Tag: Government

Acceptable Risk

Disaster, Gummint, Nannies

The inimitable Heather Mac Donald takes the Nannies to task, in her inimitable way.  This paragraph in particular struck home for me:

We set highway speeding limits to maximize convenience at what we consider an acceptable risk to human life. It is statistically certain that every year, there will be tens of thousands of driving deaths. A considerable portion of those deaths could be averted by “following the science” of force and velocity and enforcing a speed limit of, say, 15 miles an hour. But we tolerate motor-vehicle deaths because we value driving 75 miles an hour on the highway, and up to 55 miles an hour in cities, more than we do saving those thousands of lives. When those deaths come—nearly 100 a day in 2019—we do not cancel the policy. Nor would it be logical to cancel a liberal highway speed because a legislator who voted for it died in a car accident.

Bill Whittle once said more or less the same thing about accidental gun deaths:  while even one such death was tragic, the plain fact of the matter is that some freedoms come with risk, sometimes deadly risk;  and the overall benefit to our society is far, far greater than the danger that may (or may not) ensue.   Using statistics of “gun deaths” (even correct ones) to bolster calls for gun control / -confiscation is likewise irrelevant.

It’s called the price of freedom, and We The People have been balancing those freedoms against the collateral harm to individuals ever since our Republic was formed and the Constitution and Bill of Rights promulgated.  All individual rights are potentially harmful, whether it’s freedom of speech, assembly, religion, gun ownership, privacy or any of the others.

And to Heather’s point above:  driving isn’t even a right protected by the Bill of Rights.  How much more, then, should our First- and Second Amendment rights (and all the other rights for that matter) be protected, even when we know that some tragedy is bound to follow thereby?

“If it saves just one life” sounds great on a bumper sticker, but as a basis for public policy, it’s not only foolish but in many cases more harmful in the long run.  Heather again:

We could reduce coronavirus transmission to zero by locking everyone in a separate cell until a vaccine was developed. There are some public-health experts who from the start appeared ready to implement such radical social distancing. The extent to which we veer from that maximal coronavirus protection policy depends on how we value its costs and the competing goods: forgone life-saving medical care and deaths of despair from unemployment and social isolation, on the one hand, and the ability to support one’s family through work and to build prosperity through entrepreneurship, on the other. The advocates of maximal lockdowns have rarely conceded such trade-offs, but they are ever-present.

The current wave of totalitarianism and loss of freedoms caused by State overreaction to the Chinkvirus needs to be rolled back, and fast.  It just sucks that we have to rely on judges — many of whom, to judge from their records, are not especially friends of freedom — to hold back the mini-Mussolinis in their totalitarian quest for absolute power over the governed.

And just so we know what kind of “acceptable risk” we’re talking about, comes this from Fox News:

Alternative Actions

Crime, Gummint, Two-Minute Hate

From Insty:

Just who the fuck do these glorified debt-collectors think they are?

Congress should find out exactly how much the I.R.fuckingS. paid for this data, and reduce their operating budget by 100x the amount.  Unfortunately, as the House is under the control of the Socialists (for now), this isn’t going to happen.

Thus stymied, my thoughts run a little deeper than Stephen Green’s tar and feathers.

ROPE, TREES

and

WALL, BULLETS

…all come to mind, but no doubt someone is going to have a problem with this.

Straws

Gummint

You know, whenever we see reports of people going nuts and gunning down government officials (not cops or state troopers, just ordinary workers), we are justifiably appalled.

Should we be?  Try looking at these two little examples of governmental overreach.  In Connecticut:

A Connecticut selectwoman alleged on Facebook that she and her husband are facing a fine of $1,000 for violating the state’s coronavirus travel restrictions. Amy St. Onge (R), first selectwoman of Thompson, posted to Facebook that, on Labor Day, she and her husband Jason left home to visit their son Caleb, who is training at the Air Force base in Altus, Oklahoma, and preparing for his first deployment.
Upon the parents’ return, St. Onge said she received an email from the State of Connecticut informing her that she and her husband had violated Gov. Ned Lamont’s executive orders regarding travel during the coronavirus pandemic.

Here’s the thing:  somebody in government was either monitoring their Faecesbook account, or else responded to a fink’s complaint.  Either way, the response was uncalled-for and excessive.  (Connecticut is facing a massive budget surplus.  Just sayin’.)

Now Maryland:

Shawn Marshall Myers from Maryland threw two parties at his own home that violated the governor’s social distancing executive order and now he’s going to spend a full year behind bars.
They were at his own home and they were outdoor bonfire parties.
He threw one and the cops showed up and convinced him to break it up. He threw another less than a week later and he refused to tell his guests to leave when the cops arrived and told him to do so. He said he had the right to have a party at his house and told his guests not to leave.
And now he’s going to prison for a year.

Note, in the latter case, the following:

“He was given a warning,” Charles County State’s Attorney Tony Covington said. “It’s not like the police just swooped in there and said you’re going to jail. They gave him a warning.”

Yeah, that makes it all hunky-dory, of course.  You fucking little totalitarian cocksucker.

 

Lockdown Blues

Good Stuff, Gummint, Nannies

Over a month ago I went to Trader Joe’s to buy a couple of things, but was told to go to the back of the (100-yard) queue because the store was only allowing a dozen or so customers at a time to go in.  The outside temperature that day was August-In-Dallas (i.e. there were lizards frying gently on the sidewalks), so I said (quite loudly) to the officious little asshole at the door:  “This is total and utter bullshit, and you guys are acting like hysterical children.  I don’t need your stupid products that much,” and walked away.

A couple of people cheered and gave me the thumbs-up — and a few even nodded and walked away themselves.  (Sometimes, it only takes one, and — this may come as a surprise to many — I’ve often been that one, in my lifetime.)

It’s bad enough when Nanny Government can’t stop telling you what to do:  stay out of here, only six people allowed to be together there, family reunions or events are banned, can’t shop here but there is okay, this work is allowed but that isn’t and so on, but don’t forget to wear your face-condom everywhere or else you’ll be fined / arrested / publicly scolded / tossed out.

When stores start fucking with people’s lives, however, it’s probably too much.  At least, it was too much for this wonderful woman, who after having been bullied by everyone in Government or a uniform for months, decided that being told to follow in-store one-way signs was a Nanny Too Far, and showed her displeasure:

Shopper becomes furious after Co-op staff in Lingfield, Surrey, ask her to observe social distancing rules and starts throwing items and knocking bottles of wine off the shelves. The video that was captured in CCTV shows the woman screaming at the shop’s workers, after being asked to use the one-way system.

And just to put this in perspective, here are a few pics of Lingfield:

   

Not exactly the kind of place where one might find agitators and troublemakers, is it?

If you follow no other link today, this would be the one.

Bravo, Madame.

The Wrong Guys

Anarchist thugs, Elections, Gummint, Marxists

There’s only one post today, because it’s really, really important.

Over the past couple of months, cities all over the U.S. have been under siege from anarchist and neo-Communist front organizations such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter, wherein said gangs of thugs have been rioting, looting, burning buildings, attacking police with Molotov cocktails and rocks, and assaulting (and even killing) people suspected of being Trump supporters or otherwise conservatives.

I don’t have to give proof of said unrest;  there are plenty of news reports documenting it on a nightly basis — except, of course, if your main source of news is the mainstream media, in which case you’ve been fed a pack of lies about the riots being “mostly peaceful” protests instead of the violent anarchy that it actually is.  Still, the truth is the truth:  the country is under attack by the Left, who proudly proclaim their hatred of America and the capitalist system which has made the nation the wealthiest on Earth, and whose citizens rank so far ahead of other nations’ peoples in terms of prosperity and freedom that it barely seems worth arguing the point.

And it’s not “spontaneous protesting” — it is organized violence.

     The first one I attended was on the University of Michigan campus. The protest was rather large, about 1,500 people. What I found interesting was that the first speaker pointed out that “allies from RevCom/ANTIFA” were present, just to provide “logistical support” including medical and security teams. The local RevCom leader got up and explained how to find the medics (Large red or green crosses) and explained that security was “circulating among the crowd” for safety. That was an ominous statement, as I’ll point out later.
I began moving through the crowd and quickly spotted several security team members, obviously watching the crowd for anyone who wasn’t clapping or cheering along. It’s important to note that these protests require 100% ideological agreement or they will approach you and become confrontational, so I made sure I was chanting along. I noticed almost immediately that despite the man who said he was the RevCom leader, a young man named Ethan, that I would later have many interactions with, was actually in charge. He is a security team leader within the ANTIFA organization.
The biggest observation from the first protest was that despite the claims that they aren’t organized, they are highly organized by a central organization. Ethan and his security/medical team have been at every protest I’ve attended in Michigan, including one at the Capitol an hour away. They use the ubiquitous BaoFeng Handi-talkie radios to communicate.

So the goon squads of Lefties — notably, the White middle-class kids of wealthy parents along with actual criminals and a mass of disaffected, impoverished Blacks, all of whom profess hatred of the police and the system — rampage through cities like New York, Chicago, Portland, Seattle and the like, causing untold damage to life and property of those unfortunates caught in their path.

It doesn’t end there.  The anarcho-Communist rabble is vowing to get still more violent should Donald Trump be reelected this November, and their sympathizers are also attempting to subvert the voting process by insisting on a dangerously-flawed mail-in ballot system, which time and time again has been shown to be corrupt, crooked and open to all kinds of abuse.  Even worse, should the mumbling geriatric Democrat Joe Biden get elected, the rioting will not stop — and may get even worse, as Biden and his Democratic cabal of people like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and other Democratic figures of power such as state governors and city mayors, Democrats all, inflame the unrest either by overt support or else by mandating police inaction in the face of the riots.

One might think, therefore, that our Law Enforcement Establishment would consider these groups to be dangerous.  Silly rabbit;  the real danger, according to the Department of Homeland Security, is… rightwing militia groups?

White supremacists will remain the most “persistent and lethal threat” in the United States through 2021, according to Department of Homeland Security draft documents.
The most recent draft report predicts an “elevated threat environment at least through” early next year, concluding that some U.S.-based violent extremists have capitalized on increased social and political tensions in 2020.
Although foreign terrorist organizations will continue to call for attacks on the U.S., the report says, they “probably will remain constrained in their ability to direct such plots over the next year.”

Ah yes:  all those Sons Of Conservatives, White Brethren Under Christ and the worst of them all, Confederate Rebel Yellers are just waiting to inflict murder and mayhem upon this land.

Once again I am reminded of the scene from Heller’s Catch-22, where Aarfy has just thrown a prostitute to her death out of his hotel room window, but when the military police arrive, they don’t arrest Aarfy for murder, but they do arrest Yossarian for being AWOL.

Seriously?  White supremacists are the real danger?  Who are these guys?

Needless to say, as Insty puts it:  “Of course, there’s no action so vile that you can’t find an academic to defend it.”  Or give it credence and respectability, like this collection of Useful Idiots:

What might a new administration do to more effectively target white supremacist violence?

And then read the revolting details in the link.

If you are tempted to laugh at this, don’t be.  What’s happening here is very simple:  the DHS is pre-positioning law enforcement to act against anyone who dares to start resisting Leftist violence, by labeling them all as “white supremacists” ahead of time.  So if a community group stands around with AR-15s trying to prevent a mob from burning their neighborhood down, and when attacked by the mob, start shooting to defend themselves, they (and not the mob) will be plastered with the “white supremacist” label and be subject to all the weight of the law as a fulfillment of the DHS report.  Federal law enforcement, in other words, will do nothing against the Pantifa/BLM Brigades, but they will come down on… us.

And yeah, I say “us” because a huge number of people like me (such as among my Loyal Readers) strongly oppose the thug tactics of the Left — but just be aware that by physically opposing the Left, by simply voicing opposition, or even saying nothing (“silence is violence”, remember?), we will be stamped as racists, both by the Left and, it appears, by our government.

How nice.  And then there’s this:

Our training up to know has been CCW as related to violent crime inflicted upon us or our loved ones.  We never trained for organized mobs with legal  (upfront or tacit) government support.

His advice:  “have a long gun as minimum and a bunch of loaded magazines or easy to reach buck and slugs. Use cover and engage from a distance.”

And don’t try to be a Lone Ranger.  Kyle Rittenhouse’s experience has shown that’s just not gonna work.  Go ahead and check these guys out — just remember that Big Tech (and therefore Big Gummint) may be looking over your shoulder.  Best do it with your friends and neighbors offline, I think.

I think I’ll go and clean my AK-47 and sniper hunting rifles, and then call up a friend or two in the area.

Traffic Anacondas

Drive Time, Gummint

Here’s one guaranteed to make all my Murkin Readers chortle:

Pop-up cycle lanes set up as part a £225million plan to get Britain moving again are lying empty while traffic is squeezing onto narrowed streets, bringing the capital to a halt, it can be revealed.
MailOnline visited some of the key cycle lanes across the country at the height of the rush hour to gauge how busy they are, only to find them chronically under-used with cyclists criticising them as well as motorists.
Our research in London, where Transport for London is leading its own £33million scheme, shows that on the Euston Road, just 7 cyclists used the designated lane over a 15-minute period.  Meanwhile 420 cars fought their way through traffic.  In Park Lane, Mayfair, just 21 cyclists used the lane as 400 cars battled past.

Nonsense like this basically stems from the dreaded Car Hatred Disease, which engenders the opposite feeling from motorists.  The Englishman, as I recall, thinks that shooting cyclists from one’s car should not only not be prosecuted, but rewarded.  Mr. Free Market’s opinion should not be made public, but suffice it to say that there is plenty of gore involved.

We have nice wide roads Over Here in north Texas, so the “two-wheeled Taliban”, as the Brits call them, are not much more than a mild nuisance — other than committing the visual offense of wearing those faggy Lycra outfits and pisspot helmets.  It is, however, one more reason to enjoy winter here, because our usually icy roads make cycling deadly.  (“Make it compulsory, then,” grumbles Mr. FM.)

Of course, because BritPM Scruffy Johnson is a rider, all these crappy devices (“pop-up” cycle lanes?) are given a lot more government attention and support than they deserve.

I know that secretly — or perhaps not so secretly — the Greens would banish all cars if they could, and force us all to ride around on two wheels.  This is one of the reasons why, when the Beer & Treason Crowd gathers at its secret meetings, mass execution of Greens is generally ranked after the same treatment for anarchists and Communists, but just ahead of record company executives.  Or maybe it was vegans, I don’t remember.

I do know that in Britain, cyclists are generally hated more than badgers, and they squirt poisonous gas into the ground to deal with them.  Come to think of it, that sounds remarkably similar to one of Mr. FM’s suggestions…