An offer American businesses can't refuse, to their detriment

From a member of an email list to which we belong, an unattributed piece that sums up exactly why the current "partnership" with the Federal government is pretty much killing business in this country:

"Looks like it will only be getting worse as the "change" brings new tax laws into effect.

This is why there are no jobs in America

Seriously. This is a real offer. In fact, you really can't turn me down, as you'll come to understand in a moment...

Here's the deal. You're going to start a business or expand the one you've got now. It doesn't really matter what you do or what you're going to do.  I'll partner with you no matter what business you're in - as long as it's legal.

But I can't give you any capital - you have to come up with that on your own. I won't give you any labor - that's definitely up to you. What I will do, however, is demand you follow all sorts of rules about what products and services you can offer, how much (and how often) you pay your employees, and where and when you're allowed to operate your business. That's my role in the affair: to tell you what to do.

Now in return for my rules, I'm going to take roughly half of whatever you make in the business each year. Half seems fair, doesn't it? I think so. Of course, that's half of your profits.

You're also going to have to pay me about 12 percent of whatever you decide to pay your employees because you've got to cover my expenses for promulgating all of the rules about who you can employ, when, where, and how. Come on, you're my partner. It's only "fair."

Now ... after you've put your hard-earned savings at risk to start this business, and after you've worked hard at it for a few decades (paying me my 50 percent or a bit more along the way each year), you might decide you'd like to cash out - to finally live the good life.

Whether or not this is "fair" - some people never can afford to retire - is a different argument. As your partner, I'm happy for you to sell whenever you'd like ... because our agreement says, if you sell, you have to pay me an additional 20 percent of whatever the capitalized value of the business
is at that time.

I know, I know. You put up all the original capital. You took all the risks. You put in all of the labor. That's all true. But I've done my part, too. I've collected 50 percent of the profits each year. And I've always come up with more rules for you to follow each year. Therefore, I deserve another, final 20 percent slice of the business.

Oh ... and one more thing.

Even after you've sold the business and paid all of my fees, I'd recommend buying lots of life insurance. You see, even after you've been retired for years, when you die, you'll have to pay me 50 percent of whatever your estate is worth.

After all, I've got lots of partners and not all of them are as successful as you and your family. We don't think it's "fair" for your kids to have such a big advantage. But if you buy enough life insurance, you can finance this expense for your children.

All in all, if you're a very successful entrepreneur, if you're one of the rare, lucky, and hard-working people who can create a new company, employ lots of people, and satisfy the public, you'll end up paying me more than 75 percent of your income over your life. Thanks so much.

I'm sure you'll think my offer is reasonable and happily partner with me, but it doesn't really matter how you feel about it because if you ever try to stiff me - or cheat me on any of my fees or rules - I'll break down your door in the middle of the night, threaten you and your family with heavy,
automatic weapons, and throw you in jail.

That's how civil society is supposed to work, right? This is America, isn't it?

That's the offer America gives its entrepreneurs. And the idiots in Washington wonder why there are no new jobs."

A judge finds out the hard way there's no controlling social media

Judge Beth Dixon of Rowan County, North Carolina convicted local resident Felicia Gibson last week on a charge of resisting arrest:

"A Salisbury woman who was arrested in November 2009 after she refused a police officer’s order to go into her house while he was making a traffic stop nearby was found guilty Friday of resisting, obstructing or delaying an officer."
...
"The traffic stop was not far from Gibson’s home.  She sat on her front porch and recorded the arrest on video." (Emphasis ours)



Ms. Gibson quite rightly refused to stop filming and go inside her house just because local jack-booted thug Salisbury Police Officer Mark Hunter ordered her to, prompting her to be collared for "resisting".

So now Judge Dixon is running for re-election and has a Facebook page to aid in that effort.  Here's a screen shot showing but a small sampling of the comments she's been getting there, despite her or her helpers frantically deleting them almost as soon as they show up:

Better polish up the ol' resume, Judge Dixon.

(huge h/t to Carlos Miller)

From the Department of Glaringly Obvious Headlines

"Sebelius: Time for 'Reeducation' on Obama Health Care Law"

Apparently all of us who oppose the Federal government's imposition of centralized control of our private health care decisions are simply in need of having our minds gently changed for us.

If only there were some form of "camp" where such "reeducation" of the stupid proles could take place.  Perhaps Dear Leader's minions could contact North Korea or Cuba for some helpful hints about making that happen.

Hint to President Obama - your feeble protestations about not being a socialist would go a whole lot farther if your clueless appointees would refrain from (deliberately?) using such loaded Marxist cliches.

The bill for some very bad policing comes due

Our good friend Joel Rosenberg alerts us to the news that the state of Minnesota will now be spending about 3 million dollars of their taxpayers' money to compensate the many innocent victims of the incompetent and abusive thug-ridden as well as scandal-plagued (and now disbanded because of those very factors) Metro Gang Strike Force:

"After victims are compensated, any money left over will create a fund to educate officers on community policing within minority populations."

Because, you know, cops need to be informed that it's just as wrong to personally profit by ripping off innocent minorities as it is to rob white people.  Sheesh.

"Attorneys for the Strike Force say in court documents that their clients deny liability but agree the settlement is fair."

Of course they think it's fair.  The money isn't coming out of their pockets.

The members of this rogue organization aren't out of the woods yet.  The Justice Department is still investigating the many crimes allegedly committed by this "gang" of out-of-control thieves, and we wouldn't be surprised if some of them indeed ended up in cells right next to the gangbangers they were supposed to be targeting in the first place.

From the Department of Glaringly Obvious Headlines

"ICE:  We are not engaged in a 'backdoor' amnesty"

We think they doth protest too much.

Anyone else believe their feeble denials?

Nice work, if you can get it

A public employee in Norfolk, Virginia has just been fired after twelve years of not showing up and still getting paid and yet new Community Services Board executive director Maureen Womack, despite admirably canning the "employee" and referring the case to local cops, apparently still doesn't feel like it's any of the local peasants' business exactly who that "worker" was and precisely how much they were being paid to "work": 

"The head of the agency refused to identify the employee but acknowledged in response to inquiries from The Virginian-Pilot that an employee was "on the board's payroll who had not reported to work in years."

Maureen Womack, the agency's executive director, said she fired the employee, informed the board that governs her agency and asked City Attorney Bernard A. Pishko to investigate the matter earlier this summer. Pishko's investigation is nearly complete and will soon be turned over to the Norfolk police, she said.

Womack also refused to divulge the employee's salary."

The Virginian-Pilot presumably wouldn't put up with that sort of blatant stonewalling from a private business which isn't subject to Freedom of Information laws.  So why are they allowing a city agency to do it to them?

What's even worse is the clueless reaction of City Councilman Tommy Smigiel, who is going to make darn tootin' sure he and the rest of the council discuss this case during their upcoming taxpayer-paid vacation:

"He said the council needs to publicly discuss the recent revelations at its retreat next month. 'We need to send a message to the citizens that they can trust us,' he said."

Um, because using a regularly-scheduled meeting in the council chambers to discuss the situation for free would be a bad idea for exactly what reason?

That retreat is sure going to send a message, Mr. Smigiel.  We're just not convinced it's the one you want to convey.

1984 is here (and attached to your bumper)

The loons on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (in whose jurisdiction we irritatingly reside) have ruled that it's perfectly legal for cops to come onto a citizen's private property late at night, attach a tracking device to the peasant's car and then follow that person's every move from the comfort of the local donut shop, all without the benefit of obtaining a warrant signed by a judge:

"Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements."

 

Oh, really?  This must mean, then, that law-enforcement vehicles (which are publicly-owned property) parked on a public street (or in a handicapped space at the aforementioned cruller dispensary) are also fair game for the arbitrary installation of covert tracking devices.  

Both sides can play at this silly game, at least until the Supreme Court presumably steps in to set things right.  Do the police in this court's jurisdiction really wish to have to sweep their cars for bugs before getting in every day? 

Because there are plenty of activists who are perfectly willing to make that scenario come true.

Why I carry a handgun for protection, Vol. 35

Because police departments all across the country, in a desperate attempt to deal with massive cuts in their budgets, have simply decided to not show up in response to certain calls for service:

"'If you come home to find your house burglarized and you call, we're not coming,' said Oakland Police spokeswoman Holly Joshi."

The average American peasant more and more is completely on his or her own when it comes to their own personal safety and self-defense. 

Please recognize this unfortunate but very real turn of events and plan accordingly. 

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

What good people for showing so much respect for their neighbors' beliefs:

(Obtained from a Facebook friend)

Caucasian illegal immigrants get deported. Stop the presses.

A white woman from Russia who lived in this country illegally for 20 years or so has been arrested in Michigan and was subsequently deported.  Her son, who has also been here against the law since he was 2, appears to be headed for the same fate. 

Neither happen to be of  Hispanic origin, which tends to belie the current wisdom among a hysterical few that America's immigration laws are cynically being applied in a racist manner only to brown people who speak Spanish.  It just so happens that many more of the latter are here at any one time, which skews the enforcement numbers.

We don't care what color you are or if you're originally from Latin America, China, Ireland, the Caribbean or in this case Russia and Eastern Europe.  If you're here illegally you run the risk of being nabbed and sent back from whence you came along with any children you made the decision to bring with you.

It's truly sad and unfortunate that Ivan Nikolov may in fact be sent back to a country he doesn't remember.  The sole blame for this turn of events, however, rests with his mom, not the U.S. government's long-ignored enforcement of the rules about coming here and certainly not U.S. citizens for wanting their borders to be controlled.

The wake-up call commences

Today was Election Day in Arizona for the party primaries.

We enthusiastically voted for Republican Governor Jan Brewer because of her brave and principled signing of illegal immigration and gun rights legislation earlier this year.  She is expected to easily win nomination for her first direct election as governor

We also reluctantly supported J.D. Hayworth over John McCain for U.S. Senate.  Hayworth may have his problems but he is at least rock-solid on the above issues, unlike the weaselly incumbent who diametrically changes his positions far too often for our taste.  Example - McCain supported a basically complete illegal alien amnesty with Ted Kennedy as recently as 2007, but is now talking tough and assuring us that he simply wants to "complete the danged fence".  Well, which is it, sir?

McCain appears poised to pull out the win, but he had to spend over 20 million dollars to do so.

Pay attention, John.

A snapshot of life

Monday, August 23, 2010
Cave Creek, Arizona
5:55 a.m.

The Federal Government, at a time of severe recession and over 10% unemployment, is wasting some of our hard-earned tax dollars (confiscated from us under threat of imprisonment) on freebie gift bags intended to remind everyone to make sure and take their vacation this year at a government property:

Stone.  Deaf. 

Paging Mrs. Cleaver

The Justice Department is apparently seeking people who are fluent in Ebonics to help them decipher intercepted communications between gangbanging drug dealers.  Ebonics is also defined as "black English", according to Stanford linguistics professor John Rickford.

We're pretty sure that inner-city slang doesn't actually qualify as a separate language, but we know of one lady who certainly meets the agency's needs:

The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week...

... are one of the fine persons who comprise the Okaloosa County, Florida Sheriff's Department as well as two members of the Denver, Colorado Police Department (all unnamed, of course) for not one but two recent incidents in which bystanders were arrested by officers for daring to object out loud to the way those cops were mistreating some of their fellow citizens:

1.  Two young Florida men with apparently much more sense than the local gendarmes were arrested after they loudly complained to a sheriff's deputy about his TASERING a car-crash victim in order to "render aid" to the patient:

"About 3 a.m. Aug. 14, the deputy was assisting EMS at a traffic crash on the 6000 block of Old River Road that involved a 4-wheeler, according to an Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office arrest report. The patient became combative with EMS.

'I had to deploy my Taser to gain compliance,” the report said. The 19-year-old aggressively moved toward the deputy and yelled, “You’re a (expletive) for Tasing an injured person.'"

That's some mighty fine "aid rendering", Deputy.  By the way, sir, you are an (expletive) if that is indeed how the incident went down.


2.  Two Denver PD officers were caught on tape beating local resident Mark Ashford senseless after Ashford, walking his dogs past the scene of a routine traffic stop, remarked to the driver that he did observe the motorist come to a halt at the stop sign and that he would be happy to testify to that fact in court: 

"[Attorney Will] Hart says Mark Ashford was walking his dogs near 20th and Little Raven in LoDo, when he saw police pull over a driver for failing to stop at a stop sign. Ashford told the driver he saw him stop and would be willing to testify in court. Hart says the officer overheard him and 'wasn't very happy.'

That's when Ashford says the Denver police officers demanded his I.D. and detained him. Ashford tried to take a picture of the officers to document the incident, and a few second later he was on the ground."

Again with the retaliation for daring to film an officer in action.  When will this madness end?

Ashford was booked for interference and resisting arrest, charges that were subsequently dropped for an obvious lack of evidence.  He has now filed a formal complaint against the two officers alleging excessive force.  After viewing the raw video (available at the link), we tend to support that course of action.

Being a vocal critic while at the same time not interfering with a police officer's actions might be annoying to you badged fellows, but it certainly isn't illegal.  Official retaliation for doing so, however, is.  Good luck fighting those forthcoming civil-rights violation complaints.

A snapshot of life

Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Scottsdale, Arizona
1:17 p.m.

Seen spray-painted on a mattress in a pile of junk on the side of the road (in non-contrasting colors; the picture didn't come out good enough to warrant posting it):

"John McCain's the best Democrat for the job!"

Gave us a good laugh on a day we really needed one.

Chicago-style thug politics at its finest on public display

Congresswoman Melissa Bean D(aley wannabe)-IL, has apparently learned the thuggish political tactics of the martinets who rule the cesspool of Chicago quite well if the following video is any indication.  It was shot by one of her constituents at a citizen meeting at a public library:



Bean on at least two occasions hounds the man to turn off the camera, and we soon observe why she wishes for him to do so when a large man is repeatedly dispatched to aggressively and threateningly stand directly over people who are doing nothing more than politely daring to speak up against the socialist agenda being rammed down their throats.

King Emperor Mayor-for-Life Richard Daley or "naked locker room bully" Rahm Emanuel couldn't have done a better job of intimidating voters and suppressing open debate.

Had ol' Mongo there dared to loom over us at a public meeting in such a fashion he would very quickly and forcefully have found out the legal defenses against menacing and assault apply to him as well.

The Way They Were

"Barbara Streisand Skips Democratic Fundraiser"

One starring President Obama himself that the self-styled diva was supposed to be co-hosting in L.A. last night, and which apparently had the side effect of gridlocking the entire city.  That'll endear him to those residents for sure.

My, how the support is peeling off from Dear Leader, whose desperate new campaign slogan (even though he's not currently running for anything) appears to be "Let's reach for hope".

Well, there's certainly some "reaching" going on (on a number of levels), we'll give him that.

Why I carry a handgun for protection, Vol. 34

We had the opportunity over the weekend to attend the open house for the headquarters of the Phoenix Police Department's newly-created Black Mountain precinct.  The polite, professional and service-oriented officer who led our tour gave us many fascinating and much-appreciated insights into the daily life of a regular street patrol officer.  He also, however, let slip a couple of nuggets of information that reinforce our decision to carry a handgun for personal protection on a daily basis:

1.  The new precinct's location was deemed necessary because, at least until they go live on August 23, response times to calls for service by citizens of far north Phoenix are averaging 15-20 minutes each.  That's not very reassuring at all as violent crimes against those residents can happen in a matter of seconds.

2.  Street officer manpower is reduced, sometimes to dangerously low levels, during regularly-scheduled shift changes.  A savvy criminal who managed to obtain that scheduling information from a rogue officer or a careless family member of a good cop could create quite a bit of mayhem during that window and the department would oftentimes be able to do very little about it.

We very much enjoyed our chance to peek into the life of a dedicated public safety official.  We are also even more convinced, though, that there just aren't enough of them, and that the ultimate responsibility for one's personal protection rests squarely on the shoulders of the law-abiding public.

The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week...

...are the Federal, state and local shock troops who recently performed a show-of-force warrant service on a bunch of hippies at an organic grocery store in Venice, California.  The dangerous contraband that justified such unnecessarily draconian tactics?  Raw milk, organic honey and raw sugar cane syrup:

"With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts.

Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk."  (Emphasis ours)

Yep, the fridge is where the milk is usually located.  That's some excellent detective work right there, officers.

Well that innocuous situation certainly justified endangering the innocent employees as well as the public by unleashing the weapon-waving goon squad, didn't it?
 
The co-op is still open for business despite the best efforts of the food police to shut them down, according to the article.  Good.  It's nobody's business but theirs if those health-food nuts wish to roll the dice on their health by drinking raw milk, straight from the cow if they wish.  Post a sign stating that they do so at their own risk, if necessary, and then let them have at it.

The Titanic Presidency

Nile Gardiner of the London Telegraph lists ten reasons why Dear Leader's reign has been foundering so badly lately.  He then sums things up quite nicely:

"There is a distinctly Titanic-like feel to the Obama presidency and it’s not hard to see why. The most left-wing president in modern American history has tried to force a highly interventionist, government-driven agenda that runs counter to the principles of free enterprise, individual freedom, and limited government that have made the United States the greatest power in the world, and the freest nation on earth."

The whole article's well worth your time.

The party's over

Bill Frezza of RealClearMarkets breaks the bad news that the jig is indeed up for one of the Federal government's oldest Ponzi schemes as of today, not some nebulous time far down the road:

"This just in from the trustees that issue the annual report on the health of those two pillars of the modern entitlement state: Medicare and Social Security. For the first time in its history the Social Security program will pay out more money than it takes in. This watershed event will occur this year, to the tune of $41 Billion dollars. Under any rational accounting standards this makes the Social Security program bankrupt. And that's right now, not in 25 years when the so-called Trust Fund becomes insolvent. 

You see, most pension programs hold income producing assets in their Trust Funds. Stocks, bonds, real estate, oil and gas partnerships, that sort of thing. A fully funded pension program owns enough of those assets to pay its liabilities even if the company closes its doors and not a penny more of new money comes in from current employees.

Social Security plays by a different set of rules enshrined under the New Deal and Great Society programs. These are the same rules that landed Bernie Madoff in jail. Although the Social Security system has been regularly taking in billions for decades and socking it into its Trust Fund just like a normal pension plan, Congress has just as regularly been draining the money out for current spending. All of the money collected from every American's paycheck throughout all of our careers is now gone. In its place are not stocks, bonds, real estate, and oil and gas partnership. In its place are IOUs from Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, and Barney Frank. $2.5 Trillion dollars worth of IOUs."

Just wait until the great majority of Baby Boomers begin coming on line to the retirement rolls in the next couple of years, all of them expecting those Social Security checks to arrive promptly every month along with their shiny new socialized health care benefit that's also currently planned to be paid for with Chinese Monopoly money. 

Whatever will they do when those peasants realize that the "entitlement" cupboard is completely bare due to blatant thievery by the thieves in Congress over the last half-century?

A "Grim" fairy tale

The 2010 version of the old grasshopper and ant fable making the rounds on the Net, sent in by a reader who wishes to remain anonymous:

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
 
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.  America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
 
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green...'
 
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.”
 
Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake.
 
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.
 
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
 
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
 
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.
 
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
 
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.
 
The entire Nation collapses, bringing the rest of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Be careful how you vote in 2010.

He figured it out; why can't Mexico?

Victor Davis Hanson succinctly points out what we've been hammering on around here for quite some time - that America's illegal immigration problem, at least the portion of it comprised of Mexican citizens arriving and staying here in violation of the law, is driven mostly by the overwhelming incompetence, endemic corruption and official discrimination against these hard-working and generally decent peasants in their country of origin:

"Something is going very wrong in Mexico to prompt more than half a million of its citizens to cross the border illegally each year. Impoverished Mexican nationals variously cite poor economic conditions back home, government corruption, a lack of social services, and racism. In other words, it is not just the desirability of America but also the perceived undesirability of Mexico that explains one of largest mass exoduses in modern history.

But why, then, would Mexican President Felipe Calderon, whose country's conditions are forcing out its own citizens, criticize the United States, which is receiving so many of them? And why, for that matter, would many of those illegal immigrants identify, if only symbolically, with the country that made them leave, whether by waving its flag or criticizing the attitudes of the Americans who took them in?

And how does Mexico treat the hundreds of thousands of aliens who seek to illegally cross its own southern border with Central America each year? Does Mexico believe in sovereign borders to its south but not to its north?"

Mexico needs to clam up and work on its own serious societal issues for awhile before its putative "leaders" dare to again point fingers at the U.S. for simply wishing to control our own borders.

Triple-dipping on the public's dime

As many as 24 former New York City police officers (many already on tax-free retirements for various claimed physical problems) have been receiving Social Security benefits for the supposedly crippling post-traumatic stress disorders they're apparently burdened with as well.  Sure, no problem with that whatsoever, except for the minor fact that these poor destitute retirees also allegedly falsely applied and were issued handgun carry permits (the very sort that the average mentally stable, law-abiding New York City peasant doesn't have a prayer of receiving) in order to for them do private security work:

"The probers compared the list of "mentally ill" retirees with a roster of ex-cops who were issued gun permits, a process in which a person has to swear he isn't taking any drugs for mental problems."  (Emphasis ours)

Mountains of government fraud as well as perjury going on but nothing to see here, citizen, move along.

Let's add it up - cops on tax-free retirement at three-quarters pay qualify for Social Security payments of up to $3500 extra a month for their crippling stress symptoms, then either don't take their prescribed medication or lie about not taking it in order to go out and procure lucrative security contracts because they get to possess an all-but-impossible to obtain private handgun permit?  By our figures that's basically triple-dipping.  

 

Nice work if they can get away with it, but that's apparently not going to be the case much longer: 

 

"One retired cop belatedly realized he soon may face serious consequences for his avarice. 

 

The ex-cop, implicated in the wide-ranging probe, called a one-time police supervisor to ask for advice.  

 

'You're f- -ked! You need to get a criminal-defense attorney,' the supervisor said." 

 

Indeed.

 

We hope the various ailments of the officers are well-treated in the lockup, which is where they seem to be deservedly headed.

We're perplexed

If Britain's National Health Service is such a shining example of health care success for us former colonists here in America to emulate, then why is that particular agency paying out millions of dollars in hush money to at least 170 former doctors in order to prevent those physicians from "speaking out about incompetence and mistakes in patient care"?

Here's but one example of how those bullying bureaucrats are nakedly attempting to bribe the doctors who are brave enough to speak out about the atrocious conditions permeating that system, despite laws ostensibly in place to specifically prevent any retaliation for their doing so:

"A consultant paediatrician who told the Baby P inquiry that her unit had inadequate staffing levels was offered £120,000 to keep quiet, she has revealed. Dr Kim Holt, left, repeatedly told her management she believed children's services at St Ann's Hospital in north London were unsafe and first approached them more than a year before Baby P's death. Her employer, Great Ormond Street Hospital, was willing to give her £120,000 to stop her talking publicly about her concerns and to sign a document agreeing they had been addressed.

Baby P, whose real name was Peter Connelly, died in August 2007 two days after being taken to St Ann's where a locum failed to spot his back was broken. Dr Holt and three other consultants had written a letter to management the previous year warning the clinic was "falling apart" and risking patients' lives. She was offered the money after Baby P's death. 

'I was not going to be gagged,' she said. 'I've done nothing wrong. I raised concerns: it was obvious the place was a mess. I refused to retract my concerns. They wanted me to stay quiet'" 

We applaud Dr. Holt for standing up to that kind of attempted official gagging, especially since doing so ended up getting her placed on "special leave" despite those supposed whistle-blower protections.  Those anti-retaliation laws seem to be working quite well, don't they?

"David Bowles, the former chairman of an NHS Trust, told Channel 4 that he believed their use was 'endemic'. 'You shouldn't be at a position of needing a compromise agreement with a whistleblower. You should never get to that point in the first place. You should have listened to the concerns and you should have managed them in accordance with legislation and indeed the NHS's own published code.'"

Mr. Bowles sounds like an eminently reasonable man.  No wonder he can no longer stomach working for that abominable agency.

How long until the newly-appointed and unwanted health care "czars" who are apparently going to be mismanaging every aspect of our health care come up with the same brilliant idea - bribing doctors with your own money to not publicly disclose the inevitable massive failures of Dear Leader's shiny new Ponzi scheme?  Not long at all, we're willing to bet.

Oh, and the thing that really struck us about the article?  The ad for private health insurance that appeared below it on the Independent's webpage:

Private Medical Cover from £30 per month with Independent Compare

Our British readers should immediately sign up for that timely offer, even though it would mean paying twice for health care.  At least they would then be assured of eventually receiving some.

Stone deaf

After the Missouri residents that she represents in the Senate voted the other day by an overwhelming margin of more than 70% to opt themselves out of Dear Leader's socialist health care Ponzi scheme, Senator Claire McCaskill spouts a bunch of nonsense about "message received":

"McCaskill, however, makes the point that people 'don't realize' how beneficial the 'mandate' for health care will be. 'A lot of noise about the mandate that people have gotten so focused on that they don't realize that there's going to be more access and affordability and more choices,' she said."

"Oh, if only the stupid peasants would understand how we on Capitol Hill know so much better than they do about what's good for them, they'd loll about in ecstasy."  How condescending of the good lady.

Funny, it sure doesn't sound to us like she's understood any part of this communication, despite the emphasis with which it was delivered.  Perhaps the voters in Missouri should send her a much louder, clearer one at the next electoral opportunity.

Now this is just plain stupid

The FBI, apparently having nothing better to do with their time and resources, has sent a strongly worded letter to Wikipedia demanding that the online encyclopedia take down an image of the official seal that accompanies the site's article on the agency.

There's just a few small problems with this action - the seal is being used for a non-commercial educational purpose, no one is falsely representing themselves as FBI employees and, most importantly, since the seal is public property it CANNOT be copyrighted.  Therefore, the Fibbies seemingly don't have a legal leg to stand on, yet they're insisting on using our tax dollars to sent a cease-and-desist order to Wikipedia (but not the online Encyclopedia Britannica, which displays the exact same seal on their site).

"Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the dust-up both 'silly' and 'troubling'; Wikipedia has a First Amendment right to display the seal, she said.

'Really,” she added, “I have to believe the F.B.I. has better things to do than this.'"

One would think.

Wikipedia to their credit has fired back a response stating that they indeed have that perfectly valid First Amendment right to use the seal in that manner and that they're prepared to defend their position in court.  Good.  It's about time people and institutions began standing up to this sort of inappropriate (and highly annoying) bullying by the folks who supposedly work for us, and not the other way around.

So who actually ended up being more "respectable", Mrs. Gore?

Dee Snider, the lead singer of hair-metal band Twisted Sister and one of the primary targets of bored housewife Tipper Gore's PMRC back in 1985, comments on the remarkably different paths their lives have taken since he was dragged to those fun-filled hearings by that nosy twit:



"Oh, snap" indeed.

Tipper's glass house most certainly now has a huge rock hole right through the middle of it courtesy of Mr. Snider.  Enjoy the sweet, delicious irony, dear.  You completely deserve everything you're getting.

He's flat-out wrong

"I think that there are very few Constitutional limits that would prevent the Federal Government from rules that would affect your private life"

- Representative Fortney "Pete" Stark, D(ictator wannabe)-CA, one of the rudest and most martinet-like members of Congress (Google him.  His fellow Democrats actually denied him his opportunity, earned by seniority, to replace Charlie Rangel as head of the Ways and Means Committee pretty much due to his inability to get along with anyone on Capitol Hill), informing his constituents that he and his fellow conspirators can impose pretty much anything they wish on American citizens (such as requiring them to purchase health insurance they may not need or want for themselves and everyone else), and that there's bupkus those proles can do about it:



Stark is quite mistaken, of course.  The Constitution, via the Tenth Amendment, specifically limits the power of the Feds, to what is specifically granted to them elsewhere in that document, and we sure don't recall seeing anything there about forcing people to buy things.  The brave lady in the audience has it right - that sort of onerous policy is nothing more than naked slavery.

This is precisely the sort of arrogant, elitist attitude that lifers such as ol' Fortney get after enjoying 37+ years of unchecked power.  We think it's long past time that Mr. Stark be returned the ranks of the peasantry from whence he came, as he hasn't deserved the privilege of leading his district for quite some time, if ever.

Why I carry a handgun for protection, Vol. 33

Because the public is often informed, as seen here at the entrance to a dark and empty parking garage in the middle of a desolate downtown, that we're very much on our own when it comes to protecting ourselves:

One never knows when they'll suddenly find themselves in a life-or-death situation that's been made possible by this kind of circumstance.  Please prepare yourselves in advance.

A snapshot of life

Sunday, August 1, 2010
Lake Crystal, Minnesota
10:15 a.m.

Seen on the side of a highway in a supposedly solidly "blue" state (click for a bigger image):

We predict a veritable tidal wave of votes in opposition to Dear Leader's insane policy proposals (as well as shameless Congressional crooks such as Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters) come November.