Category: Rights

Damn Good Question

Anti-Gun Nannies, Government Thugs, Rights, The Gun Thing

I know that the Socialists in Congress have “shelved” their attempt to ban “weapons of war” i.e. ARs and AKs (for the moment), but this little exchange should prove interesting:

As Massie puts it (I paraphrase slightly):  “Who are the Department of Agriculture and Department of Education planning on going to war with, if their employees are to be excepted from this prohibition?”

Let us record the words of the late (and dearly-missed) H.L. Mencken, who stated:

“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol to his head.  Put it in his hand and it’s goodbye to the Bill of Rights.”

And quod erat demonstratum, today.

“Private” Property?

Business, Rights

The concept of private property has always been a contentious one.  It shouldn’t have been, as one of the few actual duties of any government is to protect private property — but ask any landlord in, oh, California how difficult it can be to evict tenants who haven’t paid the rent.

It’s even worse in Scotland — surprise, surprise — where temporary tenant-relief laws passed during the Covidiocy are now set to become permanent:

Previously, once a landlord could prove three consecutive months of rental arrears or more, eviction would have been guaranteed.

Under these latest plans, no eviction will be guaranteed, regardless of circumstance or grounds. It will be all discretionary.

The Bill proposes that a tribunal will still be able to grant an eviction if it considers it reasonable, including where late or no-payment of rent is the reason why the landlord is seeking an eviction. But campaigners have questioned what is deemed reasonable.

Instead of making it an ironclad guarantee — if tenants haven’t paid rent for X period, you may evict them — there’s now good chance that a court may say that such eviction may be “unreasonable”, by some standard undefined.  Of course, that’s an egregious injustice which runs contrary to the concept of private property, and the landloards know it:

‘Generally, a landlord will have a reason to recover their property and once they’ve evidenced their grounds, they should be entitled to recover it.

‘It is unclear what – if any – evidence the Scottish Government are analysing to consider the removal of mandatory grounds for possession.

‘Abusing temporary provisions to satisfy a long-term policy objective appears to be an underhand tactic and the intention to permanently make all grounds for possession discretionary simply highlights the Scottish Government’s wilful and continued disregard of the value of the private rented sector.’

And here’s the weaselly response from the ScotGov:

‘It simply means a Tribunal can take into account all of the circumstances of both landlords and tenants relating to a case before making a decision.  Good landlords recognise the case for keeping tenants in their homes where possible, so adding a final check from the tribunal will support responsible management, recognise financial and other pressures that tenants can face and help prevent homelessness.’

What utter, Class A, Deluxe bullshit.

Bad Behavior

Gummint, Rights

In the light of Senile Biden’s appointment of this nutcase to run the new MiniTrue:

…we also have this:

Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform, announced on Thursday plans to publish the IP addresses of all Weibo users both on their individual account pages and whenever they post comments, stating it was part of an effort to prevent “bad behavior” online.

Now, as someone who has blogged under my full name pretty much for most of my online life, this would seem to be no big deal.

There are some serious caveats to this, however.

In the first case, I’ve done this in the United States, where the government, at least nominally (coff coff ) is hamstrung by the First Amendment, and what Kim du Toit says on a blog shouldn’t matter to the Gummint at all, subject to the usual constraints of a polite, well-ordered society that we supposedly are (coff coff redux ).

Would I feel similarly at liberty if I were Do Toi Kim, resident of Beijing?  Hell no.

But we know — and Biden’s actions prove — that there are a number of totalitarian assholes and Democrats (some overlap) who would not only support a government action like China’s, but actually have called for it in the recent past.