Funny thing about political extremes... it doesn't matter whether you get there by moving right or by moving left, both end up with massive loss of liberty. Conservatives recognize this and try to guard against it (see, for example, the Libertarians). Liberals tend to get all balled up in economic "justice" and have a huge blind spot to their brand of totalitarianism. Without economic liberty, civil liberty is meaningless. In less than 4 months, the great and powerful O has transformed the USA into a socialist economy with hardly a voice of opposition, all in the name of economic justice.

My point of view - shaded by the fact I work for the man and in fact have quite a bit of access into peoples bidness is -

Any feints or displays of bravery were long over due a decade or two ago. Whimpering about it on the internet is no supplement for true bravery.. its just simply what we called a BMC - a *****, moan, and complaint.

As of this moment, the vast majority of us bow our knee, write out our written prayer for granting, pay our tax and receive various licensing and registrants from your king granting you your mere privilege to engage in various modes of transportation and means of making a living. Once your prayer is granted by your king you then pay annual or biannual homage to your king to maintain said privilege - ie you are a slave granted privileges for tax properly rendered.

There goes your bravery - right into your wallet as a form of laminated card as proof of said privileged granted pursuant to duty paid - or perhaps even prominently displayed on a wall of your chosing in a cute little frame.

And you can be assured that the enforcement side of your king, of whom I am a slave, has no problem utterly destroying your existence should you even feint a display of bravery.

Bravery, is dead.

Arbiter having your email address is nothing compared to what my little computer at work has access to.

So forget it.

It is finished.

I, as an umpire, provide a service. That being said my "customers" are legion. I serve the game, the governing body that sanctions the games, the officials association, the local association, my assigner, the players, the coaches, the parents, the grandparents ad nauseum. The Arbiter is simply a tool to serve my customers more efficiently and professionaly, nothing more.
My full time profession is a Soldier. My political orientation is Libertarian. I consider personal freedoms to be holy and worthy of laying down my life for. I can't for the life of me see the correlation between doing BUSINESS and some of the basic informational requirements and an encroachment into your personal freedom.

I belong to several groups that use arbiter. Each group does not see my assignments, all they can see is that I have an assignment. For example if the high school group has assigned me a game, the college assigner will see that I am assigned and then cannot assign me a game. He doesn't know what level I am working etc.

Your local association needs to have their own group in arbiter and the state association their own group. In this scenario the shared calendar works perfectly.

Being able to use 1 calendar to put in blocks etc... sure beats the old system of calling or e-mailing different assigners on days that I cannot work. Most of the time they would lose this info or not even look at it. Arbiter gives them this info at their fingertip.

Didn't we have a discussion a while back about Arbiter selling its clients' information to third parties? According to their privacy statement, it certainly looks like they feel they have the right to sell it. They say you have the option to opt out, but having seen what I have seen in the IT field, I don't trust anyone with my personal information. Period.

It's not just bravery that's dead. Privacy has long been a thing of the past.

I don't disagree and I don't believe it is the gathering of data.

The problem is the distrust of how the data is used/abused by those who shouldn't be near it.

And we all know the conservatives don't have blind spots in their brand of totalitarianism. :rolleyes:

I think "their" plan is working . What do they say divide and conquer...:cool:

If I were King of the galaxy for a day we would have "Queensryche" for a day. Everybody would be forced to listen to "OPERATION MINDCRIME" all day until they get the message.:D

I can tell you don't read much conservative commentary, especially the criticism of some of the Bush policies.

Politics is for another forum, guys.

My fault, accidentally started it, hoping this will be last. :(

Any comments or suggestions about Ref-Pay for new subscribers?

Party pooper! :cool: