Category: Gummint

Top 3 For The Chop

Bureaucracy, Gummint

Here’s the background to the question below:

Argentina just elected a new president, Javier Milei, and his first act upon being sworn in? He signed an executive order reducing their government departments from 21 down to NINE.

As Twitchy points out, we have only(!) fifteen FedGov departments (but innumerable sub-departments).

My question to my Readers:

You can eliminate three Cabinet-level federal government departments (to start off with) and all their sub-departments.  Which three would you eliminate first?

Mine:  Environment (an agency, not a department in the strictest sense of the word), Education (in toto) and Homeland Security (all their sub-departments to be reallocated to their original departments, e.g. Secret Service to Justice, Coast Guard to Defense, etc.).

I don’t know how it works in Argentina, but here in Murka, federal government departments exist at Cabinet level at the President’s pleasure — Richard Nixon, for instance, elevated the EPA’s chairman to Cabinet level by executive order — but departments can only truly be eliminated by Congress defunding them.  Nevertheless, play the game.

No Common Sense

Government Thugs

I’ve been following this situation for a while, in a more-or-less disinterested fashion — “disinterested” because I don’t really need much more proof that the FBI as it stands is a corrupt and immoral organization that needs to be disbanded and rebuilt from the ground up minus every single senior manager.

The FBI agents who drafted a memo proposing targeting “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology admitted to relying on politically biased sources of information when drafting the memo, according to a new House report.

Here’s my thought:  where is the common sense among the agents who, when told to investigate Catholics as a “radical-traditionalist” group, didn’t say to their superiors, “Look, this is really fucking stupid.  Of course some Catholics are radical traditionalists;  but it’s idiotic to think that these people are a danger to society comparable to, say, radical Islamists.”

I’m not talking about the rank-and-file agents, here;  I’m talking about their mid-level managers who were obviously given the job by their superiors, and who have a duty to question obviously-ridiculous directives.

Or has the FBI been so thoroughly corrupted and “weaponized” to the extent that all of them truly believe in the Justice Department’s ideological pursuit of anyone who might be in disagreement with The Narrative?

And has the FBI become like the military, where one cannot question orders but simply must comply with them?  (Yeah, I know, but most organizations either don’t remember that the “Nuremberg defense” was completely denied, or think that it doesn’t apply to them.)

You know, at some point it becomes obvious that people like myself (not even a Catholic) can become disenchanted with government and specific government agencies like the FBI, and therefore become de facto  enemies of said agencies.

The problem is that when these agencies start acting like the Soviet NKVD or German Gestapo, of course they’re going to create enemies of people like me.

Which, frighteningly, may be the whole point of their activity:  like whipping a dog until it becomes vicious, then using that very viciousness as justification for its destruction.

Bastards.

Evil Totalitarians Etc.

Gummint, Seen On Campus

“But what about the Chiiiiiildren?”  I can hear the wails already, in response to this latest example of Antipodean totalitarianism:

Cellphones will be banned in schools across New Zealand, conservative Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Friday, as his fledgling government looks to turn around the country’s plummeting literacy rates. The move would stop disruptive behaviour and help students focus, he said.

New Zealand’s schools once boasted some of the world’s best literacy scores, but levels of reading and writing have declined to the point that some researchers fear there is a classroom “crisis”.

Luxon declared he would ban phones at schools within his first 100 days in office, adopting a policy tested with mixed results in the United States, United Kingdom and France.

I know the thinking behind this:  what has changed with schoolkids since (say) 1980 when literacy rates were X, but which are now X/5?

Cell phones!!!!!!

So it’s to the banning table we go.

Of course, what has also changed in the interim is that (dare I say it) teacher quality has plummeted, teaching methodology has deteriorated, and classroom educational standards have dropped.

But those are sehr schwierig (nay, even impossible) issues to tackle, because we know that all teachers are dedicated professionals who have only the kids’ best interests at heart, teaching methodology is much better now that we’ve dropped silly things like rote learning of arithmetic tables and lowered spelling standards in favor of feelings, and we won’t even talk about topics like strict grading and corporal punishment (eek).

It’s so much easier just to ban cell phones.

Now understand that I’m actually in favor of banning the fucking things in schools because at best, children have the attention span of gnats and the blessed ability to Goooogle stuff is so, like, cool and easy and twenty-first century, Dad;  while old-fashioned learning is difficult and so, like, nineteenth century.  (I’m hopefully assuming that the modern generations are actually aware of the existence of a 19th century, but let’s move on.)

And I’m not interested in the supposed safety of the Chiiiiildren that cell phones are supposed to bring.  In fact, the proven negatives of cell-phone slavery amongst kids outweigh every single aspect of supposed in-class student safety, so there ya go.

Have the little shits turn their precious phones in at the school doors, to be returned when they leave the premises.  And have “backup” phones permanently confiscated when found.

So go for it, KiwiPM Luxon:  ban the poxy things.

And then, when literacy rates remain stubbornly in the basement, you can tackle the real problems, as outlined above.

Keeping It Anonymous

Big Brother, Deep Thoughts, Rights

POTUS-wannabe Nikki Haley and some others have come right out and said that Internet anonymity should be banned.

I think that’s bullshit, despite the fact that I myself have eschewed Internet anonymity (for the most personal of reasons).  I think that while anonymity can breed mischief, it can also protect someone from retaliation when, for example, shining light on the inner workings of an institution.

Whistle-blowers in large institutions (especially government and large corporations) would almost certainly be silenced because of (justified) fears that they’d lose their job by so doing — even if they were exposing extreme malfeasance or negligence.  That cannot be a good thing.

Of course, anonymity affords trolls and other such excrescences the ability to say awful things — such as defamation or character assassination — not to mention unacceptable utterances such as… racism?

Oh yeah, and that’s the problem.  Because the minute you say “You can say this and not that”, there’s a little question of who decides the parameters of accepted speech.

We have a First Amendment that addresses that issue, I believe, and it was thoroughly covered in the Anti-Federalist by — ho! — the anonymous “Brutus”.

There is a vulnerability in that freedom, of course, just as there’s vulnerability in all our social and political freedoms.  But confining ourselves to speech for a moment, we know the old adage that a lie travels round the world before the truth can get out of bed, and anonymity is the prime facilitator thereof.

Online commenter “Fred_The_Wise” can post on Xwitter that he has proof that Bill Clinton is a serial molester of underage girls, and even Clinton’s feral lawyers would have a problem stopping that “untruth” from spreading and “contaminating” Clinton’s good name.  “Kim du Toit” can do no such thing, of course, unless he has the actual proof that Bill Clinton is such a pervert.

The problem, as we all know, is that “Fred_The_Wise”, even if he has actual proof of said molestation, is not going to be the next “suicide” at the hands of the Clinton “Hit Squad” because nobody knows who he is;  whereas “Kim du Toit” would have to be extremely careful of slippery soap in the shower and random nooses hanging from trees, if you get my drift.

That “Fred_The_Wise” might just be indulging in a little gratuitous character assassination is just a malevolent by-product of the freedom of speech.

Which is terrible, but unfortunately for goons like Nikki Haley, they’re just going to have to live with it, as we all have to do.

You Had ONE Job

Bad News, Gummint

Columnist Rich Nolan sums up the current energy situation perfectly:

The nation’s electric grid experts and operators now work in a constant state of emergency. There’s little if any respite in the change of seasons. Fears of soaring electricity demand overwhelming power supplies during searing summer heat are now matched by an equally unnerving fear millions will be left shivering in darkness during the coldest days of winter.

The question is no longer will there be rolling blackouts or grid emergencies but rather when or where.

This week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is taking up the issue of grid reliability at a technical conference, pulling together some of the nation’s key stakeholders on the issue. This is an extraordinarily important opportunity to shed light on a catastrophe in the making and the policy decisions driving it.

Warnings over the threat posed by the loss of dispatchable sources of generation – namely fuel-secure coal power – have reached a crescendo over the past few months. And while the experts charged with keeping the heat and lights on have begged for policy relief, they’re getting just the opposite.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory agenda is making an alarmingly dangerous situation all but untenable.

I don’t know when our beloved government decided that electricity had somehow become an optional extra in our daily life, but they need to have the proverbial (battery-powered) cattle prod applied to their genitals, and soon.

We should start with the EPA, who need to experience a 90% RIF immediately, and a concomitant 90% reduction in their “regulatory agenda” — slashing the existing regulations, to start with — and daily budget cuts from a hostile Congress.

I know, I know:  the entire fucking Feddle Gummint needs the same, but let’s start small with the EPA (and, okay okay, the ATF as well).

But we need to stop being fearful about our energy needs, toot sweet, and if the existing electricity providers are being hampered, the reasons for said hampering need to be eliminated before we start having Third World problems of rolling blackouts and “load shedding”.

And by “eliminating” I mean this:

Immigration Bastardy Update

Government Thugs, Homeschooling

From HSLDA comes this email:

Dear Kim,

We just received news from ICE that the Romeikes are going to be given a one-year stay of deportation on Wednesday. This is excellent news! According to our friends on Capitol Hill, this outcome is the direct result of your calls, your petition signature, and your outreach to Congress on this issue. Now the reality is that until this is signed on Wednesday this is not guaranteed, but we do expect a positive outcome. We are sending our attorney, Kevin Boden, to join the Romeike family while they meet with ICE next week.

According to Kevin, “I spoke personally with the ICE officer in Knoxville, who told me we can anticipate them signing the order of supervision out for another year. And while we are very grateful for this news, we are continuing to advocate for a long-term solution for the Romeike family to allow their permanent stay in the United States.”

As Kevin said, this stay is not a permanent solution. It’s a bandage, but a very important one—and one that could not have happened without your diligent efforts on the Romeikes’ behalf.

The long-term solution is that the Romeikes need to be granted either asylum or permanent residency status. While we still have work to do, we are very grateful for this temporary reprieve. Please continue to support the Romeikes as we move forward. To do that, please go to hslda.org/Romeike.

We will update you as to the result of the Wednesday meeting. Thank you so much for your signature, calls, emails, donations, and prayers.

Sincerely,

 

I don’t like the fact that this is only a temporary stay of deportation.  I bet that ICE and the apparatchiks who “changed” the original orders are hoping that in a year’s time we’ll all have forgotten about them and their persecution of this family.  But I’m going to be following it closely.

For the back story of this saga, here are Part One and Part Two.