Tag: Government

As Usual

Elections, Marxists, Third World

Following on from yesterday’s news about Chile voting to “change” their constitution — really, overturning the one passed into law by Augusto Pinochet and putting in a new, “progressive” (Marxist) one — the Left in Chile did the usual:

Violence, looting, and disorder erupted in Chile on Sunday evening after an overwhelming majority of people voted in favor of destroying the country’s constitution, replacing it with a new document more favorable to the nation’s left wing.
…
On the night of the elections, local media reported that police arrested at least 19 people for looting a pharmacy and a supermarket. In the commune of Melipilla outside Santiago, rioters attacked a police station, injuring eight officers, while also installing barricades on a carriageway to prevent the movement of traffic.

No doubt, this was all part of the “wild celebrations” that followed the vote result.

So just to be clear:  if the Left loses, they riot and loot;  and if they win, they riot and loot.

Something we can probably expect in the U.S. when Trump cleans their clock next week.  See the next post for details.

I think I’ll head off to the range as soon as it opens in a couple hours.  Handgun practice this time?  I think so.

Commonsense 0, Greens 72

Business, Eco-Crap, Gummint

Like nobody could see this coming:

The inquiry into the 2017 fire at Grenfell Tower in London has revealed how the styrofoam thermal insulation layer in newly-fitted wall cladding enabled a small domestic fire to rapidly engulf most of the building, resulting in the loss of 72 lives.
The type of cladding installed complied with advice given to local authorities in 2010 by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to reduce emissions through installing new boilers and insulation in apartment blocks.

Read the details.  Anyone with the slightest bit of business experience could have foretold a tragedy like this.  But because Gummint was involved…

Goodbye Chile, Hello Venezuela

Elections, Marxists, Third World

And another one bites the dust:

Wild celebrations have been seen across Chile after the country voted to rid itself of its dictatorship-era constitution left behind by Augusto Pinochet’s regime.
Chileans voted overwhelmingly in a landmark referendum on Sunday to replace the constitution, long seen as underpinning the nation’s glaring economic and social inequalities.
Thousands of people flocked onto the streets of Santiago amid a cacophony of horn-blaring to celebrate a crushing victory for the ‘Approve’ campaign – by 78.28 percent to 21.72 percent, with over 99 percent of the votes counted.

And its replacement?

People hope a new constitution would expand the role of the state in providing a welfare safety net, ensuring basic rights to health, education, water distribution and pensions.

Ah yes, an expanded state… [sigh]

And why not?  After all, they voted for it, despite the dismal track record of an “expanded state” failing everywhere it’s been implemented.

My post title says it all.

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.