. In fact, the only time I hear about it is when I go on-line and hear my friends complain about it. Corporations in reality have much more impact on my life and often far more negatively so. Similarly corporations have had a negative influence on government.

The founding fathers were aware of the problems of corporations and tied them down but corporations got loose and we see the mess we are in today because of them. They have corrupted our justice system and political system, using the government as a tool to go to war with foreign nations for the purposes of looting their resources.

I have long since thought we need a new manifesto for the left.

I just don't like communism. I don't see how it would work on a large scale and I don't see there being a lot of personal choice associated with it.

Also the idea of buying clothes, eating government prepared food, watching TV and movies (yes I am at war with TV, but I am not anti-entertainment per se) made by the government, just sounds wholesome, at the very best. I like the idea of privately grown food (not Monsanto) and wine, I like the idea of people deciding to opt out of society and writing books, or climbing mountains and being free to make choices, if it doesn't conflict with other commitments they've made.

I like options. I like freedom. I like everyone being able to access affordable, good quality healthcare, but I don't like being forced to buy insurance and optimally, the government can provide healthcare much more cheaply and much more efficiently than private enterprise. Can we have both options available? Everyone gets sick sooner or later.

I like the idea of public school being available and private schools being available too.

I like everyone being able to eat and not having to resort to crime or lose their house because they have lost their job.
I like safety nets, I like tolerance of others and difference, variety... I like respect for humans and nature.

I don't mind rich people, but I do mind rich people at the expense of poor people, even in our own society.

I like smart efficient lean government with smart solutions to complex problems. The problem is we don't always know the best solution immediately and have to try different things before we hit upon the right solution. Government must be flexible but not so flexible that nut jobs can come along and demand stupid things and force government to change. For instance, in the US there is the notion of separation of church and state. There are some people who believe in creationism and have changed the definitions of things so much that creationism has been equated to science. It is not science. There is no way to test the theory, unlike evolution. If these people had their way, the US govt would be 'christian'. While I have no problems with people being 'christian' they should not be able to force their beliefs onto other people.

Although I don't know all that's in the constitution (especially those latter amendments) I like the idea.

Government shouldn't be watchdog of the people but kind of like the guardian. The government should be ready to step in if needed or wanted, guarding future generations, protecting the economy and those in the government should take it as an honour to be elected to office because the people trust you to act in their best interests rather than purely as a get-rich-quick scheme. It should protect national resources and ensure all have access to the essentials in life.

And there must be a mechanism to step in when the government stops performing those tasks as it is supposed to, i.e. when it starts benefiting the rich exclusively as is the case now in the US.

This is my first draft written in no more than 10mins (cos the internet keeps distracting me).

When the founding fathers set up the USA, they determined that corporations should be simple single function organizations. Quite simply the founding fathers knew all about how bad corporations were and this is what precipitated the revolution.

Few of us have the heart to forgo an advantage whether it is in the market or in any other place and hence greed is a fundamental force of human nature.

If I have more, if I am better positioned, if I have an advantage I should use it to ensure my survival because there may come a day when I no longer have that advantage or my family may need it and this justifies me saving for the proverbial rainy day. (For this reason there will never be a free market and anyone who says otherwise is nothing other than naive because it is fundamental to human nature to seek advantage.)

How to get this advantage comes in the form of persistence, determination and ingenuity which is what allowed corporations to be liberated from the yoke the founding fathers placed them under. And one of the ways corporations broke their yoke was by corrupting government.

In my opinion one of the quickest ways of fixing government is to have politicians running for election who would pledge
a) not to accept any donations from corporations or anyone else and only to accept funding from government to run election campaigns.
b) open themselves up to scrutiny as to where they receive income and make banking and tax records available to the public.
c) refuse to accept any remuneration other than salary and the usual expense remuneration, i.e. travel expenses, healthcare, retirement etc.... that they also refuse to work as lobbyists after their term is completed.
d) not do any insider trading while in office.

There used to be a time when it was an honour to serve the people by being in office rather than as a get rich scheme which it has become now. 

We must seek out honourable people to represent us and volunteer to serve us rather than act as a pig at a trough only padding their own wallets and nests.