Category: Bureaucracy

Burning Down The Climate Change Thicket

Bureaucracy, Eco-Crap, Good Stuff, Rights

Here are some very constructive ideas about how to unlock and/or break the raft of stupid eco-fascist laws and regulations.  I especially like this one:

Obama joined Paris Climate Agreement by executive action. Trump exited by the same method. And Biden rejoined, again by executive action, right on January 20, 2021.

Trump could follow the previous method and just quit again. But my preferred suggestion would be to submit the Agreement to the Senate as a treaty. There is zero chance that the Senate would ratify. That would kill this thing much more securely than the other method.

And this would be the time to submit it, while the Stupid Party controls the Senate.

I know, the Paris Climate whatever is pretty much a paper tiger and waste of time.  Don’t care about it?  Then try this one:

“Regulations” are different from mere Executive Orders and actions, in that in order to be adopted they have gone through some complex and time-consuming processes prescribed by the Administrative Procedure Act. The processes are designed to give these “regulations” some purported legitimacy and heft, to make them hard to undo, and to distract the gullible public from the fact that they have not gone through the only process that counts under the Constitution for valid legislative action, namely passage by both houses of Congress and signature by the President. The result of all the procedural rigamarole is that — if you buy the legitimacy of enactment of massive substantive regulations by administrative agencies in the first place — then the processes to eliminate the regulations are the same complex and time-consuming mess that it previously took to adopt them.

Do the Trump people really need to go through the same labyrinth to rescind these Rules? Here’s an approach I would take: First, announce that the legal opinion of the administration is that the Rules are invalid under Supreme Court precedent (i.e., the “major questions doctrine” of West Virginia v. EPA), and therefore they will not be enforced. Next, announce that permitting on power plant and other fossil fuel projects will take place as if these Rules did not exist. Finally, switch sides in the litigation, and join the red states and other plaintiffs seeking to have the Rules invalidated.

Here’s what I really, really like about this initiative:  it would also nullify, ipso facto, all the horrible regulations foisted on us by other Gummint agencies — such as the fucking ATF, for starters, and [add your favorite agency’s name here].

So when you follow the link above to see all the other Good Ideas, don’t just look at those suggestions as part of the destruction of the “climate change” myth, good as they are;  apply those principles to all areas of our life that the bureaucracy have (un-Constitutionally and illegally) affected over the years.

Roll on January 2025.

Leaving Their Market Behind

Bureaucracy, Drive Time, Marketing / Advertising, Technology

In his latest video, Harry Metcalfe takes aim at supercars — or to be more specific, their manufacturers — and their ballooning love affair with technology.

Now Harry lives in a different world from pretty much 99.99% of the rest of the world, because the market for the insanely-priced supercars is absolutely minuscule;  and his point is that the market is shrinking still more.

I don’t care about any of that, and I’d bet good money that pretty much none of my Readers could give a rat’s ass about it either, for all sorts of reasons:

  • we couldn’t afford the frigging cars even with a decent-sized lottery win;
  • even if we could, we have too much common sense to spend that amount of money on an asset that depreciates, on average, about 50% per annum, regardless of how many miles you drive the thing;
  • and lastly, we all shrink from the Nanny Technology that takes away from the pure enjoyment of driving (not to mention the intrusive data harvesting and so on, which I’ve ranted about before ad nauseam).

I’m not even going to talk about how fugly all these new super/hypercars look, because that’s also a frequent target for my rants on these pages.

Lest you couldn’t be bothered to spend half an hour in Harry’s company, let me illustrate his point about car depreciation by looking at a car we all know about:  the Bentley Continental GT convertible (GTC, for the cognoscenti ).  Here is the 2024 model, with its 4.0L V8:

I have to say, by the way, that it looks absolutely gorgeous:  very definitely a worthy successor to the 1930s “Blower” “Speed Six” Bentley which won Le Mans several times.  It’s price, however, does not look absolutely gorgeous:  $340,000 with only a few adornments.

Which is bad enough.  Now let’s look at its second-hand value.  Here’s a 2015 GTC:

Looks more like a limo than the 2024 model, but essentially it’s the same car (same engine, same luxury interior, etc. etc.) but with… 15,000 miles on the odometer (about 1,500 miles per annum of ownership).  Its price:  $90,000 (!!!).

All sorts of things come to mind, most of them unprintable anywhere except perhaps on this website.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  there is no justification — none — that can justify the prices of these upscale cars (and of the supercars we will not speak because Ferrari and the other thieves only make a few of them each year, thus ensuring their consistent “value proposition” — read:  snob appeal for the terminally-insecure rich).

Of course, the thieves (and their sycophantic customers) will cry out that it’s all the new  whizz-bang technology (“All hail Technology!!!”) that makes their cost of manufacture rocket into the stratosphere.

Unfortunately, as Metcalfe points out in his video, more and more people are looking at all that technology, what’s involved and how much money (not to mention weight) that it adds to the car, and are saying, “Eeeeehhhh I don’t think so, Luigi.”

Which, by the way, might account for this atrocity:

Looks like the More Money Than Sense crowd are taking the $340 grand they would have dropped on a new jazzed-up Bentley, and instead splurging it on a rebuilt version of Ferrari’s entry-level model of the 1970s.

At least the Dino is bereft of anything that could remotely resemble a micochip.

There is a companion piece to this post:  it’ll appear next week.

A Big Middle Finger To The Dept. Of Energy

Bureaucracy, Gummint

Via the Goddess Diogenes herself:

We here at the Department of Energy wanted to thank you for being conscientious about your energy usage this summer. Your efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. As a token of our gratitude, we wanted to highlight all the small but powerful steps you’ve taken to conserve energy over the past few months—and…

…then it falls headlong off the High Cliffs of Sarcasm immediately.  Read it all, but first I’m going to issue a standard Swallow Coffee Before Reading Alert.

(I meant to post this over a week ago, saving the link, but it fell through the cracks as these things do.  Fear not, for despite my stupidity, her post is as timely as its original publication date.  Enjoy.)

Fundamental Principle

Bureaucracy, Gummint, SHTF

I have said, many times before on this blog and elsewhere, that in America there is no such thing as “taking to law into our own hands”, for the simple reason that in America, the law has never left our hands.  Oh sure, we have deputized its enforcement, mostly to local law enforcement and (lamentably) on occasion to the federal government.

But make no mistake:  if our deputized law enforcement is unable or unwilling to enforce the law (most often the former, thank goodness), then it is indeed up to We The People to make damn sure that it is.  Which is why we have statutes like the Castle Doctrine and “stand your ground” principles;  we have every right to defend our families and properties, and that defense does not require us to “run away” in the face of such predation either.  (Of course, in some states — Massachusetts, Minnesota etc. — such prescriptions are an anathema, which is why their citizens live in fear most of the time, whereas in Florida, Oklahoma and Texas criminals commit crimes at their own peril, and the law-abiding are not themselves prosecuted for providing that peril.)

Which brings me to the next issue involving fundamental principle:  disaster recovery.

The United States, taken has a whole, experiences a wider range of natural disasters than just about anywhere else:  tropical storms and hurricanes, blizzards and deep freezes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, wildfires and floods;  you name the manifestations of that bitch Mother Nature’s enmity, and we get ’em, good and hard.

Typically, the responses to such disasters take several forms:  at state level, if the government has its ducks in a row, you have disaster preparation such as Florida having a veritable army of utility workers prepositioned to make sure that infrastructure can be restored quickly (thank you, Gov. DeSantis), or Texas having a “rainy day” fund for precisely that purpose.  And if you can take anything to the bank these days, it is the generosity of ordinary Americans to help out where they can, trucking in supplies such as water, food, construction materials and so on, quite often without asking any form of compensation other than grateful thanks from the recipients.

And then you have the federal government’s attempts at recovery assistance.  What a fuckup.  The so-called Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) has proven itself most recently to be completely and utterly inept, which by the way is typical of any Big Government agency trying to address a local situation:  they screw things up.

Worse still, when Big Agency can’t provide assistance, its inherent systemic arrogance often leads to hindering and even preventing assistance from being delivered by private individuals and organizations.  (It’s a childish and petulant attitude that “If we can’t do it, then nobody can”, and it’s a typical manifestation of bad government.)

Over at PJMedia, Scott Pinsker has written a fine piece on just this topic.  Go ahead and read it because it contains all the details that I can’t be bothered with;  but at the end he comes to this conclusion:

Most FEMA fieldworkers [as opposed to FEMA management — K.] are doing the best they can.  But something profound is going on:  The American people have stopped expecting the government to help them.  Instead, they’re turning to the Free Market.

And:

The majority of Asheville residents (the ones who are still left) probably couldn’t tell you who runs FEMA. But I guarantee you they know who Elon Musk is: He’s the billionaire who’s actually trying to make a difference.

And when help finally comes to North Carolina, it’ll be from Musk — not Uncle Sam.

Keep your eyes on this: The ground is starting to shift… and not because of natural disasters.

I expect that voters are going to demand from their state governments that they (state government) and not FEMA be held responsible and accountable for disaster recovery.  What should follow after that is the state government should actively prosecute federal officials for getting in the way.

And I’m not advocating this, but I am warning of it:  the next time some FEMA helicopter “propwashes” an “unapproved” private supply dump, do not be surprised if local residents react violently.

I’m pretty sure that I’d be tempted to, in such a situation — and I’m ordinarily the most law-abiding person I know.  But catastrophe and disaster are not “ordinary” situations, and while a federal government agency may see it as just another bureaucratic exercise needing proper, orderly management, the people on the ground won’t, and shouldn’t.

Their lives and community are more important, and the sooner Big Government realizes that, the better — because if they don’t, a shit-storm will follow, and it will be their own fault.

Question Answered

Bureaucracy, Gummint, Health

A Reader asks:

“Why do you always diss the UK’s National Health Service in your news roundups?  It’s not like we have anything like it.”

He’s referring to this sardonic comment under some catastrophe involving the above institution:

Basically — and even among a few otherwise-levelheaded conservative Murkins — a lot of people seem to wish that we had a similar institution (nationalized “free” health care) Over Here.

All I’m doing is simply pointing out the many and varied ways that such a system — even one like the much-vaunted NHS — can fuck up your life.

And that we should never.