Category: Gummint

Failed State

Bureaucracy, Gummint, Health

Every time I get into any kind of discussion with Brits and Euros (no longer a single entity, of course) about the relative state of our nations, I get hit with the “at least we have free health care”  jibe.

Well, sometimes “free” is better than nothing;  and sometimes, it’s a lot, lot worse:

Our 15 hours of hospital hell after my mother’s stroke. We saw patients urinating in the corridor, nurses being slapped and ambulances queuing for hours… the NHS is truly broken.

I had called my mother for a quick catch-up when it became clear that there was a serious problem.

It was about 10.30am, an average Wednesday two and a bit weeks ago, when my usually sparky, chatty, bright and switched-on mum answered the phone in a way that suggested something was terribly wrong.

With a befuddled voice, she told me she wasn’t feeling well. She was confused and couldn’t work out how to open the back door to let the dog out. ‘I’m supposed to be at work,’ she told me, ‘they keep calling. But I can’t understand how to do anything.’

Because I’m paranoid, and because her mother – my grandmother – had died of one 20 years ago, I immediately suspected she was having a stroke.

I remembered the famous F.A.S.T test to recognise the signs – F for facial drooping, A for arm weakness, S for speech problems, T for time being of the essence if you recognise any of these symptoms.

My mum couldn’t tell me about her face, or her arms, but her speech was confused in a way I hadn’t encountered in all my 45 years on the planet, so I immediately told her to stay where she was while I called 999.

The emergency operator told me the call was marked as high priority and that an ambulance would arrive as a matter of urgency. I would soon discover that my definition of terms such as ‘urgency’ and ‘high priority’ were very different to the definitions used by the NHS in 2025.

Read the whole thing, for the full horror.

Where’s The Beef?

Gummint

Following on from my previous post about the inadvisability of importing furrin (Argy) beef, allow me to point out the following things.

First:

Mo-Kan Livestock owner Jim Hertzog told the lawmaker that another issue involves small cattle herds.

“We’re short on numbers. It’s just that simple, and the reason we’re short on numbers is three years of drought, and a lot of cows were sold and slaughtered, and they’re not there to raise the calves,” Hertzog said.

He added that the solution is to “rebuild the herd. The solution is not to bring in other beef.”

And as for those steep beef prices at the supermarket:

Restaurant owner Sherry Keegan blamed large packing houses. “It’s the big four, big five packing houses. They tend to manipulate the pricing by shortening their kill days,” she said.

Keegan explained that “rather than killing five days a week, having a five-day-a-week slaughter schedule, they’ll reduce it down to three days and the price of beef, price of meat will go up.”

The second may also be a result of the first, however (although Big Meat have never been known for their lack of greed and cupidity).  Another reason for their slaughter slowdown could be a shortage of illegal alien workers in the packing plants…

Anyway, next up:

Matt Pearce, owner of Pearce Cattle Company, and Steve Lucie, a fifth-generation rancher, appeared on Newsmax’s “National Report” to discuss the increase of beef imports from Argentina aimed at driving down food costs in the U.S.

Pearce warned that importing foreign beef could expose U.S. herds to dangerous diseases and undermine domestic producers already struggling with high costs.

And finally:

The USDA said the national cattle herd is at a 75-year low, while consumer demand for beef has grown 9% over the past decade.

Because it takes time to rebuild herds, the department said it is investing to stabilize markets for ranchers over the long term and to make beef more affordable.

Ah yes… government stepping in to help solve a problem that they created in the first place.

The plan calls for the Agriculture and Interior departments to “streamline and expand” ranchers’ abilities to graze on federal lands.  It will prioritize grazing on an estimated 24 million acres of vacant allotments across the country.

By the way, the reason that ranching permits were reduced came courtesy of the AgDept during the FuckJoeBiden administration, because it was all part of the drive to make consumers start eating insects instead of beef, or to cut back the effect of cow flatulence on the environment, or some other crap. #BigGreenStupidity

Read all three linked articles to get a full flavor of the complexity of the issue.

There is so much bullshit [sic]  involved in this whole business that I’m starting to favor a simple solution to this Gordian Knot:

Feel free to suggest who or what should be at the naughty end of this gun barrel.

Nazzo Fast, Guido

Foreign Affairs, Politics, Subsidies

I’m not so sure that this is a good idea.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday that his administration is considering importing beef from Argentina to lower its price at home and help Argentina stabilize its struggling economy, which he described as being in critical condition.

Dear  King  God-Emperor Donald:  Those are both laudable goals, i.e. to help a loyal ally and simultaneously help U.S. consumers who are being flattened by stratospherically-high beef prices at home.

However, I can’t help but think that you should also consider trying to ease the crushing burden of federal regulations that beef farmers — actually, all farmers — have to deal with, regulations that are a legacy of the Leviathan State you’ve inherited.  That will lower their cost of production, and should make beef less expensive.

Lowering beef prices through imports will simply make our beef farming less profitable — not that it’s all that profitable to begin with — and frankly, I care more about our farmers than about the Argies.

After all, it’s Make America Great Again, not Make Argentina Great Again.  With all due respect to Señor Presidente Milei, he has to deal with problems of his country’s own making, just as we have to beat back the Commies Over Here.  We can and should help him, but not at our own expense.

Just a thought.

Stopping The Tax Tide

Taxes and Theft, Trumpism, UN and other scum

Last week I ranted about this “Global Emissions Tax” nonsense emanating from the U.N., and it is with great glee that I see that God-Emperor (not King) Trump has nipped that issue in the bud:

A global tax on shipping emissions won’t take effect after pressure from the Trump administration to abandon the climate activist-fueled proposal.  

The International Maritime Organization had been set to vote on Friday on adopting a global carbon tax aimed at pushing the shipping industry to stop using fossil fuels. But that vote did not happen after President Donald Trump on Thursday called for other countries to oppose the tax, saying that the United States would not “tolerate” or “adhere” to the measure. 

From what I can understand, Trump threatened the voting nations with stuff like trade embargoes and tariffs if they voted in support of the thing, whereupon they said “Yes, Massa”  and did what he told them to do.

However, let’s not crack open the champagne just yet:

Instead, the International Maritime Organization, an agency of the United Nations that regulates shipping, moved Friday to postpone the vote on the tax for a year. 

“Now you have one year, you will continue to work on several aspects of these amendments,” said Arsenio Dominguez, the secretary general of the International Maritime Organization. “You have one year to negotiate and talk and come to consensus.”

So next year, it’ll come up for a vote again, and again we’re going to have to rap their nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

I have a simple suggestion to end this thing, forever.  Tell the United Nations that if they ever try to impose a global tax system on the world (and on us, of course), this action will automatically trigger the United States’s immediate withdrawal from the UN, and the expulsion of the UN organization in toto  from the United States.

Then get Congress to pass a law to enable the action.  Shouldn’t be that difficult, even with the expected opposition from federal judges.

Message to the UN:  We don’t do taxes.

End of story.

Theft In Pursuit Of An Agenda

Taxes and Theft, UN and other scum

The redoubtable Stephen Moore brings to light this little bit of internationalist skulduggery,:

Later this week the United Nations will hold a vote on a multibillion-dollar climate change tax targeted squarely at American industry.

This resolution before the International Maritime Organization will impose a carbon tax on cargo and cruise ships that carry $20 trillion of merchandise over international waters.

The resolution is intended to advance the very “net zero” carbon emissions standard that has knee-capped European economies for years and that American voters have rejected.

This international tax that would be applied to American vessels and as such is a dangerous precedent-setting assault on U.S. sovereignty.

As with all great crimes, the first question is “cui bono” ?  And to nobody’s surprise, the answer is:

Worst of all, if the resolution passes, it will require the retirement of older ships and enable a multibillion-dollar wealth transfer to China — which has come to dominate ship building in recent years.

China strongly supports the tax scheme — even though, ironically, no nation has emitted more pollutants into the atmosphere than it has. Yet WE are getting socked with a tax that indirectly pays for their pollution.

Needless to say, the U.S. will have no truck with this nonsense — at least, the current generation of U.S. leaders won’t:

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy have jointly stated that America “will not accept any international environmental agreement that unduly or unfairly burdens the United States or our businesses.”

They call the financial impact on the U.S. of this global carbon tax “disastrous, with some estimates forecasting global shipping costs increasing as much as 10% or more.”

So fine.  But given that in the United Nations, there are seventeen likely “yes” votes to our single “no” vote, how are we to combat this nonsense?  As usual, Moore has the answer:

To prevent this sinister tax, the White House should announce a set of retaliation measures.

This could include a dollar-for-dollar reduction in U.S. payments to NATO, the U.N., IMF and World Bank. No foreign money should be directed to any nation that votes for this assault on American ships.

And as the old (paraphrased) saying goes:  “They may have passed this law;  now let them enforce it.”

My additional solution would be for the United States to leave the U.N. altogether, cease its funding thereof, and kick these assholes out of Manhattan for good.  Let them play their little reindeer games all they want, just in someone else’s backyard and with their own money.  See how long that little internationalist dream lasts.

Actual Conspiracy

Government Thugs, Grifters & Cons, Politics

I’m not by nature a conspiracy theorist, until there’s proof — usually after the fact — that there really was a conspiracy.  Then I go, “I thought there was something going on.”  But I keep shtum as a matter of policy, because guys who find links between JFK’s assassination and Aristotle Onassis’s manipulation of the emerald trade in China (I swear, I once read such a piece SOTI)… well, really.

So last week the Brits discovered beyond all doubt that two actual spies were working for the Chicom government, and arrested them.  Then, mysteriously, “pressure was brought to bear” and all charges were dropped.

So read here about the Circle of 48, which explains the dismissal of the charges.  (Spoiler alert:  it happened because prosecution “would have angered the Chinese government”.)

And think about whether such a group exists here in the U.S.  It’s not so much a dotted line as it is a neon arrow.  We saw evidence of it before with the fake “Russian dossier” and the people within government who prepared it, used fake information to make it legal, leaked it to the press and tried to stymie a completely valid election.  And I’ll bet there are more being cooked up, as we speak.  You may suggest your own suspects as the dramatis personae  (people like that slimy little Brit Jonathan Powell, only with American accents).

Feel free to point out where I’m wrong.