Tag: government follies

Seattle Will Inspect Your Garbage REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From September 25, 2014

Remember when James Madison wrote, in one of the Federalist papers, that the purpose of government is to “help people change their behavior”? What, it wasn’t Madison? Who was it, then, who first articulated this profound philosophy? Benjamin Franklin? Locke? Aristotle?

None of the above. It’s the Seattle City Council, that’s who.

You know your city government has way too much money when it can afford to have unionized municipal employees check residents’ garbage cans to make sure they aren’t throwing away too much food ( http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/09/24/Seattle-Passes-Laws-to-Keep-Residents-From-Wasting-Food ).

You can be fined if “food and compostable material” makes up 10% or more of your trash output. Now hear this:

The fine will be $1 for residents and $50 for businesses and apartment buildings.

The purpose of this, says the Council, is to get people to do more recycling.

Coulda fooled me! I would’ve thought the purpose of this law was to demonstrate that the city of Seattle is governed by escaped mental patients. I mean, really–does the city have so freakin’ much money, that they can get public employees to do extra work, for which they will insist on being paid, and not make the fines high enough to pay for it?

Oh, but that’s beside the point! The point is to “help people change their behavior.”

Even as you read this, former New York Nanny Michael Bloomberg is smiting his forehead and saying, “Why didn’t I think of that!” Bloomberg, who banned indoor smoking in NYC but got his hand chopped off when he reached for a ban on large sodas, pioneered the practice of using fines and taxes to help people change their behavior.

What if we don’t want our behavior to be changed?

What we want is some way to change the government’s behavior.

They’re Doing It to Us Again…REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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From March 10, 2018

There are many scientific studies, including one from the government’s own Center for Disease Control, declaring that Americans don’t get enough sleep (https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-dont-get-enough-sleep-cdc-study-finds-1455818427). In fact, says the CDC, fully one-third of us is sleep-deficient: less than seven hours of sleep a night poses a risk to one’s health.

So what is that same government preparing to do to us this weekend?

Why, take away an hour of our sleep, of course!

Yes, it’s Daylight Savings Time again, which means we have to turn our clocks ahead an hour tonight and then, for the next week or so, be short on sleep or else be late for everything.

Is this really stupid, or what?

Bad enough we have neighbors aiming floodlights at our bedroom windows, sedentary jobs that wear us out without benefit of exercise, and a disintegrating culture to stress us out. On top of all that, they’ve got to take away an hour of our sleeping time.

Why don’t they spare us this? Is this just another one of those things that government does because it’s done it for so long, everyone’s forgotten the reason for it–if there ever was one–and nobody thinks anymore, they just freakin’ do it?

Yeah, probably.

Another Desperately Stupid Scheme REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From January 16, 2015

I had never read this post, somehow.  I checked and yes it is still going on.  There is a bit of pushback going on right now.  This is incredibly short-sighted, stupid and dangerous.  PD

 

It’s too bad we can’t Save the Planet from self-anointed chowderheads who want to Save the Planet.

Here’s a scheme for you. They’ve pumped 1 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the air and stored it underground near Decatur, Illinois, population some 75,000 ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/14/1-million-tons-of-pressurised-co2-stored-beneath-decatur-illinois/ ).

So what’s wrong with storing a million tons of pressurized CO2 near a population center?

Here and there, this kind of “storage” occurs in nature. Lake Nyos in Cameroon is such a place. It traps a lot of CO2 in the water, and occasionally an earthquake or some other natural cause disrupts the arrangement and the CO2 escapes as a ground-hugging cloud of unbreathable gas that suffocates every living thing in its path. This happened at Lake Nyos in 1986 and killed some 1,700 people in a sparsely-populated rural area, according to Wikipedia.

The man-made CO2 trap by Decatur is several times larger than the one under Lake Nyos–and heaven help Decatur if an earthquake comes along, or if someone at the monitoring station gets lazy or sloppy or forgetful, or if someone decides to pocket some money by cutting corners on safety and maintenance… Oh, but that would never happen in Illinois! The state’s so full of honest, conscientious men and women who run everything with clean hands.

Why is this a totally dumbass scheme?

In addition to the risks involved, it’d be kind of like trying to store the ocean underground. We’re talking about the earth’s atmosphere, which contains kabillions of tons of CO2.

Know why? Because, among another reasons, animals exhale it. It’s called breathing. And plants consume it, which leads to plans producing oxygen, which animals must breathe. The CO2 in the atmosphere is constantly being regenerated and replaced. It would be impossible to remove enough of it from the atmosphere to make a difference. But a massive, futile effort along those lines sure would cost a lot of money!

So, yeah, let’s see how many Lake Nyos-style CO2 traps we can build, and then see how long it takes for something to go awry with one of them and wipe out a nearby population center.

“Oh, but see!” cries the Global Warming nut. “Even if it goes wrong, it reduces the population! So there is no downside!”

Stupidity kills.

Is Britain Suicidal?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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Already cumbered with the highest energy costs in Europe, the United Kingdom has decided to shut down the country’s last two natural gas fracking wells (https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/01/31/green-madness-uk-to-fill-last-natural-gas-fracking-wells-with-cement/). Fill ’em with cement.

I doubt Britain will make it into the next century. When they’re not committing Green Energy hara-kiri, they’re changing prime ministers. Like, who’s in charge here?

A politician from the Reform Party summed it up: “We have hundreds of billions of pounds of taxpayer-owned shale gas we should be using.”

Ah! But you can’t use it because Far Left Crazy says you can’t! Gotta Save The Planet, dontcha know. Which we can do by saddling you peasants with abject poverty while we enjoy our private jets and limos.

Currently Britain has no leadership. Why listen to a prime minister who’s going to be out on his kiester after just a few weeks? Why bother? The country’s getting swamped by Muslim immigration, legal and otherwise.

And there’s no King Arthur today to save the place.

 

‘Can Britain’s Idols Save Her?’ (2017)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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What would it take for a government to admit its own policies were disastrously wrong?

We’re still waiting to find out.

Can Britain’s Idols Save Her?

But how about us, here in America? Have we put our trust in idols–the works of our own hands?

There are 20 comments here already. Please feel free to add to them!

 

A Human Sacrifice to ‘Diversity’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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Yet another bit of the Obama legacy has to be plucked up by the roots and cast away–before it starts killing people.

Incredibly, the Obama Transportation Dept. and Federal Aviation Agency scrapped the rigorous testing regime that for long had governed the hiring of air traffic controllers–and replaced it with an easier test to “prioritize diversity” (https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2018/06/04/faa-endangers-public-safety-by-emphasizing-diversity-over-competence-in-selection-of-air-traffic-controllers/). Because somehow the great idol of “diversity,” at least to the libs who worship it, is so much more important than getting airplanes safely from the air to the tarmac.

The new test gives applicants a bonus of 10 points if they say their worst subject in school was science (!), and another 10 if they can say they haven’t been working lately.

It’s backed by a union with a big purse for political campaign contributions.

Getting the planes up and down without crashing, especially in the crowded skies over the airports, is an exceedingly difficult job requiring the highest competence. It has nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of “diversity.” Slacking off on smarts and skills is playing with people’s lives.

Please remember stuff like this the next time you have the opportunity to vote. Never, never, never allow Democrats back into power. And pray the Trump administration is able to put a lid on this folly before any of these new diverse air traffic controllers who stink at science can find their way to a control tower.

‘No Reincarnation Without a License’ (2013)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

https://leeduigon.com/2013/03/07/no-reincarnation-without-a-license/

Communism sometimes likes to call itself “scientific socialism” (if you will allow personification as a rhetorical device), and the official religion of communism is atheism.

So why do you have to get a permit from the Chinese communist government before you can be reincarnated?

Something about this just doesn’t compute.

Obama Legacy: War on Cigars

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The thought that somewhere, somehow, someone might be happy is a real downer for anyone in government. So on his way out the door, President *Batteries Not Included had his Food and Drug Administration cook up a few hundred regulations against high-end cigars. No legislation was involved. I mean, really, legislation is so passe…

As cigar magnate Rocky Patel told Tucker Carlson, “You don’t see kids sitting around the schoolyard chain-smoking premium cigars.” Brother, you don’t see me smoking premium cigars! Likening them to fine wine or single-malt scotch gives you an idea what these cigars are all about. I had a box of Don Diegos once, many years ago. Rocky’s telling it like it is.

And these stupid regulations threaten the whole industry. Maybe a lawsuit can save it. Maybe President Trump can wipe out these stupid regulation as he’s wiped out others. Maybe even Congress might venture a tiny bit of legislation–dare we hope?

Well, excuse me for the nonce (another hinky word I felt like using today). I’m going to stand out in the snow and have a cigar.

 

The Leftids’ War on Christianity

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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“The Spirit of ’76”–we need it now.

Well, here we go again.

At a condo building in Port Charlotte, Florida, a sign has been posted: “ANY AND ALL CHRISTIAN MUSIC IS BANNED” (https://townhall.com/columnists/toddstarnes/2018/03/08/christian-music-n2458899), reports Todd Starnes at townhall.com.

No Bible study, no group prayers, no hymn-singing, no crosses on doors–it’s all been banned, thanks to a “complaint” made to the government’s “Fair Housing” agency. I am at a loss to understand how this is “fair.”

Do we still have a First Amendment? If so, where is it?

There is, of course, a lawsuit filed against this high-handed decree. We can pray it succeeds. But why should we need a judge to tell us we can listen to Christian music, and come together to share it, if we want to? And what if the judge says no?

Another thing I can’t understand is why a country in which the vast majority of people are Christians seems to be governed solely in the interests of a tiny, rabidly Christian-hating minority–and why we put up with it. We wouldn’t have put up with it in 1776. Why do we put up with it now?

‘Feds: Jack-O’-Lanterns Cause Global Warming’ (2015)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Please don’t say you’re feeling nostalgic for the Obama administration.

Remember this? On your dime, the federal government warned us in 2015 that our Halloween pumpkins with the candles in ’em contribute to Climbit Change and omibaal we’re all gonna die–!

Let’s hope President Trump has fired whoever was responsible for this.

https://leeduigon.com/2015/10/29/feds-jack-o-lanterns-cause-global-warming/