Splendid Isolation

Category: Gummint

“Change Of Orders”

Government Thugs, Homeschooling, Rights

Here’s a “connect the dots” moment.  I’ve mentioned this sad case before.  First, courtesy of Annie Holmquist, some background:

Would you be willing to risk arrest by the government in order to choose the best education for your child?

That’s the situation the Romeike family faced a number of years ago when they lived in Bissingen, Germany. They chose to homeschool their young grade school age children even though homeschooling was illegal in Germany. The reason? Their children were bullied and scared about the violence they were facing in their local state school.

That choice resulted in a visit from police, and soon three of their children, ages six to nine, were hauled off in a police vehicle and forced to attend the official state school. Recounting the 2006 incident, father Uwe Romeike told one media outlet that he “felt very helpless,” going on to note, “My children were crying, the police were shouting.”

Faced with hefty fines, the Romeikes fled Germany for America in 2008, seeking asylum. Settling in Tennessee, the family continued homeschooling while they fought for protection from their German persecutors. In 2014, the Department of Homeland Security allowed the family to stay in the U.S. “under order of supervision and indefinite deferred action status,” according to the Homeschool Legal Defense Association.

The family—which has now grown to include two more children and two in-laws since the trauma in Germany—has continued to dwell in the U.S. for over a decade, living peacefully and homeschooling their children.

Until now. 

Let the Government bastardy begin.

On Sept. 6, 2023, the Romeikes went in for their annual immigration visit and were shocked when they were told they had four weeks to get their passports in order and self-deport to Germany. “The family had no prior warning, and was offered no explanation, other than that there had been a ‘change of orders,’” a Home School Legal Defense Association media posting explained.

What could possibly have caused this “change in orders”?  Let us now connect the dots, with this little statement from the Biden Cabinet Secretary of Education:

“I don’t have too much respect for people that are misbehaving in public and acting like they know what’s right for kids.”

Seriously?

Here’s the thing.  Tennessee is a homeschool-friendly state — i.e. the state government has no problem with people homeschooling their kids.  But:  immigration is a federal issue.  So if the Dept. of Education drops a little whisper in the ear of INS, the federal government can step in and fuck with people like the hapless Romeike family, essentially making Tennessee’s jurisdiction meaningless.

There is, of course, another interesting aspect to all this.  Since arriving in the U.S., the Romeikes have had two more children — and according to U.S. law, the two kids are U.S. citizens (yeah, they’re “anchor babies”).  So can the federal government deport U.S. citizens when in fact neither they nor any of their family have broken any American laws?

I hope the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSDLA) climbs into this with might and main — because this is precisely the kind of matter that is in their remit.

Read all of Annie’s article, because The Naked Communist  is clearly fast becoming part of official U.S. government policy.

In the meantime, let us think about the proper treatment for an unelected gauleiter government official who thinks that parents don’t know what’s best for their kids, but the government does.

Just to make my own position clear on this issue:  if I were being put in a similar position when homeschooling my own kids, I’d be making that difficult decision about calling in the HSDLA, or just going to the guns.  My kids belong to me, not to the State, no matter what the State thinks.

Oh, and Annie:  welcome back to Intellectual Takeout.  You have been sorely missed.

Simple Cure

Drive Time, Eco-Crap, Gummint

Here are two different stories, but with a common link.  First, the news from Volkswagen:

Volkswagen’s managing director has warned the sale of electric vehicles is ‘stagnating’ as a poll revealed just 2 per cent of drivers would buy one in the near future.

Alex Smith warned there are currently few incentives to buy EVs.

He claimed sales are in ‘stagnation’ with EVs still ‘relatively expensive’ compared to petrol and diesel cars, adding: ‘It’s true to say that with the retail price of an electric car, you will find a premium.’

Not so much “find” as “get beaten about the head by” that premium, but let me not interrupt the thread.

It came as a poll of 2,375 UK motorists found that just 2 per cent would buy an EV right now. The survey, carried out for industry body the Society for Motor Manufactures and Traders found more than half are not planning to buy one until 2026 or later.

The figures led to growing calls for more support for private buyers to switch to EVs ahead of the planned ban on new petrol and diesel car sales from 2030.

The “support” is, of course, a bribe I mean government subsidy.  Funded with taxpayer money.

But apart from the price “premium” (exorbitant cost), why would people’s enthusiasm for Duracell cars be weakening?  Of course, there’s that small matter of there being not enough power sockets — even in tiny Britishland — to replenish the battery when the juice runs low:  “Oh, the government should just pay for those” (with taxpayer money).

Then there’s this little wrinkle in EV ownership:

An electrical vehicle fire at Nissan Headquarters Tuesday afternoon required several more hours and 45 times more gallons of water to put out than a conventional vehicle fire.

It’s a challenge the Franklin Fire Department warns “all fire departments are struggling with” because lithium-ion battery fires often cannot be extinguished until the battery cell has released its energy.

Firefighters were dispatched around 4:42 p.m. after the car caught fire in the parking lot of 1 Nissan Way. According to Franklin Fire Marshal Andy King, the vehicle, a Nissan Leaf, had been charging on a Level 3 charger, which is the fastest charging device.

That’s when its lithium-ion battery cell reportedly overheated, went into a thermal runaway condition and caught fire. He said firefighters applied water to cool the battery cell for several hours before the fire was extinguished.

No damage occurred to the charger or other vehicles. According to King, firefighters are accustomed to responding to conventional vehicle fires, which are typically put out with one fire engine and anywhere from 500 to 1,000 gallons of water.

However, Tuesday’s fire required nearly 45,000 gallons of water and multiple units, including an engine, tower, battalion chief, rescue, hazmat, and an air response vehicle. In a news release, the fire department urged EV owners to take precautions against fires.

The very best precaution against these kinds of fires, one would think, would be not to buy these spontaneously-combusting wheeled Roman candles in the first place.

As for dealing with the fires themselves:  I think that every charging station should be required to have a large tank of water — maybe double the size of a normal backyard swimming pool — so that the fire department can just push the burning vehicle into it until it’s completely submerged.

Then, when all the fuss has subsided and the fire has finally died, the car’s owner should be required to drink a pint of water from the tank.

And now I think I need to head off to the range, because when I read how Gummint is trying to force everyone to buy one of these fucking firebombs, I can feel myself going into a “thermal runaway condition”.

Vileness

Government Thugs, Rights

Well, when you see a headline over this article, you have to follow the link to see what all the fuss is about, and to ascertain for yourself the depth of the vileness:

FIVE former Met Police officers have pleaded guilty for sending a string of “grossly offensive” racist WhatsApp messages.  The messages included vile jibes about Rishi Sunak, Meghan Markle and Queen Elizabeth II.

Of course, the article itself doesn’t tell us what the actual messages were — I know, it’s just a clickbait tactic, shame on me — so because I live in a country where offensive messages are (for now) not subject to official censure, here’s what they might have been:

And for the Britishland censors and scolds:


Kiss my African-American ass.

Strike Another One

Government Thugs, Surveillance Society

Oh, that’s just dandy:

In a recent J6 case it has been revealed that Liberty Safe Co. gave the FBI background access codes to the safe and vault owned by the investigative target of the FBI, Nathan Hughes.

As the story is told, the FBI (federal govt) contacted the safe manufacturer and asked for a secret code that would open the safe. The FBI had a search warrant for the premises.  Liberty Safe Co. gave the FBI the access code that would allow them to open the safe, without relying on (or asking) the owner to open it.

Of course, Liberty Safe [irony alert]  tried to weasel out of it, but as Sundance puts it:

This is a ridiculous position easily avoided by saying, “we don’t own the safe.”  The bottom line is to avoid all the Liberty Safe products that allow them to access your private holdings, including gun safes and personal papers.  If you own a Liberty Safe, just get rid of it.  It’s compromised. Write it off to a lesson learned and forget about it.

I only use safes with a keyed lock, for more or less this precise reason.

Point Of Principle

Bureaucracy, Government Thugs, Plagues and Poxes, Resistance, Rights

I see that the medical scaremongers and charlatans are now mumbling (soon to be shouting, no doubt) about how the latest ‘n greatest Covid variant is going to kill us all unless we do all that shit that didn’t work the last time.

I might as well get it off my chest now:

  • I will not wear a face mask, because they’ve been proven ineffective and hamper my breathing
  • I will not patronize any business (or government office) that mandates the use thereof
  • I will likewise not curtail my social or commercial activities under terms of any government-mandated lockdown
  • I will not get yet another vaccination of some unproven (and apparently also ineffective) drug against this new Covid, nor any other Covid strain for that matter
  • any attempt to coerce me into doing any of the above will meet with a hostile, perhaps (depending on the circumstances) even violent response from me.

Others may join me in this, or not — it is a matter of complete indifference to me, as this is a purely personal position.

Corollary: 

We know what you’re trying to do, and it’s not going to work.

Mixed Reaction

Government Thugs

I’m going to tread very carefully around this one:

An agent with the IRS is dead after being accidentally shot by another agent during a training exercise Thursday at a federal gun range, according to officials.

Arizona’s Family reports a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an incident occurred at its gun range in the Phoenix area. The gun range was reportedly being utilized by multiple federal agencies at the time of the shooting through an interagency agreement.

Here are my thoughts on this rather touchy topic.

If this kind of training tragedy befalls actual federal law enforcement agencies  (FBI, DEA, Secret Service, etc.) then I am truly sorry, and mourn their loss.

But far as all the other federal alphabet agencies (IRS, DoE — Education or Energy — BLM, etc.) are concerned:  I don’t care.  They shouldn’t be armed in the first place, and therefore have no business being around a federal firearms training facility.

My reason for saying this is quite simple:  what the federal government has been doing for the past seventy-odd years is turning misdemeanors or regulatory infractions into federal crimes, and ordinary citizens into criminals every chance they get.  But for all that, the latter agencies are not law enforcement departments, as much as the government would like them to be such.

Let me get specific.

It is a totally abhorrent idea that the IRS — who are nothing more than a bunch of accountants and debt collectors — should be sending their agents to get firearms training (on the use of, lest we forget, full-automatic firearms).  Who are they going to use those guns on?  And don’t insult me with the “self-defense” argument:  we ordinary folk aren’t allowed to use automatic rifles and machine guns to protect ourselves;  why should these jumped-up bureaucrats get special treatment?  Let’s be honest:  when an IRS agent is issued with an actual assault rifle — that would be a full-auto rifle, not some semi-auto AR-15 — it’s not to protect himself or his home from rampaging tax delinquents, it’s most likely because he’ll be ordered to storm someone else’s home or place of employment (that would be the very definition of “assault”).  And by the way, that’s the job of the FBI, not the bean-counters.

So no:  as much as I feel the suffering and loss of this agent’s life for his family, the plain fact of the matter was that he had no damn business being there in the first place.

And the fact that he was there is entirely the responsibility of the federal government.

By the way, should any of the alphabet agencies read this, you should know that my opinion in this is probably the mildest you’ll encounter among the vast majority of the population.  Out there, if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the popping of champagne corks.  The federal government offers little comfort to the population of this country;  they should expect little in return.

Update:  both in Comments and by email, Readers take issue with my stance on the Dept. of Energy not needing guns, in that they have to guard installations like nukes and other such power plants.

No.

If those installations are so important to the national security (and they are), they need to be guarded by the military and not by the paramilitary.  The point is that the military is Constitutionally restricted in terms of its deployment (against citizens), whereas a paramilitary force isn’t.  I’d rather that power be held by the Army (and therefore by Congress) than by a bunch of bureaucrats.