Tag: Stupid people

Taking Away The Bennies

Gummint, Illegal immigrants, Subsidies

Stephen Green points me at this:

Republican lawmakers in Texas have spent the past year implementing regulatory changes to limit access to services for the estimated 1.7 million illegal immigrants residing in the state, prompting both support from state officials and criticism from activist groups.

A report by the Texas Tribune detailed the steps taken, which include tightening eligibility requirements for occupational licenses, restricting access to commercial driver’s licenses, and limiting who can qualify for in-state tuition at public universities. According to the report, more than 6,400 refugees and DACA recipients have lost their commercial driver’s licenses. Additional restrictions are expected to affect non-citizens working in licensed industries such as construction and medicine.

State officials are also examining the 1982 Supreme Court ruling Plyler v. Doe, which requires public schools to educate non-citizens.

In a sane world, none of this would even be a topic under discussion.  Of course illegal immigrants should not get any kind of state (or federal, for that matter) benefits whatsoever.  Tax-based (i.e. government) funds should be spent exclusively on the citizens who paid those taxes, and not just on anyone who happens to be standing there.

I know, I know:

“That’s Krool & Hartless, Kim.  Why would you deny education to the CHIIIILDREN?  It’s not their fault their parents brought them here;  why would you punish them so?”

Ask their parents that question:  why would you bring your children with you and involve them in your criminal enterprise?  (Yes, illegal immigration is a crime, ipse facto.)

No.  Nobody deserves to be rewarded for criminal behavior — which is what all this is — and while I agree that it would indeed be cruel and heartless to deny medical care to anyone, it still doesn’t make it right that our hospitals treat illegal immigrants for their ailments and injuries, especially when it is precisely that (free) treatment which gives them an incentive to come over here in the first place.  Ditto child education.

Here’s the thing.  What did people think was going to be the result of our government actually following and enforcing immigrant law to its proper extent and function?  Of course this was going to create hardship on the illegal immigrants and their families — in the same way, incidentally, that sending a criminal to jail for, say, armed robbery creates hardship for their family.  That should be part of the deterrent.

But guess what?  Failure to enforce the law — as the Biden government failed to do — simply creates an incentive to break the law.  If you are not going to prosecute people for the crime of shoplifting, for example, then don’t be surprised when shoplifting becomes endemic.  We’ve seen this happen in cities governed according to this foolishness — why would we think it would be any different for any other kind of crime, such as in this case illegal immigration?

I’m really glad that Texas legislators are doing what they’re doing — what they’re supposed to be doing — which is to take away incentives for people to break the law and suffer no consequences.  And ignore idiots like this squish:

“These all represent a broader and more coordinated shift … to create a pipeline of exclusion that stretches from limiting access to K-12 education, all the way into participation in the workforce and basic mobility through the state,” Corinne Kentor, with the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, told the outlet.

Yup.  Keep going, guys, and get rid of the benefits of criminal behavior;  this is what we voted for.

Compare And Contrast

Eco-Crap

If you’ve already read yesterday’s post (Never Mind The Waves) about switching offshore wind farm funding to oil and natgas, then read on.  If you haven’t, read that first, then this one.

Here’s what happens when you elect a government which supports rabid eco-freaks by giving them control of the rudder.  Here’s the background:

North Sea Giant Ready To Exploit UK’s Biggest Oil Field This Year

Sounds good, dunnit?  And then the sting:

Britain’s largest oil field could be producing thousands of barrels a day by the autumn if Ed Miliband approves the North Sea project.

Well, that didn’t take long did it?  Because Miliband is the all-time believer in the “Wind Is Going To Save Us” school of thought — in fact, he’s the fucking headmaster.

So, to sum up:  Britishland is sitting close to a gigantic oil and gas field — bigger than anything they’ve ever had before, and larger than anything in the North Sea — and all that has to happen is for Rubber Band to wave the starter’s flag.

Which he isn’t going to do, even if pressure is applied to him by a core  Socialist  Labour Party constituency:

The powerful Unite union added its voice to the clarion calls demanding the Energy Secretary change tack in the wake of a price spiral triggered by Donald Trump‘s war on Iran.

General Secretary Sharon Graham, who has cut funding for Labour in a row over party policy, said he should not ‘let go of one rope before having hold of another’.

‘We all know that whatever happens the UK will still need for oil and gas for decades to come and the war in Iran is just the latest reminder that when we rely on overseas production our energy security is at the mercy of global events,’ she said. This comes as the Conservatives are set to force a vote in the Commons demanding an end to the ‘sheer lunacy’ of a ban to reduce prices at the pump.

And here it is:

But facing MPs today, Mr Miliband suggested it was unimportant where the UK got its gas.

‘Gas is bought and sold on the international market so whether it comes from the North Sea or imported it is charged at the same price,’ he said.

He went on to praise the amount of money raised by a renewable energy action earlier this year, saying technology like wind turbines and solar panels were ‘homegrown power that we can rely on’. 

You have to marvel at the idiocy of a man who sticks to this insane policy, even when time and time again all his guff is proven to be demonstrably false — when the winds drop and the sun doesn’t shine, and areas of the country go dark and people shiver because there’s no power to provide them warmth, as happened just this past winter.

Miliband is quite literally going to bring the UK to its knees.

And at some point you have to ask yourself whether he’s doing it out of the ignorance of policy, or just out of spite.  Either way, the result is going to be the same.

He doesn’t just need to be kicked out of government;  he needs to be given a free ticket on Air Pinochet.

…and all the more ironic if he were to be ejected right over the Rosebank field.

Yeah, Whatever

Anarchist thugs

Anytime a couple of anarchists blow themselves up, it’s a good day for the world:

The bodies of an anarchist couple were found beneath the rubble of a cottage on the outskirts of Rome after they blew themselves up while making a bomb.

Police believed Alessandro Mercogliano, 53, and 36-year-old Sara Ardizzone were plotting an attack against a police station and Leonardo, a defense contractor, which made parts for F-35 jets.

Traces of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used to make explosives, were found in the debris of the abandoned building beside an ancient Roman aqueduct on Friday.

Police said the pair were supporters of Alfredo Cospito, the jailed figurehead of a loosely-organized anarchist network called the Informal Anarchist Federation.

I must admit, though, I like the name:  “Informal Anarchist”.  I’m something of an “Informal Commie Killer”, myself — except I’m not going to actually do something like shoot a few Commies, oh no not me, no sirree.

Anyway, to return to the main point:

Ummmm Okay

Government Thugs

Here’s a headline that’s supposed to evoke a response from me, but I don’t think my response is the one they’re looking for:

DHS says more than 300 TSA agents have quit since start of shutdown

I know, I know:  I’m supposed to get all upset that the filthy socialists in Congress have blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

However, my hostility towards the TSfuckingA goes back pretty much  to its post-9/11 panic foundation.

So my feelings run more towards this response:

When it comes to abolishing transparent Security Theater and government bullying, put me at the head of the line of supporters.

And by the way:  I have fairly similar feelings about the entire Homeland Security department.

Irrelevant

Friday Feature, The Worst

I said a long time ago that I am not interested in hearing anything said by Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, and here’s a good reason to add Megyn Kelly to make a list of the Three Worst.

I’ve come to loathe the appellation of “influencer” because the problem with being one of these vacuous fools is that (if they’re collecting money for their opinions, as most are) whether they’re being contrary or else sycophantic, there’s always a motive for those opinions:  the more outrageous, the more attention they get, the more cash flows their way.

Well, good for them.  There’s nothing wrong with being a pimp after all, because all you’re doing is bringing a product to the attention of the market.  Of course, I don’t have to buy the product, but some people are quite in thrall to said blandishments.

And as Scott Pinsker points out in the above linked article, other people — in this case, the liberal media — have an ulterior motive to pimp the pimps, because in this particular case Carlson, Owens and Kelly are pushing an agenda that happens to coincide with that of the liberal media — i.e. trying to split up the MAGA movement.  Even though I don’t go along with this, I will at least acknowledge that it’s an acceptable tactic:  a fractured enemy is always easier to defeat than a cohesive one.

The point is that I don’t trust the motives of these three foul influencers, because in the end, whatever they say is all about drawing attention to themselves and not necessarily coming from principle.  In Carlson’s case, I’m fairly certain that someone else is actually deciding what it is that he has to say because from what I can gather, some of his sponsors look extremely dubious (in a bad way).

Whatever.  Frankly, I think that if money is the issue — and Carlson seems to have that nailed down — Owens and Kelly should consider an OnlyFans presence because their opinions are fucking worthless.

Null Set

History

From that Yglesias twat:

Name one.

Seriously.  I have studied Nazi Germany extensively for well over half a century — both as an amateur historian* and as a serious student (as part of my Western Civ major) — and I’ve yet to come up with a single Nazi “idea” that can be called good.

And I don’t accept the red herring about aeronautics and blitzkrieg, for instance.  Those were engineering and military ideas conceived by Germans, not Nazis;  and in many if not most cases, they predate the NDSAP’s assumption of power in 1933.

If you exclude any “good” Nazi ideas that weren’t related to making war, propaganda or genocide more efficient, or furthering the Nazis’ obsession with race, you’re not going to find any.

Ich habe Dachau gesehen.

Oh, and please don’t even think of the “medical advances” made by using concentration camp inmates as guinea pigs, because that just turns my stomach.  Ditto the “miracle” of keeping their industrial centers going despite the Allied bombing, which they achieved only through extensive use of slave labor.

So as a piece of provocative writing, Yglesias’s little statement is cute — but it’s also specious.  The Nazis had no good ideas, and to even suggest they did is either malicious or moronic.

*I first read Shirer’s Rise And Fall back when I was in high school, and have re-read it maybe a dozen times since.  Ditto works from Erich Manstein and a host of other military figures.  Even that slimy little shit Albert Speer’s Inside The Third Reich  has been on my bookshelf.  And the lasting impression from all of them is that the Nazis were absolutely hopeless, at everything.