Motorcycle Riders Foundation Announces the Freedom Fighters Hall of Fame
Motorcycling remains as one of the last true bastions of Freedom. The independence and exhilaration of being “in the wind” can only be understood and appreciated by those who experience it.
We all know that “freedom is not free”, and for six decades many people have worked tirelessly to insure the rights of motorcyclists. The patriots of the motorcyclists’ rights movement aren’t in the fight for fame or fortune, which is good, because neither tend to find them.
There are awards and even halls of fame for motorcycling, but those that work to preserve and protect our chosen lifestyle have often been overlooked in favor of racers and celebrities. We do not question that those folks are deserving of accolades, we are simply stating that the true Freedom Fighters have not received the recognition that they have earned.
To address this, the Motorcycle Riders Foundation (MRF) is proud to announce the creation of the Motorcycle Riders Foundation Freedom Fighters Hall of Fame (MRF HOF). The permanent display will be housed with other MRF artifacts at the ABATE of Indiana State Office in Bargersville, Indiana.
The first inductee will be announced at the MRF Meeting of the Minds conference in Denver, Colorado on September 22, 2018.
Through the years, a number of people from the bikers’ rights community have been a part of various halls of fame and the MRF wishes to include them as well. The MRF HOF will announce a number of Legacy Inductees each year until those deserving recognition in the MRF HOF are featured here, in addition to their previous distinction.
The MRF wishes to thank our State Motorcyclists’ Rights Organization (SMRO) partners and all of the people that work vigilantly to preserve, protect and promote motorcycling so that future generations can enjoy the freedom of the road.
For information contact the Motorcycle Riders Foundation at 202-546-0983 or mrfoffice@mrf.org
Lowering the speed limit increases speeding ticket revenue by 47%
Boston’s “Vision Zero” Exposed: Lowering the speed limit increases speeding ticket revenue by 47%: NMA E-Newsletter #506
Boston’s “Vision Zero” Exposed: Lowering the speed limit increases speeding ticket revenue by 47%: NMA E-Newsletter #506From guest writer Joe Cadillic of the MassPrivatel Blog
All across the country, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is hard at work convincing cities to lower their speed limits to 25 MPH.
The national effort to lower speed limits in cities is a fundamental tenet of a movement known as “Vision Zero.”
To date, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, National Safety Council and the IIHS have convinced more than thirty cities to lower their speed limits.
Last month the IIHS published a controversial report titled “Lowering the speed limit from 30 to 25 mph in Boston: effects on vehicle speeds.” (To learn more about Boston’s Vision Zero program, click here.)
Why is it controversial? NMA President Gary Biller said recently:
“By lowering the posted limit from 30 to 25 mph which resulted in no discernible change to actual traffic speeds or safety statistics, the City of Boston succeeded only in making many more safe drivers “violators” to be fined as involuntary contributors to the city’s coffers.”
TheNewspaper.com pointed out how the IIHS cherry-picked data to convince the public that lowering the speed limit 5 MPH saves lives.
“IIHS researchers produced the figures after gathering off-peak speed data from October through December 2016 to serve as “before” data. This was compared with data from September through November 2017, the “after” period. In Boston, the mean speed of traffic when the speed limit signs read 30 MPH was 24.8 MPH. After Boston installed 25 MPH signs, mean speeds remained 24.8 MPH. Likewise, the 85th percentile speed (the speed that the vast majority, 85 percent were traveling), remained 31 MPH. Mean speeds increased by just 0.1 MPH in the “after” period in Providence, Rhode Island, that IIHS used as a control group because the speed limits did not change in that city.”
In the report the IIHS admits that the “average and 85th percentile speeds did not change meaningfully.”
If lowering the speed limit 5 MPH doesn’t change the 85th percentile meaningfully then why do it?
As NMA Foundation Executive Director James C. Walker said “Only the IIHS could take those facts and claim that anything meaningful happened relative to safety or anything else.”
Why is the mainstream media silent, as cities find new ways to scam the public? Because cities and towns are cash-strapped and need to come up with novel ways to increase revenue.
Vision Zero increases ticket revenue by 47%
Cities like Boston who have lowered their speed limit 5 MPH have seen a huge increase in speeding ticket revenue.
According to TheNewspaper.com article, Boston Police have issued 47% more speeding tickets since lowering the speed limit.
“Because the speed limit was lowered, however, “speeding” increased to 47 percent of traffic, compared to just 18 percent before the change in speed limit.”
Three reasons not to trust the IIHS.
1.) Insurance executives from across the gamut control the IIHS Board of Directors. For example, the current chair, William Windsor, Jr. is Associate VP, office of Consumer Safety for Nationwide Insurance. The chair-elect is Angela Spark, VP for State Farm Insurance Companies. Insurance companies absolutely have a vested interest in the IIHS both financially and any messaging on speed limits and Vision Zero.
2.) The IIHS staff regularly write and promote pro-insurance company reports and IIHS officials testify before Congress to further the nonprofit’s goals of reducing speed to increase tickets and points on licenses.
3.) In 2016, the IIHS admitted to secretly using facial recognition cameras to spy on motorists and passengers for three years.
“Why precisely the insurance industry advocates felt the need to capture facial images of drivers and compare that to personal data in DMV records is a mystery,” NMA president Gary Biller told TheNewspaper.com. “Identifying drivers isn’t germane to the horsepower versus speed question.”
Vision Zero appears to be nothing more than a scam to pad city budgets and increase auto insurance companies’ profits by raising customers’ rates for anyone caught speeding.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of the author.
Clemency system may get overhaul
White House aims to add discipline to its process
Gregory Korte
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – When Alveda King was invited to the White House last month, the Atlanta pastor and niece of Martin Luther King Jr. brought with her a list of more than 90 names – all federal prison inmates seeking presidential clemency.
King’s list was compiled with the help of her goddaughter Angela Stanton, an Atlanta author (“Lies of a Real Housewife”) and reality show cast member (BET’s “From the Bottom Up”) who served time in prison herself for her part in a stolen car ring.
Last week, another reality television star – Kim Kardashian West – appeared at the White House, with the lawyer for Chris Young, a Tennessee man serving a mandatory life sentence for drug trafficking. Along with other law professors and advocates, she got a meeting with top advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s daughter and son-in-law.
And a loose coalition of activist groups, criminal justice reform advocates and lawyers – all coordinated by the conservative Koch Institute – has been assembling a list of thousands of prisoners they believe are worthy of the president’s constitutional power to pardon crimes and commute sentences.
Those efforts highlight what’s been an often chaotic, ad hoc approach to clemency under President Donald Trump. He has granted pardons to people who haven’t applied for them, bypassed the formal Justice Department review process, and focused his pardon power on a handful of politically charged, high-profile cases.
Now, the White House is attempting to instill some discipline to the process as part of what they hope will become a signature piece of Trump’s efforts at criminal justice reform.
That’s according to participants at a White House meeting last week, in which officials heard from a dozen law professors, advocates and attorneys that the clemency system is broken.
The meeting was convened by Ivanka Trump and Kushner – but neither the president nor the White House lawyers participated. A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House discussions, said the White House counsel’s office was engaged in the effort and looking at several options for how to overhaul the system.
President Barack Obama relied on the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which has handled pardons and commutations in one form or another since 1865. That office processed more than 20,000 applications through his clemency initiative, an effort to effectively resentence drug offenders serving long minimum sentences for what are now considered more minor drug offenses.
Trump has taken the opposite approach, granting pardons with no input from the pardon attorney. But those who do have input often are celebrities, political commentators and Republican insiders.
He pardoned conservative author Dinesh D’Souza on the recommendation of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. His posthumous pardon of heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson came after a personal plea from actor Sylvester Stallone.
Other cases were championed by Fox News and other conservative media outlets: His first pardon, of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, came days after he telegraphed the decision in a Fox News interview. Former vice presidential aide Scooter Libby, former
Navy submariner Kristian Saucier, and Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond were also favored by conservative commentators.
He’s offered pardons to two celebrities who appeared on his hit television franchise “The Apprentice”: lifestyle guru Martha Stewart and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
“People don’t understand. The White House has an open-door policy, believe it or not,” said King, the Atlanta evangelist who brought the White House a list in August.
Stanton, in turn, had help from such advocacy groups as Can-Do Clemency and the Buried Alive Project.
The list includes:
Michelle West of Michigan, a first time offender who has served 25 years of a life sentence on drug charges but who – like Alice Johnson, a 63-year-old Memphis grandmother who Trump released from prison in May after her cause received a boost from Kardashian West – was denied clemency by Obama.
Santra Rucker of Maryland, who has served 19 years of a 23-year sentence for a drug conspiracy and was twice denied by Obama.
Michael Pellatier, a 62-year-old paraplegic man from Maine who has served 12 years of a life sentence for marijuana trafficking.
King was reluctant to
discuss the list and was careful to note that she didn’t hand the list directly to Trump. “I didn’t just put a list in the president’s hands and say, ‘Be sure to let these people out,’ ” she said.
Bas Cops Still Planting Drugs On People
Prisoners arrested by fired deputy released
Wester accused of planting drugs during traffic stops
Jeff Burlew
Tallahassee Democrat USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA
A judge vacated sentences of at least eight people in state prisons and correctional facilities who were arrested by a former Jackson County deputy accused of ginning up traffic stops and planting drugs on unsuspecting drivers.
Circuit Judge Christopher Patterson entered the orders Wednesday in the Jackson County Courthouse in Marianna, about an hour’s drive west of Tallahassee. State Attorney Glenn Hess also announced in court documents that charges would be dropped in the cases, all of which involved former Deputy Zachary Wester.
“(An) investigation conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office into the professional conduct of Deputy Zach Wester has revealed facts that undermine the state’s confidence in the case,” Hess wrote in documents filed in each of the cases.
Patterson also ordered Jackson County Sheriff Lou Roberts to take custody of at least five of the inmates, transport them back to the county and release them immediately.
The inmates, all of whom were convicted on methamphetamine and other drug charges, were being held at correctional facilities from Quincy to Lake City. One of the inmates had been arrested twice by Wester, according to court records.
Meanwhile, the State Attorney’s Office said charges have been dropped against 32 other defendants who were arrested between 2016 and 2018, when Wester worked as a patrol deputy for the Sheriff’s Office. One of the defendants was a juvenile.
Hess on Wednesday said his office is reviewing a total of 263 cases involving Wester dating back two years.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement opened an investigation into Westeron Aug. 1 at the request of the Sheriff’s Office. The case is open and ongoing, and no charges have been filed against him. Wester, 26, of Marianna, was fired Sept. 10.
No one answered the door at Wester’s home off Highway 71 in Marianna after a reporter knocked on Wednesday afternoon. His attorney, Steve Meadows of Panama City, told reporters he would not comment on the pending case.
Hess told the Tallahassee Democrat on Wednesday that he lost confidence in Wester after seeing the deputy’s body camera video from a Feb. 15 arrest of an Alford woman, Teresa Odom, on charges of possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.
In the video, Wester can be seen holding something in his left hand before he begins searching the woman’s pickup truck and finding a similar-looking item, presumably the meth. The Democrat obtained a copy of the video on Wednesday; the State Attorney’s Office released it to media outlets on Thursday.
Wester went to work for the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in May 2016. Before that, he worked about nine months as a deputy for the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office. He worked under the previous Liberty County sheriff, Nick Finch, and members of the command staff under Sheriff Joe White were unfamiliar with him until news broke on Wednesday.
“We are fully prepared to work with FDLE and the State Attorney’s Office if they wish to conduct a review of any case files or case records,” said Liberty County Capt. John Summers.
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee. com or follow @Jeff-Burlew on Twitter.
Woman sues Samsung for $1.8M after cell phone gets stuck inside her vagina
An Albuquerque woman is suing Samsung for $1.8 million after she necessitated medical attention after inserting her cell phone inside her vagina and was unable to retrieve it for 96 hours.
Salma Briant, 39, claims her medical bills at the University of New Mexico Hospital amount to $1,168,000 and that she has suffered from severe psychological distress because of the whole ordeal.
Briant said she first inserted the cell phone inside her vagina as a dare from one of her friends but quickly realized that the phone would not come out.
“I wanted to see how it would feel to put my cell phone on vibration mode inside of me, just for fun, but it soon turned out to be a nightmare,” she told judge Andrew Peterson in tears.
“Samsung is definitely at fault here as they offer no warning about the dangers and potential risks during the insertion of their products inside their clients male or female body cavities or genitals” Salma Briant’s lawyer, Jim McAfee said in court.
A Samsung spokesman said they would not comment on this case at this moment but explained that an out-of-court settlement was still an option on the table.
Apple faced a similar lawsuit in 2014 after a man had attempted to swallow fourteen iPhones and ended up in the emergency room for mercury poisoning.
Apple was eventually forced to legally specify that their products were not fit for human consumption and the man was conceded an undisclosed amount of money.
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