Category: Gummint

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.

So Much For Carbon Dioxide, Then

Eco-Crap, UN and other scum

Over at American Thinker, Guy Mitchell concludes that the whole CO2 scare is a load of old bollocks.  Details here, but a succinct summary says, starting with the premise:

The basic premise in the man-made global warming hypothesis is that CO2 molecules in the lower troposphere, emitted by the burning of fossil fuels on Earth, absorb the LWIR photons emitted as the Earth cools. The CO2 molecules “trap” the heat energy in the photon, which causes the troposphere to warm. Then the CO2 molecule reradiates an LWIR photon of the same wavelength it absorbed back to the Earth’s surface, which warms the Earth’s surface. The more CO2 molecules that are emitted into the troposphere by burning fossil fuels, the more heat is trapped and reradiated back to the Earth’s surface, increasing atmospheric and surface warming in a never-ending cycle.

Conclusion (after a whole bunch of actual, you know, data and science and stuff, emphasis added):

Scientific analysis using publicly available data demonstrates that an LWIR photon emitted by a CO2 molecule in the Earth’s lower troposphere does not penetrate the oceans’ surface to a depth greater than 100 μm, thereby having no effect on the ocean’s temperature. The ARGO Float Program temperature measurements of the world’s oceans confirm those scientific analyses.

And:

Therefore, if the first principles of science and observational data on the ocean’s temperature indicates that CO2 emissions cannot heat the world’s oceans, why does the U.N. IPCC continue to promote the global warming hypothesis? The legal definition of fraud is intent to deceive.

Yeah, we all knew that.

We Know Better

Food & Drink, Gummint

…saith Gummint, when it comes to just about every human product or endeavor.  Here’s a fresh dose of silliness, from a doctor (another group of busybodies):

Banning junk food won’t stop people eating it, just look at how Prohibition failed! But we DO need new regulations to tackle our poor diet

Oh we do, do we?  So banning won’t work, but the softly-softly approach by regulation will achieve the same ends (cf. gun control Over Here, another catalog of failures).  Let me continue:

How do you feel about being told what to do, particularly when it comes to decisions around your health? — I want to reach for my 1911.

Most of us, I suspect, think we should be left to make our own decisions (and our own mistakes). — Except for doctors, government busybodies and other foul control freaks

But I also think most of us would accept that there are areas where the government should step in and regulate” — errrr no.  Maybe 5% of all human activity might need government oversight, and I’ll entertain arguments from anyone who thinks that 5% is too much.

Anyway, after dealing with the low-hanging fruit (leaded gasoline and cigarettes), Our Good Doctor gets after food.

There’s no way you can ban people from eating junk food — not only is it everywhere but you also have to ensure there are affordable alternatives. — No, “you” don’t.  People would prefer to eat Twinkies instead of carrot sticks or oatmeal bars.  Leave the Twinkies alone.

But there are lots of things that could be done to nudge our behaviour, many of which Boris Johnson planned to introduce before he fell from power. — and not a moment too soon.

These include the end of BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) sales on foods high in fat and sugar — their main purpose, after all, is to make you eat more junk food. You rarely see BOGOF (US: BOGO) offers on fresh veg or fish. — errrr that’s because fresh veg and fish are perishables, hello.

Other plans included a ban on adverts for junk food and sweets aimed at children, online and before 9pm on TV. These measures are popular — a YouGov poll found a ban on junk food adverts before 9pm is supported by 62 per cent and opposed by just 17 per cent — but almost all the anti-obesity strategies Boris loudly promoted have been kicked into the long grass. — because they’re unpopular, stupid and bossy.  Kinda like Boris.  By the way, the same percentage (62%) applies to people who want to reinstate the death penalty in the U.K.  No?

With one in five children now overweight or obese when they get to primary school, and the number of obese adults projected to soon outnumber those of a healthy weight within the next five years, there is a desperate need for action. Yes, ban smoking in the young but we also need to be thinking about diet. — If we’re serious about reducing the number of fat people, why not just shoot them all in the street?  This would be the most efficient (and, by the way, the least costly) option.

And we just know that Gummint is all about efficiency — except in their own dealings, of course.

Let’s rather just shoot them.  On the whole, I’d be happier living among fat people than having Government busybodies peering into my shopping basket.

Not to mention:

 

Anyone else starting to feel peckish?

British Worms Turning

Good Stuff, Resistance, Taxes and Theft

I haven’t been Over There for a while, and it’s probably a Good Thing I haven’t because in addition to London’s “congestion charge” (a.k.a. let’s create an additional tax revenue stream by scalping drivers) there’s now something called the Ultra Low Emissions Zone “ULEZ” (here’s the explanation, I couldn’t be bothered to type it out).

Anyway, it seems that more than a few Londoners have taken exception to this little scheme.  Cameras (both fixed and in mobile units) are used as an enforcement tool, like London doesn’t have enough of those poxy things already — and the fed-up public have decided to take matters into their own hands, to show Hizzoner the Mayor what they think about this nonsense:

For the first time since the anger of the Poll Tax riots during Margaret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister or the anti-Iraq war demonstrations under Tony Blair, we are witnessing an outpouring of anger against the government. In this case it is anger at the anti-car measures by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Citizens are attacking and disabling the network of cameras in London that monitors all traffic and fine cars that do not meet certain standards.

The attack on the motorist in London goes back to 2003 when the then London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, implemented the Congestion Zone whereby drivers would have to pay to enter. The public were told that this would cut congestion but many felt it was just anyway to extract money from the motorist. Public transport in London is very good but never before has there been a road charge in the UK. The London Congestion zone was, and probably still is, the largest in the world.

The next attack on motorists was the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) which was also introduced by Ken Livingstone in 2008 and was, as the name suggests, a charge/fine based on vehicle emissions. It was expanded a number of times and now covers all of London. This was to target older trucks and large vehicles. Ken Livinstone was a Labour socialist mayor but the next intrusion came from the so-called Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

In 2014 Boris announced the creation of the Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) which was targeted at car drivers. Five years later the ULEZ zone started in central London and older cars entered the zone to pay for the privilege of driving on London roads for that and every day. The cost of driving an older car into central London was now £12.50 for ULEZ and £15 for Congestion Charge. That’s over $30 a day to drive on a public road.

The fightback we are seeing today has been dubbed the ULEZ “Blade Runners.” Hundreds of the ULEZ cameras have been damaged or destroyed across London. Campaigners/vigilantes/angry citizens (take your pick) are cutting wires on the equipment and spraying the lenses with paint. Up to a quarter of all the cameras have been attacked. To combat this fight back, Sadiq Khan has employed an army of CCTV camera vans to drive around and fill these blackspots. But now we are seeing vans parking in front of these vans to block their camera and render them useless.

There is so much frustration against this onslaught in motorists that the legacy media is even running stories on the Blade Runners and interviewing them so their story can get out. This “lawbreaking” seems to be championed by sections of the media which is intriguing and encouraging. The public has been invited to take part in consultations on the introduction of both of these charges but the government was always going to implement them. They claim it is about the environment but it seems to be about something else which the government are always short of. Money!

The congestion charge rakes in £220 million every year. That’s a quarter of a billion dollars every year. A quarter of that (£55 million) is used to administer the zone but the rest is pure profit. A tax on the motorist. The ULEZ expansion is estimated to net Sadiq Khan up to £300m in its first year. That’s half a billion dollars a year.

The attacks on this network are only increasing. Not only are the public against the fines but they are also against this new level of surveillance. Sadiq Khan operates a network of 1,544 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras. ULEZ will add another 2,700.

Does anyone believe the lie that this is about saving the planet and nothing to do with raising more tax?

LOL.  Keep it up, British people.

Ordinarily, I’d suggest a more drastic solution to the problem, i.e. an ancient and much-used British legal device:

…but no doubt some Brit rozzer would have a problem with that.