Category: Gummint

Leaving Us Alone

Business, Gummint

With all the crisis talk and “We’re all gonna diiiieeeee!”  and “Gummint must do something!”  nonsense, there’s still more proof (as if we needed it) that most of America made the right choice back in 2016 by electing God-Emperor Trump.  Here’s why:

President Donald Trump did something difficult and remarkable during the White House press briefing on Sunday: he stood up for the free market in a moment of crisis, when at least half the country is pushing him to abandon it.
A reporter asked the president why he was not using the Defense Production Act to nationalize industries to take control of companies and force them to produce needed health care equipment for treating coronavirus patients.
Trump’s answer was that the United States does not believe in nationalization, and does not need it, either.

…and he goes on to give examples.

You know, I have always preferred that our presidents have executive political experience — e.g. a state governorship (despite Jimmeh Carduh) — but of late I’m starting to revise that opinion.

I realize that Trump is quite an aberration — he’s something of an iconoclast, and not all businessmen are in his mold — but I have to tell you that I’m starting to think that we need to elect, or at least give serious consideration to presidential candidates who have made their way in successful businesses.  (I’m not talking about CEOs of corporations, necessarily, because they’re often no better than the stultified politician type.)

Can anyone imagine where we as a nation would be now had we elected Her Filthiness as POTUS instead of DJT?  There’d be a Virus Czar, a Nationalization Czar, a Facemask Czar and countless other “czars”, all equally incompetent and ineffective — and you’d better believe that we would now be in the death-grip [sic] of a UK/EU-style NHS (which, from all accounts, is proving absolutely incompetent to handle this current emergency).

We dodged a bullet back then, folks;  and we now need to do two things:

  • re-elect Trump in 2020, and
  • make sure that his successor in 2024 is of the same steel and beliefs, so that all his good work is not undone by some Hillary/Biden/Bernie clone in the future.

Otherwise:

Not to mention at least one  other charming situation:

Eucalyptus Now

Bad News, Gummint

I often disagree with columnist Peter Hitchens (brother of the late Christopher), but I have to say that his latest column does resonate with me, because he points out what I often say:  that Gummint often uses apocalyptic messages to clamp down on our freedoms.  And he does it using facts and history (always the most difficult argument to refute).  Here’s an example:

The former editor of The Times, Sir Simon Jenkins, recently listed these unfulfilled scares: bird flu did not kill the predicted millions in 1997. In 1999 it was Mad Cow Disease and its human variant, vCJD, which was predicted to kill half a million. Fewer than 200 in fact died from it in the UK.
The first Sars outbreak of 2003 was reported as having ‘a 25 per cent chance of killing tens of millions’ and being ‘worse than Aids’. In 2006, another bout of bird flu was declared ‘the first pandemic of the 21st Century’.
There were similar warnings in 2009, that swine flu could kill 65,000. It did not. The Council of Europe described the hyping of the 2009 pandemic as ‘one of the great medical scandals of the century’.

And Hitchens’ devastating take:

In only one place – aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess – has an entire closed community been available for study. And the death rate there – just one per cent – is distorted because so many of those aboard were elderly. The real rate, adjusted for a wide age range, could be as low as 0.05 per cent and as high as one per cent.
…
About 1,600 people die every day in the UK for one reason or another. A similar figure applies in Italy and a much larger one in China. The coronavirus deaths, while distressing and shocking, are not so numerous as to require the civilised world to shut down transport and commerce, nor to surrender centuries-old liberties in an afternoon.

Fortunately, our government in the US is not as quite as panic-stricken as the BritGov, and while we’re being warned to be careful and take healthy precautions, we’re nowhere close to facing the governmental excesses that the Brits are.

This latest Wuhan-virus pandemic may be as terrible as we’re being told;  but I agree with the above conclusions that it probably won’t be — and all our well-meaning precautions may end up costing us more than necessary:  a lot more than necessary.

This means that we should continue to be vigilant — not just against disease, but against the loss of our freedoms — and Hitchens’ article serves as a very timely warning why we should always be on our guard against the doomsayers because very often, their motives are not altruistic.

For a much, much longer examination of the thing, go here.  While the article is long, it’s definitely not too long to read — and its conclusion is even better than that of Hitchens (with my emphasis in red):

The COVID-19 hysteria is pushing aside our protections as individual citizens and permanently harming our free, tolerant, open civil society. Data is data. Facts are facts. We should be focused on resolving COVID-19 with continued testing, measuring, and be vigilant about protecting those with underlying conditions and the elderly from exposure. We are blessed in one way, there is an election in November. Never forget what happened and vote.

You may ask yourself. Who is this guy? Who is this author? I’m a nobody. That is also the point. The average American feels utterly powerless right now. I’m an individual American who sees his community and loved ones being decimated without given a choice, without empathy, and while the media cheers on with high ratings.

When this is all over, look for massive confirmation bias and pyrrhic celebration by elites. There will be vain cheering in the halls of power as Main Street sits in pieces. Expect no apology, that would be political suicide. Rather, expect to be given a Jedi mind trick of “I’m the government and I helped.”

The health of the State will be even stronger with more Americans dependent on welfare, another trillion stimulus filled with pork for powerful friends, and a bailout for companies that charged us $200 change fees for nearly a decade.  Washington DC will be fine. New York will still have all of the money in the world. Our communities will be left with nothing but a shadow of the longest bull market in the history of our country.

 

Crisis Not Being Wasted

Gummint, Marxists, The Gun Thing

“Never let a crisis go to waste [when furthering your own objectives]” is the mantra of the Socialists, and indeed they grab it whenever they can.  Thus:

The mayor of Champaign, Illinois has declared a town emergency over the Wuhan coronavirus that includes a potential ban on the sale of firearms and ammunition.
According to a local report from WAND 17, Champaign Mayor Deborah Frank Feinen has issued an executive order that would give her office “extraordinary powers.” She has issued the order despite the town and surrounding area not having a single case of the disease.

Of course, controlling gun- and ammo sales would do nothing, nada, zip and zilch to contain, cure or prevent the Wuhan virus, but the point is not about relevance, but about opportunity.

So of course the Marxists in government are going to grab at it with both greedy little hands.

I imagine that the road traffic between Champaign and, say, Indiana is going to increase rapidly, and Illinois is going to lose serious money in taxes stemming from lost gun- and ammo sales;  but that doesn’t matter, comrade, as long as the aims of The Movement are being satisfied.

And to all Commies, of course, if there’s a problem only Gummint can fix it:

“There should be a national approach to ensuring every factory that can make hand sanitizer should be on 24/7 shifts and the distribution could go to the places that need it most” [Chief Commissar of NYFC] de Blasio said.

You want to see real shortages?  Let the State decide on selection, production and distribution.  I can see the headlines already:

Government Announces 5-Year Plan To Make Hand Sanitizer;  Production Slated To Begin In Fall 2052

Government Hand Sanitizer Factory Sends 60,000 Empty Bottles To Restaurant In North Dakota;  Owner Mystified

Government Hand Sanitizer Factory Makes 2 Million Bottles Of Hand Sanitizer;  Government Trucking Center Has No Trucks Available To Deliver Them, And Government Railcars Busy Delivering Sand To Canada

Government Hand Sanitizer Factory Makes 2 Million Gallons Of Mouthwash By Mistake, But Has No Bottles On Hand To Fill Anyway;  Uses Mouthwash To Clean Factory Floor, Pours Remaining 1.99 Million Gallons Into Town Reservoir

Congress Appropriates $250 Billion For Hand Sanitizer Production;  Government Factories Only Able To Produce 20 Gallons, Total

And finally:

CDC Finds That Government-Formulated Hand Sanitizer Causes Skin To Blister;  U.S. Forced To Import Sanitizer From… China 

Let’s hear it from Comrade Stalin:

Poxy little statists.

Rolling Back The Tide

Good Stuff, Gummint, Health

While the incompetent asswipe known as President #44 never saw a process that shouldn’t be controlled by Gummint, God-Emperor Trump and his crew disagree — especially when faced with a real  emergency:

The Trump administration has rolled back a Food And Drug Administration rule instituted by President Barack Obama that has stalled coronavirus testing at the state level.
The rule in question previously required state-run laboratories to only run medical tests pre-approved by the F.D.A.
“We believe this policy strikes the right balance during this public health emergency,” said FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn of the rule change. “We will continue to help to ensure sound science prior to clinical testing and follow-up with the critical independent review from the FDA, while quickly expanding testing capabilities in the U.S.
“This action today reflects our public health commitment to addressing critical public health needs and rapidly responding and adapting to this dynamic and evolving situation.”

And so say all of us.  No doubt, Obama’s minions wouldn’t have cared if a thousand people died (e.g. the H1N1 episode), as long as everything was being controlled by the federal government.  And now a medical opinion:

Triage

Gummint, Health

The next time some Lefty asshole starts yammering on about the glories of nationalized medical care (a.k.a. “single payer” and all the other little euphemisms they use to conceal what the system actually is) like Britain’s NHS, you have my full permission to kick them in the crotch.

Why (other than my normal bloodthirstiness) would I suggest something so extreme?  Try this little admission:

[NHS ]Doctors have admitted that the most vulnerable patients could be denied critical care in a severe coronavirus outbreak, as they also warned that the UK is dangerously unequipped to deal with a pandemic. Under protocol dubbed ‘Three Wise Men’, senior medics at hospitals would need to decipher which patients to give care such as ventilators and beds to, with a focus on saving those most likely to recover.
…
The England-based medics told the publication that the already struggling health service would ‘crumble’ under the weight of a large outbreak, one lamenting that their hospital even struggled to contain this winter’s seasonal spate of flu and colds.

Make no mistake about it:  even in normal times, medical care is rationed when administered by the State — not just in Britain, but everywhere such a system exists — so when there’s a massive event like a pandemic (or even an epidemic in a single location), the system simply collapses and people die en masse.

Wear combat boots.

 

Yeah, Just Keep On Poking

Gummint, Legal Stuff

Back when I was a young starving musician, I was driving the band’s van loaded with equipment back to our storage room after a long gig.  At about 3am I ran into a police roadblock — a common enough occurrence in apartheid South Africa.  The block was manned by a single cop who’d parked his SUV across the road and when he saw headlights approaching, would just turn on his flashers to cause the oncoming car to stop.  So I did.

“Where are you going?”
“Back home — well, back to offload all the band equipment first, then home.”
“Open up the back.”
“Now open up the side door.”
“I can’t see anything;  all that crap is blocking up the doors.”
“Yeah, we have a lot of equipment.”
“Unpack it.”
“Why?”
“I need to see that you’re not carrying anything illegal in there.”
“I’m not not carrying anything illegal.”
“Unpack it.”
“No.”
“What?”
“Look, be reasonable, can you?  It’s three in the morning, I’ve been working since 5 yesterday afternoon, and I’ve still got two more hours’ work before I can get into bed.”
“Not my problem.  Unpack the van, now.”
I lost it.  “No.  You want the van unpacked, you can fucking do it.  I’ll sit here at the side of the road, and after you’ve discovered that I’m not carrying anything illegal, you can pack it all back again, and then I’ll go home.”
I think he was more surprised that I wasn’t going to obey his orders — probably the first time it had ever happened to him.  He stared at me, I stared right back at him.  (My kids call it my “hitman” look.)
After a moment or two, he sighed and said, “Just get back in your van, and fuck off.”  (I think he figured out that he and I were alone on a deserted road in the middle of Fuck Nowhere, South Africa, and I was a LOT bigger than he was.)
So I got back in the van, and drove off.  As I did so, I touched the Colt Combat Commander strapped to my hip (which he hadn’t discovered), looked back at him in the rearview mirror, and murmured to myself:  “You don’t know it, sonny, but I just let you live.”
I was that  angry.

I told y’all that story so we could talk about this one.

We all know about the asshole who teases a normally-placid dog until it snaps at him, then beats it or kills it because “it’s dangerous”.

Feel free to read this article, then this one, and tell me if you don’t know exactly how that dog feels.

I should point out that almost every single incident of law-abiding people turning around and killing government agents or officials has been because someone’s property has been destroyed, confiscated or otherwise appropriated.

So if government agencies persist in this nonsense, do not be surprised if in desperation, angry and helpless citizens start doing stupid stuff.

Note that I’m not talking about those assholes who go round assassinating cops in cold blood — they need killing more than their victims do.  But at some point, a government official is going to fuck someone over because, in terms of Government Regulation #132-22-47, they can.

One day, the person they’re fucking with is going to snap, pull a gun and start shooting.  And of course, it’ll all be his  fault.

If you think this is unlikely, ask yourself why so many government agencies have started installing bullet-proof glass in front of their customer service counters.  They know how people feel, and still  they carry on doing it — because that’s what petty bureaucrats do when their actions are protected or even “justified” by some law or regulation.

The fucking government agencies (like those in the attached articles) need to start backing the fuck off before the shit really starts to fly.