Welcome to the Reason.com Webathon 2011! We're Looking for 500 Donors to Help Us Promote "Free Minds and Free Markets"!
[Your donations help Reasoners get out in the world and mix it up with conservatives, liberals, and leftists. Here's a clip featuring me on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher talking about reducing carbon footprints, "shared sacrifice," and the like.]
It's time for Reason's annual webathon, where we ask loyal readers of Reason.com and viewers of Reason.tv to spread some (fully tax-deductible!) year-end cheer our way. This website, the print edition of Reason, and the policy shop over at Reason.org are supported by the nonprofit Reason Foundation, which in turn runs on generous support from libertarian folks such as yourselves.
We're looking for pull in 500 donations over the next week that will help us maintain and even expand our operations as we slide into the thick of the 2012 presidential election season. Everywhere we look, freedom and liberty is under attack like never before. There's massive unemployment that government policies first helped create and then extend; bank bailouts continue to screw the economy here and abroad; regulations that took off under the George W. Bush administration proceed apace like mutant kudzu; local police departments and the federal Department of Justice insist on waging a drug war that was lost on the first day of battle; the Congress and the White House are locked in a battle over who exactly has the ultimate right to lock up American citizens on American soil for indefinite periods of time; and so much more.
At the same time, there are green shoots: Technological innovation and smart work-arounds are still spreading; gay marriage and drug legalization are at record-high levels of approval; libertarian-minded voters (according to Gallup/CNN polls) are greater in number than ever; and Reason.com and Reason.tv have a higher profile than ever before. Our folks are increasingly quoted, cited, and bylined in the most influential publications online and off; we're fighting for your beliefs in limited government and unlimited freedom in print, online, and on the air like never before.
Your donations will help us be a stronger force while covering the 2012 election cycle; your donations will help us make the case for the desperate need to reduce government interference in every aspect of our lives; your donations will help us to keep offering the best libertarian reporting, analysis, commentary, and video.
- For $100, you'll get a year's subscription to Reason magazine (which can be gifted to someone else), a T-shirt, and a bumper sticker;
- for $250, you'll get all that, plus a signed copy of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America, written by Matt Welch and me;
- for $333, you'll get all that, plus the chance to ask Matt and me any question you want for a special Reason.tv edition of "Ask a Libertarian";
- for $666 you'll get all that, plus a profile of you written up at Reason.com;
- for $2,500, you'll get a ton more, including a signed leather jacket guaranteed to make you stand out at the local voting station…
We've added a number of giving levels and swag this year, so go here now to check out the full range of offers.
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claim to be against handouts, but of course they use their own corporate-funded websites to beg for donations. This is exactly what they do with state power: claiming to be against it while relying on a Rothbardian police force to protect their precious land enTITLEments. None of this would be possible without the despicable agricultural city-STATE, which has existed for years solely for the purpose of restricting the free movements of peoples by using arbitrary lines of demarcation.
Officer, am I free to gambol?
Obviously asking for a donation is the exact same thing as taking my money with a gun. Obviously.
Well, you got me there.
But I bet that jacket is made in CHINA!!
for $2,500, you'll get a signed leather jacket
I can get one at Walmart for about $50 and "support" capitalism directly.
Gotta go run after a moose and shoot him wif a bow. kthxbye.
Is that Warty?
That's our rugged neo-primitive who lives off the land. Assuming by "land" you mean "the dumpster behind Taco Bell."
Which is hilarious, because eating the food thrown out at night behind Taco Bell is a far more stable source of sustenance than hunting/gathering with no refrigeration.
Rothbardian police force. My new favorite.
I forget: who is this "Rothbard" again? The only people here who ever mention him are the chatroom crackpots.
I don't know, but he has something to do with armed police forces killing hobos.
I thought that was Lysander Spooner.
Who?
I think he invented the spork.
Your fat ass could use some gamboling.
"They all float down here."
I wonder if he realizes you can't get retro-virals in the hunter-gatherer world he claims to want.
Oh my god! Jason you look like a villain from Batman! The cheesy TV version.
Way to reuse last year's banner without changing the dates, Reason. I want my donation back.
Postrel would have returned the money to you by now.
I probably shouldn't be assuming it was money you donated.
Why don't you just ask Koooooooooooch?
Get rid of threaded comments and I'll donate.
I second that emotion. Minus the donating part.
If you make threading mandatory, I will match their donations plus one dollar.
Abolish threading and I'll pay for those old "bill me later" blow-in card " trial subscriptions" I took under fake names in the late 1980s back when I was a snot-nosed anarchist punk.
The Jacket is spawning? Libertopia is inevitable!
How much to get a signed poster of Lobster Girl?
They're fake, you know.
The lobsters are fake? I just knew she was carrying crabs.
How much for a date with Lobster Girl? Reason would suddenly become the best funded magazine/foundation in the DC area.
If my wife wouldn't kill me I would buy the jacket spawn.
I would risk it.
I would donate, but the banner with supporter's names says the webathon is November 5 - 12, so I guess I missed it.
for $666 you'll get all that, plus a profile of you written up at Reason.com;
Here's all the profile you need of me, and you get it for free:
Fist of Etiquette: staunch anti-communist, makeout artist and model for all those who aspire to awesome.
I thought about that one. Mine would read;
Poor spelling dickhead frequent commenter.
According to the donation page, Lucy Steigerwald will write the profiles.
Mine would read "Cut-rate Fantasy Football Manager and cruelly mistaken for a chubby-chaser with questionable spelling skills."
"Crony of the real estate industry and serial hater of the endless Epi/Rather spoof war."
LMFAO!
How much of a donation gets the commenting system fixed?
For $1,729.53 we'll kill threading.
And Episiarch!
Do you take American Express?
Cash only. Thanks.
I have grown to love threaded comments.
*ducks incoming barrage of monocles.
What's broken about it?
Is that a joke?
What's the donation level to get rid of the fucking griefer trolls?
No, seriously.
You can't afford it.
That's what I'm wondering. Not all of them, just the WI shit.
# for $666 you'll get all that, plus a profile of you written up at Reason.com
What, no horns? No pitchfork?
I am disappoint.
shouldn't there be a $50 option?
Hand over your monocle.
Somehow it's always "a" jacket, never "the" jacket.
Screw the T-shirt. For $250 I want a monocle.
Dear reason,
Please consider monocle gimmes for next year. Especially if the T-shirt this year is as bad as last year's.
Yes, and make sure the monocles are made exclusively in Cambodian factories by sad little orphans. For another $35, throw in a vial of orphan tears to polish your monocle with.
No nimble-fingered Robot Devil hands?
What a gyp.
I'm not for a "banning" system for comments, just a mute button. Just so I don't have to read about gamboling every fucking day.
Get the reasonable extension. Note that it doesn't really work because fuckface and rectal handle-hop relentlessly to get around it.
Wait, what!? All this time I've been reading about gamboling and there's an extension for this!?
Note: Reason for comment is I can't seem to locate said extension.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fdbllkbadgaglaalokapjlkcagidcndj
If you can't use Chrome, look for "incif" on FireFox.
Note that it doesn't really work
If anyone donates $250 to the Joe M Foundation, I will send them an autographed monocle.
I find the space bar is a mostly effective defense against gamboling griefers and our own resident clever dick spooftrollers and the other assorted and sundry nuisances who have infested this place lately.
I now frequently check the commenter name before reading the comment. I have just about reached the point of not even reading comments from anybody who doesn't have a long term history of consistently sensible or amusing contributions.
It's not my sandbox, so I can't/ won't try to make the rules; I just try to adapt.
You get the trolls you deserve.
Justice sucks sometimes.
I have a cunning plan for some swag, Reason. It's not just a monocle, but a monocle that I can see lobster girl in whenever I wear it.
Give me the gist of it. Did Nick threaten to stab someone in the neck on this one?
wow, 2.5 minutes in..that didn't take long..
Holy shit Nick, you are surrounded by fucktards.
I'll give if you print the IP addresses of my spoofs
and customize my jacket with epi's skin
Kinky!
So who was it last year who complained about the "hypocrisy" of libertarians asking for donations?
Who will it be this year?
for $666 you'll get all that, plus a profile of you written up at Reason.com;
Will it be written by Tim and be solely based on what has been put in the comments?
Cuz that would be awsome.
Also does anyone want to pool resources to get a profile of Warty posted?
satan just made a donation through amazon. Will his name show up on the banner? Or will it just be the name on the card (not satan)?