Gummint – Page 43 – Splendid Isolation

Commonsense 0, Greens 72

October 27, 2020 Kim du Toit Business, Eco-Crap, Gummint

Like nobody could see this coming:

The inquiry into the 2017 fire at Grenfell Tower in London has revealed how the styrofoam thermal insulation layer in newly-fitted wall cladding enabled a small domestic fire to rapidly engulf most of the building, resulting in the loss of 72 lives.
The type of cladding installed complied with advice given to local authorities in 2010 by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to reduce emissions through installing new boilers and insulation in apartment blocks.

Read the details. Anyone with the slightest bit of business experience could have foretold a tragedy like this. But because Gummint was involved…

Night Follows Day

October 20, 2020 Kim du Toit Crime, Gummint, Modernism, Vermin

From Knuckledragger, talking about his old neighborhood (happens to be in California, but could have — and has — happened anywhere):

The shooting happened in the 200 block of Semple Street, I used to live at 238 Kimble, one street over. Most of the houses there were built in the 1920s.
…
When I first moved there in 1996, it was a nice neighborhood – quiet with a lot of older folks that would sit out on their front porch in the evening drinking tea and talking with other neighbors that were out for their evening walk. As time went by, those folks either died or sold their homes to go into retirement communities or whatever and younger folks moved in. Then they opened up an apartment complex on Johnson, 2 streets over, to Section 8 [low-income] housing and shit really went downhill after that.

One of the biggest failures of “progressive” philosophy is the “magic dirt” theory: that transplanting people from a bad place to a better place will somehow magically make them change, and act more like the people in the better neighborhood than they did in their old one.

As any amateur* student of human nature will tell you, that’s completely wrong. Instead, the transplantees will bring all their old behaviors to the better place, and infect it with thuggery, crime and general lawlessness, to the point where the original inhabitants of that (no longer) “better” area simply pack up and move. Then that’s referred to derisively by the “planners” as “White flight” or, to be more accurate, as “middle-class flight” (which is what it is).

Then the neighborhoods go to shit, as Kenny observes, the schools start to fail, businesses also leave and voilà! a shithole is created where no shithole existed before. By social redistributionism. (In this case, not of wealth but of antisocial behavior, to make it somehow more “fair”.)

And no matter how often it fails, the Leftists (as always) continue the practice, again and again, because Leftist activity only concerns itself with intentions, and outcomes are always the fault of others rather than of the basic Marxist principle. (The “others”, of course, being “capitalism”, “greedy businessmen”, “bankers” or, more recently, “racism”.)

*the “professional” students of human behavior are the ones who initiate and perpetuate this foolishness, reminding me of the (paraphrased) expression that so stupid and wrongheaded a precept could only have been produced by an academic — academia, of course, never having to live with the consequences of their folly.

Acceptable Risk

October 8, 2020 Kim du Toit Disaster, Gummint, Nannies

The inimitable Heather Mac Donald takes the Nannies to task, in her inimitable way. This paragraph in particular struck home for me:

We set highway speeding limits to maximize convenience at what we consider an acceptable risk to human life. It is statistically certain that every year, there will be tens of thousands of driving deaths. A considerable portion of those deaths could be averted by “following the science” of force and velocity and enforcing a speed limit of, say, 15 miles an hour. But we tolerate motor-vehicle deaths because we value driving 75 miles an hour on the highway, and up to 55 miles an hour in cities, more than we do saving those thousands of lives. When those deaths come—nearly 100 a day in 2019—we do not cancel the policy. Nor would it be logical to cancel a liberal highway speed because a legislator who voted for it died in a car accident.

Bill Whittle once said more or less the same thing about accidental gun deaths: while even one such death was tragic, the plain fact of the matter is that some freedoms come with risk, sometimes deadly risk; and the overall benefit to our society is far, far greater than the danger that may (or may not) ensue. Using statistics of “gun deaths” (even correct ones) to bolster calls for gun control / -confiscation is likewise irrelevant.

It’s called the price of freedom, and We The People have been balancing those freedoms against the collateral harm to individuals ever since our Republic was formed and the Constitution and Bill of Rights promulgated. All individual rights are potentially harmful, whether it’s freedom of speech, assembly, religion, gun ownership, privacy or any of the others.

And to Heather’s point above: driving isn’t even a right protected by the Bill of Rights. How much more, then, should our First- and Second Amendment rights (and all the other rights for that matter) be protected, even when we know that some tragedy is bound to follow thereby?

“If it saves just one life” sounds great on a bumper sticker, but as a basis for public policy, it’s not only foolish but in many cases more harmful in the long run. Heather again:

We could reduce coronavirus transmission to zero by locking everyone in a separate cell until a vaccine was developed. There are some public-health experts who from the start appeared ready to implement such radical social distancing. The extent to which we veer from that maximal coronavirus protection policy depends on how we value its costs and the competing goods: forgone life-saving medical care and deaths of despair from unemployment and social isolation, on the one hand, and the ability to support one’s family through work and to build prosperity through entrepreneurship, on the other. The advocates of maximal lockdowns have rarely conceded such trade-offs, but they are ever-present.

The current wave of totalitarianism and loss of freedoms caused by State overreaction to the Chinkvirus needs to be rolled back, and fast. It just sucks that we have to rely on judges — many of whom, to judge from their records, are not especially friends of freedom — to hold back the mini-Mussolinis in their totalitarian quest for absolute power over the governed.

And just so we know what kind of “acceptable risk” we’re talking about, comes this from Fox News:

Alternative Actions

October 7, 2020 Kim du Toit Crime, Gummint, Two-Minute Hate

From Insty:

Just who the fuck do these glorified debt-collectors think they are?

Congress should find out exactly how much the I.R.fuckingS. paid for this data, and reduce their operating budget by 100x the amount. Unfortunately, as the House is under the control of the Socialists (for now), this isn’t going to happen.

Thus stymied, my thoughts run a little deeper than Stephen Green’s tar and feathers.

ROPE, TREES

and

WALL, BULLETS

…all come to mind, but no doubt someone is going to have a problem with this.

Straws

September 30, 2020 Kim du Toit Gummint

You know, whenever we see reports of people going nuts and gunning down government officials (not cops or state troopers, just ordinary workers), we are justifiably appalled.

Should we be? Try looking at these two little examples of governmental overreach. In Connecticut:

A Connecticut selectwoman alleged on Facebook that she and her husband are facing a fine of $1,000 for violating the state’s coronavirus travel restrictions. Amy St. Onge (R), first selectwoman of Thompson, posted to Facebook that, on Labor Day, she and her husband Jason left home to visit their son Caleb, who is training at the Air Force base in Altus, Oklahoma, and preparing for his first deployment.
Upon the parents’ return, St. Onge said she received an email from the State of Connecticut informing her that she and her husband had violated Gov. Ned Lamont’s executive orders regarding travel during the coronavirus pandemic.

Here’s the thing: somebody in government was either monitoring their Faecesbook account, or else responded to a fink’s complaint. Either way, the response was uncalled-for and excessive. (Connecticut is facing a massive budget surplus. Just sayin’.)

Now Maryland:

Shawn Marshall Myers from Maryland threw two parties at his own home that violated the governor’s social distancing executive order and now he’s going to spend a full year behind bars.
They were at his own home and they were outdoor bonfire parties.
He threw one and the cops showed up and convinced him to break it up. He threw another less than a week later and he refused to tell his guests to leave when the cops arrived and told him to do so. He said he had the right to have a party at his house and told his guests not to leave.
And now he’s going to prison for a year.

Note, in the latter case, the following:

“He was given a warning,” Charles County State’s Attorney Tony Covington said. “It’s not like the police just swooped in there and said you’re going to jail. They gave him a warning.”

Yeah, that makes it all hunky-dory, of course. You fucking little totalitarian cocksucker.

Lockdown Blues

September 24, 2020 Kim du Toit Good Stuff, Gummint, Nannies

Over a month ago I went to Trader Joe’s to buy a couple of things, but was told to go to the back of the (100-yard) queue because the store was only allowing a dozen or so customers at a time to go in. The outside temperature that day was August-In-Dallas (i.e. there were lizards frying gently on the sidewalks), so I said (quite loudly) to the officious little asshole at the door: “This is total and utter bullshit, and you guys are acting like hysterical children. I don’t need your stupid products that much,” and walked away.

A couple of people cheered and gave me the thumbs-up — and a few even nodded and walked away themselves. (Sometimes, it only takes one, and — this may come as a surprise to many — I’ve often been that one, in my lifetime.)

It’s bad enough when Nanny Government can’t stop telling you what to do: stay out of here, only six people allowed to be together there, family reunions or events are banned, can’t shop here but there is okay, this work is allowed but that isn’t and so on, but don’t forget to wear your face-condom everywhere or else you’ll be fined / arrested / publicly scolded / tossed out.

When stores start fucking with people’s lives, however, it’s probably too much. At least, it was too much for this wonderful woman, who after having been bullied by everyone in Government or a uniform for months, decided that being told to follow in-store one-way signs was a Nanny Too Far, and showed her displeasure:

Shopper becomes furious after Co-op staff in Lingfield, Surrey, ask her to observe social distancing rules and starts throwing items and knocking bottles of wine off the shelves. The video that was captured in CCTV shows the woman screaming at the shop’s workers, after being asked to use the one-way system.

And just to put this in perspective, here are a few pics of Lingfield: