Tangent Man wrote:My apologies Bob, What I really meant to write in that meme but failed was,
Rosa Parks wrote:When I learned that Bob KrazyScrewLooseKey compared his struggles to mine, I rolled over in my grave.
Jonathan, your junior high school attempt at "argument by name mangling" is a sad reflection of what you've become since your accidents.
Doug, I appreciate your attempts to find an apology in Barton's quote, but it's not there. Here's Barton's full quote addressed to me:
Barton wrote:I’ve seen you lie through your teeth about flying beyond the boundaries as stated in the rules at Torrey, i.e flying north of the bathtub, regret I didn’t call you on it the day Robin was drillin you for that, so I know you are not a saint, by any stretch of the imagination. I just didn’t want to get involved in your delusional perception that you were above the rules of authorized airspace. If I only was flying with a camera that day, could I show you, you were way over the line….
Again, while I appreciate your efforts, that quote is clearly calling me a liar, and his "apology" is more like "I'm sorry I didn't call you a liar back in 2010" than an apology for having made a false accusation earlier in that same paragraph.
Doug, you also mention insurance ... which Barton and several others are trying to avoid. You wrote:
Also when you tell people on this forum to not donate and fly without insurance, especially those with assets, you are opening them up for financial destruction should a mishap occur.
The lawyers will descend on them like a pack of wolves
Let's be clear. I am advising people not to donate directly to USHPA and to instead build up a pile of Sylmar money that Sylmar can use to become a controlling and owning member of the RRG along with the other investors. These "investors" will be calling the shots as to who can join the RRG and who they will insure. They will also be the ones setting the rates that pilots (and clubs) pay to use the money that they donated. I used the Green Bay Packers analogy to point out that ownership of their own NFL franchise has spared them from the economics which have robbed other small communities of their teams. I am also critical of USHPA for structuring the self-insurance initiative as an RRG without exploring other mechanisms such as mutuals (first suggested to me by "Red" on hanggliding.org).
I am also advocating that the sport of hang gliding should be working to make insurance an option - not a requirement. Your fear that someone might sue you should not be a requirement for another pilot to buy insurance. Those decisions should be up to each individual pilot based on their own flying abilities, risk reduction strategies, and financial capabilities. In this country, we are bleeding ourselves to death through increasing requirements for "liability insurance". These large sums of money pooled in insurance companies that feeds the wolves you've mentioned.
As a side note, the creeping requirements for liability insurance in more and more aspects of our lives will strangle our economy and our freedom. The assumption behind liability insurance is that you MUST have the financial backing to cover any damage that you might cause - intentionally or not. This is not a sustainable model and it will keep us from flying hang gliders, owning guns, owning kitchen knives, selling hot coffee, and voicing our opinions in public. All of those things (and many more) create a possibility to cause damages in excess of our ability to pay for them. REQUIRED liability insurance is becoming a limitation on our otherwise constitutionally protected freedoms. I am not against liability insurance, but it must remain a voluntary decision made by the individual - and not a requirement to participate in any otherwise legal activity. Landowners certainly have the right to require insurance if they feel the need, but the recreational use statutes were specifically enacted to protect them from that need. We should be using those statutes. Individual pilots who feel that their flying styles might expose them to high liabilities should be free to negotiate insurance of any kind without placing that requirement on those who don't.