Right To Repair
The Right to Repair has become an important issue in America. Companies have become so powerful that they are destroying our system of capitalism. When you buy many products today, you are basically renting them. When something you 100% own breaks, you have to upgrade or turn to the company for expensive repairs.
A few weeks ago I read that President Joe Biden had signed an executive order that supported people’s Right to Repair. The executive order targeted anti-competitive practices in tech, healthcare, banking, and other key parts of the economy. The order has 72 actions that would lower prices for families, increase wages for workers, promote innovation, and foster economic growth. New regulations that agencies may write to translate his policy into rules could trigger epic legal battles, however.
I thought that was strange for the president to be implementing a rule that should go through Congress. It turns out there is already a law that guarantees the people’s Right to Repair, but companies have decided to ignore the law. Apple and John Deere are two notorious firms for violating the Right to Repair law.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak spoke out on the issue during a recent appearance on Cameo, a website. In a post to Louis Rossmann, a YouTube personality and a right-to-repair advocate, Wozniak said that he was “totally supportive” of the cause — which gives consumers the right and information to fix their own devices — and somewhat “emotionally” affected by it.
“I do a lot of Cameos, but this one has really gotten to me,” he said in the nine-minute video. “We wouldn’t have had an Apple had I not grown up in a very open technology world.
Wozniak, who co-founded Apple 45 years ago with Steve Jobs, said that enabling others to retool their devices also has commercial value. He pointed to the success of the Apple II computer, which he said was “modifiable and extendable to the maximum” and the “only source” of profit for Apple during its first years.
Apple has long faced criticism over policies that restrict where its customers can get their iPhones and other electronics fixed without jeopardizing their warranties. The firm is worth $2.5 trillion, and it is trying to squeeze this last dollar out of each customer.
The iPhone once cost $600, and the same smartphone is now $1,200. Apple will sign contracts with chip firms that bar them from selling replacement chips. It will also block other chips from working in their smartphone, even though it has the same functions.
I had a Samsung Note 2 for seven years that worked fine the whole time I owned it. In late 2019 I realized I needed to upgrade because Samsung had quit supporting my Note 2. What allowed me to have the smartphone for seven years is that I was able to replace the battery two times. Now the battery is tied to the internal parts of the smartphone, which makes it very hard to fix it once the battery dies.
To have John Deere playing this same game shows how bad things have gotten. Farmers need their equipment to work at crucial times during the planting and harvesting seasons. If their tractor is down and a corn crop needs to be harvested, they need to be able to get it fixed fast. John Deere is trying to require that their specialist needs to be on hand for a growing number of issues.
Farmers cannot do simple repairs because they are locked out of their equipment and need special software to unlock it. To get around this, some farmers had begun hacking their tractors with cracked software from Ukraine.
The FTC is moving toward writing new rules targeting the restrictions. A couple of weeks ago, the five FTC commissioners unanimously adopted a policy statement supporting the “Right to Repair” that pledges beefed-up enforcement efforts and could open the way to new regulations.
“These types of (repair) restrictions can significantly raise costs for consumers, stifle innovation, close off business opportunity for independent repair shops, create unnecessary electronic waste, delay timely repairs and undermine resiliency,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said. “The FTC has a range of tools it can use to root out unlawful repair restrictions, and today’s policy statement would commit us to move forward on this issue with new vigor.”
Manufacturers, on the other hand, maintain that repair restrictions are needed to safeguard intellectual property, protect consumers from injuries that could result from fixing a product or using one that was improperly repaired, and guard against cybersecurity risks. Manufacturers say they could face liability or harm to their reputation if independent repair shops make faulty equipment repairs.
I don’t have any faith in the Biden administration’s ability to fix the Right to Repair problem. Big tech companies have lobbyists who help write the laws that regulate their business. They will push for rules that allow them to continue restricting the rights of product owners.
If our nation had a greater moral foundation, we would not have such a problem with the Right to Repair. Because we have largely become a godless nation, I don’t have much hope for consumer’s rights.
“And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5, KJV).
–Todd
Those Attacking Children
Some weeks ago in an article titled “Millstone Milestone,” I addressed the matter of children below the age of accountability going to be with the Lord in the Rapture when He calls believers to Himself. I won’t repeat the reasons ’m convinced God’s Word teaches this truth. Suffice it to say I’ve covered it in lengthy articles, probably to the irritation of some who would disagree with me.
This piece is to try to get our minds around why the tremendous assault on the most innocent among us is raging in culture and society today. By innocent, I mean those too young to be aware of their rebellion and to know they need a Savior to redeem them from the penalty of sin.
We’ve catalogued a number of stories about the debauched human minions who are intent on bringing to the minds of small children and teenagers the most salacious and degrading sensual presentations. I won’t go into detail, because such activity makes any parent or grandparent cringe at the thought of things going on today in this regard. No longer is such activity taking place only within cults or other auspices. Now the activity is right in the face of those of us who want to protect children from the pedophiles who are the perpetrators of this evil.
We recently reported the San Francisco GLBTQ organization that put out the song lauding their cause that has as its lyrics, “We are coming for your children…”. We reported on numerous occasions the transvestites who, with and without parent’s permission, hold readings in libraries and, in some public-school settings, offer presentations that graphically display and verbally describe every sort of perverted sexual activity of their wicked practitioners—some even doing so while dressed in costume that partially expose their nudity.
School boards, in some cases, have approved this assault on children. Thankfully, there are parents who are organizing against this sort of evil.
With regard to the transgender perversions going on, even die-hard feminists are beginning to see the insanity and detriment caused by the satanic attempts to blend the genders. I say “satanic,” because Satan places the ideas from which these perversions flow into activity that is meant to take children’s innocence—to take them from God and his prescription for righteous living.
The attack on children has taken on much more sinister movement toward satanic control. And, again, it is the strange, sudden interjection of the COVID-19 so-called pandemic that is at the heart of the assault.
The following news excerpt gives more about this movement.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recently announced that kids over two years of age should be “masked up” for the upcoming school year. Under the new “guidance” children (including babies in nurseries) will be forced to wear masks until all children can collectively prove they are FULLY VACCINATED with experimental spike proteins. Many parents saw this coercion coming, which is why they appealed to local school officials over the past year to drop the mask mandate in their county.
Now it turns out, the AAP receives the bulk of its funding from Pfizer, a prominent covid-19 vaccine manufacturer. With financial control over the AAP, Pfizer is using medical organizations to gain parental trust, control families and force its products on children.
Pfizer is using the authority of regulatory agencies and medical organizations to enforce mass obedience to their VAX-all agenda. The AAP, bribed and brainwashed into compliance, is taking drug company money and doing as they are told – formalizing the abuse of children and bastardizing medical ethics, parental rights and informed consent. (“Terror and abuse: Pfizer is using the corrupt AAP to push mask mandates on children until they’re all vaccinated,” Lance B. Johnson, Rapture Ready News, July 22, 2021)
I will concede that the above excerpt is taken from a website (Natural News) that is in total opposition to vaccinations the way they have been produced and implemented without sufficient safety measures, in their view, before being injected in the whole population. However, I agree that to force vaccinations of any sort on any free people is counter to the US Constitution and is a thing what only a luciferian mindset would fully embrace. (I’m talking about the mindset of giving the injections to children without their parent’s permission or knowledge.) This is evil, because it takes children out of parental control, responsibility given by God.
When considering the millions of babies murdered in their mothers’ wombs each year, the assaults on the human race can’t be missed by the spiritually attuned mind. If the creature who hates humanity—Satan—wants to destroy humankind (and the Bible plainly says he wants to)—there is compiling evidence of his attempts to carry out that hellish mission.
Those who are wittingly compliant with this attack on children as this Age of Grace dispensation comes to a close are under a most terrifying condemnation. (I speak of those deliberately wanting to harm children, not women who fall for lies about right to choose, etc.)
The Lord Jesus, Himself, makes clear His love for the children He entrusts to the care of earthly parents. He also makes clear condemnation for harm perpetrated upon children if repentance is not forthcoming.
Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:3–6)
—Terry