Tag: Government

Unnecessary Deadlines

Education

I have never understood why people give themselves deadlines on activities which require no deadlines:  “I have to get my hair cut this week” or “I need to do the laundry today” and “I must finish my book before Saturday” and so on.  Other than an attempt to impose some kind of self-discipline over chronic procrastination, all this does is add a layer of stress into one’s life — all the more so because it’s both needless and self-imposed.  An ex-boss of mine put it in perspective, speaking purely of business matters and not of obvious crisis situations:  “There is no decision can’t be improved by waiting till the next day.”

Over at Insty’s place, Mark Tapscott posted a long letter from a friend who is grappling with the fact that his kids — and the kids of many of his upper-middle-class neighbors — will not be attending public school anytime soon, thanks to the teachers unions’ unnecessary obsession with the health risks of their members being exposed to the germ-laden petri dish that is the average school.  (It’s definitely worth going over there and reading it.)  Leaving aside the obvious retort that other workers (in supermarkets etc.) seem to have had few problems in this regard, I want to focus instead on one aspect of this hapless parent’s dilemma.  Here’s the part that got me thinking:

“And, for the families who either cannot leave a job or are not interested in what has been proposed by the public school systems, they are either spending tens of thousands of dollars per year on private education or are now for the first time acquainting themselves with homeschooling options. I will also add that in many cases, private schools are full and homeschooling curriculum options are sold out leaving families with no idea what they will do in a few weeks.”

Somebody needs to sit this harried man down and explain one of the most beneficial aspects of homeschooling:  there are no deadlines.  The “few weeks” he’s talking about is an artificial construct:  schools say that the new semester must begin on September 7, therefore that’s when education should begin.  Of course, that’s utter nonsense if you’re not chained to the public (or any) school system:  your kid can take up classes on September 7, or October 15 (or tomorrow, for that matter) — because given the glacial speed of public education, the kid will catch up with, and overtake, his former classmates in a matter of weeks.  (Remember that the entire middle- and high school mathematics curriculum — all five years of classroom instruction — can be learned by an average student in just over six months, when delivered at their own pace at home.)

I remember the mother of my son fretting about his slowness in getting toilet-trained, and telling her:  “I promise you that by the time he’s fifteen he’ll be using the toilet just like everybody else.”  And from an educational perspective, whether a kid starts learning in August or September is irrelevant to their future progress.

Everyone seems to want to set deadlines on education:  must complete high school by age 18, then go straight to college and finish the undergrad degree in four years, or else “they’ll be left behind” — as though that matters, when of course it doesn’t.

Unsaid in all this, of course, is that if education is truly unshackled from the education establishment, there’s nothing to stop a kid from finishing their undergrad degree by age 18, either, if the kid is smart enough and motivated enough — because just as homeschooled kids of high-school age typically finish twelfth grade earlier than their classroom-educated contemporaries, the appearance of online university-level classes (delivered either by streaming or by DVD) means that the homeschooled college student could finish their degree in two years and not the more common four.

The only thing that holds parents back from homeschooling is their own sense of inferiority — that somehow, even college-trained adults can’t teach their kids mathematics (the discipline which frightens parents the most).  Let me assure you all right now:  with the proper course materials, anyone can teach their kids anything.

And best of all, there’s no need to feel pressure to do it by any specified date — hell, you can even learn the stuff with your kids as you go along, and how bad can that be?

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.

“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.