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Issue #2

Free! — unlike the “free” politician promise

April, 2017

US Escalates Role in Syrian War, article by Will Porter (pg. 2)
Taxis hate Uber - What’s New? , article by Mike Morris (pg. 2, 3)
How Authoritarian Trolls Proved The CIA Isn’t Needed, Article by Ryan Sullivant (pg. 4)
The State Can't Fix Anything, article by Mike Morris (pg. 4, 5, 6)
What the State is Not, by Murray Rothbard (pg. 6)
What is Voluntaryism? , with Jim Davidson (pg. 7)
Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Socialists , non-aggressive parenting column by
Melissa Rajkovich (pg. 7, 9)
When the News is the New News , Article by Paotie Dawson (pg 8, 9)
What is the immigration solution?, opinion piece by Steve Long (pg. 10)
Do you smell smoke? , article by Joel Aigner (pg. 11)
Healthcare Sucks, Trump, You’re Fired! column by Jesse Wroe (pg. 12)
Abolition 1854: The Original Free State Project , article by Jim Davidson (pg. 13)
What is Liberty?, Liberty 101 column By J.C. Simpson (pg. 14)
Trump a Kremlin Puppet? , A World at War Column by Will Porter (pg. 15, 16)
Frauds, Fakes, and Shills in the Liberty Movement , piece by Jeff Smith (pg. 16)


US Escalates Role in Syrian War, article by Will Porter
For the first time since the conflict began in 2011, US
Army and Marine units were deployed to fight in
Syria, joining at least several hundred American and
British special operations troops already stationed
The escalation is ostensibly part of a push to expel
the Islamic State from Raqqa, the militant group's
base of operations and the capital city of its so-called
Caliphate. That, however, may not be the true goal.
US intervention began not long after the Syrian
conflict got underway, arming, training and otherwise
assisting the rebel opposition and looking the other
way while Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other US allies
did the same.
Who are the rebels? A declassified Defense
Intelligence Agency memo from 2012 describes the
Syrian opposition as heavily supported by al-Qaeda,
and even acknowledges &quot;the possibility of establishing
a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in
eastern Syria...&quot;
Incredibly, the document continues: &quot;...and this is
exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition
want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.&quot;
[Emphasis added] The document lists “The West, Gulf
countries, and Turkey” as the supporting powers.
Make no mistake, &quot;Salafist principality&quot; is a synonym
for Islamic State, and the memo says in no uncertain
terms that such an entity could be useful to help
&quot;isolate&quot; the Assad regime.
Last September the New York Times obtained a
leaked recording of a closed-door discussion between
then-Secretary of State John Kerry and Syrian
opposition activists that again reveals American
thinking on the Islamic State.
&quot;[ISIS] was threatening the possibility of going to
Damascus and so forth. We were watching. We saw

— Taxis hate Uber - What’s New? —
article by Mike Morris
Taxi drivers are whining again, of course, to the
government [city council]. They’re losing money to their
digital rivals who provide a better service than them;
this needs to be prevented; it’s not “fair”; there needs to
be a “level playing field.”

that [ISIS] was growing in strength, and we thought
Assad was threatened,&quot; Kerry told the activists. He
&quot;thought we could probably manage.&quot;
In the same recording Kerry explained that the
United States was &quot;putting an extraordinary amount
of arms in,” and an aide added that the situation is
tricky, because &quot;when you pump more weapons into a
place like Syria, it doesn’t end well for Syria. Because
there’s always someone willing to put in arms from
the other side.&quot;
They did it anyway. So far, over 400,000 human
beings have perished in this conflict, and imperialists
like Kerry feign shock at the carnage.
While all of this took place under president Obama,
it is not yet clear that Trump will alter the on-again
off-again policy of regime change favored by the prior
&quot;[I]f this 'race to Raqqa' is won by the US military
rather than by Syrian government forces, the chance
that the US will hand the territory back to the Assad
government is virtually nil,&quot; writes Daniel McAdams,
Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace
and Prosperity.
&quot;In other words, this is an operation far less about
wiping ISIS out from eastern Syria and much more
about the United States carving out eastern Syria as a
permanent outpost from where it can, for example,
continue the original neocon/Israeli/Saudi plan for
'regime change' in Syria.&quot;
Both options are extremely undesirable—regime
change, or merely a fight against ISIS—because both
entail yet another years-long American occupation of
a Muslim country, billions of tax dollars dumped into
a black hole, and a mountain of new material for
Islamist recruitment propaganda.
Uncle Sam would do well to keep his paws off Syria.

While they’re right, the playing field indeed should be
leveled, they’re taking the wrong approach and asking
for Uber to be more regulated rather for themselves –
having to undergo background checks, fees to the city,
etc. – to be less so. Instead of making everyone equal in
liberty, all too many would suggest that, rather than to
cut down everyone’s taxes to zero, that those who pay
less taxes need to “pay their fair share.” (Cont. pg. 3)


Continued from pg. 2)
For example, many people hate that churches are tax
exempt because others are forced to pay taxes. But I
think this is a great thing; why can’t everyone be tax
exempt? It is not being subsidized to not pay taxes; it’s
being stolen from less; and no one should be stolen
from. A leveling of the playing field would not be to tax
churches, but to un-tax, and thereby unburden,
everyone else. Likewise with transportation services of
taxis and ride-sharing applications.
Uber shouldn’t have to pay the city money for a license
too; the taxis shouldn’t have to pay or obtain a special
license to operate either. Occupational and business
licensure is used to create effective monopolies by
handing out special privileges from the government.
The taxis don’t like that Uber has found a work-around,
and one that provides value to consumers. Since an
increase in supply, demand remaining unchanged, will
tend to cause a fall in prices, the taxi companies wish to
restrict the supply of ride services so that they can
charge higher prices.
Unfortunately, most are unable to see the simple
economic effects because of their shortsightedness. As
the French classical liberal Frederic Bastiat would have
pointed out in his economic analysis and emphasis on
the seen and the unseen, people are limited to seeing
the effect on only Party A (the seen taxi-driver who
loses money) without consideration of Party B (the
unseen consumer who benefits).
So, when taxi-driver Chuck Peahl “estimates that
competition from the companies has cost him
$20,000…of income annually,” I would say good; what
this really means is it saved consumers—savings, that
is, which can be used for investment elsewhere into
forming businesses, creating other jobs, and raising real
Just as in the case with Trump having his followers
believe tariffs (or, a “big, big border tax” in Trump’s
words) are good for domestic American producers (and
that their unemployment is caused by free trade which
could be remedied with more protectionist policies),
without seeing that they’re bad for American consumers
who now pay higher prices all while the inefficient
domestic producer stays in business at the cost of what
those resources could be used for were they allowed to
fail, the taxis appeal to the government for
protectionism, however mild. This is how government is
corrupted: the “regulated” become the regulators.

People cheer when politicians “save jobs” or when it’s
reported that “X amount of jobs are being created by
ABC Company”, but there’s an outcry when “Company
XYZ lays off workers.” But this is also a false notion
that companies shouldn’t fail. Indeed, they should when
they fail to provide customers a better service than the
competition. The market economy is a profit and a loss
economy. If taxi companies fail, then so be it.
The story of the taxi-Uber antagonism is no different
between hotels and Airbnb and other game-changers
either. Same story: one provides something cheaper,
and more accommodating, and the other doesn’t like
that and seeks to destroy it, often claiming “public
safety” as the need and reason to do it.
As an Uber-user when it snows in Colorado, my own
experience is that it’s at least half the price of Yellow
Cab; and this is my decision for using it: I pay around
$10 to go 6 miles with Uber vs. $20 to go the same
distance with the local taxi services. For the longest
time Yellow Cab had virtually no competitors aside
from people on Craigslist offering $10 rides anywhere
in town. Now they’re disgruntled.
Rather than point out the issues here, the Gazette
gives us a largely sympathetic view of this problem in its
article “A bumpy road for taxi-drivers”, and so to add
emotion to the issue, names of the cabbies are included
and it’s framed as “losing their livelihood.”
But what’s the problem? We cannot stop advancing
and halt innovation because industries are being shaken
up by technology and some people are hurt because of
it. It would be akin to banning the internet so that I can
print this paper with less competitors.
Maybe we’ll see a day soon enough when driverless
cars provide a service even cheaper than Uber drivers
can, and we’ll hear them [Uber] exclaim “force the
driverless cars to get a license to make it fair for us!”
Probably not; Uber drivers are more hip and cool—and
drive for the service to supplement their income with
their spare time and resources rather than to make a
career out of it—than the old, fat, established
taxi-drivers who can’t get with modern technological
times. Sucks for them.
But I suggest: Don’t cut down Uber; free up everyone.
Limiting competition by imposing extra costs on new
entrants will cost the people. Competition is only bad
for stagnant competitors, or monopolists like
government. Consumers always benefit from more
choices. [Mike Morris makes The Voluntaryist happen]


For those who haven’t been paying attention to Shia
Labeouf’s He Will Not Divide Us (HWNDU)
livestream, after being shut down (twice) by Trump
supporters, in a fit of rage/defeat he put up a flag at
an undisclosed location, and said he’d livestream it
until the end of Trump’s presidency. With all this talk
of the CIA hacking our devices, I think it’s important
to point out that authoritarian trolls (many of which
approve of CIA/NSA style mass surveillance)
managed to unintentionally prove that the CIA isn’t
On March 8th, the flag pictured above went up on
livestream at an undisclosed location. In only 36
hours, anons from 8chan’s /HWNDU/ board had
managed to track it down and replace it with a MAGA
hat and helicopter ride T-shirt (some argue it was a
Pepe T-shirt in praise of Kek). Individuals (of varying
levels of autism) managed to locate the flag by
figuring out the timezone based on sunset in the
livestream, listen to local wildlife on the livestream’s
audio to approximate location, observe flight patterns
of airplanes over head, make some educated guesses
based on social media, and then proceed to play
marco polo with the livestream by honking horns at 1
in the morning. Through their creativity and a little
stealth, they snuck past people guarding the flag and
managed to complete their deed. It took the

— The State Can't Fix Anything —
article by Mike Morris
Have you ever noticed how everything that has become an
issue – infrastructure, education, police – is socialized, i.e.,
in government hands? Have you ever noticed how everything
no one worries about – clothing, food, cars, televisions – is,
while not totally free itself, relatively private and capitalist?
Each election season we are continuously asked to raise
ever more taxes to support X [the roads] than the previous
year. The process seemingly never ends. There is endless
construction as they are in perpetual need of repair;
something that isn't observed on, say, people's homes
throughout the year. This time around, it is with HB 1242
that the state of Colorado wants millions of more dollars for
road projects.
While the tendency of the private market is to drive down
prices as more competitors bid for money by offering..

organizers about 10 minutes to realize what had
happened and take down the MAGA hat.
The fact of the matter is, it took anonymous
authoritarian trolls about 36 hours to scour 3 million
square miles of land to locate a flagpole. All they had
was publicly available data like bird migration
patterns/flight schedules, and a 24/7 livestream of a
flagpole at an undisclosed location. Assuming the CIA
didn’t have access to the livestream’s geo-data, it
would have taken them weeks to locate the same
flagpole if they could have even located it at all, yet a
bunch of anons with too much time on their hands
were able to locate it in less than two days and
complete their mission of taking it down.
One has to question, when private actors can
complete a task for shits and giggles in such a short
amount of time, for free one might add, then what
justification can be made for the millions (billions?)
spent on mass surveillance organizations every year?
Even if one refuses to look at the ethical and moral
costs of running a mass surveillance state, private
actors still manage to prove that such organizations
are not needed, or at least can be severely reduced.
[Ryan Sullivant is an electrical technician in
Agorist/AnCap.” He spends his days working or
going to school, and knows very little about
politics/economics past the barebones basics.]

..more of their goods and services at a better quality, the
tendency under socialization is rising prices and a decreasing
quality. One only needs to look at the prices of what is
relatively privatized – electronics, clothing, etc. – versus
what is relatively socialized – tuition rates, health care,
housing, etc., and their skyrocketing prices – to see that this
is true: the former experiences cheaper prices and the latter
rising prices.
In a free market, with a free price system, and with a money
freely chosen by the people, i.e., gold, prices would tend to be
falling. Rather, what we see of the deliberate inflation by the
central bank and their fiat currency that we've now all
accepted as a normal way of life. But inflation and business
cycles are not normal; they're government and central-bank
created and not endemic of the market economy.
No workable solutions exist within the current system; it
can't be reformed or fixed, so the solution is it must step out
of the way.

(Continued pg. 5)


(Continued from pg. 4) The

inherent economic problems
created by government cannot be solved by government. The
most determined, “right” people in power couldn’t make it
work. The goods and services which the government has
intervened upon need to be turned back over to the market
economy to succeed.
The real solution to all these problems, thus, is to privatize
the property government has stolen from the people (since
all government property is stolen), and return it to individual
owners. While it would be tedious to list the possible ways in
which to proceed with privatization here, suffice it to say that
it needs to be done, and furthermore the property should be
returned to the people it was stolen from or those who have
the best claim to it now whenever possible.
This does not have to mean no one will have access to what
is now private. Roads, for instance, could be returned with
easements and right-of-ways; shares could be distributed to
those who actually use, and pay for, the roads. How many
more hundreds of billions of dollars of &quot;stimulus money&quot;,
under the Keynesian “economic” logic that government
spending can really “boost the economy” by increasing
government expenditures, can be tolerated before we call
their plans crazy, such as the lunacy of the current one
trillion dollar proposal by socialist Donald Trump in the
name of &quot;creating jobs&quot; that threatens to dwarf Obama’s
We are asked every election season to raise ever more
money for the projects they claimed could be completed last
year. The police always claim to have budget shortfalls;
taxpayers never “give” them enough. And if cuts to the
budget are threatened, government officials always threaten
to cut police funding first.
But if the taxpayers resisted these hollow bribes, perhaps
that would allow the police to prioritize their actions to
starve their funding, which could mean less cruising around
harassing people in traffic, less drug raids, less tickets for
&quot;driving without a license&quot;, and less involvement in enforcing
the many non-crimes on the books for which they've signed
up to shoot and cage people. Maybe then they could increase
their falling response times for real crimes against people
and property; a number that has over the past few years
increased by critical minutes.
In the column “Between the Lines” by Ralph Routon of the
Colorado Springs Independent , the recent bi-partisan
support of raising taxes from the Colorado legislature is
cheered as a solution. But eventually, one would think, the
taxpayers are going to reason that it is ridiculous they are
being asked for more money while the monopolized product
being offered to them in return is deteriorating in quality.
What gives? Such would never be acceptable from a private
business for a product t get worse, yet if you don’t keep
purchasing it you have to get thrown in a cage. Such would
be clearly criminal, and contrary to what we know now: walk
into a business, and if you don’t like what they offer, you take
your business elsewhere and abstain or boycott.

And eventually, maybe they will see through the bad
economics of it all, too. The basic economics behind what
government has socialized is that (1) prices ration a scarce
supply of goods, and they reach a level which is appropriate
for the current supply and demand for those resources, and
such prices are removed when they are no longer goods or
services of the market; and (2) that anything which is &quot;free&quot;
to consume, though we know it is not without costs as many
socialists would like you to assume, will be now be
over-consumed; hence potholes, traffic congestion, endless
construction, teacher shortages, police shortages, and an
overall inability to allocate resources effectively.
We could use any example to make the point. Take public
utilities. Any arbitrary price above the would-be market price
is an effective monopoly price because it would be cheaper if
left to the competitive market, and any price below the
would-be market price is going to cause a shortage because
it's being consumed at a rate higher than would be permitted
otherwise for whatever level of scarcity exists for that
product. It makes it impossible for the government to
allocate the proper number of teachers, policeman,
roads—everything. They simply don’t know.
The problem applies to anything socialized. How do they
know what price to charge? How much should the officers be
paid? How many of them are needed? Where should they be
placed, and what should they be doing? Why can they never
budget? Everything the government does is purely arbitrary.
Unless these things are determined by voluntary demand in
accordance with consumers' subjective preferences (and this,
too, is important, for the one-size-fits-all package of
government is not what everyone desires), then they're not
genuine market prices, and therefore a costly misallocation
in resources that makes us poorer will result.
Another economic view is that it is an increase in the supply
of any product which drives down its price, and government
being inherently monopolistic suppresses competition. Its
taxation discourages production; licensing or other
restrictions to entry into the market can be used to protect
the established firms and punish the new entrants; etc. The
effect is to reduce competition. This is evident in the field of
healthcare where people are not free to practice medicine
without state approval, and so the prices of the services will
rise upon the artificially shortened supply of providers.
A quick Google search reveals that the average cost of
schooling across the U.S. in the government's schools is
$10,000 per student! I'd think it would be difficult to defend
that the cost of supposedly &quot;educating&quot; a child would be
higher without the government. Indeed, it would be much
less of a burden to the taxpayers were they free to choose
themselves between various educators competing for the
business of providing their children's education. In addition,
compulsory attendance laws must be considered a morally
indefensible kidnapping of children, and there’s an ethical
dilemma altogether in forcing anyone into funding such
things they [socialists] value.

(Continued on pg. 6)


Parents and children should be free; school administrators
and parents should stop bickering about how to fix it all and
suggest instead an ending of the government monopoly on
education once and for all.
We must ask by what criteria is it exactly that decides what
should be a public good and provided by government and
what should be a private good and left to the market? My
guess is that there isn't one. They are based in emotion. If it
is the supposed non-excludability of use, then there is a weak
argument for why this might apply to the military, with
which I would still not agree, but road use, libraries, schools,
etc., can all obviously be funded by the people who use them
and have their benefits contained to those users. For that
matter, many presently private goods under this criterion
could fit the role of public good and vice versa.
It is an absurdity of socialist logic that since I supposedly
&quot;benefit from a more educated society&quot; that I should be
forced to fund public schooling. When I read a book, do my
neighbors owe me money? When one enjoys the sights of
good-looking good-smelling people for the day, should they
be compelled to pay up?
All of this is a part of the great conflation of government
and society that assumes if the government does not provide
the service or product, said service or product will not be
provided whatever. Government itself has become
synonymous with the supposed “essential services” of which
it has taken control.
There is no reason “the roads”, a seemingly built-in
response which has become an instant talking point when
proposing to someone that we do away with government,
cannot be privatized like any other good or service that
currently is. That is the solution. Rather than what the
Independent proposes, that &quot;we should be kicking and
screaming for our [county's] fair share [of the state's tax
revenue] &quot;, we should be kicking and screaming to end the
expropriation of our resources for government plundering
and waste which knows no end.

[The following is the first of a series, to be continued in
subsequent issues, which will reprint segments of an
essay entitled “Anatomy of the State,” penned by
libertarian author and theorist Murray Rothbard. In
Part 1, Rothbard offers a definition of the State, and
makes the strong distinction between the State and the
people it rules.]

— What the State is Not —

The State is almost universally considered an
institution of social service. Some theorists venerate the
State as the apotheosis of society; others regard it as an
amiable, though often inefficient, organization for
achieving social ends; but almost all regard it as a
necessary means for achieving the goals of mankind, a
means to be ranged against the “private sector” and
often winning in this competition of resources.

With the rise of democracy, the identification of the
State with society has been redoubled, until it is
common to hear sentiments expressed which violate
virtually every tenet of reason and commonsense such
“we” has enabled an ideological camouflage to be
government,” then anything a government does to an
individual is not only just and untyrannical but also
“voluntary” on the part of the individual concerned. If
the government has incurred a huge public debt which
must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of
another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying
that “we owe it to ourselves”; if the government
conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident
nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning,
any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not
murdered; instead, they must have “committed
suicide,” since they were the government (which was
democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the
government did to them was voluntary on their part.
One would not think it necessary to belabor this point,
and yet the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this
fallacy to a greater or lesser degree.
family” getting together to decide mutual problems, if it
Briefly, the State is that organization in society which
attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and
only organization in society that obtains its revenue not
by voluntary contribution or payment for services
rendered but by coercion. While other individuals or
institutions obtain their income by production of goods
and services and by the peaceful and voluntary sale of
these goods and services to others, the State obtains its
and the threat of the jailhouse and the bayonet. Having
used force and violence to obtain its revenue, the State
generally goes on to regulate and dictate the other
actions of its individual subjects. One would think that
simple observation of all States through history and
over the globe would be proof enough of this assertion;
but the miasma of myth has lain so long over State
activity that elaboration is necessary.
government; the government is not “us.” The
government does not in any accurate sense “represent”
percent of the people decided to murder the remaining
30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be
voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered
minority. No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant
permitted to obscure this basic fact.
[To be continued in the next segment: “What the State
Is.” The whole essay can be downloaded online for free
by searching “Anatomy of the State.”]


— What is Voluntaryism? —
[Voluntaryism is a political philosophy which states
that the initiation of violence against people or
property, i.e. aggression, is never morally justified,
and recognizes that such aggression is the very
foundation of the State. In each issue we will look to
the philosophy’s adherents to answer the question
“What is Voluntaryism?]

Jim Davidson gives us this:
&quot;If we are self-owners (and it is absurd, it is doing
individual, nor a majority, nor a government can have
rights of ownership in other men.&quot; ~ Auberon Edward
William Molyneux Herbert, 1885
One of the originators of the concept of voluntaryism
was Auberon Herbert who lived from 1838 to 1906, and
saw what I believe to be one of the major peaks of
contemporary civilisation. Herbert believed that each one
of us is the owner of himself or herself. Self-ownership is
the basis for a propertarian philosophy that I have always
found agreeable. Simply stated, because you own yourself,
you have no obligation to be compelled by anyone else.
You don't have to obey anyone unless you yourself choose
to obey, for whatever reasons.
Put it the other way around: nobody else owns you. And,
from your ownership of yourself, you can see that what
are termed &quot;rights&quot; are actually characteristics of you in
your normal state of being. You say what you please, not
because you are granted a &quot;right&quot; or a &quot;privilege&quot; of free
speech, but because it is natural for you to speak your
mind as you see fit. You keep and bear arms to defend
yourself - whatever arms are available to you from knives
to high powered rifles to flame throwers to whatever you
see fit - because your ability to defend your interests is
inherent in your ownership of yourself. A property you
cannot defend does not remain yours for long.
To me, voluntaryism is about a society based on
agreement, on consent, not by some few who signed a
document a couple centuries ago, but on universal
consent. I've read and signed L. Neil Smith's covenant of
Unanimous consent: www.lneilsmith.org/new-cov.html
There is no &quot;social contract,&quot; and the liar, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, who came up with this fiction was known as
the &quot;enemy of mankind&quot; by Voltaire, who was quite the
judge of character.

(continued - over)

The only contract that can exist is one you enter
knowingly, willingly, competently, and with exchange
between the parties. As Lysander Spooner once
noted, you have to get a copy, so you know what you
are obligated to do. Neither the constitution nor this
imaginary social contract are in any way obligations
on you.
Most of all, for me, voluntaryism is about abolishing
slavery. Abolishing it in all its forms, and for all time.
As John Brown once said, &quot;I acknowledge no master
in human form.&quot; God made mankind free, and
created us equal, endowed with capacities to think,
feel, speak, act, defend, create, and make our world
better. What we do with ourselves is, individually, up
to each one of us. [See extensive bio in article below]

Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow
Up to Be Socialists, non-aggressive
parenting column by Melissa Rajkovich
I never force my kids to share their property, e.g.,
toys, clothes, etc., because I believe that there is a
value to sharing if it’s voluntary. When I teach
children lessons about interacting and socializing
with others I allow them the autonomy to learn from
their experience. When my children understand that
they have control over their property they learn that
they are respected and this builds their
self-confidence. It also encourages them to
understand that respect is a two-way street.
Often my son or daughter will want the other’s toy,
sometimes it’s freely given, other times the request is
denied. While there can be disappointment with the
latter reaction, it’s a lesson to be learned for them.
Because one of the principles that I live and teach by
is that stealing is wrong. To implement this
experience early on and to remain consistent with this
as I guide them to the best I know how. And often my
children do choose to share, because they know it
makes their sibling happy and that at another time
the favor will be returned.
To dispel the idea of authority as early as possible,
it’s important that I teach my children that they can
make decisions for themselves when the situation
allows it. (I am speaking of their voluntary
interactions, not of situations that are possibly life
threatening to their well-being.)

(continued on pg. 9)


— When the News is the New News — Article by Paotie Dawson
In the Pikes Peak region over the last couple weeks,
public angst over local media outlets reached a
crescendo when John Weiss, owner and publisher of the
Colorado Springs Independent, led a public protest
against the Gazette, the city’s only daily newspaper.
Blog posts from the Independent reflect a deep-seated
animus towards the conservative daily. Reading both
newspapers’ social media accounts suggests public
opinion regarding either news outlet varies by the hour,
though it is common to see folks cheer one outlet while
jeering the other.
Unfortunately, the reality of the media wars in the
Pikes Peak region is a bit different than what the Indy
would have you believe. While it is true the Gazette uses
its media presence to influence public support for its
political ideals, the Independent’s owners do the same
in Manitou Springs, albeit in a different format with
profound consequences for the city, its public officials
and the public they serve.
A lack of a true, journalist-based outlet has led to
widespread political apathy and extreme political
polarization within the city. While a majority of folks in
the city are active in terms of state and national politics,
they don’t go to local meetings or city council sessions,
nor do they particularly have any form of objective news
to depend on to make informed decisions. Only the
Manitou Marquee has produced quality journalism
regarding a single bridge (a story the Bulletin ignored,
too.) Meanwhile, the city websites provide
difficult-to-access information, and city officials have
adopted the tactic of demanding folks sign up for
“interviews” to discuss anything related to city
government, further compounding the lack of
information available to the public.
For years, the Pikes Peak Bulletin printed mainly
pro-government articles friendly to the whims and
plans of bureaucrats. That hasn’t changed; but what has
changed in the last couple years is the Bulletin’s
expansion of its already pro-government views, a direct
result of Weiss’ purchase of the Bulletin. This is in sharp
contrast to how the Independent, the Bulletin’s sister
newspaper, operates in Colorado Springs as a single
reporter provides comprehensive, critical and
sometimes challenging coverage of most city council
and governmental activities.

Rather than face potential transparency and
accountability measures, Manitou Springs politicians
know they can depend on the Bulletin to play defense,
protect their plans, and attack (and even ignore) those
who challenge city officials. A terrible consequence of
this has been total indifference by too many bureaucrats
and city officials, including the mayor, towards the
general public. Conversely, this reinforces the general
public apathy and frustrations towards the local
For too long, the Gazette has dominated politics in the
Pikes Peak region. It favors cronyism and boondoggle
projects that reward their political friends. They print
what would otherwise be known as fake news stories
regarding recreational marijuana and frequently cater
to the Reefer Madness crowd in holy pursuit of
outlawing the harmless plant. And this is to say nothing
of the outrageously bad idea called the City for
Champions project in Colorado Springs the Gazette
continues to push.
But I live in Manitou Springs, and my focus today is on
my city. The Gazette rarely publishes anything
regarding city government in Manitou Springs, as do
many of the other Colorado Springs television and radio
outlets. I have no real beef with the Gazette with
regards to Manitou Springs, other than not doing
enough reporting. But the Bulletin is a different story
altogether, especially since it concerns its owners and
editors are part of their own news stories.
In 2015, I ran for City Council in Manitou Springs and
was invited to a candidate forum at a local and private
inn. As part of accepting the invitation, I requested
signed language interpreters (I am deaf) to assist me
during the forum. For weeks leading up to the forum,
Ralph Routon published columns in the Bulletin,
bragging about how he would “help a candidate” by
providing signed language interpreters to the forum.
What he didn’t tell his audience was the fact the
Bulletin sent an underling to Manitou Springs City
Council to plead poverty and request city funds to pay
for the signed language interpreters. In fact, at the
conclusion of the meeting, I approached City Attorney
Jeff Parker and asked him how he could support
funding the interpreters for what was essentially a
private event held on private property (Cont. pg. 14)


(continued from pg. 13)

(he expressed surprise and
acknowledged I made a great point; when he asked why
I didn’t tell the Council the same thing, I replied,
“Nobody asked me.”)
But it should be noted the Independent routinely
projects an image of helping marginalized and poor
communities, and Mr. Routon’s attempt at doing the
same for me presents a problem: there were no signed
language interpreters at the forum, which put me into a
rather difficult spot. More striking, it seems Mr. Routon
is incapable of understanding the position I found
myself in without any signed language interpreters.
Compassion and empathy may not be Mr. Routon’s
strong points.
In fact, when it was pointed out there were no
interpreters at the forum, Bulletin staffers, including
Mr. Routon, did nothing. They continued eating their
meals. While Mr. Routon would later give me a
handwritten list of questions to be asked of all the
candidates, only a Citizen’s Project (which co-hosted
the forum) employee went to the Bulletin staff and
informed them they needed to provide the interpreters
or face legal consequences. Long story short: I opted to
stay at the forum and participated as best I could. (In
hindsight, I should have left but that’s another story for
another day.) I will forever be grateful to the Citizen’s
Project for advocating on my behalf that night at the
candidate forum.
I have never received an apology from Mr. Routon, nor
has he ever printed an apology or taken accountability
for his failure to live up to his own promises. More
importantly, his failure constituted news, but because
he was part and parcel of that failure, the Bulletin (and
the Independent) did not report news created by its
own editorialist.
So I read with interest a recent Independent article in
which Mr. Routon states, writing about errors and
biases at the Gazette, “ … reflects on every editor on the
staff, especially when we've still not seen any kind of
correction in print.”
Right. So, where’s your correction, Mr. Routon? You
know, it is a bit of interesting news when a newspaper
columnist brags about doing something for weeks and
then fails to deliver, and even more striking, fails to be
compassionate or empathetic about the person(s)
impacted by his failure, and this is a guy who claims to
help marginalized and poor communities. I am of those
communities, too.
( continued over)

So, while Colorado Springs rages into the night over
which newspaper is worst, the Gazette or the
Independent, in Manitou Springs, we do not have such
a wonderful luxury. We constantly fight to have our city
government be more transparent, accountable, and
provide a true service for the community. What does
the Bulletin do in that regard? It refuses to bite the
hand that feeds it.
I have hope, though: through the years, there have
been numerous attempts at citizen journalism and
blogging, and as previously mentioned, the relatively
new Manitou Marquee, in addition to the Front Range
Voluntaryist, are signs that the existing media power
structure, as it were, is being challenged across the
Pikes Peak region.
And that’s a great thing because voters, residents and
stakeholders in the Pikes Peak region deserve
information from different viewpoints and not just
those from the two major newspaper outlets who seem
content to manipulate the public to serve the
publishers’ political goals. No real shocking news here.
But someone should remind the Independent they are
the weekly version of the Gazette. [Paotie Dawson is
our libertarian contributor from Manitou Springs]

(continued from pg. 7 - Non-aggressive
What I notice is that this empowerment gives them a
chance to learn respect for others and themselves. They
become more aware of how they interact with others,
the concept of setting boundaries, and teaches them
responsibility. The more I can give my children these
opportunities, the more independent and self-reliant
they become. If I am consistent with my actions while
my children are learning, then I am confident they will
live their lives, taking responsibility for themselves and
creating a peaceful world.

[Melissa Rajkovich, Enemy of the State, is a
parent of two children. She is involved the Non
Aggression Parenting Podcast, Anarchy Among
Friends Roundtable Podcast, and is a contributor
to the Voluntary Agrarian and Anarchista
Musings facebook pages.]

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