Category Archives: The Nanny State

Law and Order, Politics, Science and Edumacation, The Nanny State

Wednesday Night Linkorama

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  • This is what happens when you let parents control policy. They were scared kids were going to hurt themselves on play equipment. Now they’re angry because the protective mats get hot. They want the city — I shit you not — to put protective canopies over every playground. It’s only a matter of time until the city fixed on the best solution: demolish all the playgrounds.
  • LA just banned plastic bags from stores. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse pointing out that this is bad for the environment. And some people think we should have the government solve global warming.
  • How lovely. Pointlessly terrorize law-abiding citizens; get decorated for it.
  • Having tobacco regulated by the FDA? Bad idea. What is with politicians that they worship certain agencies so much? The FDA can’t keep up with their current tasks, let along regulating the billions of cigarettes Americans suck on every year. One feels that this is a backdoor attempt to outlaw cigarettes.
  • More commentary on LA’s stupid fast food ban:

    I exaggerate not a bit when I describe the prevailing politics of L.A. to be roughly as follows: Wal-Mart and big box stores = evil, and need to be stopped at all costs. Also, we need more cheap supermarkets! Mom and pop stores need to be defended from Big Corporations, unless they sell fried chicken or used tires, or get in the way of a big development project. We have an affordable housing crisis, which is why we need to raise property taxes, limit the footprint of houses on their lots, and bulldoze thousands of affordable houses to make way for schools that we don’t need!

  • I’ve finally figured out the best way to enforce the DMCA. Ban everything!. Oh, they’re already taking their advice, trying to ban comments. Yes, comments.
  • As a professional astronomer (for the moment), this made me laugh. Well, giggle. Well, grin at least.
  • Obviously, a future Obama voter.
    • Politics, Science and Edumacation, The Nanny State

    Tuesday Night Linkorama

  • The first sex happened 570 million years ago and involved a twelve inch … organism. Not mentioned? 569,999,999 years ago, the first funisia dorothea porn hit the internet.
  • Interior decorators think licensing their profession is equivalent to licensing doctors. Somehow I don’t think anyone has ever died because the carpet didn’t match the curtains.
  • This is pathetic. A warden is refusing to grant a furlough to a man whose 10-year-old daughter is dying of cancer. What an asshole.
  • A must-read. Our efforts to stop slavery are being hamstrung because feminist and religious twerps are insisting that all forms of prostitution be lumped into slavery.

    Over the objections of a few anti-slavery stalwarts in the Justice Department, the House of Representatives passed a bill in December that expands the current anti-trafficking legislation to cover most forms of prostitution, coerced or not. If approved in its current form by the Senate and signed by the president, the law will no longer address slavery exclusively and will instead become a federal mandate to fight prostitution on a broad scale.

    Prostitution is always degrading, and it is often brutal — but it is not always slavery. Equating the scourge of slavery with run-of-the-mill, non-coerced prostitution is not only misleading, it will weaken the world’s efforts to end real forced labor and human trafficking.

    • 'Culture', Politics, Science and Edumacation, The Nanny State

    Constipated Linkorama

    The site was done for a while due to wordpress problems. My baby brother fixed it and everything is copacetic. So a long delayed LINKORAMA is due.

  • John Stossel comes out against the stimulus plan. You know, John. Maybe you could have written this a couple of weeks ago when it might have mattered. The blog and radio silence on this issue enraged me. My feeling was that everyone knew it was a bad idea … but everyone wanted those checks.
  • A nice tribute to the amazing Julian Simon.
  • Morrisey on Clinton’s bad history with buying the New York election by pardoning the FALN terrorists. This is something that will be huge if Hillary gets the nomination.
  • There’s been a lot of noise about the mother who tried to discipline her kid with public humiliation. The thing I can’t stand about these articles are all the “experts” who tell us the best way to raise a child. Note to experts: children are not lab rats, they are individuals. Different parents need different tools. One size fits all discipline is a horrid, horrid idea. Shut the fuck up.
  • Megan McCardle is not the only economist who likes Barak Obama. He is the infinitely preferable choice in the Dem primary — see my post (Empress of Industry) at Right-Thinking.
  • Speaking of McCardle, she makes some good points on the push for CFC bulbs. I keep circling around this and it always seems that the best way to combat global warming is a carbon tax. It’s the simplest and does not interfere with the market.
  • The latest from the Nanny State? A tax on video games.
  • Those FEMA trailers? Poisonous.Oh, this gets better with every passing day.
  • Dubner thinks our recession isn’t that bad. I hope he’s right. I can’t afford for him to be wrong.
    • The Nanny State

    No Booze For You

    You know, I agree that a ban on liquor sales on election day is dumb. That’s the one day when everyone needs to drink. And besides, we have a noble tradition, from Washington down, of buying elections with booze.

    But this sort of BS argument annoys me:

    Sales of packaged hard liquor are state-controlled in Idaho, and the state reaps the profits. Nally estimated that every Election Day, the state liquor dispensary loses $350,000 to $400,000 in sales. It also takes lots of calls from angry customers wondering why there’s a Tuesday store closure.

    There is no way in hell the state loses that much money in liquor sales. People simply buy their booze the day before or the day after. It’s not like they’re driving to Utah to buy their liquor

    Culture War, Politics, Science and Edumacation, The Nanny State

    Wednesday Linkorama

    2 Comments
  • It’s not enough we have that silly online gambling ban. Now, we’re going to have to pay $100 billion in trade agreements to keep it.
  • Carbon capture a good option? Eh, not so much. Carbon capture is one of those things that worries me. There is a stampede to embrace this idea and little, if anything, is known about the environmental impact.
  • From my old stomping grounds, a cop roughs up two jaywalkers. Oh, it was a war veteran and his pregnant fiance. Nice.
  • Jesus, is the MPAA a bunch of lunatics. You really should see This Film Is Not Yet Rated, if nothing else for the scene of Maria Bello discussing her pubic hair.
    • Politics, The Nanny State

    Thursday Linkorama

  • You want to know why Africa is struggling? Because people are unwilling to call out monsters like Robert Mugabe.
  • What the hell is wrong with people? A high school gets locked down because someone broke a mercury thermometer. Eeek! Contaminants!
  • Fresh off the success of banning guns, Britain wants to ban samurai swords. No news yet on whether they want to ban pointy sticks.
  • Police get called out because a teacher is doing karaoke. This panic in public schools over anything and everything is getting out of hand and getting our kids used to being in a State of Terror (which might be the intent). Here in Austin, they evacuated a school because of a ticking sound. Turned out an air-conditioner cover was rattling.
  • Ten media myths about the economy. Anyone who turns to our celebutwit news hosts for knowledge is getting the ignorance they deserve.
    • Culture War, Politics, Taxes and Spending, The Nanny State

    Wednesday Night Linkorama

  • Fred Phelps and his gang of assholes have been fined $11 million for their protests at military funerals. And before anyone screams “free speech”, the court decision was that this is a private event. The First Ammendment does not give you the right to bust into people’s funerals and scream at them.
  • Read about Karen Tandy, the outgoing Nanny in Charge of Drugs. Ugh.
  • The Democrats tax and spend and tax and spend. If only we had a conservative option.
    • Culture War, Politics, The Nanny State

    Dead Potheads

    Just another dead pothead:

    Robin Prosser, a Missoula woman who struggled for a quarter century to live with the pain of an immunosuppressive disorder, tried years ago to kill herself. Last week, she tried again. This time, she succeeded.

    After her earlier attempt failed, Prosser wound up in even more trouble after investigating police found marijuana in her home. She used the marijuana to help cope with pain.

    That marijuana charge was eventually dropped in an agreement with the city of Missoula, and Prosser had reason to rejoice in 2004 when Montanans passed a law allowing medical use of the drug.

    She was a high-profile campaigner for the Montana Medical Marijuana Act, and like others, she was dismayed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that drug agents could still arrest sick people using marijuana, even in states that legalized its use.

    The ruling came to haunt Prosser in late March, when DEA agents seized less than a half ounce of marijuana sent to her by her registered caregiver in Flathead County.

    At the time, the DEA special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain Field Division said federal agents were “protecting people from their own state laws” by seizing such shipments.

    Another casualty in the War on the Sick. George Bush, Alberto Gonzalez, John Ashcroft, John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia – there is blood on your hands, you puritanical Constitution-raping assholes.

    Law and Order, Politics, The Nanny State

    Counting All . . . Well, You Know

    Our Helen Lovejoy government know wants to register all porn stars. Ostensibly this it to stop underage porn. I guess since Traci Lords happened once, she could happen again.

    Garbage. I oppose registering guns because it wastes government resources and inconveniences the law-abiding while doing nothing to stop criminals. And I oppose registering penises and vaginas because it wastes government resources and inconveniences the law abiding while doing nothing to stop criminals.

    And the thing is, the Bushies know this. They know that created a federal database will do nothing to stop the exploitation of children. But this has nothing to do with kids; this is about going after perfectly legal adult pornography. And the disturbing thing is that the fundies will know little about this. This almost looks like a genuine pathology.

    Haven’t they got anything better to do?

    Politics, Socialism, Taxes and Spending, The Nanny State

    Sunday Sunday SUNDAY Linkorama

  • A fantastic story in the NYT about how New Zealand farmers are better off without subsidies. P. J. O’Rourke said the best thing to do with farm subsides was to take them behind the barn and kill them with an ax. That looks more true with every passing day.
  • Neal Boortz has an interesting breakdown
     of where all the highway money in Minnesota has gone. People are blaming the Governnor for not raising taxes. In the meantime, the state spent $1.5 billion on bailing out the Teachers’ Retirement Fund and building a stadium for the Twins.
  • Cato on the liberal media again. I don’t mind a media that’s biased, but I do mind paying for said bias. But as we all know, only Fox News is biased. Everyone else is just “right”.
  • Continuing on the liberal media theme, the NYT has their article on the SCHIP bill. Notice that they don’t even question any assumptions, failing to point out that SCHIP will cover “poor” families making $82,600, 90% of whom already have insurance. They also fail to mention the crowd-out effect which means millions will lose their insurance and we’ll spend $15 billion insuring less than a million kids. Give me $15,000 and I’ll insure more than one child. They also fail to point out that we need 20 million new smokers to pay for this.

    Oh, that liberal media! You know things are bad when the NYT’s reporting looks like a position paper from the Democratic party.

  • The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again! Children’s programming is being gutted by a lack of sponsors since junk food advertising has been banned (because we all know that parents can’t stop their kids from eating junk food). The solution will be to force them to pay for educational TV.
  • The house has OK’d drug reimportation. This could be a good thing if it forces the drug companies to refuse to do business with socialist price-fixing countries. We are paying almost all the R&D costs of the drug companies. Let’s see if they have the balls to fight. Of course, most libs have the “kill the goose” option – fix prices in this country.