Category: Gummint

Third World Adventure

Behind Enemy Lines, Gummint

I once knew a German professional photographer (let’s call him Georg) who, along with a fellow German photographer (“Klaus”), decided to do one of those photo safaris — driving from Cairo to Cape Town, snapping pics along the way — that sounds so good back in Hamburg, but is completely foolish in reality.  Anyway, driving a mil-surp G-Wagen (not a bad choice, BTW), they set off and made it through Egypt without incident.  At the border, they had to get a “passing through” visa to get across the Sudan, which essentially allowed them to be in the country for three days.  When they got to Sudan’s southern border, however, the sole guard at the border post (just a hut) wouldn’t let them leave the country because they had the “wrong visa” — and they’d have to drive back to Khartoum (a two-day drive) to get the right one.  When Georg pointed out that their existing visa would expire en route and they would, in essence, be in the country illegally and imprisoned if caught, the guard just shrugged.  Not his problem.

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.  Last week, faced with a looming legal deadline, I had to fly up to Chicago to get a legal document out of the Cook County Court archives.  (Why I was unable to access the document online, or even manage to talk to someone in the County Clerk’s office to send me the document is a story all by itself.)  Anyway, after having had my 5am flight canceled (thank you, American), I made the 7am flight only by dint of paying the full fare (don’t ask) and arrived at the Cook County courthouse (2nd District in Skokie) at about 11am, with all the data needed for the request on my trusty laptop..

Of course, there’s TSA-type security at all these places these days, which is where I had a Sudan-type encounter of my own.  Reason?  No laptops allowed in the courthouse by members of the public.  I know, it’s inexplicable but hey, Cook County.  I looked around for any storage lockers:  none.

“So where can I store my laptop?”
“You’ll just have to take it back to your car.”
“I don’t have a car;  I just flew in from Dallas.  So what can I do?”
Like the Sudanese border guard, the fucking security guard just shrugged.  “Not my problem.”

At this juncture, I should point out that every single glass window and door at the courthouse has one of those idiotic little “No Handgun” stickers displayed.

I’m not saying that I would have shot someone — in fact, I absolutely would not have, even if I’d been able to bring the 1911 with me — but let me tell you, after a day which had begun at 3am, experienced a canceled flight and a massive fare surcharge along with all the other hassles of modern-day travel (full flight, idiots with too-large bags, crowded train from the airport into the city etc.), only to be faced with indifferent bovine officialdom at the end of it, I can quite believe that some other guy  might  have dropped the hammer.

Which, by the way, is what Klaus did at the Sudanese border.  He told the guard that he had the correct visa back in the car, fetched his gun instead and shot the guard dead.  Then he and Georg got in their G-Wagen and raced off into Uganda.  A real African tale, that one.

And now, the rest of my  story. Read more

With All Due Respect, Fuck Off

Gummint

So the Attorney General thinks we should allow Gummint access to our private lives, does he?

U.S. attorney general William Barr has said consumers should accept the risks that encryption backdoors pose to their personal cybersecurity to ensure law enforcement can access encrypted communications.
In a speech Tuesday in New York, the U.S. attorney general parroted much of the same rhetoric from his predecessors and other senior staff at the Justice Department, calling on tech companies to do more to assist federal authorities to gain access to devices with a lawful order.In remarks, Barr said the “significance of the risk should be assessed based on its practical effect on consumer cybersecurity, as well as its relation to the net risks that offering the product poses for society.”
He suggested that the “residual risk of vulnerability resulting from incorporating a lawful access mechanism is materially greater than those already in the unmodified product.”
“Some argue that, to achieve at best a slight incremental improvement in security, it is worth imposing a massive cost on society in the form of degraded safety,” he said.
The risk, he said, was acceptable because “we are talking about consumer products and services such as messaging, smart phones, e-mail, and voice and data applications,” and “not talking about protecting the nation’s nuclear launch codes.”

Really?  That little speech probably sounded better in the original Chinese.

Then there’s the tu quoque  argument:

The U.S. is far from alone in calling on tech companies to give law enforcement access.
Earlier this year U.K. authorities proposed a new backdoor mechanism, the so-called “ghost protocol,” which would give law enforcement access to encrypted communications as though they were part of a private conversation.

As though we should emulate the British — who, lest we forget already  has governmental powers which allow them to preemptively ban anything to be published which they don’t like.  (It’s called a “D notice”, FYI.)

Here’s my take.  But first, a reminder:

Amendment IV
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.

Considering how the “security services” have already violated this Constitutional precept against one person they didn’t care for (FISA?  Russian collusion, anyone?), why should we trust that these fucking spies won’t abuse this power against anyone else?

OF course, the fucking feds will no doubt blackmail the tech companies into doing their foul work for them:

Barr did not rule out pushing legislation to force tech companies to build backdoors.

I’ll bet he didn’t.   And Barr, lest we forget, is supposed to one of the good guys?  Can you imagine giving this power to a Justice Department, CIA, NSA DHS or any of the other little Stasi acronyms, under a future Democratic Socialist administration?

We might as well live in Communist China or 1970s East Germany.  Which is doubtless exactly where these pricks, all of them, would like us to be.  All for our own security, of course.

FOAD, all of you.

That’s my First Amendment right coming into play.  You don’t want me invoking the Second, you motherfuckers.  There’s another wholly different meaning to “going dark”.

Oops

Business, Food & Drink, Gummint

Everybody told them that it was a monumentally-stupid idea;  but noooooo:

Restaurants Unlimited, a Seattle-based chain with restaurant locations in 47 US cities, announced on Sunday it was seeking Chapter 11 protection, citing “progressive” wage laws.
The company, which has operated since the Lyndon Johnson Administration, said rising labor costs—part of a national trend of government-mandated minimum increases—were part of its decision.

Note the 47 cities affected by these closures (see link).

I would feel more sorry for the soon-to-be-laid-off workers, but I’m betting that most of them supported the higher-minimum-wage idiocy in the first place, so… sucks to be them.  Maybe next time they’ll vote with their brains instead of with their greed.  (Granted, working-class people have trouble making ends meet in liberal shitholes like Seattle and San Francisco;  but the politicians who have caused the high housing prices are the same ones who pushed through the higher minimum-wage thresholds.  So there’s a double whammy here, and yet those idiot voters keep sending them back into office.)

Of course, it’ll be all Trump’s fault (according to the West Coast media).

Who’s Costing What

Gummint, Health

It is inevitable that whenever a service is limited, talk will turn towards issues like “who is more deserving of it?” or “should people pay more if they use the service more?”, and so on.  Insurance companies have a hold on this measurement in that, for example, young men pay more for auto insurance because they have more accidents and drive more recklessly than middle-aged women do.

Where this all starts falling apart is when it gets taken to its logical extreme:  should fat people pay more for airline tickets when their weight requires more fuel to power the plane off the runway?  Sure, say all the skinny people;  fuck you, say the chubbies.

And that’s for a pay service.  The argument becomes even sharper when it’s a free (to consumers) service such as, say, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), which is going to become still more of an issue Over Here as the U.S. inches towards a “single-payer” (i.e. State-provided) healthcare system.

So who costs the healthcare service more:  fat people or smokers?  In her inimitable style, Brit journo Janet Street-Porter (who is skinny) scolds future BritPM Boris Johnson (who is chubby) for saying that fat people don’t cost the NHS as much as smokers.

Sorry, Boris but fat people are costing the NHS just as much as smokers ever did so why shouldn’t they face the same shame and taxes?
It’s official, eating yourself to an early death is a human right which must be protected.
Boris Johnson – who could be our next Prime Minister, a prospect which fills me with fear and loathing in equal measure- wants to review the levies on sugary food and drink because they ‘hurt the poor’. He calls them ‘sin taxes’.
This is shameless electioneering, stooping to a new low to grovel for votes.
What really hurts the poor is discovering your child needs every tooth filled and there are no dentists for hundreds of miles.
Or your teenager is too fat to play sport and is being bullied at school. Every extra kilo around a child’s waist is another year off their lives.
Giving people on low incomes the freedom of choice to buy unhealthy food is not a policy anyone who cares about humankind should be proud of. It is retrogressive and patronising.
Food laced with sugar and fat SHOULD be taxed, and that money ploughed back into the National Health service.

For starters, this whole “shaming” thing should be called what it really is:  bullying.  Shame  is what you should feel if you commit a sin or a crime (some overlap);  only scolds and control freaks (some overlap) want to ascribe the eating of a hamburger or a chocolate bar as sinful, and therefore worthy of taxing.

Hey, let’s not stop there.  If we’re talking about costs to a nationalized healthcare system, let’s not stop with smokers and chubbies;  what about car drivers, cyclists and motorcyclists?  I mean, we’ve all seen the accident reports and injury stats — why not tack a tax onto car, bicycle or motorcycle purchases to help cover those  costs to the healthcare system?  (Feel free to add your  suggestions as to ways to squeeze yet more tax dollars from citizens.  Indulge your inner politician.)

I’m making a joke about this, but make no mistake:  at some point this nonsense — especially when supported by media assholes like Street-Porter — starts becoming policy.  And we need to nip it in the bud, hard.

Let’s end this little discussion with a thought from Janet:

It’s the duty of responsible parents and schools to promote healthy eating, and the duty of supermarkets to promote real unprocessed food over junk.

Yeah… we know better than parents what’s good for their children, and (channeling Michelle Obama) schools shouldn’t serve meals that aren’t blessed by the Nutrition Police.  And supermarkets shouldn’t serve their customers’ needs and wants;  they should only serve foods that we say they should.  (Corollary:  and if our “suggested” foods turn out to be completely wrong — e.g. the food pyramid espoused by the FDA for decades — then that’s just tough titties.)

FOAD.

True Story

Gummint, Marxists

Apparently Rep. Frederica Willams (Communist-FL) was on her way to a speaking engagement when she discovered she’d forgotten to brush her teeth.  She stopped at a Walgreens on the way, and sent her assistant into the store to get her a toothbrush.

“Can I get a toothbrush for Congresswoman Williams?” she asked the clerk breathlessly.
The clerk thought for a moment, then replied, “Sounds like a fair trade.”

OMG — I think I’m going to be arrested for that.

Out Of The Past 2

Gummint, Old Essays, Politics

Barricades, Explained

November 26, 2008
5:04 AM CDT

In a long-ago discussion in Comments, I made the statement that if I had my preference, I’d like to die either asleep in my wife’s arms, or else on the barricades.

I think I’d better explain the latter, because someone may get the wrong impression, and I’d hate that to happen.

Although I’ve started to look like a Frenchman and am descended from the French, most Gallic qualities have long since been burned off by the passage of generations. Most especially, the need for le geste magnifique, mais inutile (the magificent, but futile, gesture) has long ago been purged from my psyche.

So don’t expect me to rush to the barricades when The Glorious Day comes, AK clutched in wrinkled grasp, with ringing exhortations coming from my lips.

I am uncomfortable in the role of “revolutionary leader”. I’m not a rabble rouser, or an agitator. I seek not to form an army, or an underground movement, or any kind of Maquis. I don’t care about glory, or notoriety, or any of that nonsense. I am, quite simply, a man who will go so far, and no further, and who will resist oppression without fanfare, without recognition, and without a qualm.

I am also not a terrorist, or “freedom fighter”, and I will never engage in any activities which are proactive against Our Enemy, The State.

I may, however, choose to resist, in a manner of my own choosing, because I have various boundaries, personal boundaries, which may or may not be the same as those of others.

So my “barricade” would be a lot simpler, and a lot more personal.

It could be at my doorstep, when agents of the State come to confiscate my suddenly-illegal guns.

It could be in a court of law, when I am forced to choose between paying a fine for disobeying an unjust law, and going to prison. (It will, I promise you, be the latter.)

It could be when the State tries to confiscate or trespass on my property.

It could be when the State threatens my family.

It could be when the State tries to load me, or any other “undesirables”, into the cattle cars (real, or metaphysical).

It could be when an agent of the State demands “Papieren, bitte” and I show them my tattoo instead.

It could be when I am restricted in, or forbidden to exercise my freedom of speech, or any of the other freedoms enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I will decide what constitutes “reasonable” when it comes to restrictions thereon, and not some Congressman, lawyer, judge, policeman or government bureaucrat.

Just like Nock before me, I’m not intent on “setting an example”, or influencing others, or making a splash of any kind. Those who wish, may do what I do, or not. Those who wish to castigate me for my choices may do so, but it will have no effect. Those who wish to use me as an example do so without my consent or blessing, and those who expect me to “lead” them will be disappointed.

I am a quiet man, a reasonable man, but I am not nor will ever be a slave to the State. I left one country to escape that, and I will not live like that in my adopted one.

So if I die on the barricades, it may be known to others, or else just an unseen spark which flickers and dies in the darkness. Either way, I am indifferent. But it will be known to the agents of the State, I can promise you that. I will not go quietly into that dark night of oppression. It may well turn out to have been a futile gesture, but it will not be futile for me.

I may have lost most Gallic qualities, as I said earlier, but the one I have most definitely lost is the impulse to surrender.

And that’s all I’ll have to say on the topic. Ever.