Category: Gummint

Killing Golden Geese

Anarchist thugs, BaconLettuceMayo, Business, Gummint, Marxists

The late and great Margaret Thatcher had it right (as usual) when she said of Communists that sooner or later, they run out of other people’s money.  What’s happening in many of the neo-socialist hellholes like New York lately is that the “other” (i.e. wealthy) people aren’t necessarily running out of money, they’re running out of patience with the filthy nest their government has created, and are running away.

It’s snapshot simple. The wealthy and the companies they work for pay most of the taxes. The poor consume most of the taxes through social programs. COVID is driving the wealthy and their offices out of the city. No one will be left to pay for the poor, who are stuck here, and the city will collapse in the transition.

Of course, that would be bad enough, because even if the wealthy folks came back to their Upper East- or West Side domiciles once the Chinkvirus had subsided, NYFC could continue to fleece them in the manner to which everyone has become accustomed.  But if their toney little brownstone houses and chi-chi apartment buildings are surrounded by homeless, aggressive beggars and rioting assholes of the BLM / Pantifa persuasion, the millionaires and billionaires will say (and are saying) “The hell with this shit” and leave for more hospitable climes — and their companies will go along with them.

I have another post bubbling under about the death of the traditional office-work model, but that can wait for another time.

What’s really interesting, from a socio-political perspective, is how quickly this has happened.  It might have happened at some point or another anyway, as the Blue Model metropolises collapsed under the weight of their underfunded pension plans and failing social services and infrastructure — but the Chinkvirus has been the Catalyst Supreme for our little domestic Lenins and Maos.  What’s even more interesting is that, being economic illiterates, our socialist pols have looked to Europe, their favorite model, and said, “But France isn’t collapsing!”

Oh yes, it is.  The difference is that rich Frogs can’t exactly load up U-Hauls and move to — where?  Germany?  Belgium?  Britain?  It’s the same situation in those countries.  There are no prosperous and successful business-friendly, low tax states in Europe like Texas, Florida or Utah — they’re all soft socialist states;  and the Chinkvirus is having the same effect on their economies and traditional business models as it is in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

So even in the best of times (booming Trump economy, no virus, no BLM / Pantifa riots), Illinois, California and New York — to name but three — would be sucking wind soon enough, and the writing has been on their walls for some time.  But in the current environment?  They’re screwed.

My only concern, as I’ve often said before, is that these fleeing rats don’t come to our happy little ships and infest them with their shitty ideas and political morality.

Open Season

Gummint, Two-Minute Hate

It’s not often that I read a long article that starts off with me getting angry (remember, my general mood is best described as “irritable” at the best of times) and having my anger grow to nigh-ungovernable rage.  But this article managed to get me there quite effortlessly.  Here’s a taste:

On his way to hunt on his father’s land during the first week of December 2017, Hunter Rainwaters was driving a side-by-side through the property when he noticed an oddity positioned roughly 4’ off the ground. He popped the brakes, backed toward the object and looked in surprise at a trail camera belted to a tree.
“I didn’t see any words or stickers on it, but I knew right away it wasn’t ours,” Hunter Rainwaters recalls.
Following the hunt, he drove back onto the family property and spotted a second trail camera attached to a tree with several branches removed to allow for an unimpeded lens view. Rainwaters dialed his father’s cellphone, and described the two cameras: “I was shaken up when my son called and I knew immediately it had to be the TWRA (Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency),” Rainwaters recalls.
Deeply disturbed, Rainwaters arrived home later in the afternoon and took a look at the two cameras, mulling over whether to remove the pair. Two days later, with Rainwaters in limbo on what action to take — both cameras disappeared.
…
“The cameras were collecting pictures of us hunting, driving and just our lives,” he adds. “One of the cameras was even recording footage up to the back of my tenant’s house.”

That’s bad enough.  But it gets worse. (And I’ve added emphasis.)

Can the government place cameras and monitoring equipment on a private citizen’s land at will, or conduct surveillance and stakeouts on private land, without probable cause or a search warrant? Indeed, according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. Welcome to Open Fields.
The vast majority of Americans assume law enforcement needs a warrant to carry out surveillance, but for roughly a century, SCOTUS has ruled that private land — is not private. Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures” expressed in the Bill of Rights only apply to an individual’s immediate dwelling area, according to SCOTUS.

Had the government agency mounted their little snoopies on utility poles on the public road off the property, I would have just shrugged.  But to come onto the land without a warrant or permission?

Somewhere, Feliks Dzerzhinsky is chuckling his ass off.

Me, had I discovered this shit on my land and ascertained that there was no label that it was government property, I think I would have moved well back out of range of the camera and performed a little long-range shooting exercise.

“After all, Yeronner, I actually thought it was poachers, scanning my land to see if there was any game for them to hunt illegally.  I never for a moment thought that this skullduggery could be the work of the Gummint!“

(My other thought was to plant a Claymore mine at the base of the tree, but no doubt someone’s going to have a problem with this. )

Apart from my beef with the bastard government agency, my equally-enraged beef is with the fucking shysters on the Supreme Court.

Just as I don’t need some asshole judge to “explain” the meaning of the Second Amendment to me, I don’t need these turds to “explain” the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to me, either.

Private property is just that:  private.  And the sole function of government — any government — is to protect that right and ensure that it isn’t transgressed, by anyone.  Looking at the Fourth, I can see the problem:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So, in the exquisite nature of lawyers to parse the law literally and look for loopholes, the word “houses” is taken to mean just the area enclosed by walls, and thus government agents can pretty much run roughshod over one’s outdoor property (just as the TWRA did in the above story), as often and for any reason they deem fit.

Izzat so?

Listen:  everybody knows that the nature of government — of all governments — is eventually to oppress otherwise law-abiding citizens.  The only way this can be preempted is to force the would-be oppressors to convince a judge that what they want to do has a clear and compelling justification.  If the judge is just going to sign whatever they put in front of him and pat them on the head as they go on their way… what’s the fucking point of having a judge in the first place?

I’ve said this many, many times on this blog before:  whenever you get a situation where an individual starts whacking government officials and agents, the vast majority of the time it’s because the government is messing with his property in some way or another.  So do not be surprised when landowners start taking potshots at these bastards.

And if I were sitting on a jury to judge a homicide charge against the landowner under these circumstances, I would die before voting for a conviction.

I’ve slotted this post into the “Two Minute Hate” category at the top;  let me tell you, the hatred is going to last a lot longer than that.

Why Not?

Crime, Gummint, Law and Order, The Gun Thing

As police presence and power decreases (forced by, lest we forget, Democrat-controlled local governments), it seems only natural that people are saying, “Well, we did deputize the enforcement of laws and peacekeeping functions to government — but if they are unable or unwilling to perform those functions, we’re just gonna take that power back into our own hands.”

Hence:

Violent Crime Explosion Forces Minneapolis Residents to Form Militias

Breitbart’s John Nolte, by the way, doesn’t think this is a Good Thing, and he gives a number of sound reasons why.  I, however, am not interested in ivory-tower discussions — I prefer to remain rooted in reality — so I think that even if Nolte is correct, it doesn’t matter.  The reality facing these people betrayed by their government is real, and it’s dangerous.  So I say:  go on, buy guns, learn how to use them, and do whatever you have to do to protect yourselves from the raving mob.  Right now, the BLM/Pantifas are actively behaving in ways that makes me think they’re looking for martyrs, and if a bunch of citizen militias help them achieve that goal, so much the better.  (I would love to see a situation where a militia group drops the hammer on some scumbag looters / rioters, and when the cops put in a belated appearance to try and arrest the shooters, the militia sticks to their guns, so to speak, and tells the cops to go pound sand.  Let government try to maintain its “monopoly on force” in the face of an armed and angry citizenry trying to protect themselves and each other.)  As the Z-man sourly puts it:

“Gun sales are booming, but the people buying the guns imagine themselves defending their life and property within a system of laws. What happens when they realize there is no system of laws?”

Interesting, but behind the curve.   More intriguing is what happens when the cops realize there is no longer a system of laws.  And Z-man talks about that too:

Social collapse comes when the majority stops accepting the legitimacy of the system and the authority of those in charge of it. The one result of the street rioters and their corporate and political sponsors is they may get what they want. The majority may stop accepting the legitimacy of the system. That silent minority may lose all faith in the system and the people running it. That would be us one step from the edge, when all respect for authority collapses and takes society with it.

That would be this scenario:

Yeah, I know:  it sounds like I’m promoting anarchy, doesn’t it?  Tell me that what’s going on right now in Portland, Seattle and Chicago isn’t already anarchy.  Only what it really is, as Z-man points out, is government-enabled (and even -supported) anarchy.  If the Left is so keen on anarchy, let’s give them the full flavor.

But just for the record, I’m damn glad that it’s Black people (and women) buying more guns.  Self-defense is a universal right, after all.

“Sin” Taxes

Gummint, Nannies

It is a truism that as any government becomes larger and larger, its reach extends yet deeper and deeper into our private lives, and it becomes greedier and greedier for money to feed its bloated bulk, the only kind of creativity it produces is finding novel ways to tax us.

The idea, therefore, of a bloated, obscenely-large government lecturing us about the “sins” of obesity would be savagely ironic — not that any government would ever acknowledge that, being by definition bereft of a sense of humor.

So Gummint imposes a “sin” tax on us, for our own good.  Liquor and tobacco were the earliest manifestations of this theft, and as society becomes more and more prosperous, it also becomes less and less fearful of starvation — and now, of course, “obesity” is the latest “danger” we need to be protected from — and as something becomes more expensive, people will always use less and less of it, what better than to make it expensive through taxation, thus feeding government coffers while “protecting” us.

Listen, as a Fat Bastard myself, I know that fatties (I’m sorry, “heavy people”) have health issues and are sometimes exposed to deadly consequences for their obesity.

So what?

Well, of course, if someone else is paying for the consequences of your “gluttony” and overindulgence — in this case, that would be taxpayers, through a nationalized health service —  then the rationale for “sin” taxes is an easy one.

And right on cue, a fat-ass at the head of a fat-ass government is planning to shaft everybody.

‘Sin tax’ on sugary fizzy drinks could be extended to chocolates with adverts for sugary treats banned and health warnings slapped on alcohol bottles in anti-obesity plans being considered by Boris Johnson

And like Saul on the road to Damascus:

It came as Mr Johnson today launched the Government’s new anti-obesity drive., admitting he was ‘too fat’ when he was hospitalised with coronavirus.  He said that since his recovery from the deadly illness he has focused on getting fitter by going on morning runs.

Of course, this is being done because Gummint really, really cares about our health:

The Prime Minister’s comments came as Health Secretary Matt Hancock said if overweight adults were to lose five pounds in weight it could save the NHS £100 million.

Or it could not.  In fact, that’s an utterly bullshit statistic, and I would love to see how this incompetent prick came up with the number.  (Five pounds’ loss in someone who weighs, say, three hundred pounds, achieves precisely fuck all — and lest we forget, it’s the 300-lb+ category of fatties which has the highest mortality rate.)

As much as I love visiting the place, I am so glad I don’t live in Britishland.  Finally, as all arguments can be bolstered and/or improved by pitchurs, here’s something to ponder.  If being fat is so damn bad, why is this trend growing?

Anyway, I think everyone’s got the point by now.  It’s time for my morning breakfast of buttered Belgian waffles with syrup, followed by a refreshing pint or so of gin.

Someone else can live an austere life of self-denial and good health.  I’d rather enjoy mine, as David Hockney suggests.

Quote Of The Day

Gummint, QOTD

From CanuckiFriend Fred Z, in Comments:

“The Government of the USA is the best in the world and it’s so shitty it has to be watched every second of every day and thwacked in the gonads as often as possible.”

The only better government I can think of at the moment doesn’t exist anymore:  Hong Kong’s of the 1950s-60s, where income tax was capped at 5%, zero business or cap gains taxes, there was no welfare, “security net” or mandatory retirement contribution, and the government collected no statistics on its population whatsoever.  Now compare that to what Fred’s talking about.

I think I’ll have another gin with my breakfast.

Replacement Time

Gummint, Law and Order, The Gun Thing

This just goes to show how ignorant some people are:

It seems that residents wanting to defend their homes from a mob are no longer allowed to exercise their Second Amendment rights in the city of St. Louis. On Friday, KSDK reported that local prosecutor Kim Gardner got a search warrant for the McCloskey home. And based on the court order, police seized the rifle used by Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis resident who used the weapon to defend his home from a group of protesters who threatened to kill him and his wife. They also seized the handgun Patricia McCloskey used, which was being held by their former attorney.

The ignorant people, in this case, would be this loathsome prosecutor Gardner and the people who “advise” her.

If I’d been in this situation (assuming I only had one gun, which I do, following that terrible canoeing accident on the Brazos or maybe Colorado rivers), I would have replacement guns in the house about, oh, half an hour after the cops left.  Only this time, I’d hide the some of spares where the cops would need a pneumatic drill to get access to them.  Or not.

So from this unhappy situation we should deduce the following:

  1. Never have just one gun per person in the house
  2. Hide a couple of backup guns — not just inside your own house, but in those of a couple trusted friends
  3. Don’t forget to do the same with the ammo for the guns.

If you haven’t made such arrangements already, do it now.