Category: Gummint

“Losing”?

Gummint, Law and Order, Media Assholes, Military

I yield to no man in terms of my respect for Victor Davis Hanson, but I’m afraid the worthy professor is extremely late to this party.

Losing Confidence in the Pillars of Our Civilization
Millions of citizens long ago concluded that professional sports, academia, and entertainment were no longer disinterested institutions, but far Left and deliberately hostile to Middle America.
Yet American conservatives still adamantly supported the nation’s traditional investigatory, intelligence, and military agencies — especially when they came under budgetary or cultural attacks.
Not so much anymore.

He then enumerates said institutions:  the FBI, the military (senior officers), Big Tech / Woke journalism, federal health agencies, and the criminal justice system in general.

I will admit that the above are relative newcomers to the conservatives’ hall of shame, but as we all know, we’ve always loathed and distrusted the alphabet soups of the IRS, ATF and DHS, as well as Cabinet departments like the EPA, Energy, Interior and Education — to name but a few.

Wake up, VDH:  they’re all on the shit list.  They are very close to being — and in some cases very much already — not the “pillars of our civilization”, but active destroyers thereof.

And if you Readers want proof of this, ask yourself this question:  would you rather deal with your local law enforcement, or the FBI?  Your county tax office or the IRS?

Q.E.D.

When “Private” Isn’t

Gummint

Here’s an interesting story:

Jeremy Clarkson has been granted ‘urgent’ planning permission to build cattle shed – in time for his herd to calve in the New Year.

To any American farmer, this would cause a certain amount of head-scratching:  you need a new shed on your farm, you build it.

Not, of course, in Britishland, where ownership of property gives one no rights at all, except of course the obligation to pay taxes on it.

And if the “emergency” part hadn’t been granted, requiring an endless wait while the permission process wound its tortuous way around bureaucratic inertia, “public” input (objections from people who think farmers should be able to carry on with Saxon-era buildings) — resulting in Clarkson building an “un-licensed” shed to save his calves’ lives — why then, he’d be fined and forced to tear the thing down.

Government at its finest.

Market Response

Business, Gummint

This article is proof, as if any were actually needed, that the general public, very much including journalists and most politicians, have no clue when it comes to basic micro-economics:

Bus drivers have been flocking to jobs with haulage firms as HGV operators when companies were desperate and were handing out large signing on bonuses.

Like this should come as a complete surprise.  You have a heavy-duty driving license and are working as a bus driver, when an opportunity comes to do essentially the same job but for much, much more money.  What should you do, oh what should you do?

But let us never forget that a bad situation can always be exacerbated by government regulation:

They said the [public transportation] industry had put in place plans to hire new workers but said they were being put off due to delays in sorting licences.

…which delays are because of government red tape, as evidenced by the very next sentence:

The CPT urged the government to ensure training them was as ‘streamlined and efficient as possible’.

I’m sure that the government is getting right onto that.

Another Blood-Curdler

Crime, Gummint, Seen On Campus

As Glenn Reynolds puts it so often, putting your kids into the public school system is tantamount to child abuse.  Read this horrorshow:

The cops had the apartment building manager knock on the family’s door. Jade answered and the cops told her she shouldn’t be home alone. Jade started crying and asked to call her dad, McMurry says. But the cops wouldn’t allow it. They did allow her to change into warmer clothes, since they were going to take her away for an interrogation.
…
When McMurry returned from Kuwait, she faced two felony charges of child abandonment. She turned herself in and spent 19 hours in jail before being released on bail.
…
Long story short, almost a year later—she was suspended without pay the entire time— McMurry’s case came to trial. Brunner claimed to be on a prearranged vacation. McMurry, eager to get the case heard, allowed the trial to proceed without him.
…
The trial took four days. The jury deliberated for five minutes and found McMurry not guilty.

Unlike many stories of this type, this one ends well:  the mother is suing the shit out of the Stasi cops, and a judge has denied them “qualified immunity” (whereby cops can do whatever the fuck they want without fear of penalty).

But read the whole thing, keeping all guns out of reach.

“If You’ve Got Nothing To Hide…”

Gummint, Taxes and Theft

That was my reaction to this latest bit of Government bastardy:

The Biden administration has made clear its plan to beef up IRS auditing by expanding the agency’s funding and power. Biden’s latest proposal would require banks to turn over to the Internal Revenue Service bank account information for all accounts holding more than $600.
…
“There’s a 99 percent compliance rate on wages – because wage earners get their earnings reported to the IRS,” a fact sheet says that was handed out by the White House to lawmakers to sell them on the plan. “But the super wealthy who get their income from unreported sources are able to hide their income and avoid paying the tax they owe. In fact, each year the top 1 percent chooses not to pay more than $160 billion in taxes.”

Just out of curiosity:  if the “super wealthy” are not paying those taxes, how is the IRS able to put an actual number on that “uncollected” amount?  Or is it just an estimated, i.e. invented number?

I note that there’s been some pushback:

“While the stated goal of this vast data collection is to uncover tax dodging by the wealthy, this proposal is not remotely targeted to that purpose or that population,” the letter said. “In addition to the significant privacy concerns, it would create tremendous liability for all affected parties by requiring the collection of financial information for nearly every American without proper explanation of how the IRS will store, protect, and use this enormous trove of personal financial information. We believe that this program is costly for all parties, not fit for purpose, and loaded with potential for unintended and serious negative consequences.”

That’s telling them.  And it will be roundly ignored, as usual.

I don’t even want to talk about the intrusiveness of this motherfucking proposal because it just makes me want to sharpen my bayonet and oil the rope.  As it is, my bayonet is sharp enough and if I oil the rope any more, it’ll be too difficult to tie the knot.


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At what point do we say, “Enough is enough?”

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